many messy doings, the boy was always pictured as crisp and clean, as spotless as any saint. No filth in the world of Crispian Crumpet. Sickness and sadness were unknown quantities, like
x
and
y
.
Why was this obnoxious child’s life so filled with honey and sunshine when my own was rain and ruin?
With a sigh, I closed the book and returned Crispian to his shelf.
His life and mine were as unalike as noonday and darkness.
“Stop it!”
Uncle Tarquin snapped, and this time I obeyed.
Only then did the strangeness of my discovery strike me. Why on earth would a grown man—a grown
older
man at that—have a set of children’s books at his bedside?
And multiple copies, at that?
Could it be a case of second childhood, like old Mr. Terry, the former verger at St. Tancred’s? Mr. Terry, according to Mrs. Mullet, baked mud pies in the oven if he were not watched carefully, and chased robins round the vicarage garden with a salt cellar.
I had another look at Mr. Sambridge. Even dead, he didn’t look like someone who had lost his marbles. Surely the vicar and his wife would have noticed: Cynthia Richardson would hardly have sent me alone, and without any warning or explanation, to the house of a man who was known to be utterly gaga.
Someone like that would hardly be able to make a living by ecclesiastical wood-carving.
Perhaps he was a book collector.
I know that there were people who are as barmy about books as Father is about postage stamps. My sister Daffy, for instance, can prattle on about flyleaves, colophons, and first editions not only until the cows come home, but until they have put on their nightcaps, gone to bed, switched off the lights, and begun snoring in their cowsheds.
Again using my handkerchief, I lifted the Oliver Inchbald books one at a time from the shelf and turned to the title pages: first editions, every single one of them. No inscriptions.
As I have said, as pristine as if they had just come fresh from the booksellers.
Below the title and the name of the author, each book bore the imprint of its publishers—Lancelot Gath, London—and the address in Bedford Square.
Nothing else: no bookmarks, underlinings, or tipped-in clippings.
Except for one: a rather grubby copy of
Hobbyhorse House,
lacking its dust wrapper, which, unlike its mates, was lying flat across the Bible and Shakespeare.
I opened it. This one, too, was a first edition. The owner’s name was printed in crude and spidery block letters of green ink, which had bled horribly into the absorbent paper of the page:
Carla Sherrinford-Cameron.
My heart leaped with joy—and something else.
I
knew
Carla!
What in the name of all that is holy was Carla’s copy of
Hobbyhorse House
doing in the bedroom of an elderly wood-carver who lived miles from her home in Hinley?
There was only one way to find out, and that was to question Carla. Even if she didn’t have the answer, it would satisfy my need to ask.
Meanwhile, there was the question of Mr. Sambridge. Who had killed him and why?
Time was running out and I needed to get back to Buckshaw. There would be no second chance to view the scene of the crime. This would be my only opportunity, and I meant to make the most of it.
Before continuing with the corpse, I made what I thought was a professional examination of the room: swift, yet rich in detail.
I ran through a mental list even as I was inventing it: nothing overturned, nothing spilled, no dust marks to indicate that some object—a blunt instrument, for instance—had been moved, or taken away from the room. There was, in fact, no dust at all: further indication that Mr. Sambridge was an uncommonly good housekeeper.
Back to my list: nothing on the floor, no fresh scuff marks or abrasions, nothing under the carpet, nothing behind the pictures on the wall (a view of the sands at Margate, labeled as such, and a rather decent watercolor of a wooded glade: one of those works that captures the place so perfectly that you think
x
and
y
.
Why was this obnoxious child’s life so filled with honey and sunshine when my own was rain and ruin?
With a sigh, I closed the book and returned Crispian to his shelf.
His life and mine were as unalike as noonday and darkness.
“Stop it!”
Uncle Tarquin snapped, and this time I obeyed.
Only then did the strangeness of my discovery strike me. Why on earth would a grown man—a grown
older
man at that—have a set of children’s books at his bedside?
And multiple copies, at that?
Could it be a case of second childhood, like old Mr. Terry, the former verger at St. Tancred’s? Mr. Terry, according to Mrs. Mullet, baked mud pies in the oven if he were not watched carefully, and chased robins round the vicarage garden with a salt cellar.
I had another look at Mr. Sambridge. Even dead, he didn’t look like someone who had lost his marbles. Surely the vicar and his wife would have noticed: Cynthia Richardson would hardly have sent me alone, and without any warning or explanation, to the house of a man who was known to be utterly gaga.
Someone like that would hardly be able to make a living by ecclesiastical wood-carving.
Perhaps he was a book collector.
I know that there were people who are as barmy about books as Father is about postage stamps. My sister Daffy, for instance, can prattle on about flyleaves, colophons, and first editions not only until the cows come home, but until they have put on their nightcaps, gone to bed, switched off the lights, and begun snoring in their cowsheds.
Again using my handkerchief, I lifted the Oliver Inchbald books one at a time from the shelf and turned to the title pages: first editions, every single one of them. No inscriptions.
As I have said, as pristine as if they had just come fresh from the booksellers.
Below the title and the name of the author, each book bore the imprint of its publishers—Lancelot Gath, London—and the address in Bedford Square.
Nothing else: no bookmarks, underlinings, or tipped-in clippings.
Except for one: a rather grubby copy of
Hobbyhorse House,
lacking its dust wrapper, which, unlike its mates, was lying flat across the Bible and Shakespeare.
I opened it. This one, too, was a first edition. The owner’s name was printed in crude and spidery block letters of green ink, which had bled horribly into the absorbent paper of the page:
Carla Sherrinford-Cameron.
My heart leaped with joy—and something else.
I
knew
Carla!
What in the name of all that is holy was Carla’s copy of
Hobbyhorse House
doing in the bedroom of an elderly wood-carver who lived miles from her home in Hinley?
There was only one way to find out, and that was to question Carla. Even if she didn’t have the answer, it would satisfy my need to ask.
Meanwhile, there was the question of Mr. Sambridge. Who had killed him and why?
Time was running out and I needed to get back to Buckshaw. There would be no second chance to view the scene of the crime. This would be my only opportunity, and I meant to make the most of it.
Before continuing with the corpse, I made what I thought was a professional examination of the room: swift, yet rich in detail.
I ran through a mental list even as I was inventing it: nothing overturned, nothing spilled, no dust marks to indicate that some object—a blunt instrument, for instance—had been moved, or taken away from the room. There was, in fact, no dust at all: further indication that Mr. Sambridge was an uncommonly good housekeeper.
Back to my list: nothing on the floor, no fresh scuff marks or abrasions, nothing under the carpet, nothing behind the pictures on the wall (a view of the sands at Margate, labeled as such, and a rather decent watercolor of a wooded glade: one of those works that captures the place so perfectly that you think
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