‘Oh!’ said Caroline. I could see her nose twitching as she worked on this.
‘He arrived at the Three Boars yesterday morning,’ she said. ‘And he’s still there. Last night he was out with a girl.’
That did not surprise me in the least. ralph, I should say, is out with a girl most nights of his life. But I did rather wonder that he chose to indulge in the pastime in king’s Abbot instead of in the gay Metropolis.
‘One of the barmaids?’ I asked.
‘No. That’s just it. he went out to meet her. I don’t know who she is.’ (Bitter for Caroline to have to admit such a thing.) ‘But I can guess,’ continued my indefatigable sister.
I waited patiently.
‘His cousin.’
‘Flora Ackroyd?’ I exclaimed in surprise.
Flora Ackroyd is, of course, no relation whatever really to Ralph Paton but Ralph has been looked upon for so long as practically Ackroyd’s own son, that cousinship is taken for granted.
‘Flora Ackroyd,’ said my sister.
‘But why not go to Fernly if he wanted to see her?’
‘Secretly engaged,’ said Caroline, with immense enjoyment. ‘Old Ackroyd won’t hear of it, and they have to meet this way.’
I saw a good many flaws in Caroline’s theory, but I forebore to point them out to her. An innocent remark about our new neighbour created a diversion.
The house next door, The Larches, has recently been taken by a stranger. To Caroline’s extreme annoyance, she has not been able to find out anything about him, except that he is a foreigner. The Intelligence corps has proved a broken reed. Presumably the man has milk and vegetables and joints of meat and occasional whitings just like everybody else, but none of the people who make it their business to supply these things seem to have acquired any information.
His name, apparently, is Mr Porrott – a name which conveys an odd feeling of unreality. The one thing we do know about him is that he is interested in the growing of vegetable marrows.
But that is certainly not the sort of information that Caroline is after. She wants to know where he comes from, what he does, whether he is married, what his wife was, or is, like, whether he has children, what his mother’s maiden name was – and so on.
Somebody very like Caroline must have invented the questions on passports, I think.
‘My dear Caroline,’ I said. ‘There’s no doubt at all about what the man’s profession has been. he’s a retired hairdresser. Look at that moustache of his.’