“I don’t hear anything else.” She turned round. “You’re probably listening to your own watch.”
“I haven’t got one. I lent it to a friend. He went to South America. Lie down on the floor and listen.”
“I’ll get paint on my clothes.”
“Lie down and put your ear to this board,” Harry said. His eyes were bright and excited, his normally sad, mocking face was stern. He looked like an anarchist who at last has his hands on a bomb.
Hester lay down obediently. She wasn’t sure. She heard, or thought she heard, something that might have been a ticking.
Her father opened the door and looked at them in consternation.
“Sshh!” Harry said. “We’re listening to a ticking. It comes from under the floorboards.”
“A ticking,” Wade repeated. “You’re mad, Harry.”
“I’m not. The boards are ticking.”
Wade tried to laugh.
“If you think it’s a joke,” Harry said, “lie here and listen.”
Hester stood up. “What do you think it is?” she asked uncertainly.
“Death watch beetle,” Harry said curtly.
“What?” Wade said in a stunned voice. He put out a hand to the wall, to support himself.
“Death watch beetle,” Harry repeated with relish. “They eat their way into the middle of boards and through and through and suddenly the floor collapses, and then the ceiling underneath. They nibble their way round the walls and through the beams on the roof until the whole building shudders and turns to dust – like something found in an Egyptian tomb. Listen!”
Wade dropped on his hands and knees beside Harry and put his ear to the floor. He thought he heard the sound of ticking.
“They make the noise by banging their heads on wood,” Harry explained. “It’s a mating song. When the female death watch beetle hears the male banging its head on wood it gnaws its way through the intervening timbers to reach the male. I suppose they carve themselves out a little cell. It’s like the end of Aida, except they have children.”
“Aida?” Wade asked, looking defenceless and baffled. “What has Italian opera got to do with it?” He was fond of opera, but he hadn’t Harry’s talent for seeing one event in terms of another.
“Oh, Father, don’t look so worried,” Hester said. “There’s bound to be some way of getting rid of death watch beetle.”
“Of course there is,” Harry said briskly. “You send for – I think it’s the County Sanitary Engineer. When he’s confirmed it’s death watch beetle he lists your house as a dangerous structure. You have to pull it down or rebuild.”
“That sounds arbitrary,” Hester said coldly.
“Or you can take the boards up yourself and soak them in paraffin. That often cures it.”
Wade looked round the half-painted room at the crumbled wall. “I don’t think I can tackle it today.”
“I’ll do it for you,” Harry said. “Get me a hammer and chisel and a gallon of paraffin, and I’ll fix it for you.”
When the tools had been brought to him he began to wrench up the boards and pour paraffin on the joists beneath.
“You look like a fire-raiser,” Hester said.
“These boards aren’t too bad,” Harry said. “It may have spread to the floor beneath, that’s all. Morgan’s room is under this, isn’t it?”
“Morgan wouldn’t like to have his room torn up,” Wade protested.
“Take him out for a walk, Hester, then he’ll never know. I’ll do it very neatly,” Harry promised. “But I’ll need some more paraffin.”
“I’ll send Prudence up,” Wade said.
Hester lingered.
“Harry, do you know what you’re doing? You’re not going to do any damage, are you?” she asked unhappily.
“Damage?” He looked up with a serious, preoccupied face. She felt ashamed of her suspicions, without knowing precisely what her suspicions were.
“It’s hard to know when you’re being serious, Harry. You’re so different from anyone I’ve ever met,” she said despairingly. She left the room quickly before he had time to answer.
Prudence appeared with the paraffin, and stood, peering intently at the exposed joists.
“I’d like to see a death watch beetle,” she said.
“They’re like woodworm, only smaller. You’d need a magnifying glass.”
“I’ll get a magnifying glass.”
“They take cover. They don’t like being exposed to light. You can try, if you want to. I think I’ve finished this bit. I’ll have a look at the room downstairs. You wouldn’t like to hammer these boards back on for me?”
“Not much.”
“I’ll put them back later, then.”
He picked up the tools and the paraffin, and walked downstairs and nonchalantly into Morgan’s room. Prudence followed.
“Does Morgan know you’re going to be in his room?” she asked.
“I didn’t ask his permission. Death watch beetle can’t wait.”
“I can,” said Prudence, and sat down on the bed.
Harry looked at her briefly, then walked over to the heavy, dark, Jacobean wardrobe, and opened the door.
“See,” he said, “bottles.”
Prudence looked, entranced.
“Harry, I thought you weren’t serious.”
“People are always thinking I’m not serious, when I am. Help me roll back the carpet.”
They lifted a table to the corner, then took one end each of the frayed green carpet and rolled it to the other side of the room. Harry looked quickly at the dusty boards underneath, and walked thoughtfully to the middle of the room. He bent down and tapped one board with the hammer.
“There’s a lot of dust about. Get me housewife’s implements and I’ll sweep it up,” he said to Prudence.
She was out of the room for several minutes. When she came back she carried a book as well as a brush. Harry had already lifted one board and was staring into the hole.
She stood beside Harry, scrutinising him, noting with distaste that his brown hair waved, that his nose was not quite straight, as if it had once been broken, that his face was round and his mouth and chin soft. She liked a man to have a hard, lean, Hollywood look. Harry was nearly handsome, but he didn’t look like a man who would be put in charge of a spaceship.
“I’ve been reading about death watch beetles in my insect book,” she said.
“Yes?” Harry stood up.
“Are you looking at me with narrowed eyes?” he asked.
“Death watch beetles court in February,” she said. “You wouldn’t hear them tick in August. It’s people you hear ticking,” she added cryptically.
“In February?” he said, grinning. “Then I’ve made a mistake.”
“You have.”
“A natural, human mistake,” he said cheerfully. “So I’ll put the boards back and say no more. Imagine these little creatures confining their love life to February!”
“What do you know about death watch beetles anyway?” she asked grimly.
“I used to collect them when I was a boy. Relax, Prudence, unless you’re training to be a girl detective.”
“Do you mean to tear up any more floorboards?”
“There wouldn’t be any point in it, if I can’t separate them when they’re courting.”
“You know there aren’t any death watch beetles there,” she said accusingly.
“For all I know, there may be. I regard them as not proven. I’ll put the boards back.”
“Harry, I don’t know what you’ve been trying to do, but I shall tell Father. Then what will you say?”
“I shall feign madness. And I’ll leave him to put the floorboards back. You’ll never find out what I was trying to do. But if you keep your mouth shut, you’ll discover something very interesting – about Morgan.”
“About Morgan?” Prudence asked, frowning.