primly surrounded by high-backed chairs, stood unmoved. Some display plates held in wires on the wall had broken and fallen off. The sideboard was bare, but then it had been before. Malcolm had said the room had hardly been used since he and Moira had taken to shouting.
I continued round to the kitchen and went in through the door, to the agitation of the constable. I told him I’d been in there earlier to fetch the pine chair, which someone had since brought back, and he relaxed a very little.
‘That door,’ I said, pointing to one in a corner, ‘leads to the cellars. Do you know if anyone’s been down there?’
He didn’t think so. He was pretty sure not. He hadn’t heard anyone mention cellars.
The two underground rooms lay below the kitchen and dining-room, and without electric lights I wasn’t keen to go down there. Still… what excuse did I have not to?
Malcolm kept some claret in racks there, enough to grieve him if the bottles were broken. Coochie had used the cellars romantically for candlelit parties with red-checked tablecloths and gypsy music, and the folding tables and chairs were still stacked there, along with the motley junk of ages that was no longer used but too valuable to throw away.
‘Do you have a torch, constable?’ I asked.
No, he hadn’t. I went to fetch the one I’d installed by habit in the hired car and, in spite of his disapproval, investigated downstairs. He followed me, to do him justice.
To start with, the cellars were dry, which was a relief as I’d been afraid the water from the storage tank and the broken pipes would have drained down and flooded them.
None of Malcolm’s bottles was broken. The chimney wall, continuing downwards as sturdy foundations, had sheltered everything on its outer side as stalwartly below as it had above.
The dire old clutter of pensioned-off standard lamps, rocking-chair, pictures, tin trunk, tiger skin, bed headboard, tea-trolley, alltook brief life in the torchlight and faded back to shadow. Same old junk, undisturbed.
All that one could say again was that nothing seemed to be there in the cellar that shouldn’t be, and nothing not there that should. Shrugging resignedly, I led the way upstairs and closed the door.
Outside again, I looked into the garage, which seemed completely untouched, and walked round behind it to the kitchen garden. The glass in the old greenhouse was broken, and I supposed Moira’s little folly, away on the far side of the garden, would have suffered the same fate.
I dearly wanted to go down to the far end of the kitchen garden to make sure the gold store was safe, but was deterred by the number of interested eyes already swivelled my way, and particularly by Arthur Bellbrook’s.
The wall itself looked solid enough. The crowds were nowhere near it, as it was away to the left, while they were coming in from the fields on the right.
The constable stood by my side, ready to accompany me everywhere.
Shrugging, I retreated. Have faith, I thought, and drove away to London.
Twelve
Malcolm had achieved a double suite at the Ritz with views of Green Park. He had lunched on Strasbourg pâté and Dover sole, according to the remains on the white-clothed room-service table, and had reached the lower half of a bottle of Krug.
‘How are the shakes?’ I said, putting his briefcase down beside him.
‘Were you followed here?’ he asked.
‘I was not.’
He was doing his best to pretend he had regained total command of himself, yet I guessed the train journey had been an anxious and lonely ordeal. It was difficult for me to imagine the escalating trauma within him. How could anyone be the target of deadly unrelenting virulence and not in the end break down? I’d got to invent something better for him, I thought, than cooping him up in millionaire cells. Make him safe, give him back his lightheartedness, set him free.
‘Um,’ I said, i hope your passport’s still in your briefcase.’
‘Yes, it is.’ He had taken it in his briefcase to Paris.
‘Good.’
An unfortunate thought struck him. ‘Where’s yours?’ Malcolm asked.
‘In the rubble. Don’t worry, I’ll get a replacement. Do you have a visa for America?’
‘Yes. I also had one for Australia once, but they only last a year. If we go, we’ll have to get new visas from Australia House.’
‘How about if you go to America tomorrow?’ I said.
‘Tomorrow? How can I?’
‘I’ll take you safely to Heathrow and see you off.’