Father stared at her for a moment, and then at me, then back at Porcelain again. “Excuse me,” he said, “I didn’t realize—”
“Father,” I said, “I should like to introduce Porcelain Lee.”
“How do you do?” Father said after an almost imperceptible pause, then sticking out his hand at once, rather than waiting for her to do so first. He was obviously flustered.
Porcelain came forward a couple of halting steps and gave him a single shake: up-down.
“Lovely weather we’ve been having,” Father went on, “when it isn’t raining, of course.”
I saw my opportunity and I took it.
“It was Porcelain’s grandmother, Mrs. Faa, who was attacked in the Gully,” I said.
What seemed like an eternity of shadows fled across Father’s face.
“I was saddened to hear of that,” he said at last. “But I’m given to believe she’s going to make a splendid recovery.”
Neither of them knowing what to say next, they stood there staring fixedly at each other, and then Father said, “You’ll join us for supper, of course?”
You could have knocked me down with a moth-eaten feather!
Dear old Father! How I admired him. Generations of breeding and his natural gallantry had turned what might have been a sticky situation into a perfect triumph, and my bedroom, rather than the anticipated field of battle, had suddenly become a reception chamber.
Porcelain lowered her eyelids to signal assent.
“Good!” Father exclaimed. “That’s settled, then.”
He turned to me. “Mrs. Mullet returned not ten minutes ago to retrieve her purse. Left it in the pantry. If she’s still here, I’ll ask her if she wouldn’t mind—I believe she might still be in the kitchen.”
And with that, he was gone.
“Crikey!” Porcelain said.
“Quick,” I told her. “There’s not a minute to lose! You’ll probably want to have a wash-up and change into something more … fresh.”
She’d been wearing Fenella’s dowdy black outfit for days, and looked, to be perfectly frank, like a Covent Garden flower seller.
“My things won’t fit you,” I said, “but Daffy’s or Feely’s will.”
I beckoned her to follow, then led her through the creaking upstairs corridors.
“That’s Daffy’s room,” I said, pointing, when we reached the west wing of the house. “And that’s Feely’s. Help yourself—I’m sure they won’t mind. See you at supper. Come down when the gong is struck.”
I don’t know what makes me do these things, but secretly, I could hardly wait to see how my sisters reacted when Porcelain came down for supper in one of their favorite frocks. I hadn’t really had the chance to pay them back properly for the humiliation in the cellars. My jiggered looking glass had backfired horribly, but now, suddenly, out of the blue, dear old Fate had given me a second chance.
Not only that but Mrs. M had turned up unexpectedly in the kitchen, which presented a perfect opportunity to ask her the question that might well stamp this case “Closed.”
I flew down the stairs and skipped into the kitchen.
Hallelujah! Mrs. Mullet was alone.
“Sorry to hear you forgot your purse,” I said. “If I’d known sooner, I could have brought it to you. It would have been no trouble at all.”
This was called “storing up credits,” and it operated on the same principle as indulgences in the Roman Catholic Church, or what the shops in London called “the Lay-away Plan.”
“Thank you, dear,” Mrs. M said, “but it’s just as well I come back. The Colonel’s asked me to set a few things on the table, and I don’t mind, really, seein’ as it’s Alf’s lodge night, and I wouldn’t have much to do anyway but knit and train the budgerigar. We’re teachin’ it to say ‘Eee, it was agony, Ivy!’ You should ’ear it, dear. Alf says it’s ever so ’umorous.”
As she spoke, she bustled about the kitchen, preparing to serve supper.
I took a deep breath and made the leap.
“Was Brookie Harewood a Hobbler?” I asked
“Brookie? I’m sure I couldn’t tell you, dear. All I knows is, last time I seen ’im slinkin’ round the church, I told the vicar ’e’d best lock up the communion plate. That’s what I said: ‘You’d best lock up the communion plate before it goes pop like a weasel.’ ”
“What about Edward Sampson? Do you know anything about him?”
“Ted Sampson? I should say I do! Reggie’s half brother, ’e is, a reg’lar bad bun, that one. Owns that salvage yard in East Finchin’, and Alf says there’s more’n old tin goes through them gates. I shouldn’t be tellin’ you this, dear. Tender ears, and all that.”
I was filling in the blanks nicely. Pettibone and Company, under cover of a quiet shop, an out-of-the-way salvage yard, and an eccentric religion, were operating an antiques theft and forgery ring. Although I had suspected this for some time, I had not seen, until now, how all of it fitted together.
Essentially, Brookie stole, Edward copied, and Reginald sold treasures removed from stately homes. The ingenious twist was this: After the original objects were copied, they were returned to their owners, so that they would seldom, if ever, be missed.
Or were the originals replaced with the copies? I had not yet had time to find that out, but when I did, I would begin by making a chemical analysis of Sally Fox and Shoppo’s metallic content. I had originally intended to begin with the de Luce lobster pick I had found in the hands of Timothy—or was it really “Timofey”—Bull. But the demands on my time had made that impossible.
With his gob full of sweets, Timofey had been very difficult to understand.
I smiled as I recalled the child mucking in the lane.
“Danny’s pocket,” he had replied when I’d asked him where he got his pretty digger. In retrospect, he was almost cute.
“And Mrs. Bull, of course. Is she a Hobbler, too?”
“I couldn’t say,” Mrs. Mullet said. “I’ve been told Tilda Mountjoy was one of ’em, but I never heard it said that Margaret Bull was, even though them two is as thick as thieves! Them ’Obblesr goes traipsin’ round to one another’s ’ouses of a Sunday to sing their ’ymns, and shout, and roll about on the floor as if they was tryin’ to smother a fire in their unmentionables, and God knows what all else.”
I tried to picture Miss Mountjoy rolling around on the floor in the grips of religious ecstasy, but my imagination, vivid as it is, was not up to it.
“They’re a rum lot,” Mrs. M went on, “but there’s not a one of ’em would let Margaret Bull through their front gate. Not in a month o’ Sundays! Not anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Somethin’ ’appened when that baby of ’ers got took. She was never the same after—not that she was much of a marvel before—”
“What about her husband?”
“Tom Bull? ’E took it real hard. Nearly killed ’im, they say. ’E went off not long after, and my friend Mrs. Waller said ’is wife told ’er, in confidence, mind, that ’e wouldn’t be comin’ back.”
“Maybe he went off to find work. Dogger says a lot of men have done that since the end of the war.”
“ ’E had work enough. Worked for Pettibone’s brother-in-law.”
“Ted Sampson?”
“The very one we was talkin’ about. A foundryman, Tom Bull was, and a good one, so they say, even though ’e’d ’ad ’is troubles with the police. But when that baby girl o’ ’is got took, somethin’ ’appened, inside, like, and ’e went off ’is ’ead. Not long after, it were, ’e was up and gone.”
How I longed to blurt out to her that the body of Tom Bull’s baby daughter had been found in the Palings, but I dared not breathe a word. The news had not yet reached the village, and I didn’t want to be accused of leaking information that the police would sooner keep to themselves—at least for the time being.
“You’d better run along and clean up for dinner, dear,” Mrs. Mullet said suddenly, breaking in upon my train of thought. “The Colonel says you’re ’avin company to supper, so ’e won’t want to see dirty ’ands at the table.”