'Well, I'm sure a donation could be -'
'I was thinking,' said Miss Drummond, 'of five hundred guineas.'
'You were what?’
'Five hundred, I thought.' She gave an unlikely giggle.
‘Only the other day we had a bill for that very sum from afirm of solicitors, and they'd done almost nothing, I assure you. When I protested they said we must pay for their knowledge. So I thought to myself, Mr Graves is wearing a beautiful suit, His shirt is from Jermyn Street and his shoes are hand-lasted - you can always tell, can't you? - and he must be really quite an important man. So, I thought -' she giggled once more, - 'that I could be like those solicitors and sell my knowledge.'
'I think,' Graves said seriously, 'that five hundred might be just a little high.'
Miss Drummond giggled yet again. 'Oh, I am enjoying this!'
'A reasonable sum might be -'
'Reasonable is what the market will bear, that's what my father always said.'
'And he -?'
'Dealt in Oriental carpets, Mr Graves. Look, why don't you do it this way. See if you can find out somewhere else. Then if you can't, and if it's important, you can always come back to me.'
Graves came to his feet. 'Well, five hundred is rather a lot. Maybe I will try -'
'Of course, you understand the price will go up, Mr Graves, if you have to return to me.'
He looked hard at her. 'How do I know it's worth the money?'
The giggle had subsided into a broad and very confident smile. 'You don't, Mr Graves. That's what's so delightful. Tell me something. Do you like dust?'
'Dust?' Graves repeated, perplexed.
'You'll be up to your neck in it, hunting through history for Carfax House.'
He blinked at her. 'Fifty pounds seems fair. Including support for a worthwhile cause.'
'Five hundred.'
Graves wriggled around miserably for a minute or two, but he was done and he knew it. And the money, after all, was not his. He even thought for a moment that he might renege on the promise, but that was before she made him write it out.
Carfax House, she told him, once the paper was locked away, had been built in the 1790's and burned to the ground during World War One, when a passing Zeppelin dropped an incendiary on it. It was rebuilt after that war by a certain Mr Cavendish, who had made money out of army contracts for bully beef, and who liked it to be thought that he was related to the Dukes of Devonshire, whose family name, was Cavendish. Cavendish House it now became. It may be true of lightning that it rarely strikes twice in the same place; but the same cannot be said for German bombs, for in the autumn of 1941 a Heinkel 111 proceeding upon an attack on the Isle of Dogs was hit by anti-aircraft fire and turned for home, jettisoning a stick of bombs, one of which turned Cavendish House into a ruin. But once again, said Miss Drummond, it was rebuilt, still as Cavendish House. The man who rebuilt it - she had forgotten his name
- was something of a recluse and had, in any case, eventually moved away.
'So who has it now?' Graves asked.
'Oh, some frightful people. He's something in popular music, or advertising is it? I forget which. She's just a tart. Well, a model anyway. I always think they're interchangeable, don't you?'
'Do you know the name?'
The name merely cost him a fiver, this time for the Lifeboats. The house was not big. It stood two storeys high in a walled garden close to the grass of the Heath. It was painted a delicate shade of pale lemon, with white window-frames, and it was clearly in first-class order. Miss Drummond's view that There's precious little of the original fabric left, of course, but it's still one of the prettiest little Georgian houses in the village,' was obviously sound. Graves lit a cigarette and paced across the grass, looking thoughtfully at Carfax/Cavendish House. Somewhere inside must lie the second part of Dikeston's story, no doubt carefully hidden. By whom - by Dikeston himself? It seemed at least possible that the recluse whose name Miss Drummond could not remember was in fact Dikeston.
Had he then moved away and left the packet of par concealed? They'd have to be well concealed, Graves thought, or somebody who had no business to do so might find them. The white front door, with its gleaming lion's head knocker, looked somehow forbidding in the sunshine. Graves, who would not normally have hesitated to approach the devil's own front door on Hillyard, Cleef business, found the thought of knocking on that door strangely daunting. How did one say it: 'Good afternoon, I'd like to search your house'? Graves felt himself agreeing with Pilgrim's stated view that Dikeston was a joker who was going to make all of them run their butts off. His own butt first. He returned to 6 Athelsgate.
'Do next?' said Sir Horace Malory. 'Good Lord, isn't it obvious - you find the packet of papers, man!
They're somewhere in the house - must be. Go and look! And get a move on!'
The white door, now lit from above by a bulb encased in a gleaming brass fixture, looked still less inviting as Graves crunched up the short gravel path towards it. His hand already on the lion's head knocker, he paused as laughter sounded from inside the house. Was it a dinner-party in there - or a television set? He knocked, and felt as he did so like an encyclopaedia salesman. It was a dinner-party. The door was opened by a man flushed with wine and carrying a napkin. Damn!
'Mr Abrahams?"
'Bit late, don't you think. Whatever you're selling, come back another time.' Abrahams dabbed the napkin at his lips and made to close the door.
Graves thrust a visiting card at him. 'Please,' he said. 'It's quite important.'
'Oh?' Abrahams glanced at him with some suspicion, and then at the card. After a moment his thumbnail scraped at the embossed lettering. 'Hillyard, Cleef? Merchant bank, isn't it?'
'Yes.'
'First time I heard of a merchant bank going door-to-door,' Abrahams said, grinning. 'I know about the recession, but Christ!'
Graves, feeling the beginnings of fluster, now turned to dignity. He emitted a sombre laugh and said, 'We have a request, Mr Abrahams. You may see it as somewhat unusual, but we hope you may consider helping us in a small way.'
Abrahams's eye ran over him knowledgeably, pricing the suit, the haberdashery, the shoes. Miss Drummond had done the same, Graves thought. Blackheath and its denizens clearly judged the goods by the wrapper.
'Come in, Mr Graves,' Abrahams said abruptly. 'Have you eaten yet? We have a couple of friends in for a meal but I'm sure there'll be plenty.' He closed the door and led the way into the dining-room, where three slightly startled faces turned towards him.
Abrahams's initially suspicious manner had now become airy. 'Mr Graves is from a merchant bank. Just dropped in to see me about something they want.' He contrived to imply that nocturnal visits by City figures were commonplace events at Cavendish House. Abrahams was also, Graves shortly understood, trying to drum up business from the other male guest. Graves found himself being used, and disliking it. But the evening ended, the guests departed, and at last Graves found himself making the nightmare request: 'We'd like to search your house!'
He had to repeat it, naturally, more than once. The eccentric client, now regrettably deceased, made a further appearance 'Search the house?' screeched Mrs Abrahams. She was much as Miss Drummond had described her: half-tart, half-model. 'You mean, go poking into the cupboards, don't you?'
Graves explained, with all the smoothness he could muster, which was a good deal, that the Abrahams'