Having arrived at this satisfactory conclusion, Pettigrew must have dozed off, for when he opened his eyes again the moonlight had vanished and in its place the first grey hint of dawn showed through the window. It was very still and quiet. Only Eleanor’s light breathing in the bed beside his own broke the silence. Yet he felt certain that he had been awakened by some noise, though he could not tell what. He lay listening for a moment or two and then his ear caught a small, grating sound from outside. In that instant, to his great surprise, he knew exactly what had made the sound and whence it came.
The back door of the farmhouse gave on to the farm-yard, and next to the back door was an outhouse with a gently sloping lead roof. The window of one of the bedrooms in the older part of the house was immediately above that roof. For an active boy occupying the room who wanted to get in or out without his elders’ knowledge, or for whom the stairs were too dull and mundane a means of access, the outhouse made a convenient landing stage between ground and window. The recollection emerged sharp and keen from the depths of the past, provoked by the long-forgotten sound. Somebody was on the roof of the outhouse at that moment; and the room in question was not now occupied by a boy.
Pettigrew slipped out of bed without disturbing his wife, and peered out of window. The other side of the farmyard was in shadow, but he could just make out the line of the outhouse, and on the roof, pressed against the wall, the figure of a man. His head was level with the window, which was open at the bottom. He stood there motionless for a moment, and then in the semi-darkness the upper part of his body seemed to blend with another shape that appeared at the window. Pettigrew could just distinguish the pallor of two white arms that enfolded his head and shoulders. An instant later they were withdrawn, the window closed silently, the man dropped to the ground and vanished into the shadows.
“Good morning, sir! Good morning, madam! It’s a lovely day and I’ve brought you your tea. Have you slept well? Would you be wanting eggs for breakfast or there’s a nice piece of liver and bacon if you’d fancy that?”
Mrs. Gorman cooed as gently as a sucking dove. Pettigrew sat up in bed and contemplated that demure, slightly melancholy face, the calm, unruffled brow, the infinitely respectable demeanour. Anybody less like the heroine of an illicit love affair it would be hard to imagine. But he knew the layout of the house too well to have any doubt as to which was Mrs. Gorman’s room. His judgment of character had been hopelessly at fault-not for the first time, he conceded. He felt at once irritated and amused. It was like living in a short story by Somerset Maugham.
As he dressed, his mind turned to the problem of the man’s identity. In a remote spot such as this there could not be many candidates…
“How many people does Mr. Joliffe employ on the farm, do you suppose?” he said to Eleanor at breakfast.
“Two or three, I think,” she said. “There’s an old man who milks the cows and a girl who drives the tractor.”
“Isn’t there a young, able-bodied man on the farm?”
“I don’t know. Why do you ask?”
“I was just wondering,” said Pettigrew.
CHAPTER II. The Hunt is Up
Mrs. Gorman was right. It was a lovely day, and on such a day a picnic lunch was clearly indicated. When Eleanor went into the kitchen to suggest it to Mrs. Gorman she found that Doreen, the twelve year old, was already preparing the basket.
“The meet’s at Satcherley Way, so you’ll want to leave by half-past ten,” she explained.
“The meet?” said Eleanor, puzzled.
“The meet,” Doreen repeated, her large eyes round with surprise at such stupidity. “The meet of the stag-hounds. Didn’t you see the card in the hall?”
“But what makes you think we want to go to the meet, Doreen?”
“Visitors always do.”
“Well this one doesn’t. I don’t like hunting, and neither does Mr. Pettigrew.”
“Cor!” said Doreen, in a tone of incredulity.
So that there should be no doubt about the matter, Eleanor took the precaution of finding Satcherley Way on the map before they set out, and the picnic took place at a spot which seemed reasonably remote from the contaminated area. So far as her husband was concerned, it was an immense success. The food was good, the weather was warm, the heather on which they reclined was deliciously soft and yielding. Decidedly the holiday had been an excellent idea of Eleanor’s. If only he had been able to sleep better the night before…
“Wake up, Frank,” said Eleanor a little later.
“My dear, I am wide awake. I have never been anything else.”
“Then you should not have been snoring. What was that noise I heard just now?”
“Obviously, I should have thought, my snoring. Or do you mean something else?”
“I do mean something else. Listen!”
Pettigrew was well awake by now, and straining his ears. In a moment he heard the sound, distant but clear and quite unmistakable.
“That was the horn,” he said.
“A horn, did you say?”
“Yes.” Actually, Pettigrew realized, he had said, not “a horn”, but “the horn”. It came to him with a little shock of recollection that there was a world of difference between the two. “A hunting horn. Perhaps they’re running this way.”
“I hope not,” said Eleanor chillingly. “It must be a disgusting sight. But they may not be chasing a stag at all. The man was probably only blowing to call the dogs together.”
“No.” Pettigrew was quite decided on the point. “Hounds are running all right. He was doubling his horn.” (The phrase slipped easily off his tongue- fantastically easy for one who had not used it for fifty years.)
“Frank!”
“Yes, my love?” Pettigrew turned from looking at the distant ridge of moorland to see his wife’s brilliant blue eyes fixed on him accusingly.
“You seem to know a lot about this stag-hunting business. Have you been deceiving me all this time?”
“God forbid!”
“Have you ever been a huntsman?”
“Heavens, no! A huntsman is a highly skilled professional. I’ve only had one profession all my life. You know that.”
“Don’t quibble, Frank. You know what I mean. Have you ever been a hunter?”
“No, of course not! A hunter is- All right, I won’t quibble. I do know what you mean. I will be honest. I have hunted. And with these hounds, too. But it was a long time ago.”
“How long?”
“Longer than I care to think. When that I was a little tiny boy. My father used to bring us down here for the holidays.”
“And you hunted,” said Eleanor reproachfully.
“If you can call it hunting. I was put on a pony and bumped about the moor after the hounds. One hadn’t much choice in the matter. Everybody did it.”
“I see.” Eleanor sounded mollified by his explanation. “You don’t sound as if you enjoyed it very much.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” said Pettigrew slowly…
How fantastic to suppose that he had forgotten all about it! With the scent of the heather in his nostrils, the sound of the horn fresh in his ears, gazing across the valley at two distant hummocks which suddenly revealed themselves as the very oldest of old acquaintances, Pettigrew found his memory opening up like some monstrous flower, fold within fold. He saw himself, a small boy, jogging uncomfortably to the meet along a road innocent of motor traffic but thick with dust on a hard-mouthed, self-willed pony that could not accommodate its pace to that of the big hunter alongside. It was a pony given to habits so unpleasing and undignified that even in retrospect he averted his mind from them; but once away, it would gallop for ever. The boy was wearing what struck him now as fantastically uncomfortable clothes-a hard hat that seared his forehead, breeches that pinched his flesh below the knees, gaiters that never quite spanned the gap between the breeches and the heavy black boots. In his leather gloves he clutched a thonged hunting crop that was at once his greatest pride and an appalling encumbrance. One pocket was weighed down with a vast pocket knife equipped among other things with a hook designed to take stones out of horses’ hooves; another bulged tightly over the packet of sandwiches, which, when eaten later in the day, would prove, whatever their composition, to taste of leather gloves and smell of sweating pony. His secret hope was that someone would give him for his birthday a man’s-size sandwich box in a leather container which could be strapped to the saddle. The ultimate glory of a hunting flask might be attained next season, perhaps.