Rainbow's End

CHAPTER ONE

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The gate-posts, until recently shorn of their crests and leaning drunkenly out of true, now stood up regally on either side of the drive, crowned with a pair of baronial lions, gripping in their paws escutcheons certainly not native either to the building, which was in fact a rather monstrous eighteenth-century vicarage, built by a wealthy pluralist in the days when such remote parishes carried a stipend fit for a prince, or the present owner, who was a come-lately antique dealer from Birmingham, the first landlord since 1800 to be able to duplicate the founder’s extravagant fancies. No doubt the lions had been acquired in the course of business, but they looked sufficiently imposing, looming whitely in the early September dusk between dark-rose brick, and backed by clipped, cavern-dark cypresses. And hadn’t the gate-posts themselves been upped by a couple of feet, to tower so high above George Felse’s Volkswagen as he drove in? It was a fair preparation for what was to come.

The drive was newly-surfaced, the grass on either side shorn like a second-year lamb. Nicely-spaced cypresses accompanied the traveller, with the occasional life-size nymph or satyr, possibly marble, probably lead, posed against their darkness in antique pallor. Posed, as George noted, very tastefully, every dimension studied as meticulously as if this remote upper end of Middlehope, the rim of the world between England and Wales in these parts, had been the serene preserve of Stourhead, in Wiltshire, the final perfection of the landscape garden in these islands. Every tree placed with care, every vista calculated with the precision of a master-photographer, every view not so much an accident of nature as a dramatic composition. Between the trees sudden blazons of flowers shone in noble golds and burnished bronzes, like flares lit in the cradling dark.

‘How long did you say he’d been installed here?’ asked Bunty dubiously, hunching her right shoulder against her husband’s left, like a loyal colleague in a battle-line closing ranks.

‘Three months. Oh, I’ve no doubt most of these garden-gods were lying around here, it was that sort of set-up once before. Either flat on their faces or breast-deep in grass and shrubs. It wouldn’t take so long to get them set up again. And from all accounts he’s got the money to indulge his fancy. They’ll be glad of the jobs, they’re hanging on by their teeth here, the older ones. The kids head on out, more’s the pity. He could be a blessing if he employs local labour.’

‘He knows his stuff,’ admitted Bunty, gazing wide-eyed at the Psyches and Graces flickering by. Bunty knew hers, though her field was music rather than landscaping, and could appreciate authority when it showed. So why wasn’t she happy? Three months isn’t very long, and the extreme head of a valley climbing over frontier hills from England into Wales is hypersensitive territory, critical and aloof, resentful of mere mechanical aids like expertise.

‘In several fields, apparently,’ said George drily. ‘And does his homework, too.’ For one of the newcomer’s interests was also music, and he had arrived already primed with the knowledge that Bernarda Elliot, once a promising mezzo-soprano with a bright future before her, was one and the same with Bunty Felse, long since dwindled into a wife, and to the newly-promoted head of the Midshire C.I.D. of all people. The sole reason they had been invited to this house-warming, according to Bunty, was because she had let herself be conned into acting as secretary to the Comerbourne Musical Association, and their host showed every sign of planning a takeover bid for that earnest body, and was recruiting support at every opportunity.

‘I know I got myself into this,’ admitted Bunty frankly.

‘But you could easily have got out of it if you’d wanted to. I wonder why you didn’t?’

‘Curiosity, mainly. It pays to take a close look at every major development in these parts.’ He didn’t go into details, there was no need. The remorseless waves of urbanisation had rippled outwards from the lowlands into the ramparts of Middlehope, and reached as far as Mottisham, which was the halfway mark, but Abbot’s Bale and the scattered hill-farms round it remained a fortress of tribal solidarity. Lucky valley, still viable for a limited population, owing to sheep-farming and small personal craft industries, beautiful enough and just near enough to more populated centres to attract those commuters most grimly determined on peace and rural society, while remote enough to discourage the merely rich and pretentious. By no means a closed community, it had assimilated a number of retiring, and retired, artists and academics, and tolerated a few suburban hangers-on, who, given the atmosphere, would either adapt, or lose heart and sell out to more congenial arrivals. Middlehope was expert in providing the atmosphere, though it condemned no one on sight. At any given moment there might be three or four newcomers on probation, of whom one or two would survive to become initiates. Not always the most obviously inoffensive candidates, either.

‘Is he really good?’ asked George curiously.

‘Musically? Yes, very. I don’t think he’d waste time on anything at which he couldn’t excel.’

‘Or stop short of a take-over in anything at which he can excel?’

‘It’s early days yet to judge.’ They were just turning a curve in the drive, so screened with bushes that the view beyond should spring upon them with instant effect; and there, foursquare and arrogant and large in the afterglow, was the house itself, once the Old Rectory, now Abbot’s Bale House, a great sweep of russet gravel before it, already stippled with the sharp colours of cars, and backed by a rise of two terraces, sporting new terracotta vases along their balustrades. ‘It has got a lord of the manor look about it, hasn’t it?’ said Bunty dubiously. ‘He must have unloaded quite a lot of money to get all this done in the time. He’s rather committed himself, hasn’t he, with a stake like that ploughed into the property?’

‘Investment. He expects a set-up like this to sell antiques for him more effectively than any town shop, and it probably will.’

They were approaching the open space under the terraces, where the old, blocked-up portal glared darkly from the centre of the heavily-pillared undercroft. ‘You remember what this place used to be, five years or so ago?’ asked George, as he slid the Volkswagen neatly into line beside Willie Swayne’s ancient Land-Rover. ‘A special school for delinquents with abnormally high IQs. One of those gallant experiments we used to float on waves of good intentions, forgetting how much they were going to cost. It couldn’t hope to last long, but it went the length of ten years before the county finally gave in and acknowledged it couldn’t be kept going. One or two of my brightest first-offenders landed up here. There were enough idealists to provide the kind of advanced education to keep them interested and out of mischief. More or less, anyhow! Some of them did the place credit in the end. The bright get so abysmally bored when there’s nothing tough enough to stretch them.’

‘I bet it didn’t look like this then,’ said Bunty, eyeing the massed flowers along the balustrades as she got out of the car.

‘No, the spending was rather on personnel. It was plain living and very high thinking. The place has been derelict for want of a buyer ever since the school folded.’ He looked along the array of cars, many of them known to him. ‘It looks as if everyone who is anyone is here.’

‘Yes,’ said Bunty simply. ‘They would be.’ She did not add that Arthur Everard Rainbow had joined the Golf Club, the Arts Association, the Angling Society, and every other body that contained important people among its members, and if he could have got the entry to a club of which God was a member he would undoubtedly have invited God to his house-warming. They were about to play a small part in a very ambitious public-relations exercise. But she was not yet sure how fair she was being to Rainbow. After all, the very best of men might show as over-anxious to be accepted, in the circumstances. Give him the benefit of the doubt until all doubt was at an end. ‘Here we go, then,’ said Bunty, shaking out her long skirt and patting her short chestnut hair into order. At forty-seven she could still look thirty. ‘Let’s go and see what he’s done to the interior.’

Broad, curving staircases, gleaming whitely where new stone had been inserted to make good the dilapidations of time, swept round from either end of the terraces, and brought them to the huge, wide-open double doors of the house, where noise and light gushed out to meet them. There is no other sound quite like that of a large and widely-assorted party which has not yet imbibed enough alcohol to shake its inhibitions and get off the ground. A loud but slightly wary noise, of many voices dutifully making conversation, pitched slightly higher than normally, and curiously blended, some conversations loose and easy with old friends, others tight and superficial, weighing up new acquaintances. At this stage parties are hard work. George was not looking forward to contributing very much. He might, on the other hand, learn quite a lot. He was, after all, only an adjunct of Bunty here. Whatever his ambitions, Rainbow wasn’t aiming to join the police!

They stepped into a grandiose cube of a hall that went up two storeys, with a double staircase and a large gallery at its inner face, and musicians in the gallery, playing not tea-dance trifles or modern mood-music, but Vivaldi. The nearest few of a mobile and congested gathering turned heads to look at them, and a man in a polo-necked silk shirt and lightweight pale grey suit, with a black cummerbund, bore down on them instantly with cries of pleasure. The get-up was so polite and adaptable, so nicely calculated to be all things to all men, that Bunty suffered a shock of revulsion for which there was no logical reason. Poor Saint Paul! Kipling was right, it must be hell to mislay one’s self, not to be anyone in the effort to be everyone.

He was about George’s age, which was not far off fifty, and very much George’s build, rangily made, carrying too little weight rather than too much. He had a long, narrow head, and elongated, somewhat severe features that wore his broad, welcoming smile like a mask, framed fashionably in dark, greying, abundant hair that swayed in disciplined waves to his nape, and there curved to a halt in the most discreet line possible. And to offset this mildly ascetic appearance, he had a large, hearty voice.

‘Mrs Felse!’ he cried. ‘I’m so glad you could spare an evening for us. I’m only too well aware that you know everybody here much better than I do – well, there could be a few of my own fraternity around, you’ll discover them as you circulate. But here I’m in your home territory, and very glad to be.’

‘Nice to see the old house coming to life again,’ said George noncommittally. ‘You’ve done wonders with it.’

‘You like the results? You must look round the whole interior, everything’s open tonight. A man likes to have his efforts appreciated. We made slides, you know, of the entire house and grounds – before and after. We’ll have a show of them later on, if people are interested. Now, would you like to keep your stole, Mrs Felse? I think you’ll find it rather warm in here. My wife will take care of you…’

He looked round, mildly displeased not to find her at his elbow, and swept a commanding glance round the crowded room. ‘Ah, there you are, Barbara! I think you haven’t yet met Mrs Felse – and Superintendent Felse, our new C.I.D. chief…’

There indeed she was, sweeping down upon them from a corner of the room with a long, graceful stride, leaving a scented, swirling wake behind her, like the wind through a field of corn and poppies, and drawing along after her, as if in the same impetuous breeze, no less than three bemused men, even the oldest and staidest of whom followed her several paces before he came to rest. The other two, younger and even more dazed, were swept half across the room before they span aside, one either way, and melted into new groupings and new conversations, reluctantly but resignedly. George knew neither of them, which meant that they did not belong in these parts. They had the half-patronising, half-apprehensive look of strays from the city, and their clothes were just one degree too far removed from the casual valley norm. One was dark and one was fair, and both were in pursuit, how seriously there was no telling, of Barbara Rainbow. And no wonder! Clearly Rainbow was well aware of it, and that had not been the circumstance that displeased him. Probably he enjoyed having one of his loveliest possessions admired and coveted. Possibly he also found it useful?

She couldn’t have been more than twenty-seven or twenty-eight, twenty years younger than her husband. She was tall and slender, almost lean, and as dark and bright as Carmen, with glittering, iris-shadowed eyes, and a mane of thick dark curls that cascaded down to her shoulders, and stopped short there in a pruned thicket of thorns, formidable as the briar hedge about the Sleeping Beauty. A straight, fierce nose and a wide, dark-red mouth that smiled with a slow assured ferocity. Very beautiful, very expensive, and probably worth every penny. The gypsy type, in modern, sophisticated gypsy clothes, a long, billowing skirt built in three tiers, in three different shades of red and three different flower-prints; a black, embroidered blouse that spilled low to leave her shoulders bare, and half her high breasts into the bargain, while shrouding her arms to just below the elbow. A lot of beads, heavy, tangled and bright, a lot of bangles in a dozen colours. And what looked like a new dishcloth twined round her hips and knotted on the left. When her feet showed as she strode, they were seen to be bare, but for some sinuous patterns in henna, and scarlet nail-varnish. She was well-named Barbara, everything about her was barbed.

But her voice, when she greeted them, was young, fresh and deep, very pleasantly pitched. ‘Hullo, you’re Bunty, aren’t you? And – George, if I may call you that? I’ve been talking to a lot of people who know you, you see. I’m Barbara!’

‘Whew!’ breathed Bunty, clutching a pink gin and gazing after the mane of blue-black hair as it surged away into the crowd. ‘Isn’t that something?’

‘A sales aid?’ wondered George as softly. ‘Or an objet d’ art for sale?’

‘The Laird of Cockpen,’ said Bunty. ‘ “He wanted a wife, his braw house to keep.” And “down by the dyke-side a lady did dwell, at his table-heid he thought would look well”.’

‘Oh, sure! But McLeish’s ae daughter turned the offer down! What did she want? What has she got out of it?’

‘Look round you,’ said Bunty. ‘Now I suppose we’d better circulate, hadn’t we?’

‘Left or right for you?’ asked George obligingly.

‘You know me, always inclined left. I’ll see you round the other side.’

The noble hall and the reception rooms on either side, one of which housed the bar, the other the buffet, were very tastefully arranged, and adorned with so many, but so cleverly disposed, pieces of furniture, pictures, ornaments, that George found himself wondering which of them were for sale, and trying to fit them out with prices. The whole house was a show-case. A dealer living in it might well get carried away, and find at night that he’d sold the bridal bed from under himself and his wife by mistake. There were fine displays of flowers, too. The work of the gardeners, of the exotic but effective Mrs Rainbow, or of some florist from Comerbourne?

George’s progress round this gallery was marked by a series of halts and exchanges with people he knew, some of them natives of this remote valley-head, others from down the valley at Mottisham, or beyond, in his own village of Comerford, or the county town itself. Everyone who was anyone had been drawn in. Not, of course. Sergeant Moon, the resident police-god of Middlehope, who was invincibly plebeian and had no obvious favours to grant, but who nevertheless would know everything that had gone on in this house by tomorrow morning. Not the innkeeper, or the few tradesmen, or the sheep-farmers. The absentees were as significant as those present.

‘I’ve made up my mind,’ pronounced Miss de la Pole with finality, and clinched it by telling young Stephen in front of about seven interested witnesses. ‘I’ve been putting it off for months, but now there’s no putting it off any longer. I shall have to resign, and he may as well take the word for the deed. Nobody knows better than I do that I’ve been fluffing half the notes for the past six weeks, and if the choir can tolerate it, I can’t. You can argue for so long with arthritis, but it’s going to have the last word in the end. Look at these finger joints!’

‘ They appear,’ said George mildly, ‘to be retaining a very fine grip on that whisky glass, if I may say so.’

‘You may! When I lose that knack, they’ll be practicing the anthem for my funeral. But the church’s music is another matter. I won’t be a drag on it any longer, I’m getting out now. After all, there’s Evan, years younger than I am, and just as good – better now I’m acknowledging I’m crippled.’

She looked unequivocally alert, competent and masterful, as she always had and always would, a tall, erect, slender old lady with the steely, delicate profile of a Renaissance Italian, say one of the pleasanter Malatestas of Rimini. From which obscure branch of the de la Pole family she drew her ancestry nobody quite knew, and she herself had never shown any disposition to enquire, but there was no mistaking the quality. Rainbow would have bought her without pedigree, so plainly was she the genuine article. She had been organist and choirmistress at St Eata’s church for thirty years, and to contemplate her departure was nothing short of revolutionary. But the thin hands that retained the significant beauty of tools well-used were certainly growing daily more deformed at the joints.

‘For general use,’ she remarked critically, flexing the hand not employed with the glass, ‘they’ll serve years yet. But music is music. No making do with that. I was saying so to Bunty a while ago.’

‘They’ll be out of their minds,’ said George with conviction, ‘if they don’t co-opt you as consultant for life. Somebody else can pound the keys and operate the stops no reason why you shouldn’t do the office of guardian angel, is there?’

‘Oh, Evan will let me interfere,’ she agreed serenely. ‘We’ve known each other a long time, and anyhow, we’d both feel deprived if we couldn’t wrangle over everything as usual. I don’t expect any problems there. After all, we’ve both had our work cut out, trying to restrain Stephen from chucking out all the old chants that everybody knows, and curb his enthusiasm for all these modern gobbledegook Bible versions. Such abysmal doggerel! Where do these people learn their English?’

‘I know just what you mean,’ agreed George ruefully, thinking of the intoxicatingly lofty prose of Bible and prayer-book on which he had been reared. On the brink of his half-century he could still thrill to the noble cadences, when half the doctrine had been rendered suspect; and certainly no new, debased, cosy popular version was going to do anything but put him off totally.

‘Our host, by the way,’ remarked Miss de la Pole, ‘is quite astonishingly competent technically on almost any keyboard instrument you could offer him. He has such a superb piano in the next room that I suspect he’s going to demonstrate soon.’

‘So Bunty warned me,’ agreed George. ‘And she shares your opinion of his powers, if that’s anything.’

‘Oh, yes, I’m sure we’d agree about his proficiency,’ said Miss de la Pole, sipping her whisky, which looked, and probably was, neat. ‘What a pity he isn’t in the least degree musical,’ she added absently, smiled briefly and brilliantly at George, and sailed into the centre of the now lubricated mob towards an old acquaintance. Her formal black dress, high-necked and long-sleeved, was by no means mourning black, but high fashion, and the back view of her silver-steel hairdo had the sheen of a war-helm and the floating bravado of its crowning plume.

A light hand slapped down on George’s shoulder, and a young voice, nicely balanced between impudence and shyness, said in his ear: ‘The old place has come down in the world since our day, don’t you think? Sad to see it going down the nick like this!’

George turned to look at the boy addressing him with such elaborate social assurance, and met two large, guileless blue eyes that stared him out steadily, waiting with confidence to be recognised. It took half a minute to run him to earth. Eighteen or nineteen now, by the look of him, claiming acquaintance both with George and with this house. Thick brown hair, a nice athletic build, double-jointed movements, and all the engaging cheek in the world. And who else would walk in uninvited on Rainbow’s house-warming, wearing jeans and a tee-shirt with a respectable blazer, the latter probably borrowed?

‘Toby Malcolm!’ said George, delighted, and saw his own pleasure mirrored in the blue eyes. ‘Well, this is a surprise! How on earth did you manage to turn up here?’

‘I didn’t break and enter,’ said the youth buoyantly, ‘not this time. Not even gatecrash, really. We’re playing in Presteigne this week, so I blew over to see Sam and Jenny, and they brought me along with them.’

‘And you’re staying overnight? Not driving tonight? Then come and get a drink, and I’ll make this one do, and we’ll join your folks.’ And when Toby was duly charged, this time, as he again remarked without embarrassment, not with breaking and entering: ‘What do we drink to? Success to crime?’

‘From your point of view, or mine?’ retorted Toby. ‘No, that was all kid’s stuff. There are much more exciting things going on now. Come on, let’s find Sam, he’ll love seeing us together like this. Jenny still worries about me a bit, bless her, that’s why I always come over on the old bike when we’re anywhere within reach.’ And he plunged ahead, weaving through the babel like a quicksilver lizard, and George coasted in his wake to where Sam and Jenny Jarvis were ensconced in a safe corner.

They were not really Toby’s folks, of course, unless by right of capture. He had a perfectly sound father of his own, and wealthy into the bargain, a merchant who did a lot of trading to the Middle East, and was probably somewhere out there now with his third wife, Toby’s second and charming but far too young stepmother. But Sam Jarvis had taught him Latin and English and European literature in this house when it was a special school, and Toby its star delinquent, with the longest record of adventurous crime in the book, and possibly the least harmful. A brilliant cracksman at thirteen, partly out of boredom, partly out of sheer necessity to experiment with his own powers, he had never been known to lift anything more than derisory trifles in all his exploits, just to prove he had really been where he said he had been, and he had never hurt anyone, except, on occasions, himself. Sam Jarvis and his wife had chosen to remain in Middlehope when the school closed, with their one son and their prodigious library, and Sam made a living, nobody knew how good or bad, by writing textbooks and works on education. George had never needed much assurance that Toby would prove one of the world’s assets in the end. The very fact that he hared back here at every opportunity to reassure Jenny was reassurance enough for George, too.

‘Here he is!’ proclaimed Toby, clarion-voiced, homing in on his elders with huge satisfaction. ‘The gaffer who put me away! But for Mr Felse you’d never have had the pleasure of my acquaintance, think of that!’

They were as pleased as he had known they would be. Sam was a large, clumsy, shy man with a simple face and a complex mind, clean-shaven, rosy and benign. Jenny was small and svelte and dark, possessed of a natural style that did wonders for mail-order clothes. They were both as proud of Toby as of their own single offspring, and showed it a good deal more openly, since he was not really theirs.

‘And what have you done with Bossie tonight?’ asked George. Bossie was James Boswell Jarvis, the one shoot of this promising stem, and approaching thirteen years old. ‘Heaven knows you couldn’t wish a baby-sitter on him, not without risk to life and limb, but I’ll bet there’s some sort of Praetorian guard hovering. How do you get round it?’

‘What can you do with an egghead like Bossie?’ demanded Jenny, between resignation and complacency. ‘Sylvia Thomas comes in as his guest, and plays him game after game of chess until we get home. Mostly he wins, but sometimes he gives her a game out of chivalry. He’s a bit sweet on Sylvia.’ Sylvia Thomas was a farmer’s daughter, eighteen and very pretty.

‘He’d have to be,’ agreed Toby positively, ‘or he’d mow her down in half a dozen moves.’

‘And what are you doing, these days?’ George wanted to know. ‘Playing, you said, but you haven’t said what or who. And as far as I can gather, it’s something that keeps you on the move.’

‘Oh, sorry, I forgot you couldn’t very well know about it. Thespis, that’s us! We’re a travelling theatre. We’ve got three wagons that put together into a rather ramshackle auditorium, but mostly we like to play outdoors, little festivals, all that sort of thing, and improvise according to what ground we can get. There’s seven of us to do everything. I’m general dog’s-body on lights, staging, scenery, whatever comes along, and sometimes I play, too. Mostly I do the adaptations, to get by with so few of us. Schools, as well. It’s all grist. After all, that’s where I got the bug.’ And he beamed upon Sam with so much satisfaction that George felt himself partaking of his friend’s justification. ‘I write plays for us, too. Bursting with social criticism, as if you wouldn’t guess! But funny, too, I hope. Blame Sam – I’ve gone legit!’

And blessedly, that was the plain truth. There went one danger to society, rapturously transmuted into a danger to nothing more precious than the establishment, which is quite a different thing. And funny, too! Nineteen, not yet out of the bud. George moved on dutifully to his next encounter, much encouraged. The only adverse note was Toby’s last remark, as he looked round the furious animation and expensive furnishing of the hall, and wrinkled his straight, fastidious nose, and knotted his mobile and mischievous mouth in a grimace of distaste at so artful a display of taste. ‘It does seem a pity,’ said Toby with detached regret. ‘We had some good times here. Nobody ever really minded us.’

George found himself brought up by a tide in the restless sea of the hall, close behind a pair of tweed-clad shoulders that topped his own by at least two inches, spare, wide and straight, carrying practically nothing but bone and sinew and leathery hide, and topped by a tall brown neck and bleached, straw-coloured head. The tweed jacket smelled of resin, fungus-bearing woodland, and late summer greenery. The head was reared and still, braced like a pointer on a spot across the hall, where Barbara Rainbow had just appeared, newly-primed glass in hand, and bare shoulders shaken free for the moment of all close attendance. In a crowded room she looked alone, however briefly, and it so happened that she was looking about her with the mane-tossing challenge of a lion – sex was irrelevant! – who has just shaken off the hunt.

From the anteroom behind her rose the first notes of a Chopin study. Rainbow was indeed demonstrating his abilities, and yes. Miss de la Pole had been right, the piano was splendid. Traffic in the hall thinned somewhat, as dutiful devotees flocked quietly towards the music. Barbara stretched and straightened and breathed deep, and looked about her with relaxed interest, assured of where her husband would be for the next quarter of an hour or so.

‘Hullo, William,’ said George into a sun-tanned, leathery ear. ‘I didn’t know you went in for parties.’

‘Hullo, George,’ responded Willie Swayne, with a brief but amiable smile, and returned his gaze at once to the sophisticated Romany across the room. ‘I don’t.’

‘Or got invited to them, these days,’ added George. Plenty of people had tried it in the past, but it didn’t take long to discover that William Swayne, known to the whole valley as Willie the Twig by reason of his solitary lordship of some ten square miles of new and old afforestation along the border, found nothing interesting in gatherings for social chit-chat, and preferred his deer and his setters to more garrulous company.

‘Oh, yes, everybody was invited this time, even me. “Forest warden” sounds pleasantly feudal, and who knows, he may want a haunch of venison some day.’ Part of Willie the Twig’s forest was plantation only a few years old, but part of it was very old indeed, and had supplied venison to kings of England ever since Edward III. ‘I just blew in out of curiosity, I’ve only met the fellow once. I thought I’d have a look round, and be civil, and then shove off to the “Gun Dog” for a pint.’ Judging by the distrait tone of his voice and the steady stare of his light, bright grey eyes this original plan was in process of being modified. And at that very moment Barbara Rainbow’s roving gaze had lighted upon him, and very thoughtfully halted there. George felt the slight, silent tensing of sinews, the almost imperceptible leaning forward, as when a pointer is about to surge out of his concentrated immobility into action.

‘I shouldn’t, if I were you,’ said George benignly.

‘On the contrary,’ said Willie the Twig, ‘being you, of course you wouldn’t, but if you were me you certainly would.’ And without further waste of time he strode across the room, swerving only sufficiently to clear such persons and objects as got in his way, and made straight for Barbara. Who, George observed before he drifted towards his next encounter, was neither surprised nor displeased, but stood and waited, reeling in on the dark and glittering thread of her glance the only fish that had so far engaged her interest, in all these hundred or so milling about her.

‘Hullo!’ said Barbara. ‘I’ve been noticing you for some time, and nobody’s told me who you are. I was wondering when you’d work your way round to me.’

‘I don’t work my way round,’ said Willie the Twig. ‘I go straight across. And my name’s Will Swayne. Warden of Middlehope Forest. I don’t know if you like forests?’

‘I never really met one,’ said Barbara. Her voice was low, deliberate and thoughtful. ‘On closer acquaintance I think I might get to like them very much.’

By the time the musical interlude ended, George had reached a little group gathered at an open window. Courteously silent until that moment, they fell into easy conversation after Rainbow had received his due acclaim. Two of them George knew well, Robert Macsen-Martel from Mottisham Abbey, down the valley, and his wife Dinah. Their half-ruinous property was in process of renovation under the guidance of the National Trust, and archaeological interest in the new acquisition was proving unexpectedly lively.

‘I don’t think you’ve met Charles Goddard,’ said Robert, attenuated and lank and fair. ‘He’s advising on the work, we’ve been uncovering some rather good tiled floors.’ He was a little deprecating about saying ‘we’ now that he had agreed to surrender the place, but obviously he must be ploughing everything that was left of his family patrimony into endowing it, or the Trust would never have been able to accept the burden, however desirable. Robert worked in an estate office selling small new houses, in one of which he and his wife lived, and there was nothing left of the centuries of Macsen-Martels and their outworn glory except the decency and integrity contained within this desiccated and aloof exterior. Unless, perhaps, Dinah’s dress, loose from the shoulders, had been chosen for more reasons than fashion? Dinah was petite, rounded and dark, born into the ranks of honest toil, and with both small feet planted firmly on the ground, and what those two apparently incompatible and wildly devoted people would produce between them gave room for interested speculation. What was more, Dinah had already detected, the brief glance at her waistline, and was staring George out in sparkling silence, challenging him to ask or comment. Probably Bunty had already got all the answers.

Charles Goddard was large, impressive and grey, the silver of early distinction rather than encroaching age. He had the slightly waxen and heavy smoothness of the legal profession.

‘And here’s John Stubbs, who’s taken over as man-on-the-spot. Someone has to live on the premises, and John’s brave enough to inhabit the lodge alone, ghosts or no ghosts, and look after the whole place.’

This one was younger, dark, solid and taciturn, even dour. Perhaps partly because, while he murmured his perfunctory greeting, his real attention was concentrated upon a distant corner of the room, where Barbara Rainbow and Willie the Twig were perceptibly getting on rather well together. And now George realised that both these young men he was confronting had already caught his attention once this evening. They were the two who had been drawn half across the hall in bemused pursuit of Rainbow’s spectacular wife, like helpless sparks in the tail of a comet.

‘– and Colin Barron, who’s been an enormous help to me over a number of things I never realised were valuable assets until he briefed me. I owe Colin’s acquaintance to our host, as a matter of fact, and I’m grateful. I know absolutely nothing about the antiques market,’ owned Robert. ‘It’s salutary to discover that what you’ve been writing off as junk can realise a lot of money elsewhere, and be hailed as treasure.’

This was the fair one, who belonged on sight to Rainbow’s world. He was tall, and built like an athlete, but his features were urban and shrewd, his clothes, while tactfully unobtrusive, of the city and the fashion.

‘I’ve been a friend and rival of Arthur’s for a long time,’ he ‘said with an amiable but knowing smile, ’and learned a lot from him. Enough to know that any hare he starts is well worth coursing. When a chap like Arthur moves up into these parts, it pays to take a look at the territory and see what drew him there. I haven’t caught up with the real attraction yet, I suspect, but I did discover Mottisham Abbey. In time to be useful to Mr Macsen-Martel, maybe, but you may be sure it didn’t do me any harm, either. I like to be candid about it.’

‘I’m afraid we’ve been talking shop, even on this occasion,’ said Robert apologetically. ‘My fault, I don’t seem able to think of anything else at the moment. It really has become very interesting. Several schools and clubs have come into the act, and been doing splendid work, under Charles’s guidance. I never imagined there’d be so much enthusiasm. We’re being asked to allow party visits from so many bodies that we’re planning on beginning in a few weeks. Afternoons only, and while the work’s in progress they’ll have to be strictly guided tours, it would be too chaotic to have people straying everywhere among the plant and materials lying around there. You wouldn’t like to volunteer as a guide, would you, George? We’re open to offers!’

‘I doubt if I should be much of an asset,’ said George. ‘I could certainly improvise a stunning scenario for you, but the facts might cause less trouble. You seem to have recruited several competent candidates already. And there’s always Professor Joyce, if you can lure him away from his magnum opus.’

That was a joke strictly for local people, who were all well aware that Professor Emeritus Evan Joyce, happily retired at sixty-odd to a decrepit but spacious cottage up the valley with his books, was busily engaged in not writing his long-projected history of Goliard poets, and almost any distraction was enough to justify him in never getting it beyond the note stage.

‘I think he’d rather reserve his options at the moment,’ said Dinah, dimpling. ‘Haven’t you run into him tonight? He is here. Miss de la Pole has just told him she’s made up her mind to retire, and has broken the news to the vicar. We could lure him away from his Latin poets, all right, but we can’t compete with the organ and the choir, not a hope. He’s been waiting to get his hands on them for years.’

The Reverend Stephen Baines was young, earnest and good-looking, and as poor as his eighteenth-century predecessors here had been rich. He lived in a small bungalow, a bashful bachelor looked after by a widowed neighbour who cooked and cleaned, and nursed selective match-making plans for him, taking her time about both choice and tactics. He was as unaware of this as he was of many other practical proceedings that went on round him. He had some distressing proclivities, according to his parishioners, who were protectively fond of him none the less. He worried about the church’s image, and tended to try all sorts of new gimmicks to get nearer to people who felt, as it happened, very close indeed, the gimmicks notwithstanding. He was given to trying out new texts in the vernacular, and adopting attitudes which were hard work for him and a great trial to his long-suffering aides. Luckily he was sound on music, which he loved.

‘Isn’t it lucky,’ he said happily, ‘that there should be someone so able, just coming into our community at the very time when he’s needed? Providential, you might almost say. Indeed, I feel sure Mr Rainbow is going to prove a great asset in every way. We shall miss our dear de la Pole, how could we not? She’s such a stalwart, and has such a way with the boys. But they sometimes need a firm hand, you know, and then, Mr Rainbow is really an outstanding musician. I can hardly believe he’s really agreed to take over as organist and choirmaster. Do you know, he even volunteered? Such a busy chap, and yet willing to take on this further work in addition to everything else. And he’s offered his house and grounds for the harvest supper, too.’

‘Most generous!’ said George hollowly. What can you say. There was Evan Joyce across the room, talking to Bunty, unkempt, shaggy and endearing in his rusty black suit that must have served him for every formal occasion since his graduation, and here was this exasperating innocent who had just given away what Evan wanted most in this small chosen world of his, to a stranger, and one who showed signs of appropriating this, literally, in addition to everything else.

‘Isn’t it? He even intimated that he would be delighted to serve as churchwarden if there should be a vacancy. Willing workers are not so thick on the ground these days.’

This one, thought George resignedly as he moved on to confront the deprived professor and reclaim Bunty, shows every sign of being very thick on the ground indeed. A walking take-over bid for Middlehope, where he seemed to think there was a vacancy for a squire, if not a lord of the manor. He couldn’t be expected to know in advance that ‘squire’ was a dirty word in these tribal regions. But very, very soon someone would have to start instructing him.

They foregathered in the saloon bar of the ‘Gun Dog’ afterwards, for one social drink together before they scattered for home: George and Bunty, Evan Joyce, Sam and Toby Malcolm (Jenny having gone straight home to relieve Sylvia Thomas of her watch), Miss de la Pole, and Willie the Twig, who came late and was unusually thoughtful and quiet. They talked about the weather, and the harvest prospects, and the forthcoming Flower and Vegetable Show, and the sad fact that the ‘Gun Dog’ was not a home-brewed house, like the ‘Sitting Duck’ at Mottisham. But never a word about Rainbow. Not until Miss de la Pole drained her glass and rose to set a good example, drawing her black shawl round her shoulders.

‘He won’t do, you know,’ she said with inexorable gentleness; and having pronounced her oracle, as gently and decidedly withdrew, leaving them room either for comment or for silence.

As it turned out, no one had anything to object, or to add.