“Do? For what?”
“For you and Mr. Pettigrew. Unless, of course, you’ve given up the idea of an Exmoor holiday altogether. You’ll hardly get in anywhere else at this time of year.”
“But why-?” Eleanor began. “Oh, I see. You’re assuming that Mrs. Gorman is-will be-”
“I’m assuming that Mrs. Gorman is now a widow, that she’ll be too upset to be wanting to bother with boarders and that in any case you won’t care to stay in a house with that sort of trouble about. And I’ve gone so far as to assume that you and Mr. Pettigrew might care to stay with me for a few days. I’m sorry to be so blunt about it, but as I told Mr. Pettigrew yesterday, I’ve lost my finesse living in the country.”
“It’s extremely kind of you, Mr. Mallett.”
“You’ll come, then? Good! As my guests, mind. I don’t want any nonsense about paying your way. You can leave a present for the housekeeper at the end of your stay, but that’s as far as I’ll go.”
Mallett accompanied his words with a ferocious tug at the ends of his moustache. Thoroughly overawed, the Pettigrews agreed to his proposition, provided that his basic assumption proved to be correct.
It was correct. Mr. Joliffe’s little car was standing in the farmyard when they returned to Sallowcombe, and it was Mr. Joliffe who received them when they entered.
“My daughter is in bed,” he said heavily. “She has had some news that has upset her. I was sent for from Whitsea.”
“We have heard the news,” said Pettigrew. “I should like to express our deep sympathy.”
“That’s very good of you, sir, but frankly I don’t regard it as an occasion for sympathy at all. Rationally speaking, it’s a very happy release for her. My daughter, however, isn’t rational. She doesn’t see it in that light at all. She has not so much as set eyes on her husband for six months, and now she chooses to be prostrated. Women are strange creatures, if you’ll excuse the phrase, Mrs. Pettigrew.”
From the look on his wife’s face, Francis Pettigrew realized that she was not disposed to excuse the phrase and that for two pins she would make the fact extremely clear. He interposed hastily.
“In any case, Mr. Joliffe, I am sure that you will agree that at a moment like this your daughter won’t want any visitors in the house. We have been lucky enough to find somewhere to go, so we shall be leaving straight away.”
“I was afraid you would say that. I told my daughter as much, but she didn’t pay any attention. I’ll get out your bill while you do your packing.” He sighed deeply. “In the ordinary way I should charge you for a week’s board in lieu of notice, but in the circumstances I can hardly do that. It’s a pity, but there it is.”
Pettigrew contrived to keep a straight face. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.
“Ah well,” Mr. Joliffe went on, “there’s one good thing about it. The next lot of boarders aren’t due till Saturday week and she should be over it by then. I shouldn’t like to put them off-that sort of thing gives the house a bad name.”
“Disgusting old man!” Eleanor burst out as soon as they were back in their room. “Heartless, money-grubbing brute! And I thought he was nice!”
“I’m disappointed in him too,” said Pettigrew. He was looking out of the window as he spoke, and his gaze rested on the roof of the outhouse beneath Mrs. Gorman’s room. Remembering what he had seen there a few nights before, he felt it unreasonable that she should be so overcome with grief at her husband’s death. To that extent at least he could sympathize with Mr. Joliffe.
“Those poor little girls!” Eleanor went on. “He hadn’t a word of sympathy for them, of course. I really wonder whether we are doing right in leaving until we’re sure Mrs. Gorman is in a fit state to look after them. I feel quite worried about them.”
That worry at least was dispelled when, the packing completed, Pettigrew sought out Mr. Joliffe to settle his account. He found him closeted with his granddaughters, and it was obvious at a glance that a condition of complete sympathy existed between them. Beryl was sitting in the corner absorbing a sweet of the type known to Pettigrew in his youth as a gob-stopper. Though her face bore traces of recent tears, she looked resigned, and even contented. Doreen was close to her grandfather’s side, and it was evident that Pettigrew had interrupted an intimate colloquy between them. Her expression was subdued and serious, and for the first time Pettigrew was aware of her strong resemblance to her mother. But what struck him most was the look of utter confidence on one side and deep affection on the other.
In a gentler voice than usual, Joliffe told the two girls to “run along” while he did his business with the departing guest. “They’re all I have, Mr. Pettigrew,” he said softly as the door closed behind them. The sentimental expression vanished from his face as he went on, almost without pause, “Was it one or two early morning teas you had on Saturday?”
Pettigrew paid his bill. Mr. Joliffe shook him warmly by the hand and expressed the hope that they would meet again another year. “The rooms will be there,” he said, “and if Mrs. Gorman is there to look after you, you’ll be welcome. It just doesn’t pay if you have to give a woman wages to attend to the summer visitors. My daughter was talking of setting up house on her own, but now this has happened I am hoping she will change her mind.”
Pettigrew must have shown something of what he felt, for Joliffe went on, “You think I’m lacking in sympathy for my daughter, sir, but if you’d known my son-in-law you’d think different. He was a ne’er-do-well, and that’s the long and the short of it. I don’t mind telling you that first to last he cost me a lot of money. Thank Heaven, he’s left my girl well provided for!”
After this, Pettigrew could not resist the temptation of adding to Mr. Joliffe’s financial worries by demanding a twopenny stamp on his receipt.
Mallett was out when the Pettigrews returned to Sunbeam Cottage and he did not put in an appearance until just before supper.
“I’ve been having a chat with the Detective Inspector,” he said. “Luckily we’re on fairly good terms.”
He filled three glasses with sherry and handed them round. “Inquest’s on Thursday, it seems. At Polton. Your very good healths, sir and madam.”
The sherry was of a quality to command Pettigrew’s respect, but for the moment his mind was on lower things.
“What else did he tell you?” he asked.
“I didn’t like to ask any direct questions, because he’s a sensitive sort of man, and might have resented them, coming from me. But I gathered that death was due to a blow in the chest. The Inspector seems to be working on the theory that it was a motor car, but it might have been something else, so far as he can tell until he gets the report of the P.M.”
“But he wasn’t found on the road,” Eleanor put in.
“Quite so, ma’am. It seems the body had been moved after death.”
“And death was-when?”
“It was the answer to that question that I was angling for all along, of course, but it took me a long time to bring him round to it. And the answer-again without waiting for the pathologist’s report-appears to be, late last night or first thing this morning.”
Mallett looked at Eleanor. Eleanor looked at Frank. Frank looked at his glass. Nobody said anything for a moment.
“So that lets you out, Mr. Pettigrew,” said Mallett cheerfully.
“Yes. That lets me out, doesn’t it? I’m simply a second-sighted, temperamental sufferer from precognition. It’s nice to know. It only remains to enjoy the rest of the holiday.” He drank off his glass with a singular absence of enjoyment.
The appearance of supper restored Pettigrew’s spirits, and by the end of the evening he was able to discuss the case of Jack Gorman-for it was impossible to keep away from it for long-in his usual vein of cheerful detachment.