On the fourteenth, Ash and Cropper went into Leatherhead and visited the offices of Densher and Winterbourne. They stopped at a garden centre on their way out of the town and purchased-for cash-various heavy-duty spades and forks and a pickaxe, which they stowed in the boot of the Mercedes. On the afternoon of the fourteenth, they took a walk to the church, which was, as usual, locked against vandals, and wandered round the churchyard, looking at the gravestones. There was a notice at the entrance to the little graveyard, which was fenced with crumbling iron railings; the notice informed them that this parish, the parish of St Thomas, was part of a group of three parishes, of which the Reverend Percy Drax was vicar. Holy Eucharist and Morning Prayer were held there on the first Sunday of every month; Evensong on the last.
"I don't know this Drax," said Hildebrand Ash.
"A most unpleasant person," said Mortimer Cropper. "The Schenectady Poetry Fellowship made a presentation to this church of an inkwell Ash had used on his American tour, and some of his books he had signed for American admirers, with his photograph pasted in. They presented a glass case as well, to display the treasures; Mr Drax has sited it in a mostobscure corner and covered it with a dusty baize pall and absolutely no external indication of its nature, so that it is entirely missed by the casual visitor…"
"Who can't get in anyway," said Hildebrand Ash.
"Precisely. And this Drax is very hostile to being asked for keys by Ash scholars and admirers who wish to pay their respects. He says-he has written to me in letters-that the church is God's house, not Randolph Henry Ash's mausoleum. I see no contradiction."
"You could buy the things back."
"I could. I have offered substantial donations to him even for the loan of the objects. The books are already represented in the Stant Collection, but the inkwell is unique. He replies that unfortunately it is not in the terms of the gift that the objects may be disposed of. He is not interested in ways of altering the terms of the gift. He is positively surly."
"We could take them too," said Hildebrand. "While we were at it."
He laughed, and Mortimer Cropper frowned.
"I am not a common thief," he said severely. "It is only that box-whose contents we may only guess at-the thought of it decaying in the ground until such time as we acquire the legal right to exhume it-the thought of perhaps never knowing-"
"The value-"
"The value is partly the value I set on it."
"Which is high," said Hildebrand, with a question.
"Which is high even if it contains nothing," said Cropper. "For my peace of mind. But it will not contain nothing. I know."
They took a turn or two about the churchyard. Everything was quiet, English and dripping. The graves were mostly nineteenth-century with some earlier and a few later. The grave of Randolph and Ellen was at one edge of the churchyard, in the shelter of a kind of grassy knoll, or mound, on which grew an ancient cedar and an even older yew, screening the quiet corner from the eyes of anyone on the path to the church door. The railings were just beyond the grave and beyond them a field, closely cropped, of down grass, containing a few stolid sheep and a little stream, bisecting it. Someone had already been digging; green turfs were neatly stacked against the rails. Hildebrand counted thirteen.
"One for the head and a double row for the length of the… I could do that. I can cut turfs, I take an interest in our lawn. Are you thinking of trying to leave it so it looks undisturbed?"
Cropper thought. "We could try that. Put it all back real neatly and stow it with old leaves and things, and hope it grows back before anyone notices who might think twice. We should try that."
"We could set up a diversion. Leave a trail of false clues so it looked as if we were Satanists, practising a black mass or something." Hildebrand gave another snort and long high chuckle of solitary laughter. Cropper looked at his heavy pink face and felt twinges of fastidious distaste. He was going to have to spend much more of his time than would be pleasant in this banal creature's company.
"Our best hope is that nobody notices. Anything else is bad-if anyone notices at all that the grave has been disturbed, they will also notice our presence here quite likely. And put two and two together. Then we just fake it out. If we find the box and take it away, no one can prove it ever existed, even if they dig again and have a look. Which they won't. Drax won't let them. But our best hope-I repeat-is to be unobtrusive."
On their way out of the churchyard they passed two other visitors, a man and a woman, green-clad in quilted jackets and Wellingtons against the pervasive rain, blending into the background in an English way. They were examining the sculpted heads of laughing cherubs or baby angels on two tall leaning stones; the little creatures rested their dimpled feet on footstool skulls. "Morning," said Hildebrand, in his country English voice, and "Morning" they replied, in the same tone. Nobody met anyone else's eye; it was very English.
On the fifteenth Cropper and Hildebrand dined together in the restaurant, which was panelled like the bar, and had a cheerful log fire burning in the stone fireplace. Cropper and Hildebrand were to one side of this; a young couple, who had attention only for each other, and who were holding hands across the table, had the other. Cracking oil portraits of eighteenth-century parsons and squires, half obscured and blackened by candle-smoke and thickened varnish, stared down heavily from the panels. They ate by candlelight, salmon mousse in lobster sauce, pheasant with all the trimmings, Stilton, sorbet cassis maison. Cropper savoured it all with regret. He was not going to be able to come back here for some considerable time, and he had enjoyed his visits to this part of the world. He liked the Rowan Tree Inn; it had romantically uneven floors, paved on the ground floor, creaking under carpets above; its corridors were so low and narrow that he was forced to stoop his tall head. The water made strange thumping and hawking sounds, which he treasured as he treasured, with equal love, the endless silver flow in his streamlined, gold-tapped bathroom in New Mexico. Both were good of their kind, snug, cramped, ancient smoky England, and the dry sun, the glass, the airy steel, the expansiveness of New Mexico. His blood was running, he was excited, as he always was when truly on the move, when his mind hung, like the moon, over his trajectory from one earth-mass to another, when he was neither here nor there. Only this time, more than ever. He had spent the time before dinner in his room, running through exercises and routines, limbering up, contorting his muscles, swaying and twisting and punching and coercing his body into suppleness. He liked that. He looked good, still. He stood in front of a cheval glass in his special exercise clothes, long black pants and terry-cloth sweater. He resembled his piratical ancestors, or a film version of them, his silvery hair romantically dishevelled on his brow.
Hildebrand said, "And tomorrow, USA, here we come. I've never been, you know. Only seen it on telly. You'll have to teach me about giving lectures."
Cropper thought that perhaps he could, or should, have done it all entirely alone. But then it would have been absolute theft, absolute intrusion, whereas this way, he was only speeding up a natural process, buying from Hildebrand what would have been his in any case, later, a very little later, if he was to be believed about Lord Ash's state of health.