fire.
Mr Campion sat between Giles and Biddy. The firelight shone upon his spectacles, hiding his eyes. Giles leaned back in his chair, puffing contentedly at his pipe. The girl sat close to their new guest, Addlepate in her lap, and the old rector was back in his corner. Sitting there, the firelight making a fine tracery of his face, he looked like a Rembrandt etching.
‘Well, about this Estate Agency business,’ said Mr Campion, ‘I’ve got something to put up to you kids.’ His tone was unusually serious.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘You’re wondering where the slow music comes in. It’s like this. It so happened that I wanted a country house in a remote spot for a particularly peppy job I’ve got on hand at the moment. Your announcement that you’d have to let the ancestral home occurred to me, and I thought the two stunts worked in together very well. Giles, old boy, I shall want you to help me. Biddy, could you clear out, my dear, and go and stay with an aunt or something? For a fortnight or so, I mean—until I know how the land lies?’
The girl looked at him with mild surprise in her brown eyes. ‘Seriously?’ she said.
He nodded. ‘More serious than anything in the world.’
Biddy leaned back in her chair. ‘You’ll have to explain,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to miss anything.’
Mr Campion took Biddy’s hand with awful solemnity. ‘Woman,’ he said, ‘this is men’s work. You’ll keep your little turned-up neb out of it. Quite definitely and seriously,’ he went on, ‘this is not your sort of show, old dear.’
‘Suppose you don’t blether so much,’ said Giles; ‘let’s have the facts. You’re so infernally earnest that you’re beginning to be interesting for once.’
Mr Campion got up and wandered up and down the room, his steps sounding sharply on the polished oak floor.
‘Now I’m down here,’ he said suddenly, ‘and I see you dear old birds all tucked up in the ancestral nest, I’ve got an attack of conscience. I ought not to have done this, but since I have I’d better make a clean breast of it.’
The others turned and stared at him, surprised by this unusual outburst.
‘Look here,’ he went on, planting himself back in his chair, ‘I’ll tell you. You read the newspapers, don’t you? Good! Well, have you heard of Judge Lobbett?’
‘The old boy they’re trying to kill?’ said Giles. ‘Yes. You know I showed it to you this morning, St Swithin. Are you in that, Albert?’
Mr Campion nodded gravely. ‘Up to the neck,’ he said, adding hastily, ‘on the right side, of course. You know the rough outline of the business, don’t you? Old Lobbett’s stirred up a hornet’s nest for himself in America and it’s pretty obvious they’ve followed him here.’ He shot a glance at Giles. ‘They’re not out to kill him, you know—not yet. They’re trying to put the fear of God into him and they’ve picked an infernally tough nut. In fact,’ he went on regretfully, ‘if he wasn’t such a tough nut we wouldn’t have such a job. I’m acting for the son, Marlowe Lobbett—a very decent cove; you’ll like him, Giles.’ He paused and looked round at them. ‘Have you got all that?’
They nodded, and he continued: ‘The old boy won’t stand any serious police protection. He himself is our chief difficulty. At first I thought he was going to sink us, but quite by chance I stumbled on a most useful sidelight in his character. The old boy has got a bee in his bonnet about folk-lore—ancient English customs—all that sort of thing. Marlowe introduced me to him as a sort of guide to rural England. Said he’d met me on the boat coming over, as of course he had. Anyway, I’ve let him the house. There’s a title of Lord of the Manor that goes with it, isn’t there?’
Giles glanced up. ‘There is something like that, isn’t there, St Swithin?’
The old man nodded and smiled. ‘There’s a document in the church to that effect,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what good it is to anybody nowadays, though.’
‘Old Judge Lobbett liked it, anyway,’ said Mr Campion. ‘It gives the place a sort of medieval flavour. But I’ll come to that later. All that matters now is that the old bird has taken the place off your hands at fourteen quid a week. And if he knew as much as I do he’d realize he got it cheap.’
Giles sat up. ‘You expect trouble?’ he said.
Mr Campion nodded. ‘I don’t see how we can escape it,’ he said. ‘You see,’ he went on hastily, ‘I had to get the old boy out of the city and down here, because in a place like this if there’re any strangers knocking about we know at once. Look here, Giles, I shall need you to help me.’
Giles grinned. ‘I’m with you,’ he said. ‘It’s time something happened down here.’
‘And I’m in it too,’ said Biddy, that expression of determination which the others knew so well appearing at the corners of her mouth.
Mr Campion shook his head. ‘Sorry, Biddy,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t have that. You don’t know what you’d be letting yourself in for. It was only in a fit of exuberance that I went into it myself.’
Biddy sniffed. ‘I’m staying,’ she said. ‘Judge Lobbett has a daughter, hasn’t he? If she’s going to be in it, so am I. Besides, what would you three poor fish do without me? We’ll move over to the Dower House.’
Mr Campion turned to the rector. ‘Bring your influence to bear, St Swithin. Tell her that this is stern stuff—no place for the tender sex.’
The old man shook his head. ‘In the words of the poet, “I do remain as neuter”,’ he said. ‘Personally, I always obey her.’
Mr Campion looked abashed. ‘You’re making it very awkward for me,’ he said. ‘I’d never have done it if I’d dreamed that I was bringing you into it, Biddy.’
The girl laid her hand upon his knee. ‘Don’t be a fool,’ she said. ‘You silly old dear, I’m with you to the death. You know that.’
Mr Campion almost blushed, and was silent for an appreciable space of time. The rector brought him back to the subject on hand. ‘Let us be specific,’ he said. ‘No doubt you have your own dark secrets, Albert, but what are we expected to do?’
Mr Campion plunged into the details of his scheme. ‘First of all,’ he said, ‘we’ve got to keep the old boy here. And that means we’ve got to keep him interested. St Swithin, I rely on you for the archaeology and whatnots. Show him the village trophies. Get out the relics of the witch burnings and polish up the stocks. Make it all bright and homely for him. Then there’s the doubtful Romney in the drawing room. Get his opinion on that. He’s a delightful old cove, but obstinate as sin.’
He hesitated. ‘What he’s really interested in,’ he went on after a pause, ‘is actual folk-lore and superstition. Haven’t you any prize yokels who know a few ancient wisecracks?—old songs and that sort of thing?’
Giles glanced up. ‘Plenty of those,’ he said. ‘Did I tell you, Biddy, I set George to cut down that dead thorn at the end of the home paddock this morning? When I passed by at lunchtime he grinned at me, as pleased as Punch—he’d been all the morning at it. “How are you going, George?” said I. “Foine, Master Giles,” he said, “I can cut that down
