'Mr Mulholland loved his tea,' she finally said. 'I've never seen anyone in my life drink as much tea as dear, sweet Mr Mulholland.'
'I suppose he left fairly recently,' Billy said.
'Left?' she said. 'But my dear boy, he never left. He's still here. Mr Temple is also here. They're on the third floor, both of them together.'
Billy put down his cup slowly on the table, and stared at his landlady. She smiled back at him and then put out one of her white hands and patted him comfortingly on the knee.
'How old are you, my dear?' she asked.
'Seventeen.'
'Seventeen!' she cried. 'Oh, it's the perfect age! Mr Mulholland was also seventeen. But I think he was a little shorter than you are - in fact I'm sure he was. And his teeth weren't quite so white. You have the most beautiful teeth, Mr Weaver. Mr Temple was a little older. He was actually twenty-eight. I wouldn't have guessed it, though, if he hadn't told me. There wasn't a mark on his body.'
'A what?' Billy said.
'His skin was just like a baby's.'
There was a pause. Billy picked up his teacup, drank some more and then put it down again in its saucer. He waited for her to say something else but she seemed to have fallen into another of her silences. He sat there, looking ahead, biting his lower lip.
'That parrot,' he said at last. 'You know something? It completely fooled me when I looked through the window from the street. I thought it was alive.'
'Sadly, no longer.'
'It's very clever the way it's been stuffed,' he said. 'It doesn't look at all dead. Who did it?'
'I did.'
'You did?'
'Of course,' she said. 'And have you met my little Basil as well?'
She nodded towards the dog curled up so comfortably in front of the fire. Billy looked at it. Suddenly he realized that this animal had all the time been as silent and motionless as the parrot. He touched it gently on the top of its back. It was hard and cold but perfectly preserved.
'Good heavens,' he said. 'How very interesting. It must be awfully difficult to do a thing like that.'
'Not at all,' she said. 'I stuff all my little pets myself when they die. Will you have another cup of tea?'
'No, thank you,' Billy said. The tea tasted faintly bitter and he didn't really like it.
'You did sign the book, didn't you?'
'Oh, yes.'
'That's good. Because later, if I forget what you were called, then I can always look it up. I still do that every day with Mr Mulholland and Mr ... Mr ...'
'Temple,' Billy said. 'Gregory Temple. Excuse me for asking but haven't there been any other guests here except them in the last two or three years?'
Holding her teacup high in one hand, moving her head slightly to the left, she looked at him out of the corners of her eyes and gave him another gentle little smile.
'No, my dear,' she said. 'Only you.'
The Vicar's Pleasure
Mr Boggis was driving the car slowly, leaning back comfortably in the seat with one elbow resting on the open window. How beautiful the countryside is, he thought; how pleasant to see signs of summer again.
He took one hand off the wheel and lit a cigarette. The best thing now, he told himself, would be to drive to the top of the hill. He could see it about a kilometre ahead. And that must be the village at the top of it.
He drove up the hill and stopped the car just before the top of the hill on the outskirts of the village. Then he got out and looked round. Down below, the countryside was spread out in front of him like a green carpet. Perfect. He took a notebook and pencil from his pocket, leaned against the car and allowed his eyes to travel slowly over the landscape.
He could see one medium-sized farmhouse over on the right. There was another larger one beyond it. There was a house surrounded by tall trees that looked rather old, and there were two possible farms away on the left. Five places in all.
Mr Boggis drew a quick sketch in his book showing the position of each so that he'd be able to find them easily when he was down below, then he got back into the car and drove up through the village to the other side of the hill. From there he saw six more possibles - five farms and a big white eighteenth-century house. He studied the house carefully. It looked very grand. That was a pity. He excluded it immediately. There was no point in visiting the rich.
In this area then, there were ten possibles in all. Ten was a nice number, Mr Boggis told himself. Just the right amount for a relazing afternoon's work. He decided to take the old house with the trees first. It looked dilapidated. The people there probably needed some money. Mr Boggis got back into the car and began driving slowly down the hill.
Apart from the fact that he was at this moment disguised as a vicar, there was nothing very strange about Mr Cyril Boggis. By trade he was a dealer in antique furniture, with his own shop in London. The shop wasn't large, and generally he didn't do a lot of business, but because he always bought cheap, very cheap, and sold at very, very high prices, he managed to make quite a good profit every year. It was said of him by some people that he probably knew as much about French, English and Italian furniture as anyone else in London. He also had surprisingly good taste, and he was quick to recognize and reject an ungraceful design, however genuine the piece might be. His real love was for the work of the great eighteenth-century designers, Chippendale, Robert Adam Inigo Jones, Hepplewhite, Sheraton and the rest of them.
During the past few years, Mr Boggis had achieved great fame among his friends in the trade by his ability to find unusual and often rare items with amazing regularity. Apparently this man had a source of supply that was never-ending. It seemed that he only had to drive out to it once a week and take what he wanted. Whenever they asked him where he got the things, he would smile and say something about a little secret.
The idea behind Mr Boggis's little secret was a simple one, and it had come to him as a result of something that had happened one Sunday afternoon nearly nine years before, while he was driving in the country.
He had gone out in the morning to visit his old mother and on the way back, in the countryside, his car had broken down, causing the engine to get too hot and the water to boil away. He had got out of the car and walked to the nearest house, a small farm building about fifty metres off the road, and had asked the woman who answered the door if he could have a jug of water.
While he was waiting for her to fetch it, he had glanced in through the door to the living room and seen, not five metres away, something that made him so excited that sweat began to pour down his face. It was a large armchair of a type that he had only seen once before in his life. Each arm of the chair was beautiful and delicate and the back of the chair was decorated with flowers made of wood. The top of each arm was made to look like the head of a duck. Good God, he thought. This chair is late fifteenth century!
He looked further through the door and there was another of them on the other side of the fireplace!
He couldn't be sure, but two chairs like that must be worth thousands of pounds up in London. And how beautiful they were!
When the woman returned, Mr Boggis introduced himself and asked her if she would like to sell her chairs.
Why would she want to sell her chairs? she asked.
No reason at all, except that he might be willing to give her quite a high price.
And how much would he give? They were definitely not for sale, but just for fun, you know, how much would he give?
Thirty-five pounds.
How much?
Thirty-five pounds.
Thirty-five pounds. Well, well, that was very interesting. She'd always thought they were very old. They were very comfortable too. She couldn't possibly do without them. No, they were not for sale, but thank you very much anyway.