revolver. Sixty years apart, and the same laundry-mark.’
‘Have they traced the laundry?’ I don’t know how Hermione got the words out.
‘They think it was a laundry that was bombed in the War, and never reopened. The trail’s quite cold there, I’m afraid.’
‘I never heard of anything so crazy . . .’ I said.
He looked at me. ‘No, it doesn’t make sense, any kind of sense. Except that people keep sheets a very long time, locked up in linen-cupboards . . . I hear you people are still selling the public Victorian night-dresses at a good profit?’
‘Not me,’ I said. ‘But some.’
‘Stuff lasts a long time.’ He flicked me an odd lopsided grin. ‘But who am I to tell that to an antique dealer?’ He turned to Hermione. ‘What I have just told you is in confidence, madam. We want to keep quiet about this baby business at the moment, and I’m sure you don’t want your work at the Pond held up by crowds of ghouls. In any case, I’ve asked the local panda to keep in close touch with you. Good day.’
And he went, leaving us staring at each other, speechless.
The next two days were fairly peaceful. The warm spell was developing into something of a heat wave, and the students, as brown as berries, worked in very short shorts and wellies. The huge saucer-shaped depression of the Pond now broke up into three areas. Close to shore, the drying mud was cracking into irregular plates a foot across, which the trampling feet crushed to a foul-smelling dust that hung in the hot air. Further out, the deep mud still glistened and popped, talking with a low chuckling noise that we no longer really heard. And at the south end, the fire appliance still pumped away at a figure-of-eight of black water.
The students could move on the dried-out part without ladders now, though some cracked patches were still treacherous, and one or two of them ended knee-deep in blackness. Sven even lost one of his wellies. A lot of smaller mounds were poking up, as drying-out continued, and there was a rush to investigate them before the thieving kids got to them. The kids were still lurking quite openly round the path, especially at lunch-time or after school, making occasional dashes to try to steal something. But Hermione had brought in ten more students, and they were strung out round the Pond fifty yards apart, and could usually head off any sudden invasion.
They found three rifles, just as Sergeant Crittenden had predicted, which made him some kind of god in their eyes. We took them straight to my shed and washed them off, and stacked them in one corner for the police to collect. Nobody tried to fire one, thank God. I handled the first one, a Lee Enfield .303, an ugly beast that no one would ever want to buy to hang on their wall. Then I lost interest. I’m not a weapons man, myself. James was inclined to muck about with them, wanting to clean and oil them, for old times’ sake, and I had to speak sharply to him. We still had a living to make, and he had a job to do. It was odd, that. The way the stuff from the lake had a way of fascinating people, carrying them off into their dreams or their past. James talked a lot about his time in the Army in Italy.
Of Lenny there was still not a sign. Or word. I hoped he wasn’t really ill. I felt I should go round to his house to find out; but what with the Pond and the shop, there was just too much to do. And I was trying to concentrate on the shop. I was dancing attendance on a well-dressed middle-aged woman who could not decide whether to buy a cast-iron doorstop in the form of a shepherd playing his pipe to his dog, or one in the shape of Punch, or both. I rather hoped she would buy Punch, for Punch was a good modern fake, but the shepherd was genuine, and I was rather fond of him.
At this point Sven burst in.
‘Hermione want you! Now!’
I’m afraid I snarled at him; we’d all gone a bit jumpy since we found the plywood box, and the heat in my shop didn’t help.
‘Can’t it wait? I was up there only an hour ago.’
‘Is good news, I think.’
‘Right, Sven. Will you wait here, until this lady has made her