"Please, sir," begged Hirst. "Not here in a public bar. The General wouldn't like it."
"No," agreed Sloan. "I can see now why he didn't like my asking him if he was called Hocklington-Garwell. In the circumstances, I'm not sure that I would have cared for it myself. Would a note of apology help?"
"It might, sir." Hirst sounded grateful. "But why did you do it, sir? It's all such a long time ago now. We never had any children in the family, sir, so we never had any nurseat all. And there's no call for a nursemaid without babies to look after, is there?"
"I asked him, Hirst, because a woman, who is also dead now, had a sense of humour."
"Really, sir?" Hirst was polite but sounded unconvinced.
"Yes, Hirst, really. I never met her but I am coming to know her quite well. She misled me at first but I think I am beginning to understand her now."
"Indeed, sir?"
"A very interesting woman. Give me your glass, will you?"
"Thank you, sir. I don't mind if I do."
The Rector of Larking and Mrs. Meyton joined Henrietta as soon as the inquest was over. She was standing talking to Bill Thorpe and Arbican.
"There is very little more you can do at this stage, Miss Jenkins," the solicitor was saying. "You must, of course, be available for the adjourned inquest."
"I shan't run away." Henrietta sounded as if she had had enough of life for one morning.
"Of course not," pacifically. "And then there will be the question of intestacy."
"What does that mean?"
Mr. Meyton coughed. "I think that is the greatest virtue of education…"
Arbican turned politely to the Rector, who said:
"You learn the importance of admitting you don't know."
"Quite so." Arbican turned back to Henrietta. "Grace Jenkins appears to have died without making a will. That is to say"—legal-fashion, he qualified the statement immediately—"we cannot find one. It hasn't been deposited with the bank, nor presumably with any Berebury solicitor…"
"How do you know that?" asked Bill Thorpe.
"There is a fairly full account of the accident in yesterday's local newspaper. I think any Berebury firm holding such a will would have made themselves known by now."
"The bureau," said Henrietta heavily. "I expect it was in the bureau."
There was a little silence. They had nearly forgotten the bureau.
Arbican coughed. "In the meantime, I think perhaps the best course of action would be…"
"I think," Bill Thorpe interrupted firmly, "that the best course of action would be for me to marry Henrietta as quickly as possible."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Rooden Parva was really little more than a hamlet.
It lay in the farthest corner of the county, south of Calle-ford and south of the much more substantial village of Great Rooden. Sloan and Crosby got there at about half-past two when the calm of a country Saturday afternoon had descended on a scene that could never have been exactly lively.
"This is a dead-and-alive hole, all right," said Crosby. They had pulled up at the only garage in Rooden Parva to ask the way and he had pushed a bell marked For Service beside the solitary petrol pump.
Nothing whatsoever happened.
"Try the shop," suggested Sloan tetchily.
They were luckier there. Crosby came out smelling faintly of paraffin and said Holly Tree Farm was about a mile and a half out in the country.
"This being Piccadilly Circus, I suppose," said Sloan lookat all of twelve houses clustered together.
"They said we can't miss it," said Crosby. "There's only one road anyway."
Holly Tree Farm lay at the end of it. It, too, had fallen into a sort of rural torpor, though this appeared to be a permanent state and in no way connected with its being Saturday afternoon. The front door, dimly visible behind a barricade of holly trees, looked as if it hadn't been opened in years. Knocking on the back one alerted a few hens which were pecking about in the yard but nothing and nobody else. The farmhouse was old, a long low building with windows designed to keep out the light and a back door built for small men.
They turned their attention to the yard. A long barn lay on the left, its thatched roof proving fertile ground for all manner of vegetation. Beyond was a sinister little shed about whose true function Sloan was in no doubt at all. Two elderly tractors stood in another corner beside a rusty implement whose nature was obscure to the two town bred policemen.
"Is that a harrow?" asked Crosby uncertainly.
"I'd put it in the Chamber of Horrors if it was mine," began Sloan when suddenly they were not alone any more.
A woman wearing an old raincoat emerged cautiously from behind the barn.
"Are you from the Milk Marketing Board?" she called, keeping her distance.
Sloan said they were not.
She advanced a little.
"The Ministry of Agriculture?"
Sloan shook his head and she came nearer still.
"No," she said ambiguously, "I can see you're not from them." She had a weatherbeaten face, burnt by sun and wind and she could have been almost any age at all. Besides her old raincoat, she had on a serge skirt and black Wellington boots. "We paid the rates…"
There were no visitors at Holly Tree Farm it seemed, save official ones. Sloan explained that he was looking for a man called Cyril Jenkins.
"Jenkins," she repeated vaguely. "Not here. There's just me and Walsh here."
"Now," agreed Sloan. "But once there were Jenkins's here."
Her face cleared. "That's right. Afore us."
"Splendid," said Sloan warmly. "Now, do you know what became of them?"
"The old chap died," she said. "Before our time. We've been here twenty years, you know."
Sloan didn't doubt it. It was certainly twenty years since anyone repaired the barn roof.
"We got it off the old chap," she said. "The young 'un didn't seem to want it."
"The young 'un?" Sloan strove to hide his interest.
"Yes." She looked at him curiously. "He didn't want it. He'd been away, you know, in the war."
"That's right."
"Didn't seem as if he could settle afterwards. Not here."
Sloan could well believe it. Aloud he said, "It isn't easy if you've been away for any time."
"No." She stood considering the two men. "Times, it's a bit quiet at Holly Tree, you know. There's just Walsh and me. Still, we don't want for nothing and that's something."
It wasn't strictly true. A bath wouldn't have been out of place as far as Mrs. Walsh was concerned. Say, once a month…
"This young 'un," said Sloan. "Did he ever marry?" She nodded her head. "Yes, but I did hear tell his wife died."
"Where did they go after you came here?" It was the question which counted and for a moment Sloan thought she was going to say she didn't know.
Instead she frowned. "Cullingoak way, I think it was."
"Just one more question, Mrs. Walsh…"
She looked at him, inured to official questions.
"This old man, Jenkins…"
"Yes?"
"Did he just have the one son?"
She shook her head. "I did hear there was a daughter too but I never met her myself."
The Rector and Mrs. Meyton had taken Henrietta out to luncheon in Berebury after the inquest. Bill Thorpe had declined the invitation on the grounds that there were cows to be milked and other work to be done. It was Saturday afternoon, he explained awkwardly, and the men would have gone home. Whether this was so, or whether it was because of the silence which had followed his mention of marriage, nobody knew. He had made his apologies and gone before they left the Town Hall.
Arbican had arranged for Henrietta to come to see him on Tuesday afternoon following the funeral in the morning. He had also enquired tactfully about her present finances.