"We do."
"But if Cyril Jenkins is alive and is the father of Henrietta, then their blood groups would tie up, wouldn't they?"
A low rumble came down the telephone line. "First, catch your hare…"
General Sir Eustace Garwell was at home and would see Inspector C. D. Sloan.
This news was conveyed to the waiting policemen by an elderly male retainer who had creaked to the door in answer to their ring. He was the fourth Garwell upon whom they had called since leaving the police station late that afternoon. The other three had numbered several Jenkins's among their acquaintance but not a Cyril Edgar nor a Grace and certainly not a Henrietta Eleanor Leslie. Nor did they look as if they could ever have had a hyphen in the family, let alone a Hocklington.
It was different at The Laurels, Cullingoak.
Sloan and Crosby had left it until the last because it was on the way to lurking. Both the hyphen and the Hocklington would have gone quite well with the Benares brass trays and the faded Indian carpets. There were a couple of potted palms in the hall and several fronds of dusty pampas grass brushed eerily against Crosby's cheek as he and Inspector Sloan followed the man down the corridor. He walked so slowly that the two policemen had the greatest difficulty in not treading on his heels. There was that in his walk though, together with the fact that he had referred to "the General"and not "Sir Eustace" that made Sloan say:
"You've seen service yourself."
"Batman to the General, sir, since he was a subaltern."
"The West Calleshires or the Cavalry?" hazarded Sloan.
The man stopped in his tracks and drew himself up to his full height "The East Calleshires, sir, not the West."
Sloan began to feel hopeful.
"We only live in the Western part of the county," went on the man, "because her ladyship was left this property, and though she's been dead some years, the General's too old to be making a change."
"I'm sorry," said Sloan, suitably abject.
A very old gentleman struggled out of a chair as they entered.
"Come in, gentlemen, come in. It's not often I have any callers in the evening. We live a very quiet life here, you know. Stopped going out when m'wife died. What'll you take to drink?"
Sloan declined port, madeira and brandy in that order.
"On duty, sir, I'm afraid."
The General nodded sympathetically, and said they would forgive him his brandy and soda because he wasn't on duty any more, in fact it was many a long year now since he had been.
"It's about the past we've come," said Sloan by way of making a beginning.
"My memory's not what it used to be," said the old man.
"Pity," murmured Crosby sotto voce.
"What's that? I can't hear so well either. Damned M.O. fellow wants me to have a hearing aid thing. Can't be bothered." The General indicated a chair on his left and said to Sloan, "If you would sit here I shall hear you better." He settled himself back in his own chair. "Ah, that's more comfortable. Now, how far back in the past do you want to go? Ladysmith?"
"Ladysmith?" echoed Sloan, considerably startled.
"It was Mafeking they made all the fuss about—they forgot the siege of Ladysmith." He fixed Sloan with a bleary eye. "Do you want to know about Ladysmith?"
"You were there, sir?"
The General gave a deep chuckle. "I was there. I was there for a long time. The whole siege. And I've never wasted a drop of drink or a morsel of food since." He leant forward. "Are you sure about that brandy?"
"Certainly, sir. Thank you."
The General took another sip. "Commissioned in '99. Went through the whole of the Boer War. Nearly died of fever more than once. Still"—he brightened—"none of it seemed to do me any harm."
This much, at least, was patently true. They were looking at a very old man indeed but he seemed to be in possession of all his faculties. Sloan thought back quickly, dredging through his schoolboy memory for names of battles.
"Were you at Omdurman, Sir Eustace?"
Sir Eustace Garwell waved the brandy glass under his nose with a thin hand, sniffing appreciatively. The veins on his hand stood out, hard and gnarled. "No, sir, I was not at Omdurman. Incredible as it may seem now, I was too young for that episode in our military history. At the time I was very distressed about missing it by a year or so. I was foolish enough to fear that there weren't going to be any more wars." He gave a melancholy snort. "I needn't have worried, need I?"
"No, sir…"
"Now, on the whole I'm rather glad. You realise, don'tyou, that had I been born a couple of years earlier I should probably be dead by now."
Sloan took a moment or two to work this out and then he said, "I see what you mean, sir."
"The East Callies were there, of course. Battle honours and all that…"
"Yes." Sloan raised his voice a little. "There is just one little matter on which you may be able to help us by remembering. After Ladysmith. Probably sometime between the wars."
"I was in India from '04 to 1913," said the General helpfully. "In the Punjab."
"Not those wars," said Sloan hastily, hoping Sir Eustace was too deaf to have heard Crosby's snort. "Between the other two."
"Ah. It wasn't the same, you know."
"I daresay not," said Sloan dryly.
"Everything changed after 1914 but war most of all."
"Do you recollect a Sergeant Jenkins in the Regiment, sir?"
There was a row of ivory elephants on the mantelpiece, their trunks properly facing the door. Sloan had time to count them before the General replied.
"Jenkins did you say? No, the name doesn't mean anything to me. Known quite a few men of that name in m'time but not in the Regiment. Hirst might know. Ask him."
"Thank you, sir, I will."
"They put me on the Staff," said the old voice querulously. "You never know anyone then."
"Did you ever have a woman called Grace Jenkins working for you either, sir?"
"Can't say that we did. We had a housekeeper but she's been dead for years and her name wasn't Jenkins."
"Or Wright?"
"No. One of the cleaning women might have been called that. You'd have to ask Hirst. They come and go, you know."
If the dust on the ivory elephants was any measure, this was one of the times when they had gone.
"No, not a cleaning woman," said Sloan. "A children's nurse, perhaps. A nanny?"
"Never had any children," said the General firmly. "No nannies about the place ever."
"I see, sir. Thank you. Well, then, I must apologise for disturbing you. Routine enquiry, you understand."
"Quite so."
Sloan got up to go. "About a woman who used to work as a children's nurse for a family called Hocklington-Garwell and we're trying to trace…"
Without any warning the whole atmosphere inside the drawing room of The Laurels, Cullingoak, changed.
Two beady eyes peered at Sloan over the top of the brandy glass. Just as quickly the old face became suffused with colour. A choleric General Sir Eustace Garwell put down his glass with shaking hands.
"Sir," he said, quite outraged, "is this a joke?"
He struggled to his feet, anger in every feature of his stiff and ancient frame. He tottered over to the wall and put his finger on a bell.
"If I were a younger man, sir," he quavered, "I would send for a horse whip. As it is, I shall just ask my man to show you the door. Goodnight, sir, goodnight."
CHAPTER TWELVE
As always, Sloan was polite.
He had long ago learned that there were few situations where a police officer—or anyone else, for that matter— gained by not being.
Henrietta was sitting opposite him and Crosby in the little parlour of Boundary Cottage.