The Fox in the Attic by Richard Hughes

Three!”
    But Polly was loth to move.
    â€œ One ...”
    â€œ Two ...”
    Then the nursery door opened and in walked Augustine.
    Dropping into a chair, Augustine just had time to snatch the towel from Nanny to cover himself as Polly sprang squealing straight from the water into his lap—with half the bath following her, it seemed.
    Well! Bursting in like that without knocking! Nanny pursed her lips, for she didn’t at all approve. Nanny was a Catholic and believed it is never too young to start teaching little girls Shame. They ought to mind men—even uncles—seeing them in their baths, not go bouncing onto their laps without a stitch. But she knew it was as much as her place was worth to breathe a word to the child, for Mrs. Wadamy was Modern, Mrs. Wadamy had Views.
    Meanwhile Polly, lonely no longer, was in the seventh heaven of delight. She tore open Augustine’s waistcoat to nuzzle her damp head inside it against his shirt, where she could breathe nothing but his magic smell, listen to the thumping of his heart.
    Reluctant at first to let his still-tainted hands themselves even touch the sacred child, he dabbed with a bunch of towel tenderly at the steaming, flower-petal skin. But with her head inside his waistcoat she grabbed his hand tyrannically to her and pressed its hard hollow palm tight over her outside cheek and temple and little curly ear, so that her lucky head should be quite entirely squeezed between him and him . But that very moment he heard Mary’s voice from the stairs, calling him: he must come at once.
    Augustine was wanted on the telephone: it was a trunk call.
12
    This was the dead child asserting precedence over the living one; for the untimely call was from the police at Penrys Cross. But it was only to say the inquest was put off till Friday as the coroner was indisposed.
    Flemton Banquet had ended as usual—in a fight. This year the occasion had been the final torchlight procession: it had fired some of the street decorations, and Danny George declared the burning of his best trousers had been deliberate. Flemton had been happy to divide on the point, and in the fracas Dr. Brinley’s old pony took fright and galloped him off home in the rocking trap, splashing across the sands through the skim of ebb that still glistened there in the moonlight. He had been properly scared and shaken. Thus he had missed the Tuesday and Wednesday Meets after all, taking to his bed with a bottle instead.
    The experienced Blodwen had been firm with them: Friday was the earliest the Coroner could be fit for duty.
    The next day, Wednesday, Mary was taking Polly back to Dorset. The extra day just gave Augustine time to go with them and spend one night there before having to be back in Wales.
    The weather had cleared, and Augustine and Polly wanted to travel together, in the Bentley; but Nanny objected. She said it was crazy in any weather to let a child with a cold travel in a thing like that; for Augustine’s 3-liter Bentley was an open two-seater—very open indeed, with a small draughty windscreen and with even the handbrake outside. Mary Wadamy, on the other hand, was rather in favor. A big wind, she argued, must blow germs away . And it would soon be over; whereas in the stuffy family Daimler, with the luggage and Nanny and Mary’s maid Fitton and Mary herself, the journey would take the best part of the day.
    Trivett, their old chauffeur, was carriage-trained and had no liking for speed. But even at twenty miles an hour he drove dangerously enough for the most exacting: “Best anyway not put all your eggs in one basket when the basket is driven by Trivett!” said Augustine grimly.
    As for Polly, speech was so inadequate to express her longing that she was silently dancing it, her tongue stuck out as if in exile for its uselessness. That decided Mary: “Being happy’s the only cold-cure worth a farthing,” she said to herself, and gave her