“Nor was I. She’s wrong on the first half anyway. Not what you’d really call old. She was twenty-seven last week.”
“Now how would you know that?”
“While you were being attended to in the rose garden I peeked inside the birthday cards lined up on the mantelpiece.”
“So—hardly old then.”
“No. And she was misleading us on the second half too, unless I mistake.”
“Now how would you know that?” Joe said again but his voice now conveyed a chilly rebuke rather than a question. A woman’s honour would always be defended by Joe whatever the circumstances. Whoever the woman.
Hunnyton picked up the warning and, as Joe had come to expect, backed away. Advance, retreat, concede territory, disarm, advance again, eyes averted. Joe wondered if he’d recognise the moment the superintendent was ready to throw the saddle over his back. “I wouldn’t know that,” the horseman said easily. “Evidence not so readily available. You might well have a better insight, city gent that you are. It just occurs to me that a woman of her quality, working at her trade, with her chances, well, it would be a bit of a surprise if … Just choosy, I expect. Hard to tell when she comes in from the garden looking like a rook-scarer that’s been pulled through a thorn hedge, but there’s something about her … She’s friendly and yet she has a sort of shield around her. Get close and you’d bounce off.”
“I noticed that, but she’s very unusual. I could swear I’ve seen her, or her like, somewhere before …”
“You have. You pass her every day on your way to work. On the Embankment. She’s standing with a dirty great spear in one hand, chariot reins in the other. She’s hurling abuse at the Roman army and she’s made of bronze,” Hunnyton said, chuckling. “Boadicea! Corst, blast! You wouldn’t want to get the wrong side of that one! Doctor Hartest is a corker but those pruning shears she keeps in her pocket are as much of a warning as the scythes on Boadicea’s chariot wheels. ‘Keep off! You could lose a limb.’ ”
This was a disappointing response. A crude cover to deflect the interest Joe was sure he’d noticed?
“You’re too severe,” he said easily. “I’ve remembered now where I’ve seen her before! She’s not the Queen of the Iceni, she’s a Botticelli goddess … Flora’s her name and she takes centre stage in the painting of Primavera.”
Hunnyton frowned, trying to recall it.
“You know the one—there’s the three Graces on the left, sketchily dressed in diaphanous dresses, dancing about in a bosky dell, cupids and cherubs shooting each other and just to the right of centre, the only one who’s looking at the camera, so to speak, the most amazing girl with honey-coloured hair, a deliciously wicked smile and slanting eyes. She’s offering you a choice bloom from her pinny-ful of wildflowers. Or anything else you have in mind.” He sighed.
“I know it. A bit flowery-bowery for my taste. If lusting after painted ladies is all the go, I’ll admit to being more in tune with Peter Lely. All those Stuart beauties in slippery amber-gold boudoir gowns, pearl drops and just the odd rosebud carefully placed. There’s one of the Countess of Oxford … or is she the Countess of Halifax …?”
Joe knew when he was being sent up. “Ah, yes. Who needs ‘Tit-Bits’ when we have the ‘Tate’ for titillation? But—speaking of aristocratic ladies, I’d guess you are now taking me to the Hall to present me to the Dowager, Sir James’s widowed mother. Is that what you have in mind?”
Hunnyton nodded. “She’s on my list. I thought first we’d call in at my modest abode and spruce up a bit. You’re covered in ginger hairs of one sort or another.”
“Sounds like a good plan. Perhaps while we’re at the Hall I can ask to use the telephone. I didn’t think we could impose on Adelaide Hartest, though I assume the vet has one.”
Joe had unconsciously stumbled into an odd pocket of resentment, judging by the abrupt increase in speed and the exclamation that followed.
“You’ll need some change in your pocket. Bloody English aristocrats! They’ll freely lend you their second best castle for a month, their Rolls-Royce for a week, their mistress for a night but if you want to use their telephone for five minutes that’ll be sixpence please. Just leave it in the dish next to the telephone. Even if you’re reporting that the vicar’s fallen downstairs and broken his neck. If you want a stamp to post a letter it’ll cost you twopence—”