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‘That a spoon might stand up in it,’ suggested Peter.

‘No,’ said Mr Kirk. “That bit doesn’t seem to finish up quite right. But thanks all the same. Here’s health.’

‘And what have you been doing all afternoon?’ inquired Peter, bringing a stool to the fire and seating himself on it between his wife and Kirk.

‘Well, my lord,’ said Kirk, ‘I’ve been up to London.’

To London?’ said Harriet. ‘That’s right, Peter. Come a little further this way and let me take the straws out.’

‘Il m’aime-un peu-beaucoup.’

‘But not to see the Queen,’ pursued the Superintendent. I went to see Frank Crutchley’s young woman. In Clerkenwell.’

‘Has he got one there?’

‘Passionement a la folie-’

‘He had,’ said Kirk.

‘Pas du tout. Il m’aime-’

‘I got the address from that chap Williams over at Hancock’s. Seems she’s a good-looking young woman.’

‘Un peu-beaucoup-’

‘With a bit of money-’

‘Passionement-’

‘Lived with ’er dad and seemed dead struck on Frank Crutchley. But there-’

‘A la folie-’

‘You know what girls are. Some other fellow turned up-’

Harriet paused, with the twelfth straw in her fingers.

‘And the long and short of it is, she married the other bloke three months back.’

‘Pas du tout!’ said Harriet; and flung the straws into the fire.

‘The devil she did” said Peter. He caught Harriet’s eye.

‘But what got me all worked up,’ said Kirk, ‘was finding out what ’er father was.’

‘It was a robber’s daughter, and her name was Alice Brown. Her father was the terror of a small Italian town.’

‘Not a bit of it. He’s a-There!’ said Mr Kirk, arresting his glass half way to his mouth, ‘of all the trades and professions open to a man, what should you say he was?’

‘From your air,’ replied Peter, ‘of having, so to speak, found the key that cuts the Gordian knot-’

‘I can’t imagine,’ said Harriet, hastily. ‘We give it up.’

‘Well,’ announced Kirk, eyeing Peter a little dubiously, ‘if you give it up, then I’ll tell you. ’Er father is an ironmonger and locksmith as cuts keys when wanted.’

‘Good God, you don’t say so!’

Kirk, putting down a mouthful, nodded emphatically. ‘And what’s more,’ he went on. setting the glass down on the table with a smack, ‘what’s more, none so long ago-six months more or less-young Crutchley comes along, bright as you please, and asks him to cut a key for him.’

‘Six months ago! Well, well!’

‘Six months. But,’ resumed the Superintendent, ‘now this. I’m going to tell you will surprise you. I don’t mind saying it surprised me… Thank you, I don’t mind if I do… Well-the old boy didn’t make no secret of the key. Seems there’d a-been a bit of a tin between the young people before they parted brass-rags. Anyhow, he didn’t seem to feel no special call to speak up for Frank Crutchley. So when I asked the question, he answered straight off, and, what’s more, he took me round to his workshop. He’s a methodical old bird, and when he makes a new key, he keeps a cast of it. Says people often lose their keys, and it come in ’andy to have a record. I dunno. Shouldn’t wonder if he’d had official inquiries round there before. But that’s neether here nor there. He took me round and he showed me the cast what he’d made of the key. And what do you think that key was like?’

Peter, having been once rebuked, did not this time venture on so much as a veiled guess. But Harriet felt that some sort of reply was called for. Mustering up all the astonishment the human voice is capable of expressing, she said:

‘You can’t mean it was the key to one of the doors in this house?’

Mr Kirk smote his thigh with a large hand. ‘Aha!’ he cried. ‘What did I say? I knew I should catch you there! No-it was not, and nothing like, neether. Now! What do you think of that?’

Peter picked up the remains of the bottle-straw and began to weave himself a fresh head-dress. Harriet felt that her effort had gone even better than she had intended.

‘How astonishing!’

‘Nothing like it,’ repeated the Superintendent. ‘A huge great thing it was, more like a church key.’

‘Was it,’ asked Peter, his fingers working rapidly among the straws, ‘made from a key or from a wax mould?’

‘From a key. He brought it along with him. Said it was the key of a barn he’d hired to keep some stuff in. Said the key belonged to the owner and he wanted another for himself.’

‘I should have thought it was the owner’s business to supply a key for the tenant,’ said Harriet.

‘So should I. Crutchley explained he’d had one once and lost it. And mind you, that might be true. Anyhow, that’s the only key the old man had cut for him-or so he said, and I don’t think he was lying, neether. So away I come, by the evening train, no wiser. But after I’d had me bit o’ supper, I says to myself. Well, I says, it’s a line-never leave a line, I says, till you’ve followed it up. So out I goes to Pagford to look for our young friend. Well, he wasn’t in the garage, but Williams said he’d seen him out on his bike along the road to Ambledon Overbrook-you may know it-about a mile and a half out o’ Pagford on the Lopsley road.’

‘We came through it this afternoon. Pretty little church with a brooch spire.’

‘Yes, it’s got a spire. Well, I thought I’d have a look for my gentleman, so I pushed along and-do you remember seeing a big old barn with a tiled roof about three-quarters to a mile out of Pagford?’

‘I noticed it,’ said Harriet. ‘It stands all by itself in a field.’

‘That’s right. Well. going past there, I see a light, as it might be a bicycle-lamp, going across that field, and it came to me all of a sudden that, about six months ago, Crutchley did a bit of work on a tractor for Mr Moffatt as owns that barn. See? I just put them things together in my mind. So I gets out of the car, and I follows the bicycle light across the field. He wasn’t going fast-just walking with it-and I went pretty quick, and when I was about half way across, he must a-heard me coming, because he stopped. So I come up and then I see who it was.’

The Superintendent paused again.

‘Go on,’ said Peter. ‘We’ll buy it this time. It wasn’t Crutchley. It was Mr Goodacre or the landlord of the Crown.’

‘Caught you again,’ said Kirk, jovially. ‘Crutchley it was, all right. I asked him what he was doing there, and he said that was his business and we argued a bit, and I said I’d like to know what he was doing with a key to Mr Moffatt’s barn, and he wanted to know what I meant by that and-anyhow, the long and short was, I said I was going to see what there was in the barn and he was damn’ well going to come with me. So we went along, and he sounded pretty sulky, but he says: “You’re barking up the wrong tree,” and I says, “We’ll see about that” So we got to the door and I says, “Give me that key,” and he says, “I tell you I ain’t got no key,” and I says, “Then what do you want in this field, because it don’t lead nowhere, and anyhow, I says, I’m going to see.” So I puts me ’and on the door and it come open as easy as winking. And what do you think was inside that barn?’ Peter contemplated his plait of straw and twisted the ends together to form a crown.

‘At a guess,’ he replied, ‘I should say-Polly Mason.’

‘Well, there!’ exclaimed the Superintendent. ‘Just as I was all set to catch you again! Polly Mason it was, and she wasn’t half scared to see me, neether. “Now, my girl,” I said to her, “I don’t like to see you here,” I says. “What’s all this?” And Crutchley says, “No business of yours, you stupid cop. She’s over the age of consent” “Maybe,” I said, “but she’s got a mother,” I said, “as brought her up decent; and, what’s more,” I said, “it’s breaking and entering, and that’s a civil trespass, and Mr Moffatt’ll have something to say, about it.” So there was more words passed, and I said to the girl. “You ’and over that key, which you ain’t got no right to, and if you’ve got any sense or feeling,” I said, “you’ll come along home with me.” And the end of it was, I brought her back-and a lot of sauce she gave me, the young piece. As for me lord, I left him to twiddle his thumbs-I beg your pardon, my lord-no offence intended.’