The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [13]
Edward was looking around cautiously. He stepped over the wall. There was a rustle in the undergrowth. He fired two deafening shots. A rabbit flew away, careering wildly through the trees. A man in flannels at Edward’s side snapped shut his shotgun and fired both barrels. The noise made the Major’s stomach lurch. It was the first time in months that he had heard gun-fire.
The sergeant was looking dismayed but helpless as Edward stepped back over the wall, smiling.
“Both missed. No shifty individuals in the undergrowth. Perhaps we’d better have a look through the out-houses just to make sure, though.” He led the way through the orchard and into the kitchen garden which was protected from the north-easterly wind by a high wall. A number of cabbage whites fluttered peacefully here and there in the late afternoon sunlight, but there was no other sign of life. One by one they trailed through potting-sheds, a laundry house, a small conservatory glowing with ripe red tomatoes, the apple house (in which great mounds of green apples had been piled almost to the ceiling without any apparent thought for their preservation), an empty barn, the garages which housed a Daimler and a Standard, empty stables with feed-boxes still stuffed with dusty straw...and then they straggled back again into the sunshine.
“Let’s finish that set,” one of the men in flannels said. “I think the whole thing was just a bally ruse of Edward’s to avoid facing my deadly serve.”
The party disintegrated. While the tennis players strolled back to the courts, unloading their guns, the policeman continued, though somewhat resentfully, to poke through the buildings that had already been searched. The Major was uncertain what to do: should he return to his “fiancée’s” side? Perhaps by now the tea-party would be over and a tête-à-tête would be possible. He lingered with Ripon, however, and accompanied him to retrieve the javelin which he had just hurled at a mudstained plaster nymph arising incongruously from a bed of cabbages. It had missed the nymph’s plump stomach by a few inches and transfixed a giant cabbage a few feet farther on.
“I say, Edward,” a voice floated back to them. “I don’t think much of your local sleuths.” The sergeant, who had just emerged from a second inspection of the barn, avoided the Major’s eye.
Coming to the edge of the orchard at a point where the drive touched it at a tangent, the Major saw a girl in a wheelchair. She was holding up two heavy walking-sticks and trying to use them as pincers to grasp a large green apple that hung out of her reach. Ripon hesitated when he saw her and whispered “Oh Lord, she’s seen us. She’s absolutely poisonous.”
“Don’t go away,” the girl called. As they approached she added: “My name is Sarah. I know who you are: you’re Angela’s Major and you’ve just arrived from England for a holiday.” “Ah, for a holiday?” wondered the Major.
“You see, I know everything that goes on...including everything about Ripon, don’t I, Ripon? Everything about what young Ripon has been up to in Kilnalough recently. He’s like an evil little cherub, don’t you think so, Major, with those round cheeks and curly hair.”
“You’re cruel,” the Major said lightly. And though her eyes were clear and grey and the backs of her hands sunburned (which suggested that she might be rather modern) and her hair dark, shining and very long, dividing round her nape and falling over her chest, and though she was quite beautiful, all things considered, the Major thought that perhaps Ripon was right