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By Root 533 0

She likes to find out things and you go about and take her about. These women are like that. They can get at secrets. If you’re young and beautiful you do it like Delilah. When you’re old–I can tell you, I had an old great-aunt once and there was no secret that she didn’t nose into and find out the truth about. There’s the money side. Robinson’s on to that. He knows about money. He knows where the money goes, why it goes, where it goes to, and where it comes from and what it’s doing. All the rest of it. He knows about money. It’s like a doctor feeling your pulse. He can feel a financier’s pulse. Where the headquarters of money are. Who’s using it, what for and why. I’m putting you on to this because you’re in the right place. You’re in the right place by accident and you’re not there for the reason anyone might suppose you were. For there you are, an ordinary couple, elderly, retired, seeking for a nice house to end your days in, poking about into the corners of it, interested in talking. Some sentence one day will tell you something. That’s all I want you to do. Look about. Find out what legends or stories are told about the good old days or the bad old days.’

‘A naval scandal, plans of a submarine or something, that’s talked about still,’ said Tommy. ‘Several people keep mentioning it. But nobody seems to know anything really about it.’

‘Yes, well, that’s a good starting point. It was round about then Jonathan Kane lived in that part, you know. He had a cottage down near the sea and he ran his propaganda campaign round there. He had disciples who thought he was wonderful, Jonathan Kane. K-a-n-e. But I would rather spell it a different way. I’d spell it C-a-i-n. That would describe him better. He was set on destruction and methods of destruction. He left England. He went through Italy to countries rather far away, so it’s said. How much is rumour I don’t know. He went to Russia. He went to Iceland, he went to the American continent. Where he went and what he did and who went with him and listened to him, we don’t know. But we think that he knew things, simple things; he was popular with his neighbours, he lunched with them and they with him. Now, one thing I’ve got to tell you. Look about you. Ferret out things, but for goodness’ sake take care of yourselves, both of you. Take care of that–what’s-her-name? Prudence?’

‘Nobody ever called her Prudence. Tuppence,’ said Tommy.

‘That’s right. Take care of Tuppence and tell Tuppence to take care of you. Take care of what you eat and what you drink and where you go and who is making up to you and being friendly and why should they? A little information comes along. Something odd or queer. Some story in the past that might mean something. Someone perhaps who’s a descendant or a relative or someone who knew people in the past.’

‘I’ll do what I can,’ said Tommy. ‘We both will. But I don’t feel that we’ll be able to do it. We’re too old. We don’t know enough.’

‘You can have ideas.’

‘Yes. Tuppence has ideas. She thinks that something might be hidden in our house.’

‘So it might. Others have had the same idea. Nobody’s ever found anything so far, but then they haven’t really looked with any assurance at all. Various houses and various families, they change. They get sold and somebody else comes and then somebody else and so they go on. Lestranges and Mortimers and Parkinsons. Nothing much in the Parkinsons except for one of the boys.’

‘Alexander Parkinson?’

‘So you know about him. How did you manage that?’

‘He left a message for someone to find in one of Robert Louis Stevenson’s books. Mary Jordan did not die naturally. We found it.’

‘The fate of every man we have bound about his neck–some saying like that, isn’t there? Carry on, you two. Pass through the Postern of Fate.’

Chapter 6

Postern of Fate

Mr Durrance’s shop was half-way up the village. It was on a corner site, had a few photographs displayed in the window; a couple of marriage groups, a kicking baby in a nudist condition on a rug, one or two bearded young men taken with their girls. None of the photographs