The Antique Dealer’s Daughter. Lorna Gray

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СКАЧАТЬ on.’ The voice became muffled as a hand was placed over the mouthpiece. ‘I don’t know, sir. I’m trying to find out, only there’s some dim-witted—’

       ‘Sorry?’

      The voice came back into clarity. ‘Pardon?’

      ‘Ah,’ I said sweetly, ‘I’m sorry, I thought you were speaking to me there.’ There was a momentary silence. Now that I had his attention, I resumed my idea of crisp orderliness. ‘This is the Langton residence, only I’m afraid no one is here who can take your call. I’m a neighbour, you see, or rather the guest of a neighbour and I only stepped in because the telephone was ringing again. It’s been going all afternoon and I’d have answered it sooner only then there was a bit of a crisis in the village and I’ve only just heard it again now. I thought I’d better come in to answer it anyway. Just in case it was urgent, you understand.’

      There was a pause when it dawned on me that I was explaining all this without having the faintest idea who this man was. Then it was proved that I hadn’t really been explaining anything as far as he was concerned. Just as I was about to ask this distant male his name, I heard him say on a faintly wearied note, ‘I’m not entirely sure I do understand, actually, no. Who did you say you were again?’

      In the background at his end I heard an older man’s voice adding something pettishly. I ignored it and said, ‘Emily Sutton. I’m staying with my cousin, Miss Jones. At least I’m staying at her house while she’s in h—’

      ‘Well, Emily, I’m not sure what you—’

      This time I interrupted him. Perhaps it was being sworn at, ridiculed and then called ‘Emily’ like some half-trained parlour maid that made me brave. I mean, anyone who was local knew my cousin as the daughter of the old steward, even if they had no reason to know me. And, besides, even at this time when war had done away with all sorts of obsolete social conventions, strangers could still expect to rank enough for a ‘Miss’.

      I said, ‘I’m sorry, but I didn’t quite catch who you are.’

      I was perhaps a shade hostile. It was slowly dawning on me that this man would want something from me. So when he told me he was Colonel Langton’s son I’m afraid I simply said impatiently, ‘You can’t be. He died.’

      I think I was imagining this might be some extension of the scene I’d just left by Mr Winstone’s house, or perhaps I was comparing this caller with the sort of chancer who occasionally tried to convince my father that the rare and valuable antique he’d just listed for sale was in fact their long-lost family heirloom and theirs by right. Any moment now, this man would lead me into making a fresh statement about the family just so that he could parrot it back to me later under the guise of genuine knowledge before he set about coercing me into popping some supposedly meaningless family trinket into the post for him.

      Only this man did none of it. After the smallest of hesitations, the caller replied calmly, ‘That was my younger brother. The Colonel’s other son.’

      And my cousin had feared that a lack of tact would cause misunderstandings.

      Through a stomach-gnawing fog of embarrassment, I heard him add, ‘This is Captain Richard Langton.’

      ‘That’s nice,’ I remarked faintly, while frantically trying to calculate how one addressed a captain. I finally tacked on as an afterthought a vaguely military, ‘Sir.’

      ‘Thank you. And now that we’ve cleared that up, perhaps we can return to the original question?’

      ‘Which was?’

      ‘Where is Mrs Cooke?’

      I was coiling and uncoiling the telephone wire about my fingers. I had to stop it before I twisted it into a permanent state of tangle. I told him, ‘I’m afraid I don’t actually know who Mrs Cooke is. The house looks shut up to me; there is no one about and the kitchen doesn’t look particularly well stocked, although admittedly I can only relate the impression I got on my dash through from the garden. As I’ve already said, I only answered the telephone because it’s been ringing all day—’

      ‘Yes, yes; and you only heard it ringing because you’re visiting your aunt Mrs Jane or something like that. Please don’t let’s go over all that again.’

      ‘My cousin. Miss Jones of Washbrook.’

      ‘All right; Miss Jones. But that still doesn’t solve my problem.’

      ‘Which is?’ I’d been right about one thing at least. He was going to ask something of me.

      ‘Perhaps you could deliver a message to our driver?’

      ‘Is it an emergency?’ I don’t quite know what made me ask that. I suppose it was a legacy of the shock of finding Mr Winstone at the end of what had already been a very long day of travelling. I was wary of what fresh demands this place would make of me.

      The question certainly puzzled Captain Langton. He said on an odd note, ‘No. It is quite important though, Emily.’

      Again the address of the parlour maid or the charwoman. Though probably I deserved it this time. I was after all only here because I hoped to make free with his telephone in order to call my cousin just as soon as he gave me room to do so. Biting my lip, I agreed.

      ‘Good,’ he said briskly. ‘Could you tell him that he’s to collect my father from the solicitor’s office in Cirencester at eleven o’clock on Thursday? Heavens, that’s tomorrow now. That shows that I’ve spent all week trying to set this up. My father intends to go home for a while to …’ He checked himself. ‘No, those details don’t matter here. What does matter is that he’s met by the car tomorrow. Do you know our driver, Bertie Winstone?’

      Oh Lord.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ I said inadequately. I really hadn’t handled this conversation very well. ‘Mr Winstone has had a bit of an accident. I’m afraid I’ve just left him as he was being whisked off to be patched up by the doctor. I have to tell you that I really don’t think it likely that he’ll be fit to drive your car tomorrow. Or any car, for that matter. I really am very sorry.’

      ‘You’ll have to speak up. There’s an almighty racket going on here. Did you say Bertie has had an accident?’ The man was hard for me to hear too. A persistent drone in the background was blurring his voice.

      I told him what had met me during the course of climbing the hill to answer his call; that is to say, I gave him the bare facts about the whole neighbourhood being deserted all day, about finding Mr Winstone, the lucky timing of Danny Hannis coming home, the likelihood that the attack had taken place at the turbine house and, finally, I don’t know why, that I had met several of my cousin’s friends, including Mrs Abbey. I believe I might even have mentioned something about the loneliness that had inspired my walk up the hill in the first place. Apart from that, it was, I realised, the first time I had willingly given Mr Winstone’s injuries the title they deserved and called this thing an attack and not an accident. It was a peculiar kind of shock and yet somehow it lessened it to be telling this man and the Captain certainly took the information very matter-of-factly. I suppose as a military man such things might seem more commonplace and as a son he was certainly inclined to be more concerned with the news that his father was going to be beset by yet more inconvenience.

      He was asking me, ‘Is it still working, though? The turbine, СКАЧАТЬ