And he clasped the salesman’s hand, saying, ‘Pleasant journey back, now!’
Gifford stepped into the lane that stood between the vicarage and the graveyard, and gave a start of surprise when he saw the two of us lounging there, no doubt recalling in that instant his secret visit to our room.
‘You’re the pair from The Angel, ain’t you?’
I could see the sweat leaking out from over his stand collar.
‘We’ve just taken a stroll around the back,’ I said. ‘… Saw you chatting to the parson, and couldn’t help over-hearing a bit.’
‘Not a lot to bloody well hear,’ said Gifford in a glum tone.
‘Came out badly, did it?’
‘Don’t it always?’ replied Gifford, and he removed his brown bowler to mop his brow. He had not made his sale, and he was stifled besides. His centre parting looked like a guide-line for a saw. His moustache was also arranged in two halves. The man was a martyr to his fine-toothed comb.
‘I travel in model locomotives,’ he said. ‘You might think that’s a pretty good joke?’
And he looked at us expectantly.
‘But I ain’t seen the funny side in years — not in years.’
We had entered the graveyard, and come to a stop by Sir George’s grave.
Gifford was saying, ‘Steam-powered, electrical and spring-motor mechanism — well, that’s clockwork, if you must know. But it’s all a bloody mug’s game, pardon my French, lady. He’s one of the biggest collectors in the whole country,’ Gifford continued, indicating the vicarage. ‘“Well worth a visit to Reverend Ridley,” I was told. “Makes a purchase every time. Never misses.”’ He shook his head. ‘Calls himself a vicar… Christian thing would’ve been to buy the little red loco. Brass boiler, steel frames. Double action piston valve cylinders with reversing motion worked from cab. All wheels to scale throughout.’
Gifford stepped back from the grave, and his boot-heel went into some fresh sheep dung.
‘Who let a bloody cow in here?’ he said, and I hadn’t the heart to put him right. ‘Bloody cattle!’ he said, looking down. ‘They do make a litter. I’ll be bloody glad to be leaving this ’ole, I can tell you.’
I looked towards the vicarage, where the Reverend Ridley was standing at one of the ground-floor windows, watching us with folded arms.
‘Have you two heard of his layout, by the way?’ Gifford continued in a lower voice, as though he felt the vicar might be able to hear him. ‘Famous, it is — been photographed in all the railway papers. It’s in his dining room I believe, though the pill wasn’t about to show me it, and I hadn’t the nerve to ask. King’s Cross and environs in one and a quarter inch to the foot. Shown in the rush hour, the Cross is. Hundreds of little lead people charging about all over the shop — well, they’re not charging; they’re completely fixed, but that’s the effect. Thing is, being a parson, he’s rotten with money and ain’t got anything else to do.’
‘Except save the souls of the villagers,’ said the wife, who was one of the religious sort of feminists, and set a lot of store by the behaviour of vicars.
‘Do leave off, lady,’ said Gifford.
‘You have a line in German models?’ I said.
Gifford pulled at his collar.
‘The best models today are German,’ he said. ‘You’ll generally find with your German models the smoke-box door will be made open-able. Little touches like that. It’s in the finishing too, of course. The enamelling and lining is always of the first order. But try telling him that!’
It struck me that the vicar might be looking on because he’d seen us stop by Sir George’s grave. Did he think we were discussing the murder?
‘That’s the fellow was murdered,’ I said to Gifford, indicating the grave.
‘I know,’ he said, which surprised me. ‘It’s a queer spot this is, just the place for a murder. Gives me the jim-jams, I don’t mind telling you.’
‘Do you not find it peaceful and quiet?’ asked the wife.
‘The quieter a place is,’ he said, ‘the noisier it is. You hear every little thing. Here now, I meant to have a word with you,’ he continued, addressing me particularly. ‘You’re a copper, aren’t you? Railway police.’
‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘How do you know?’
He stopped dead; all the life went out of him. But he rallied after a few seconds, saying, ‘I don’t rightly know. Just something about you, I suppose. Something about your looks.’
‘And a railway policeman looks different from the ordinary sort, I suppose?’ the wife cut in.
He’d been in our room all right.
‘What did you want a word about, anyway?’ I asked. ‘Something touching on the murder?’
‘I believe so,’ he said, thoughtfully, but before he could answer, there came a cry from the vicarage.
The Reverend Ridley was standing in the doorway and hailing Gifford.
‘God help us, he’s changed his mind!’ said Gifford. ‘He’s seen the sense of going for the single-driver.’
The vicar called again.
‘I’ve half a mind not to go to him,’ said Gifford.
‘I wouldn’t if I were you,’ I said.
‘Are you nuts?’ said Gifford, and he was off, bag in hand, calling ‘Just coming, sir!’ to the Reverend Ridley.
‘What did you want to tell me?’ I shouted after him.
‘Speak to you at the inn,’ he called back. ‘One o’clock suit?’
‘Well, that’s that as regards him,’ said the wife, looking on as he was taken into the vicarage.
‘How do you mean exactly?’ I asked her.
‘He’s not a spy.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t believe he is.’
‘We ought to see John Lambert again,’ she said. ‘Really have it out with him once and for all.’
I reminded her that there was the complication of the man in field boots.
‘Oh, I don’t care about him,’ she said.
Chapter Eighteen
We’d followed the finger-posts to the Hall, which had taken us, by a new route, to the gates at which we’d earlier discovered John Lambert. We’d walked through these and were now passing between the great globe-like trees, approaching the house with its dozen windows staring down at us.
I’d meant to wait for the arrival of the Chief before braving the Hall again. I’d been warned off the place both by Lambert and (in a roundabout way) by the man in field boots, and with every step I expected some alarm, shout, objection to be raised. Most particularly, I expected some gun to be fired. Over against that, I was a police officer about my duty.
As for the wife, she just seemed entranced by the house.
‘It’s middle Georgian,’ she said. ‘Very simple.’
Many green plants stood in tall urns across the white gravel of the carriage drive. These and the green door, the brown bricks and the great heat bearing down somehow put me in mind of the Roman Empire.
I said to the wife, ‘What’s the programme?’ and I thought: Now hold on, Jim, you can’t be asking her.
A man came walking fast round the side of the house, and he wore knee-length boots, but not field boots. He was a footman or groom or some such — had a horsy look about him.
‘Where’s the gardener’s cottage?’ I asked him, and he said, ‘Follow me round.’
We crunched over the dazzling white gravel to the left side of the house, and there stood a lot of stables and out-buildings of one sort or another, the lot of them looking Roman to me, like temples or villas. We walked through the maze of these for a while, passing dark farm machinery standing in open doorways, until the horsy bloke pointed to a very plain cottage standing amid burnt brown grass fifty yards off.
‘That’s you,’ he said.
‘I’m obliged to you,’ I said, and we set off in that direction.
The groom called out:
‘You’re with Captain Usher, are you?’
‘Don’t answer him,’ said the wife, in a low tone as we walked on. ‘He’s a servant, so you don’t have to.’