‘Perhaps the thief is a cook.’
‘Or a crook,’ said Slater, and Tom thought he detected a touch of humour. He said, ‘Are you worried for your collection?’
‘I might be,’ said Slater. ‘But to a thief, what I have collected would look like nothing more than a heap of stones and metal trinkets.’
This was not so far from Tom’s initial response to the objects. He was surprised, though, by the cleric’s seemingly easy attitude. By now they had reached the river bank. The water flowed fast and swollen after the autumn rains, carrying the odd tree branch or mass of green weed. Beyond the far bank there stretched meadows dotted with willows and grazing cows. A kind of timber garden-house or gazebo stood near the water’s edge. It had a covered verandah on the river side and a curtain with a check pattern in the window. Nearby was a small grassy mound, with a headstone set at one end. The little grave, set out in the open, was curiously disturbing. Slater noticed Tom looking at it.
‘A dog of my wife’s is buried there. A little pug. She wanted him close at hand. My wife likes to sit here in the summer,’ said Felix Slater.
‘I would sit here too, dog or no dog’ said Tom, thinking of his own lodgings in Islington and the close, stuffy air of a London summer.
‘She says that it reminds her of home.’
Tom was puzzling over this remark, or rather wondering where exactly home was for Mrs Slater, when from the distance there came the sound of a gong being struck. It was the signal for lunch The two men turned back towards Venn House. Soaring above the line of the roof they could see the spire of the cathedral.
‘The highest in all of England, isn’t it?’ said Tom, dredging the fact up from somewhere. ‘It must be the pride of Salisbury.’
‘It may surprise you, Mr Ansell, to know that there is not much love lost between the town and the cathedral. Hundreds of years ago the bishop owned this town, more or less, but things are different now. Oh, there is a kind of respect for this great church and the tradespeople are grateful that it brings visitors here, no doubt. Once our visitors would have been pilgrims. Now they want to look at the sights and go shopping. But the townsfolk have their business to get on with, just as we have ours. I don’t suppose that more than one in a hundred of our good citizens ever considers that he is walking across the ground that his ancestors toiled on. Everywhere we go we traverse layers of the past but so few of us see beneath the soil.’
Tom glanced sideways at the tall, bird-like cleric. There was that same suppressed fire in his manner as when he had been examining the artefacts in the glass cases.
They went back inside, down the hall and past the watercolours and the case of ornamental ferns. Slater led the way through a door near the front part of the house and into the dining room. Three people, two women and a man, were already there. Tom recognized each of them. The man was Slater’s nephew, Walter Henry, who smiled to see his uncle come in with Tom. One of the women was Bessie, the flustered maid — now with her collar properly straightened and waiting to serve lunch — who had appeared in Slater’s study. The second woman was the mysterious personage who had told Tom to stay outside Venn House and whose existence he had almost forgotten about for the last hour or so. He had made various compromising assumptions about her: that she might be a prostitute or woman of the town, then that she was an odd visitor to Venn House (a clairvoyante or something of the kind) or possibly a servant.
But now he realized, with horror mixed with embarrassment, that she was actually Felix Slater’s wife.
Venn House, Interior
The Canon introduced Amelia to Tom. They shook hands. It was a firm grasp, just as it had been when she gripped his arm outside the gate. Over her shoulder Tom could see himself in the great mirror which was set above the mantel. He was quite red in the face. His complexion made a contrast with her yellow dress. Fortunately, his confusion was not observed by Slater, who had drawn his nephew to one side and was talking in an undertone by the window. Now that everyone had arrived, the maid was busying herself by the sideboard. If Tom Ansell was flustered, Amelia Slater was calm. Her hand was warm (Tom’s was sweaty) and she looked amused.
‘I am pleased to meet you, Mr Ansell. You are coming from London this morning?’
‘No, I got here last night,’ said Tom, remembering the woman’s injunction outside the gate of the house that he wasn’t to mention how they’d met before. Her disingenuous question about his arrival seemed to confirm the little conspiracy between them.
‘You are staying somewhere nice, I hope?’
‘I have a room in The Side of Beef,’ he said, almost adding, ‘As you well know, Mrs Slater.’ He was convinced that he had seen her hanging about outside the inn when he’d glanced out of his window on the previous evening.
She seemed about to say something else but fortunately she was cut short by Felix and Walter finishing their talk and taking their places at table. The Canon sat at one end with his nephew at the other while Tom and Amelia Slater were opposite each other. The table was large and each person seemed to be marooned in his or her seat.
After Slater had said grace, and in the pause before conversation picked up, Tom glanced round the room. It was done out in quite an old-fashioned style with mahogany furniture and dark colours. A great sideboard occupied most of the wall facing the window. No one said anything as the maid served them with oxtail soup.
The silence was prolonged while they took the first couple of sips. The maid went to stand demurely by the sideboard. Walter Slater spoke first.
‘I saw Foster just now. The Inspector, you know. He has been to talk to the Anstruthers and to see what he can discover about the robbery last night. He told me that the thief gained entry from the river side. A door had been forced at the back of the house. He said that we should look to our own doors and locks.’
The name, in connection with the local police, prompted some memory in Tom’s head. Foster? Where had he heard that name, and recently too? It had been while he was sitting in the cab on the way from the station. Canon Selby had said something about Inspector Foster. That he was a good man, a sound man.
‘It is frightening that someone can come into a house while the people inside are asleep,’ said Amelia. But she did not look frightened. Tom caught her glance; there was a gleam in her eye. ‘If only Achilles was still here.’
Tom was puzzling over Achilles when he remembered the small grass mound down by the river.
‘Achilles couldn’t do much,’ said Walter.
‘He could bark and was brave,’ said Amelia. ‘Achilles would have protected me.’
‘You do not need to fear, my dear,’ said her husband. ‘I am here at night and so is Walter. We shall protect you. Did you find out what was taken, Walter? Surely it was more than a few jelly moulds?’
‘Not much more, according to Foster. The cook was still going through the kitchen since it appears that the thief concentrated his attentions entirely in there. A few spoons and forks are missing. Mr Anstruther was woken by a great clattering noise while he was asleep and came downstairs. He found the back door ajar.’
‘Then it is as Mr Ansell here suggested to me earlier,’ said Felix Slater. ‘The thief was disturbed before he could do any worse.’
‘It seems an odd place to begin a robbery, in the kitchen,’ said Tom ‘Why not start in the more valuable rooms of a house?’
‘Perhaps Mr Ansell fancies himself as a detective,’ said Walter. ‘If so, sir, maybe you can explain something which is odder still. When Mr Anstruther came down to inspect the kitchen together with the servants who’d also been alerted by the clatter, they found that pots and pans had been deliberately flung on to the floor. One or two items had been dented and damaged but none of them taken.’