Be Shot For Six Pence Read Free Page B

addressed, I was to ask him a question.”
    “Ask away.”
    “I was to ask who Henry was.”
    “That’s easy,” I said. “Henry is a woman. A charming and accomplished person of uncertain age who was at one time governess to Colin and his brother. Later on she was a governess in our family. We called her Henry because she was the eighth.”
    “The psychology of young children is a fascinating study,” said Mr. Satterley.
    He took off his glasses, polished them with little, darting, movements, replaced them securely on his nose and said: “How can I help you?”
    “I’m not too sure. To start with, it was news to me that Colin had been in England lately.”
    “I’m afraid that does not follow. This announcement was delivered to us – let me see – more than two months ago. Nearer three.”
    “Then how did it come to be put in on this particular date?”
    “Our instructions were, that if we did not hear from Mr. Studd-Thompson by the last day of any week, we were to insert the announcement during the whole of the week following.”
    In silence I tried to think this out. Silence so absolute that I could suddenly hear a woman speaking quite clearly two rooms away. She was accepting an announcement for the Births Column and seemed to be making heavy going of it.
    “I take it, then,” I said at last, “that when he failed to get through to you—”
    “We heard from him regularly for nine weeks.”
    “So you know where he is – or was?”
    “I’m afraid not. The messages were sent through our foreign correspondents. The last three came from Rome – but that does not mean that Mr. Studd-Thompson was necessarily in Italy.”
    “I see. And last Friday – or Saturday – you got no message at all—”
    “That is correct.”
    “It may have been delayed.”
    “Possibly. Our messages are not often delayed. And in any event our instructions were categoric. If we had not heard by midnight on Saturday, the announcement had to be inserted on Monday – and for the five days following.”
    “G-o-t-t—” said the shrill voice.
    “It is really rather a remarkable circumstance,” went on Mr. Satterley. “Owing to the peculiar way in which this matter has been arranged you are probably the only person in England who is in a position to find out exactly what has happened to Mr. Studd-Thompson.”
    “—f-r-i-e-d. That’s right. As in fried bread.”
    “Yes,” I said. “Well, I’m very much obliged to you.”

 
Chapter II
TWICKENHAM AND SLOANE SQUARE
     
    I walked back slowly, and rather blindly, along the Embankment. My feet took me into the little garden by Temple Station. I don’t know its name. It’s an austere place, full of office sandwich eaters at lunch time but deserted for the rest of the day; guarded at one end by John Stuart Mill and at the other by William Edward Forster.
    I settled my body carefully down on a seat facing the Embankment and allowed my mind to drift backwards for ten, for twenty, for thirty years . . .
    Myself as a new boy at a preparatory school on the South Coast. Serials in the Boy’s Own Paper had prepared me for the worst. I see now, looking back, that everyone was enormously kind and considerate, but to go from home, at the age of eight, and into exile, for the eternity of three months in a strange world; it must always be such a parting as will make the other partings of life seem unimportant.
    Colin had been the first person to speak to me. He had spoken with the patronage demanded by his superior position (for he had already been at the school for a whole term) but he had spoken kindly. The train was passing Three Bridges. He waved at a grassy knoll behind the town and said, without preamble: “Did you know they had a battle there during the Civil War, in 1640?” I said that I had not known. As the train thundered south (if such an expression can be applied to the progress of the old London Brighton and South Coast Railway) Colin told me a number of other