‘Well, I can only suggest you keep an eye on them, Professor. Meanwhile I will get in touch with my cousin. Is it possible for me to come along at some time and see how the work is progressing?’
‘Oh, by all means. I shall be delighted to take you round and explain what we are doing.’
‘Well,’ said Veryan, joining Tynant in the car, ‘he says there is nothing he can do.’
‘What did you ask him to do? After all, to be perfectly fair, we are more of a menace to Saltergate’s towers and walls than ever he is to our excavation. Couldn’t we—’
‘No, we couldn’t. My work is all-important. His is mere play by comparison. If my trench impinges upon his walls, well, that is just too bad, but it cannot be helped, and I shall have to tell him so.’
‘What kind of fellow is this bailiff?’
‘He is a cousin of the owner and, I should guess, a poor relation at that. The servants are all on board wages except (he told me) one gamekeeper who has had to remain at work because of the young pheasants, and—’
‘I thought a big chap in a green baize apron let you in. That wasn’t this cousin, was it?’
‘No. That’s a manservant called Wicklow. The other reason I have for thinking that the cousin is a poor relation is not his clothes, threadbare though his jacket was. Half the population goes about looking like tramps and nobody thinks anything of it nowadays—’
‘I thought that was only the young. How old is this fellow?’
‘Forty, perhaps. Anyhow, what struck me most forcibly was that manservant’s attitude towards Sandgate.’
‘He needed a good setting-down and he did not get it? Obviously he has no respect for his master’s poor relation, which is what you take Sandgate to be.’
‘The man behaved to Sandgate as though he recognised no difference in their social standing.’
‘Perhaps he is resentful at being left on duty while the other servants are absent.’
‘I suppose that could be so. All the same, although Jack may be as good as his master and, in some cases, very much better, I am a stickler for the old values and I think that dependants should pay lip-service to their employer and not attempt to bridge the gap which custom and usage have placed between them. It is better and more convenient for both sides to have it so.’
‘But this Wicklow chap probably sees the two of them as fellow workers in the same vineyard.’
‘But even in a vineyard there are the supervisor and the supervised.’
‘I am sorry you went, as you obtained no satisfaction from the visit,’ said Lilian Saltergate, ‘and I am sorrier still that your car passed Malpas’s on the road back and so he knows you went. What kind of man is the bailiff?’
‘I did not care for him. I received the impression that he has some axe of his own to grind and that the rift between Malpas and myself fits in with his plans.’
‘It would be interesting to know whether Malpas got any more satisfaction from him than you did.’
‘Tynant was in the car with Malpas, but I don’t know whether he went into the house with him.’
‘Probably not. Malpas prefers to play a lone hand unless he is in need of help. Do you think there is anything between him and Susannah?’
‘Between Malpas and Susannah? I thought she and Tynant—’
‘I am not so sure. I have seen glances exchanged and a hand brushed against another hand.’
‘You scandal-mongering woman!’
‘It’s all very well to laugh, but Susannah is very lovely; very intelligent, too.’
‘And Veryan is a married man.’
‘Not any more. Oh, dear, my head-in-the-sand old ostrich, you are behind the times! They divorced each other ages ago. It was kept very quiet, but it happened.’
‘One sees their names as attending the same conferences. They are listed as Professor and Mrs Veryan.’
‘What of it? She goes as a delegate in her own right, the same as she always did. It only means that she hasn’t married again, that’s all. Is the Holdy estate a large one?’
‘I should think so, but probably not of very much value. There would not be rich grazing or prosperous large farms around here. The size of the estates in this part of the country was achieved because the local nobility and gentry intermarried and added one estate to another and, of course, in England the property is not divided up when the father dies. The younger sons often come off very badly.’
‘But this – what was his name?’
‘Sandgate. No, he is not a younger son. He is the owner’s cousin.’
‘Why didn’t you like him?’
‘Perhaps because his name is reminiscent (to him) of mine. He suggested that we ought to get on well together. Somehow I felt there was something behind the remark.’
‘ “As I came through Sandgate I heard a lassie sing”,’ said Lilian, turning to go up to change for dinner.
As she came from the bathroom into the bedroom, Edward said, ‘Even if I have to stand at my flanking-towers with a shotgun, Malpas is not going to touch them. His wretched dig could do irreparable damage and I won’t put up with that.’
‘Stop worrying yourself, and don’t envisage situations which will probably never arise. Do you think the Horse and Cart will improve on last night’s offering of stewed steak and dumplings, followed by rice pudding and very sour plums? I suppose in the depths of winter they serve cold chicken and salad, followed by an ice-cream sundae. This is a loathsome little inn.’
‘We could always move to the Barbican.’
‘And have you and Malpas throwing crusty rolls at one another? Anyway, I’ve made Malpas and Nicholas feed those two boys and get them an occasional bath. Nicholas is your best bet, you know. If anybody can restrain Malpas, he can.’
‘If the worst looks like coming to the worst…’ began Edward, but Lilian did not allow him to finish.
‘I will tell Nicholas that Malpas takes more than a fatherly interest in Susannah,’ she said, her plump, smooth face creasing suddenly into a smile, ‘then he will murder Malpas and all will be well.’
‘You shouldn’t make jokes about murder.’
‘Oh, oh! Who talked of guarding our walls with a shotgun?’
‘Malpas adopts an irritatingly superior attitude in comparing his work with mine. When he has satisfied himself with his Bronze Age burials, the ground will all be smoothed over again, as though nothing had ever happened to it, but my restoration of the castle defences will last a thousand years. Doesn’t that mean something?’
‘Nothing means anything to a fanatic except his own fanaticism.’
‘Perhaps that applies to me as well as to him, and he may learn that to his cost!’
6
Humpty Dumpty
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Dear Godmother,’ (wrote Bonamy), ‘Tom and I are now the shadows of our former selves. We have moved blocks of stone which would have made Samson blench, swept up and dumped mountains of lung-corroding debris, all this at Saltergate’s behest, and for Veryan we have delved, toiled and sweated to make a vast ring round most of the outer bailey.
‘Now, however, we have decided to go on strike. The idea was mooted by the two girls, Fiona and Priscilla. They waylaid us after the morning’s work and told us that they were fed to the teeth with slave labour and proposed to take next weekend off. We are all for this flouting of authority and have backed the project. We shall cruise about in my car – the girls have hired Tom’s – and take the tent and the sleeping-bags and hey! for the open road.
‘We, all four of us, have put our point of view to our taskmasters and found it unopposed. As a matter of fact there has been what we think is a major row between Veryan and the Saltergates. There have been comings and goings between the castle and the house where the owner lives, but we gather that nothing has been settled. The owner himself is away and nobody else will take the responsibility of making a decision.