'Well,' she said, 'what have you come for?'
'To ask why I can't go to school in January. I've read all about it. Frozen wash-basins, so that you can't wash, dreadful grub, so you think you're in a foreign prison, underground form-rooms hundreds of degrees below zero, sadistic prefects...'
'They can't be sadistic enough to suit me,' said Laura.
'It sounds a most inviting prospect,' said Dame Beatrice, producing, as though out of a hat, chocolates, potato crisps and liquorice all-sorts.
'You know,' said Hamish, reaching out for the goodies, 'you're the only person who really understands me, Mrs Dame.'
'But, back to the subject of those two girls,' said Laura to her employer, 'what do you think we ought to do?'
'The one thing we cannot do is to take Mr Towne to court. The car was large, the lane is very narrow, there was a bend around which he could not possibly have seen the girls approaching, and the evidence against him rests on their word alone.'
'Well, then, what can we do?'
'At present, nothing. Hamish would like his lunch early, then he can have a rest before you hire a pony for him.'
'He's the complete human cormorant, certainly,' Laura agreed, looking at her son with the fascination of horror. 'All right. I'll push him into the dining-room while we have a civilised drink and then, as you say, he can sit still for a bit while we have our lunch. I'd better ring up the stables right away.'
'You do just that, and hurry up about it,' said Hamish. Laura clouted him, a gesture which he accepted with the greatest of sang-froid.
'May I have a tomato juice, please?' he asked. 'One gave up lemonade when one was seven. With grandfather in Scotland I was allowed a dash of whisky. He said new dogs learn old tricks, whereas old dogs don't learn new tricks. Interesting, and not altogether true. Look at politicians.'
'I don't want to,' said Laura. 'Go and get yourself that tomato juice and then for goodness' sake have your lunch.'
'Will they serve me in the bar? I shouldn't wish to be embarrassed by a refusal because I'm under eighteen.'
Laura went out and returned with the tomato juice. Hamish gulped it down and then headed for the dining-room. Laura sighed. Dame Beatrice cackled.
'You will trust him to ride alone, after the gipsy's warning?' she asked. Laura looked surprised.
'Did you never read Mr P. G. Wodehouse on the subject of the page-boy Harold and the chance of his being bitten by a snake?' she demanded.
'I don't think I ever did.'
'Well, when Jeeves' views were canvassed, he contended that, in such an emergency, his anxiety would be entirely for the snake. If Hamish runs into trouble, my anxiety will be entirely for the other person.'
Laura accompanied her son to the riding-stables at half-past two, saw him mounted, and then walked back to the hotel, but not before he had asked her to tell him the number of the car which had tried to run down the two girls. They knew it, and had given it to her over the telephone. Laura, who knew that she would be plagued by Hamish for days if she did not repeat it to him, confided it hastily, fairly sure that he would forget it that his curiosity was satisfied.
Hamish owed his almost boundless selfconfidence and his overt personality to two factors. One of these was his heredity. Neither Laura nor Detective Chief-Inspector Gavin lacked personality. The other factor was that everything the child had been taught had been taught him extremely well. He was, at the age of ten, a daring and accomplished diver and swimmer, his batting and fielding were, for his age, first class, and he rode like a prince. He was a tall boy, extremely well built and yet also graceful. He had given up dancing classes (at his own urgent request) and was learning judo, which Laura much preferred to boxing, and the piano, which he intended to give up in favour of the organ, which made, he said, a great deal more noise.
His estimate of his prowess at Greek and Latin was more modest than was justified by the facts.
Like most intelligent children of his age, he learned easily and had no objection to being taught. Besides, he got on well with the scholarly, kindly vicar and showed him always his best side. Laura and Hamish themselves were in conflict only because both enjoyed the fight for power. Laura respected her son, and in her he found an opponent worthy of his steel.
'She leaves me alone. I can manage my own affairs,' he had said, at the age of seven, to his father. 'I suppose not many mothers are like that.'
'She leaves me alone. I am allowed to manage my own affairs,' Gavin had replied. 'Very few wives, and even fewer mothers, are capable of so much self-control.'
'So it ought to be thank God kneeling for a good woman's love. I'm not so sure that she exactly loves us, you know.'
'Well, it's probably a bit difficult,' Gavin had said, with a grin. Father and son understood one another perfectly, a fact which Laura recognised with a mixture of irritation and gratitude.
Hamish, on this occasion dismissing all thoughts of his mother, rode the pony at an easy pace on to the Lawn. There were a number of the Forest ponies about, but they took not the slightest notice of him or of his mount, but continued their quiet grazing. Hamish reined in his pony and studied them before he moved on. He was following a narrow path, without being on it, which led, between a ditch and the open grassland, straight across the Lawn towards some woods.
He skirted the woods when he came to them, and branched off to the left towards a rough, almost unmade road. Without his knowledge, he was on the track which led to Campden-Towne's house. He kept his pony on the grass, but, hoping that the road would lead to something interesting, he followed its course. The pony plodded on until Hamish decided upon a gallop. This soon ate up a couple of hundred yards of the flat but rather uneven surface of the ground and brought them on to the common, but at a point where the rough road crossed a bridge which Richardson would have recognised.
Hamish, always interested in streams, rode on to the bridge, dismounted, slung the reins over his arm and walked the pony to the parapet so that they could look at the running water. A toot on the horn of a car caused the boy to look round. A large limousine drew up and the driver leaned out.
'You're trespassing here,' he said. This is a private road.'
Hamish raised his cap.
'I'm extremely sorry,' he said. 'Do you mind if I just go on? I haven't ridden on your road until now.'
'Oh, carry on,' said the man ungraciously, 'but remember that, once you've crossed the bridge, you must take yourself off on to the heath. I don't have roads made up at my own expense for any casual strangers to make use of.'
'Quite,' agreed Hamish. 'I do see your point. That's a very good car you have there, sir. A Kent number, I believe.' He stared hard at the number plate, to the man's obvious annoyance.
'Oh, go and write down some train numbers, can't you?' he snarled. 'Now get along with you.'
Hamish mounted his pony, raised his riding crop in an ironic gesture unusual, perhaps, in so young a boy, and rode on. The car, imitating its owner's angry snarl, drove off. When it had rounded the bend, Hamish solemnly recited to himself its number and then remarked to the pony that it was the car which had attempted to run down two girls. As soon as he had crossed the bridge, he rode off on to the grass and continued upon its uneven surface until he came out on to the heath and found himself facing, albeit at some distance, an important house partly hidden among trees.
Hamish possessed the original and slightly dare-devil mentality of his mother, combined, although not so strongly, with his father's sense of civic responsibility and duty. He rode up to the house, hitched the pony to a convenient bit of trellis and thundered on the front door. The dim-witted maid, who had once refused to allow Richardson to use the telephone, opened a crack of perhaps eight inches and said,