Free Watcher in the Shadows by Geoffrey Household

village. If atomy was what I supposed — it seemed an excellent word — I was evidently a professor with some unspecified interest in nuclear fission.
    “What did you think of this big, dark man who wanted to know which was the Nash road?” I asked as soon as I could get a word in.
    “A pleasant-spoken gentleman,” said Isaac Purvis, as if that was about as far as he could safely go. “Put me in mind of old Worrall, ‘e did.”
    “How do you mean exactly?”
    “Old Worrall who ‘ad the farm opposite where you’re a-staying. I used to work for ‘im as carter thirty year ago, and I can see ‘im as plain as I sees you. Just as pleasant as ever, ‘e was, after ‘is eldest son ‘ad been took to the mad’ouse, and you’d ‘ave reckoned ‘e thought nothing of it. But one day ‘e says to me: God Almighty is goin’ to pay me for that, Isaac.”
    “And what happened?”
    “Nothing. What was there to ‘appen? ‘Is eyes were what I meant. Like a widder’s eyes when the parson tells ‘er that sufferin’ is good for ‘er.”
    That vivid phrase brought back my unreasonable sense of guilt, which had been dispersed by fear and anger. Poor devil — if he believed I was the same sort of creature as Sporn and Dickfuss, he had a right to kill me. How long is it since revenge was considered a virtue in a man of honor? A mere three hundred years?
    I asked Purvis if he had any reason to think that the big, dark man was a foreigner.
    “Well, all I’ve seen of ‘im was three days back. I tells ’im what ‘e wants to know. And then I asks ‘im if ‘e weren’t the new undertaker what Mrs. Bunn wishes to make ‘er own bargain with. ‘E just says that ‘e weren’t.
    “I knew as ‘e weren’t. ‘E was just out for a walk in a manner of speakin’. But I says to myself afterwards, I says, now if ‘e was the kind of gentleman what ain’t in a ‘urry and goes walkin’ when ‘e could do it easier in ‘is motor car, then ‘e’d like to ‘ear about Mrs. Bunn making ‘er own arrangements with the undertaker. So I wouldn’t say ‘e ain’t a foreigner and I wouldn’t say as ‘e is.
    Mr. Purvis was willing to discuss till five o’clock the character of Englishmen — by which he meant the inhabitants of Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire. That was perhaps a long time to stand chatting in the open when I did not know where our gentleman had gone, but I did not wish to offend so useful an assistant by cutting him short.
    At half past four Ian arrived. We drove off in his car. He seemed a little cold and military because he could not find a certain Jim Melton for whom he had been looking. The only time you could be sure of seeing the blasted man, I gathered, was when he was going into the magistrates’ court to pay a fine for some minor offense or coming out again; and then if you didn’t catch him on the court steps he vanished. An enviable gift, I thought.
    Ian wanted me to go with him to Buckingham and have a leisurely dinner somewhere afterwards. When I told him to park the car by the roadside and settle down with me under a convenient haystack, he said he could not see why I found boy-scouting necessary. It was an effort to remember that he knew nothing of the last agitated twenty hours.
    I gave him my story from the time I had left the Haunch of Mutton the night before. He did not interrupt. He was always a patient and practiced listener, though one never knew what explosion there might be at the end.
    “But you’d got him cold!” he exclaimed. “Why on earth didn’t you hold him up in his bunker or on the road?”
    I reminded him that I dared not shoot. There was no evidence to connect this harmless stroller in the brown tweed suit with the dog or with any attempt on me. I might have a fearful time clearing myself if I killed him. And one of us would almost certainly be killed. The fellow was capable of being just as dangerous as any wounded tiger. Even if I could drill him through the