Read Online A Presumption of Death by Dorothy L. Sayers, Jill Paton Walsh - Free Book Online Page A

out to Flight Lieutenant Brinklow, would become available when he went back to his unit. She walked down to it. It stood four-square a little apart from its neighbours in an overgrown garden that was mostly old apple trees. The garden abutted an arm of Blackden Wood. Peter had bought the wood a couple of years back to stop it being clear-felled, because the hillside it stood on was in plain view from the bedroom windows of Talboys. At the time Harriet had thought it extravagant of him, and she had been amused when he said woodland always came in handy, but now it was providing firewood for Talboys, and most of the villagers, she couldn’t dispute it. It was handy to own it. Peter said there was an implied permission for anyone to take sticks for firewood – anything they could get ‘by hook or by crook’ – but no gathering with axe or saw.
    Harriet knocked at the cottage door, waited and knocked again. The officer must be out. It was rather an isolated dwelling, she thought, but it looked as though you could put a whole family in it, which would certainly cheer it up a bit, and it would be nice for a London family to have the run of the wood. She must find out tactfully about the condition of the house, and the rent. She didn’t want to suggest the requisitioning of something that was essential to a local family’s income.
    Later that day Harriet went into Great Pagford to shop. Paul needed larger clothes every week, it seemed, and it was getting very difficult to find things. She dropped in on Mr Kirk at the police station and gave him the names she had elicited. He thanked her in an abstracted way.
    ‘I’ll check up on these men as soon as I can,’ he said. ‘I’m being driven up the wall, my lady, by reports of spies. Everywhere. You wouldn’t have been able to see the moon for parachutes if the half of these tales were true. They all turn out to be Polish or Jewish refugees or fellows from Scotland whose funny accents hail from Glasgow rather than Berlin. But I can’t risk not investigating.’
    ‘There was a real one in the paper this morning,’ said Harriet. ‘A couple who turned up at Largo asking for the train to London, and aroused suspicion by not knowing where they were.’
    ‘See what I mean? We have to check however barmy it sounds. Look, we obviously have to follow up this Birdlap person. If I gave you a note to his commanding officer, you wouldn’t care to do that for me, would you?’
    ‘I’ll do what I can,’ said Harriet, carefully folding the hastily scribbled note into her handbag. ‘If he won’t talk to anyone unofficial, I’ll hand it back to you.’
    As she reached the door of his office it occurred to her to ask, ‘What about Wendy’s parents?’
    ‘In Brighton!’ he cried, as though it had been Timbuktu.
    ‘We have a friend who might be able to help,’ said Harriet. ‘I couldn’t go myself, I’m afraid; but the friend in question has been very useful to Peter in several enquiries.’
    ‘Lady Peter,’ said Mr Kirk, ‘you are the answer to a maiden’s prayer, in a manner of speaking, of course. Just a minute while I find the parents’ address.’
    Getting in to Steen Manor proved to be a little difficult. Harriet drove herself there, since it was rather too far to walk, even for an able-bodied and healthy woman. The road ran for two miles alongside a six-foot-high wall of mellow brick, topped with rolls of barbed-wire. She had to wait for ages at the guard post at the entrance. The lovely wrought-iron gates of what had clearly been the drive to a substantial gentleman’s house had been opened wide, and in the space between them a wooden hut had been erected, together with a red and white pole barrier. The sentry rang for instructions, which took some time to come.
    Harriet stood quietly, leaning on her car bonnet, listening to the sweetly unaware birdsong. It comforted her, like the flowers in the banks. Eventually an airman in uniform came marching down the