An Unsuitable Job for a Woman by P. D. James Page B

sort of thing they get up to at Cambridge now. But I asked him for the name of his tutor as a referee and rang him, a fellow called Horsfall. He wasn’t particularly forthcoming but he did assure me that the boy had left voluntarily and to use his own words, his conduct while in college had been almost boringly irreproachable. I need not fear that the shades of Summertrees would be polluted.”
    Miss Markland turned her knitting and broke into her sister-in-law’s little cry of “What can he have meant by that?” with the dry comment: “A little more boredom of that kind would be welcome from the city of the plains.”
    “Did Mr. Horsfall tell you why Mark had left college?” asked Cordelia.
    “I didn’t enquire. That wasn’t my business. I asked a plain question and I got a more or less plain answer, as plain as you can expect from those academic types. We certainly had no complaint about the lad while he was here. I speak as I find.”
    “When did he move into the cottage?” asked Cordelia.
    “Immediately. That wasn’t our idea, of course. We never advertised the job as residential. However, he’d obviously seen the cottage and taken a fancy to the place and he asked if we’d mind if he camped out there. It wasn’t practicable for him to cycle in from Cambridge each day, we could quite see that,and as far as we knew there was no one in the village who could put him up. I can’t say I was keen on the idea; the cottage needs a lot doing to it. Actually we have it in mind to apply for a conversion grant and then get rid of the place. It wouldn’t do for a family in its present state but the lad seemed keen on roughing it there, so we agreed.”
    Cordelia said: “So he must have inspected the cottage before he came for the job?”
    “Inspected? Oh, I don’t know. He probably snooped around to see what the property was like before he actually came to the door. I don’t know that I blame him, I’d have done the same myself.”
    Mrs. Markland broke in: “He was very keen on the cottage, very keen. I pointed out that there was no gas or electricity but he said that that wouldn’t worry him; he’d buy a Primus stove and manage with lamps. There’s water laid on, of course, and the main part of the roof is really quite sound. At least I think it is. We don’t go there, you know. He seemed to settle in very happily. We never actually visited him, there was no need, but as far as I could see he was looking after himself perfectly well. Of course as my husband said, he was very inexperienced; there were one or two things we had to teach him, like coming up to the kitchen early every morning for the orders. But I liked the boy; he was always working hard when I was in the garden.”
    Cordelia said: “I wonder if I might have a look at the cottage?”
    The request disconcerted them. Major Markland looked at his wife. There was an embarrassed silence and for a moment Cordelia feared that the answer would be no. Then Miss Markland stabbed her needles into the ball of wool and got to her feet: “I’ll come with you now,” she said.
    The grounds of Summertrees were spacious. First there was the formal rose garden, the bushes closely planted and grouped according to variety and colour like a market garden, the name tags fixed at precisely the same height from the earth. Next was the kitchen garden cut in two by a gravel path with evidence of Mark Callender’s work in the weeded rows of lettuce and cabbages, the patches of dug earth. Finally they passed through a gate into a small orchard of old and unpruned apple trees. The scythed grass, smelling richly of hay, lay in thick swathes round the gnarled trunks.
    At the furthest end of the orchard was a thick hedge, so overgrown that the wicket gate into the rear garden of the cottage was at first difficult to see. But the grass around it had been trimmed and the gate opened easily to Miss Markland’s hand. On the other side was a thick bramble hedge, dark and