Harry, Fiona, Nolan, Lewis, Perkin, Mackie and Tremayne, all silent, as if everything useful had been said already. Tight-knit, interlocked, they looked at me vaguely, at the stranger within their gates, the unexpected character in their play.
‘Ah... John,’ Tremayne said, stirring, remembering, ‘are both boys still living?’
‘More or less.’
I poured myself some wine and sat on an unoccupied footstool, feeling the oppression of their collective thoughts and guessing that they all now knew everything I did, and perhaps more.
‘If Harry didn’t do it, who did?’ It was Lewis’s question, which got no specific reply, as if it had been asked over and over before.
‘Doone will find out,’ I murmured.
Fiona said indignantly, ‘He’s not trying. He’s not looking beyond Harry. It’s disgraceful.’
Proof that Doone was still casting about, however, arrived noisily at that point in the shape of Sam Yaeger, who hooted his horn outside as a preliminary and swept into the house in a high state of indignation.
‘Tremayne!’ he said in the doorway, and then stopped abruptly at the sight of the gathered clan. ‘Oh. You’re all here.’
‘You’re supposed to be resting,’ Tremayne said repressively.
‘To hell with bloody resting. There I was, quietly nursing my bruises according to orders, when this Policeman Plod turns up on my doorstep. Sunday afternoon! Doesn’t the bugger ever sleep? And d’you know what little gem he tossed at me? Your bloody stable girls told him I’d had a bit of how’s-your-father with Angela effing Brickell.’
The brief silence which greeted this announcement wasn’t exactly packed with disbelief.
‘Well, did you?’ Tremayne asked.
‘That’s not the point. The point is that it wasn’t any Tuesday last June. So this Doone fellow asks me what I was doing that day, as if I could remember. Working on my boat, I expect. He asked if I logged the hours I worked on it. Is this man for real? I said I hadn’t a bloody clue what I was doing, maybe it was a couple of willing maidens, and he has no sense of humour, it’s in a permanent state of collapse, he said it wasn’t a joking matter.’
‘He has three daughters,’ I said. ‘It worries him.’
‘I can’t help his effing hang-ups,’ Sam said. ‘He said he had to check every possibility, so I told him he’d have a long job considering old Angle’s opportunities, not to mention willingness.’ He paused. ‘She was even making goo-goo eyes at Bob Watson at one time.’
‘She wouldn’t have got past Ingrid,’ Mackie said. ‘Ingrid looks meek and mild but you should see her angry. She keeps Bob in her sight. She doesn’t trust any girl in the yard. I doubt if Angela got anywhere with Bob.’
‘You never know,’ Sam said darkly. ‘Can I have a drink? Coke?’
‘In the fridge in the kitchen,’ Perkin said, not stirring to fetch it.
Sam nodded, went out and came back carrying a glass, followed by Gareth and Coconut busily stoking their furnaces with pizza wedges.
Tremayne raised his eyebrows at the food.
‘We’re starving,’ explained his younger son. ‘We ate
Sam looked bewildered. ‘What
‘Survival,’ Gareth said. He marched over to a table, picked up
‘What about Sherwood Forest?’ Harry drawled, smiling but looking strained notwithstanding.
Coconut explained, ‘We might be cold and hungry but there weren’t any enemies lurking behind the apple trees.’
‘Er...’ Sam said.
Tremayne, amused, enlightened everyone about our day.
‘Tell you what,’ Gareth said thoughtfully, ‘it makes you realise how lucky you are to have a bed and a pizza to come home to.’
Tremayne looked at me from under lowered lids, his mouth curving with contentment. ‘Teach them they’re lucky,’ he’d said.
‘Next time,’ Coconut enquired, ‘why don’t we make some bows and arrows?’
‘What for?’ asked Perkin.
‘To shoot the Sheriffs men, of course.’
‘You’d wind up hanged in Nottingham,’ Tremayne said. ‘Better stick to dandelion leaves.’ He looked at me. ‘Is there going to be a next time?’
Before I could answer, Gareth said ‘Yes.’ He paused. ‘Well, it wasn’t all a laugh a minute, but we did
‘Well done!’ Fiona exclaimed sincerely. ‘Gareth, you’re a great boy.’
It embarrassed him, of course, but I agreed with her.
‘How about it?’ Tremayne asked me.
‘Next Sunday,’ I said, ‘we could go out again, do something else.’
‘Do what?’ Gareth demanded. ‘Don’t know yet.’
The vague promise seemed enough for both boys who drifted back to the kitchen for further supplies, and Sam, leafing through the book, remarked that some of my more ingenious traps looked as if they would kill actual people, not only big animals like deer.
