The Sending Read Free Page A

we—the local folk who were in no way distinguished but couldn’t be left out—had freely discussed what we might expect and what we thought of Sir Victor Pirrone.
    Some of that I told the superintendent, led on by his pleasant manner. Then the iron hand came out of the glove.
    â€˜Mr Hollaston, to whom did you lend your car?’
    I exclaimed that anyone would tell him I had no conceivable motive to murder Paddy Gadsden, who was very dear to me.
    â€˜I am not suggesting for a moment that you knew for what your car would be used. I require to know to whom you lent it.’
    I gave him my word of honour that I had not lent it to anybody and added that I always left it outside the front door.
    â€˜With the keys in it?’
    Well, yes, they were. It saved trouble, and the car was perfectly safe up the remote drive to the house and just below my open bedroom window. He accepted that, probably ascribing such casual behaviour to the supposed Bohemian carelessness of an artist, and asked me to give him in strict confidence my opinion of Sir Victor Pirrone. I replied that I hardly knew the man, that he had moved into the Manor House at the end of March and that police enquiries would be far more revealing than anything I could say. After that he left me alone.
    Naturally we think we know a lot about the Pirrones. Strangers cannot settle in a little country town without becoming the subject of pub-biography, detailed and wildly inaccurate. Pirrone so far is neither liked nor disliked. He is imposingly handsome for a man in his early sixties, generous, cordial and a host out of the Arabian Nights, but one somehow feels that it might all be put on in the morning like a monogrammed shirt. He is Sicilian by birth, and it is said that he made his money in the export of fruit—then from fruit to shipping, to finance, to British naturalisation and eventually to a knighthood, changing his Christian name from Vittorio to Victor. Rita tells me that a more interesting side of him shows in his hobby: the social history of his island. Apparently he is a source of fascinating footnotes on the six peoples who dominated Sicily and the remnants of their customs, folklore and architecture.
    Lady Pirrone I like very much on short acquaintance. She lets everyone know that she is not Italian but Spanish, and not Spanish but Basque. She rolls in fat and has not much in her still-pretty head beyond good manners inserted by a convent and excellent English by a governess. I gather that English governesses were common in the wealthy steel and shipping circles of Bilbao. She is inclined to disown industry, claiming descent from a very ancient family of Basque chieftains who, until her grandfather came down to the coast and took to ship-building, had never amounted to anything outside their own remote valley in the heart of the western Pyrenees—evidently a deep-rooted family much like my own, which may be why I find her congenial.
    So much for Pirrone’s party and my alibi. I can’t be haunted by guilt. Even the subconscious has some common sense. And Meg insists that I am healthy. She’d know if there were anything badly wrong. I could detect it.
    Could I? Well then, more analysis—of Meg this time as well as myself. Unlike Paddy’s niece, it was not necessary for Meg to wait for probate of the will. I took her over at once. She moped for a few days and once was found looping down the High Street to Paddy’s workshop. They sent for me to pick her up. No one else wanted to. She was in a chattering temper and had already bitten through the paw of an inquisitive terrier. Dogs which know her will sometimes join in her dancing, stabbing games. Cats, who set more store by dignity, always ignore her.
    Both of us quickly accepted the position and I was permitted to take the place of Paddy. I had every outside pocket in my working coats enlarged to form a den for her, and she turned out to be a comfortable,