'Yes,' said Jessica, 'we hit a little car.' 'Indeed?' said Mr Bullstrode. 'A little car. I trust you reported the accident to the police.' Lockhart shook his head. 'I didn't bother.' 'Indeed?' said Mr Bullstrode more legally still. 'You simply hit a little car and then continued on your way. And the owner of the other vehicle, did he have something to say about it?'-'I didn't wait to find out,' said Lockhart. 'And then the police chased us,' said Jessica, 'And Lockhart was ever so clever and drove though hedges and across fields where they couldn't follow us.'
'Hedges?' said Mr Bullstrode. 'Am I to understand that having been involved in an accident which you failed to stop and report you were then chased by the police and committed the further felony of driving this remarkable vehicle through hedges and across, by the look of the tyres, ploughed and doubtless planted fields thus damaging property and leaving yourselves liable to criminal prosecution on grounds of trespass?'
'Yes,' said Lockhart, 'that just about sums it up."
'Good God,' said Mr Bullstrode and scratched his bald head. 'And did it never occur to you that the police must have taken your number and can trace you by it?'
'Ah, but it wasn't the right number,' said Lockhart and explained his reasons for changing it. By the time he had finished Mr Bullstrode's legal sensibilities were in tatters. I hesitate to add to the proscriptions attendant upon your grandfather's will by describing your actions as wholly criminal and without the law but I must say,…' He broke off unable to give words to his feelings.
'What?' said Lockhart.
Mr Bullstrode consulted commonsense. 'My advice is to leave the vehicle here,' he said finally, 'and to travel home by train.'
'And what about finding my father?' said Lockhart. 'Have you any opinion to offer on that?'
'I was not alerted to your mother's death or your delivery until some months had passed,' said Mr Bullstrode. 'I can only advise you to consult Dr Magrew. Not, of course, that I impute any interest other than the professional to his concern for your dear mother's condition at the time of her demise, but he may be able to help in the matter of timing your conception.'
But Dr Magrew when they found him in the study warming his feet at the fire could add little.
'As I remember the occasion,' he said, 'you were, to put it mildly, a premature baby distinguished largely by the fact that you appeared to be born with measles. A wrong diagnosis, I have to confess, but understandable in that I have seldom if ever been confronted by a baby born in a stinging-nettle patch. But definitely premature and I would therefore put your conception no earlier than February 1956 and no later than March. I must therefore conclude that your father was in close proximity to these parts and those of your mother during these two months. I am glad to be able to say that I do not qualify as a candidate for your paternity by the good fortune of being out of the country at that time.'
'But didn't he look like anyone you knew when he was born?' asked Jessica.
'My dear,' said Dr Magrew, 'a premature infant expelled from the womb into a stinging-nettle patch as a result of his mother's fall from her horse can only be said to look like nothing on earth. I would hesitate to defame any man by saying that Lockhart at birth looked like him. An orang-outang possibly, but an unsightly one at that. No, I am afraid your search will have to proceed along other lines than family likeness.'
'But what about my mother?' said Lockhart. 'Surely she must have had friends who would be able to tell me something.'
Dr Magrew nodded. 'Your presence here today would seem conclusive evidence of the former proposition,' he said. 'Unfortunately your grandfather's will makes the second highly unlikely.'
'Can you tell us what Lockhart's mother was like?' asked Jessica.
Dr Magrew's face grew solemn. 'Let's just say she was a wild lassie with a tendency to rush her fences,'- he said. 'Aye, and a beauty too in her day.*
But that was as much as they could get out of him. And next morning, accepting a lift from Mr Bullstrode, who had stayed overnight, they left the Hall carrying Mrs Flawse's letter to Mr Treyer,
'My dear,' said old Mr Flawse patting Jessica's hand rather more pruriently than their relationship called for, 'you have married a numbskull but you'll make a man of him yet. Come and see me again before I die. I like a woman of spirit.'
It was a tearful Jessica who got into the car, "You must think me awfully sentimental,' she said.
'Of course ye are, hinnie,' said the old man, 'which is what I admire about you. Where there's mush there's grit beneath. You must have got it from your father. Your mother's grit all over and as soft as a slug at the core.'
And with these parting words they left the Hall. In the background old Mrs Flawse added slugs to the menu of her revenge.
Two days later Lockhart presented himself for the last time at Sandicott & Partner and handed Mr Treyer the envelope containing Mrs Flawse's instructions. Half an hour later he left again while behind him Mr Treyer praised whatever Gods there be, and in particular Janus, in the environs of Wheedle Street that he had at long last been instructed to fire, sack, dismiss and generally send packing the ghastly liability to the firm of Sandicott & Partner that marched under the name of Lockhart Flawse. His mother-in-law's letter had been couched in much the same terms as the old man's will and for once Mr Treyer had no need to equivocate. Lockhart left the office with his head ringing with Mr Treyer's opinions and returned home to explain this strange turn of events to Jessica
'But why should mummy have done such a horrid thing?' she asked. Lockhart could find no answer.
'Perhaps she doesn't like me,' he said. 'Of course she does, darling. She would never have let me marry you if she hadn't liked you."
'Well, if you had seen what she wrote in that letter about me you'd have second thoughts about that,' said Lockhart. But Jessica had already summed her mother up.
'I think she's just an old cat and she's cross about the will. That's what I think. What are you going to do now?'
'Get another job, I suppose,' said Lockhart but the supposition came easier than the result. The Labour Exchange in East Pursley was already swamped with applications from ex-stockbrokers and Mr Treyer's refusal to grant that he had ever been employed at Sandicott, combined with his lack of any means of identification, made Lockhart's position hopeless. It was the same at the Social Security office. His non-entity in any bureaucratic sense became obvious when he admitted he had never paid any National Insurance stamps.
'As far as we are concerned you don't statistically speaking exist,' the clerk told him.
'But I do,' Lockhart insisted, 'I am here. You can see me. You can even touch me if you want to.'
The clerk didn't. 'Listen,' he said with all the politeness of a public servant addressing the public, 'you've admitted you aren't on the Voters' Roll, you haven't been included in any census count, you can't produce a passport or birth certificate, you haven't had a job… Yes, I know what you're going to say but I've a letter here from a Mr Treyer who states categorically you didn't work at Sandicott & Partner, you haven't paid a penny in National Insurance stamps, you haven't got a health card. Now then do you want to go your non-existent way or do I have to call the police?' Lockhart indicated that he didn't want the police to be called.
'Right then,' said the clerk, 'let me get on with some other applicants who've got a better claim on the Welfare State.'
Lockhart left him coping with an unemployed graduate in Moral Sciences who had for months been demanding to be treated rather more generously than an old-age pensioner while at the same time refusing any job that was not consistent with his qualifications.
By the time Lockhart got home he was utterly despondent.