Heaven Knows Who by Christianna Brand Page A

had now had none since the two penn’orth on Friday morning.
    By nine the exemplary old gentleman was at the counting-house ready for work. John Fleming and his son, John junior, were due back from Dunoon that morning—the trip took from two to three hours. He did not wait to see them but conducted his business and started off on his rounds, rent collecting. His business was to hand over two pounds, six shillings and eight-pencein small rents: it was all in silver. (It seems odd that he had not paid it in during the half hour he spent in the office on the Saturday, but perhaps he had something else on his mind at the moment). He said nothing to anyone about anything being unusual at Sandyford Place.
    His grandson got to the counting-house at about eleven: his son John two or three hours later.
    Mr Fleming’s first call was upon Mr Daniel Paton, who, like Jessie, lived in the Broomielaw. Mr Paton was a dealer in secondhand clothes and furniture and often did a bit of business with old Mr Fleming; he would go round to Sandyford Place and had bought clothes from him that had belonged to any of the three gentlemen residing there—grandfather, father and son. He had been offered nothing, however, since a fortnight ago, when he had bought a pair of trousers and a brownish-grey coat which he thought must have belonged to John junior, for it was too large for the old man. Today, however, Mr Fleming was here only to collect the month’s rent. (Unlike poor Jessie, Mr Paton was able to pay). Mr Fleming was wearing a black coat, or at any rate a darkish coat; there seemed nothing remarkable about it—Mr Paton, with his intimate knowledge of and interest in the Fleming wardrobes, thought he would have noticed if it had been new. But he wasn’t too sure, altogether; he thought it was the long-tailed black coat that Mr Fleming often wore on his rounds but it might have been the blue beaver, rather longer than a shooting jacket, with big pockets at the side. He could not say whether Mr Fleming had on his black trousers or the steel grey. Mr Fleming seemed quite calm and—appropriately enough for the work he was employed upon—collected.
    But Miss Elizabeth Mitchell of Albion Street, where he paid his next call, was another observant sixteen-year-old and more positive than Mr Paton. Mr Fleming had had on his good black clothes, not the clothes he wore for ordinary—his usual clothes were black but very brown from the wear, his long-tailed coat glazed, and greasy looking about the sleeves. He had seemed to her to be very much ‘raised’, very flushed, more flushed than was ordinary and though he sometimes had a staring eye, today it was more staring than ever, not restless but fixed and staring. He did not sit down but stood with his back to the dresser, quite agitated-like. After he had gone Mrs Mitchell remarked on it,‘Mary,’ she said, ‘Mr Fleming is very raised like today and has on his best clothes.’ Mr Fleming had just walked into the house, said Mrs Mitchell, and stood with both his hands stretched out and his hat raised a little from his forehead—whether by some astral force or by some hitherto unsuspected third hand is not apparent. He did not appear drunk; there was nothing drunk-like about him. She said to Mary that she wondered, could something be wrong? Mary said she was sure she couldn’t say.
    He seemed very anxious, said Mary, to get the money, but this was perhaps because it was already overdue. Mrs Mitchell had taken the house through him but he had turned her out for nonpayment of rent, and apparently allowed her to keep the tenancy only on condition of her sub-letting. Her tenants had let her down and she still couldn’t pay so he had told her she would have to give up altogether. Nevertheless, Mary insisted, if he was raised, it was nothing to do with them; there was no bad feeling.
    While Mr Fleming was toddling about among his tenants, Mrs