There was something intoxicating and ancient about the very word “midsummer.” Lily found her mind, so recently alerted to an author’s sensibilities, supplying a following alliterative: “madness” or “mischief” or “malice.” She searched for a word less baleful and found none.
CHAPTER 9
Joe couldn’t repress a shout of laughter when Hunnyton drove up to collect him at the Garden House after breakfast on Friday morning. He walked around the dark red open-topped sports tourer expressing his approval of the motorcar and his admiration for the driver. Hunnyton was suitably dressed in waterproof cape, cloth cap with earflaps and tinted driving goggles.
“Now who’s doing a Mister Toad?” Joe challenged. “Look at you! I’m afraid if I climb aboard you’ll drive me back a couple of decades. We’ll be bursting into the Edwardian age before you can say ‘H. G. Wells’!”
Hunnyton shook his head. “Who needs a time machine? Besides—Edwardian? Pouf!—that’s just yesterday. No, we’re going back a few centuries. Disappearing down a tunnel of green gloom into an age where they still speak the language of Chaucer and think this young Shakespeare feller is a bit avant-garde with his expression.”
“I shall be glad to have an interpreter aboard then. What is this vehicle?”
“It’s a Lagonda M45. The poor man’s Bentley, they call them. Very popular with undergraduates seeking to impress. I thought we’d have something with a collapsible hood so we can enjoy the views and the fresh air. It’s a bit wide for the country lanes but it’s got tough wheels and tyres and we won’t have to blush for it when we park it on the forecourt of the Hall. If it were a horse, I’d say it was a well-shod, long-legged hunter with a deep chest, suitable mount for a gentleman.”
He turned off the ignition and made to climb out.
“No, no! Stay where you are,” Joe hurried to shout. “You look perfect at the wheel. It would take me at least ten miles to get the hang of it. And I did note the streams rushing down open gutters on both sides of Trumpington Street on the way here. They’d caught a Ford, two bikes and an old lady on a tricycle before breakfast, I noticed. Damn dangerous bit of plumbing! Can’t think why you allow that in a civilised city. The Romans would never have sanctioned it.” Chattering on, he threw his bags into the back and, hearing not even a token objection, settled into the passenger seat.
Hunnyton looked sideways at Joe as they moved out into the almost empty King’s Parade, heading for the river crossing. He took in Joe’s lightweight Burbury trench coat worn with an officer’s swagger open over a summer tweed suit; he eyed his pale grey soft hat and his black shoes from Lobbs. “I think they’ll work out which one of us is from the Yard,” he commented.
“I never see any point in disguising what I am when I’m working,” Joe said. “Some have even found it reassuring. If it scares the villains—good.”
ALL ATTEMPTS AT conversation were abandoned as they zipped along the main road east leading to Newmarket and on to the North Sea coast. Joe noticed that, as with most good horsemen, Hunnyton also seemed to have a sure touch with a motorcar, and he wondered with envy why the skills had not been meted out to him in equal measure. Joe had been born on a Scottish Borders farm, and had grown up riding everything from pony to plough horse, but he was the first to admit that he was never in harmony with a car. His lack of enthusiasm to take the wheel seemed to have further confirmed Hunnyton’s picture of him as a high-ranking officer who expected to be driven everywhere, a Man of the Metropolis. He had no doubt that the superintendent was looking forward to watching him submerge his shining Oxfords in something unspeakable at the first opportunity.
After a few miles of dodging dangerously around lorries and swaying haywains, they turned off the noisy road, taking an offshoot to the left. Hunnyton slowed down in response to the narrowed road and trundled along at twenty miles an hour. Perversely, now that conversation was possible, neither man chose to speak. Both were hushed by the silence of the thick green canopy of oak and beech enclosing the road over their heads, hypnotised by the rhythmic swish of the tree trunks as they passed through. It had the same effect on their senses as the architecture of a lofty cathedral, arousing a quiet awe.
Hunnyton broke the silence. “It’ll be like this for miles now. We should get where we’re going before the horse-drawn hay-carts start clogging up the roads. They’ll be taking a third cut this year—it’s been a good one so far.”