"I believe your grandfather was a great collector," said Sir Humphrey. He held up the book in his hand. "Here is an old friend whom I have not met, alas, for many years. I cannot think why it is missing from my own shelves. I wonder if I may borrow it? A pernicious habit, I am aware."
"Do by all means," said Fountain, hoping to get away from the subject of books. "Very glad if you'd borrow anything you want to."
"Thank you. I just have a fancy to dip into these pages again. I will take the first volume, if I may."
Fountain gave his noisy laugh. "First volume, eh? I don't mind admitting I shy at anything in more than one volume."
Sir Humphrey looked at him with much the same wonder as he would have displayed upon being confronted by a dinosaur.
"Dear me!" he said. "Yet this work - it is Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature -you would find well worth the — ah - labour of reading. But I did not come to talk about books. I must not waste your time."
Fountain murmured a polite disclaimer but made no attempt to dissuade Sir Humphrey from coming to his business. At the end of twenty minutes' earnest conversation he promised that he would speak to his keeper. It was pointed out to him that some suspicious-looking men had been seen on his estate; Sir Humphrey felt that it was the duty of every landowner to stamp out this poaching menace and was sure that Fountain would agree with him.
Fountain was ready to agree with anything. Certainly poachers must be got rid of; he would have a word with Hitchcock.
Felicity, perceiving his scarce-veiled impatience, got up and said that if they did not go they would not have time to visit Upper Nettlefold before lunch. Sir Humphrey said, to be sure they were encroaching upon Fountain's time; he would rely on him to see that something was done.
He shook hands and was about to go when the door opened softly and Collins came in.
The valet stopped and said at once: "I beg pardon, sir. I thought you were alone."
"That's all right; since you're here you can show Sir Humphrey and Miss Matthews out," said Fountain. "Goodbye, sir; I'll see about it at once. Sure you won't take the other volumes? Well, don't hesitate to borrow any book you happen to want. Only too glad!"
The valet's eyes rested for a moment on the volume Sir Humphrey carried. Then he looked quickly towards the bookshelves. Some quiver of emotion flickered in his face. He said: "Should I wrap the book up for you, sir?"
"No, thank you, I prefer it as it is," replied Sir Humphrey, going towards the door.
"I fear it may be very dusty, sir. Shall I wipe it for you?"
"Wipe it? No, no, it is perfectly all right!" said Sir Humphrey testily. "Well, goodbye, Fountain. Come along, Felicity, or we shall be late."
As Felicity started the car she said: "Did you notice that man? The valet, I mean."
"Notice him, my dear? I naturally saw him. Why should I notice him particularly?"
"I thought he gave you — such an ugly look."
You imagine things, my dear," said Sir Humphrey. "Why should he give me an ugly look?"
"I don't know. But he did."
She drove the car into Upper Nettlefold, being commissioned by Lady Matthews to call at the Boar's Head to find out if Shirley Brown was comfortable there and to offer to accompany her to the inquest next morning. The porter thought Miss Brown was in her room, and went up to find her while Felicity and Sir Humphrey waited in the lounge.
Shirley came downstairs in a few minutes; she seemed pleased to see Felicity, but rather shy. She wore a black armband over her tweed coat, but no other sign of mourning, and although she looked worried she had certainly not been crying. She said that she was quite comfortable at the Boar's Head and declined Lady Matthews' offer of escort to the inquest. It was very kind of Lady Matthews but quite unnecessary; she would not like to drag her to anything so unpleasant.
"My wife," said Sir Humphrey, eyeing her askance, "thought that perhaps you would be glad of - ah support - under such painful circumstances."
Shirley gave him back one of her surprising clear looks. "I shan't break down," she said. "It has been a shock to me, and I'm upset. But I don't want to pose as being heartbroken. You see, I'm not. I'm sorry if this shocks you."
It evidently did shock Sir Humphrey. He said that perhaps she had scarcely had time to realise what had happened. Her smile was a little scornful, but she did not argue the point. On the question of her return to London she was inclined to be vague; purposely, Felicity guessed. There appeared to be business connected with Ivy Cottage which she would be obliged to settle.
She made no effort to detain her visitors when Felicity rose to go. Felicity thought, privately, that whatever she might choose to say, she was suffering from considerable strain. Her eyes betrayed her.
Sir Humphrey, on the way home, took no pains to disguise the fact that he did not like Shirley. His sense of propriety was offended by her lack of hypocrisy; he could not forgive such plain speaking, however unsatisfactory Mark Brown might have been. Decency had to be preserved. He thought that the absence of mourning clothes showed lack of respect towards the dead. Whatever a man's character had been in life, death, in Sir Humphrey's eyes, made him instantly respectable.
In the middle of these reflections he broke off to hunt on the seat beside him for something. Felicity slowed down. "What is it, Daddy?"
"I seem," said Sir Humphrey with annoyance, "to have left that book I borrowed at the Boar's Head. I can't think how I could have done such a thing. We shall have to go back."
Leaving things behind was a habit he had so often condemned in his wife and daughter that Felicity could not forbear a little crow of laughter as she turned the car.
Ten minutes' run brought them back to the Boar's Head. Sir Humphrey went into the lounge where he found Shirley sitting alone, the book on the small table before her. She was flushed, and when she looked up at his approach, he was surprised to see so much light in her dark eyes. Upon his soul, the girl looked as though she had come into a fortune instead of having lost her only brother.
She got up, lifting the book from the table. "You left this behind, didn't you?" she said. "I've been dipping into it. Also dusting it, which it badly needed." She put it into his hands. "Here you are."
"And what did you think of it?" said Sir Humphrey.
A little smile hovered on her lips. "It seems to have some very interesting things in it," she said. Amberley was not in to lunch, having gone over to Carchester to confer with the chief constable, but he put in an appearance at tea-time, not in the best of tempers. An effort on Sir Humphrey's part to read aloud to him an anecdote about the Abbe Marolles was firmly checked at the outset. "I've read it," said Mr. Amberley.
"Indeed?" said his uncle huffily. "I shall be surprised, nevertheless, if you can tell me what book it occurs in."
"Curiosities of Literature," said Amberley without hesitation. "I didn't know you had the book."
Sir Humphrey, pleased to find his nephew more widely read than he had imagined, unbent and said that he had borrowed the book from Fountain that morning. He presently made another attempt to read a passage aloud was still more firmly checked. "Do you remember this bit, Frank?" he began.
"Yes," said Mr. Amberley.
Sir Humphrey informed him that his manners were intolerable. By way of working off his spleen he said acidly that he trusted Frank did not intend to wake the whole household up in the small hours that night as he had last night.
Mr. Amberley, who had heard his uncle snoring as he had passed his door at four that morning, grinned and said meekly that there would be no disturbance tonight.
He was mistaken. At twenty minutes past two the silence of the house was shattered by a crash that woke not only Sir Humphrey, but his wife and his nephew also.