The cousins accepted the lift but did not take advantage of the advice. Over their drinks they asked the barman to direct them to the local hospital.
‘Which do you want—the Cottage or the County?’ enquired the man.
‘Both, then,’ Gascoigne replied. ‘A pal of ours was in a car crash last night. We only heard this morning, and we thought we’d go and look him up. Heard he’d busted a leg and a couple of ribs.’
The barman gave them the information they needed, and they caught a bus into Welsea, lunched, and then visited the hospitals. No patient except, at the County hospital, a six-year-old child who had swallowed a spool of silk, had been admitted within the past twenty-four hours.
‘So what?’ said O’Hara. ‘Oh, damn it, I don’t want to go to the police!’
‘Well, look, then,’ said Gascoigne suddenly. ‘I’ll tell you what! There’s a fellow my mother used to know when she was a girl… a chap called Ferdinand Lestrange. He’s a K.C., and what he doesn’t know about the law is certainly not worth knowing. Let’s put it up to him. He proposed to my mother once, so I feel I know him, although actually I’ve never met him in my life. Still, I know where he lives when he’s not in London, and that’s not so very far from here. We could go tomorrow. Of course, if he says go to the police, we’ll have to go. Now let’s forget the whole thing and go and have a look at the sea.’
‘Did you say Lestrange?’
‘I did. He’s got a quaint old mother—a psychiatrist or something. You must have heard of her. She’s famous.’
‘Is her name Lestrange?’
‘Only partly. Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley. She still believes in Freud—1856 and all that. Still, I believe she’s ninety.’
‘We’ll date her up,’ said O’Hara.
Chapter Four
—«♦»—
‘But the wizard king was not at home, and his grandmother sat at the door in her easy chair.’
Ibid. (The Giant with the Three Golden Hairs)
« ^ »
Neither Mrs. Bradley nor her son Ferdinand had very much spare time; neither was their scanty leisure coincident. It happened, however, that a new grandchild had been born, and Mrs. Bradley had attended the christening; thus she was at her son’s house, three miles from Cuchester, when two handsome boys turned up to see Ferdinand and to ask his advice.
‘I suppose I throw them out?’ suggested Mrs. Bradley’s young and competent secretary, Laura Menzies, when, having been apprised by the butler of the presence of Gascoigne and O’Hara, she had confronted Mrs. Bradley with the news. ‘It seems a pity. They’re easy on the eye and ear, and come from what the cognoscenti call Oxford College.’
‘Admit them,’ said Mrs. Bradley, leering horribly at her grandchild who happened to be lying in her lap.
‘But doesn’t our native honesty compel us to explain that Sir Ferdinand is in London defending the public-spirited murderer of six G.I. brides?’ demanded Laura.
‘True, child. But do not stress the fact of his absence just at first. Do I know these boys?’
‘I don’t… at least, I didn’t until they introduced themselves. They are Irish, I should think, from their names. Let’s see.’ She closed her eyes, opened them, and recited, ‘Mr. Patrick Michael Brian Maurice Bennett Sean O’Hara. Mr. Gerald Fitzgerald Gascoigne. And very nice, too. As a Scot, I appreciate aristocratic nomenclature, and they’ve got it in gobs.’
The baby blew a series of congratulatory bubbles and Mrs. Bradley swabbed these away with absentminded efficiency. A moment later the two tall young men, one as black as Saturn, the other fair as Apollo, were shown into the room by the butler in accordance with Laura’s instructions.
They looked apprehensively at the baby, critically at Laura, and with evident interest at Mrs. Bradley, who scarcely did justice to the ninety years with which she had been credited.
‘Sit down and speak freely,’ said she, handing the baby to Laura much in the manner of the Duchess in Alice handing over her sneezing child. ‘Be bold. Confess—for only the walls have ears.’
‘We came,’ said Gascoigne gravely, ‘to… to put a hypothetical case, as it were, to Sir Ferdinand Lestrange. I… er… that is, my mother used to know him. It’s… well, it’s Michael’s… my cousin’s… story, really. Go on, Mike. Speak up.’
‘Begorra!’ said Mrs. Bradley, fascinated by the lordly Hibernians and anxious to do them honour by employing what she affected to believe was their idiom. ‘Arrah, now, be aisy, wouldn’t ye?’
This last remark, apparently addressed to the baby, achieved its object. The young men laughed, with some constraint but to their own relief. Laura rang the bell, passed the buck (in her own words) by giving the baby to the nurse who answered the summons, and seated herself at the table with notebook and pencil.
‘Go on, please,’ she said, ‘but make it snappy. We have to catch the three o’clock train.’
‘Well,’ began Gascoigne, ‘as I say, it’s really Mike’s story, and, to tell you the truth’—he turned to Mrs. Bradley again— ‘it isn’t too easy to explain.’
‘I see,’ Mrs. Bradley observed. ‘You haven’t, by any chance, committed murder, I suppose?’
‘No,’ said O’Hara, coming in boldly at this. ‘But I’m wondering whether, perhaps, I’m an accessory after the fact.’
‘Interesting,’ remarked the elderly lady. ‘Well, go on. Don’t leave out any details, however unimpressive they may seem, and don’t cut a long story short, whatever you do. The three o’clock train doesn’t matter.’
‘Step high, wide and handsome,’ agreed Laura, licking her pencil and looking expectantly at them.
‘Well, it was like this,’ said O’Hara. He told the story of the hare and hounds cross-country run, and of his experiences at the lonely farm. ‘And I’m now quite certain that the man was dead,’ he concluded, ‘and from the fact that he was said to be suffering from something infectious, but actually bled all over me, I’m wondering whether there wasn’t something rather peculiar, in fact, something rather nasty, about the business, and, if there was, well—I’m involved, I suppose. I’d rather like to know what to do.’
‘It might be better if my son did not advise you. Not, at the least, face to face. I will put the facts before him myself, if you desire it, and, if you will give me an address to which my secretary, Miss Menzies, can write, I will let you know his unofficial views.’
‘I say, that’s awfully good of you,’ said O’Hara. ‘You see, when we found that the fellow had not been admitted to hospital…’
‘I do see. Now, there are just one or two points which my son may want to have clear. First of all, tell me, how many of you were running across country that day?’
‘Eleven, including Gerald. He was the hare.’
‘Had you only one hare?’
‘Yes, only one.’
‘So there were nine others besides your two selves, and all nine of these were hounds. Was anybody missing from the reunion at the end of the day?’
‘No, we were all there. I got in late, of course, but… Oh, one fellow didn’t finish. A bloke called Firman. He’d told us he probably wouldn’t, though. We met him next day while we were messing about at the farmhouse. He turned up in a car and gave us a lift. That was—well, just a bit queer. That he should have been there, I mean. But I don’t suppose there was anything in it, you know.’