Free The Tender Winds of Spring by Joyce Dingwell

is?’
    ‘Of course. Rice pudding or bread and butter pudding at school. But they’re not funny.’
    ‘No, dear,’ Jo agreed.
    ‘Grown-ups are funny, though. They laugh at things that aren’t funny.’
    ‘Like rice pudding and bread and butter pudding,’ Jo agreed. Yes, she decided again, it would have to be Dicky of the trio, the only one so far to speak to her of his own accord. ‘We’ll have dinner now, Dicky, seeing that we don’t have to wait for Abel.’
    The meal was a silent one. Dicky, it appeared, had made his contribution for the day, and Amanda and Sukey only spoke when spoken to. It was uncanny, Jo despaired, for children were born communicators, natural chatterers. What had happened to these three that they shrank like snails at a touch, in their case only a verbal touch?
    Abel did not come down to Tender "Winds that night. It appeared, Jo thought, that those country conventions of Gavin’s would have very little on which to base any brow-raising.
    He turned up the next morning, though, and promptly sent the children into the garden.
    ‘I have something to tell you,’ he said. ‘I had it yesterday but I didn’t get round to it.’
    ‘No, only to tossing a coin,’ Jo reminded him coldly.
    ‘I’m sorry if I upset you, I was a little upset myself.’
    ‘I didn’t make the rule,’ Jo pointed out. ‘If you’re referring to—’
    ‘I was referring to it, and I’m sorry for the way I went on. As you said, it wasn’t your doing but his, and in all fairness I have to see his side.’
    ‘His name is Gavin.’
    ‘See Gavin’s side. He’s young and ambitious and very naturally he doesn’t want to start off in such an extremely married state.’
    ‘Extremely married state?’ she queried.
    ‘Three children must be extremely married. No, it would be asking too much.’
    ‘I never asked it of him,’ Jo defended herself again.
    ‘No, but I bet you made a stipulation, a kind of “either you do this or else”.’
    ‘How do you mean?’
    ‘Accept a child or forget me.’
    ‘If I had made a stipulation, as you vulgarly put it, it would have been for all three, and anyway Gavin isn’t that kind.’
    He shrugged and made no comment.
    Biting back more angry words, Jo asked instead: ‘What was it you had to tell me?’
    ‘My report to you on yesterday’s investigations, Miss Millett. What I managed to discover from various sources, including schools, banks—no solicitor unfortunately—but—’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘The Mines Department.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘I thought that would interest you. It did me.’
    ‘Why did you go there?’ she asked.
    ‘The bank told me that several deposits to them from Mark Grant had been made through the Mines Department. Of course I followed up the clue.’
    ‘And discovered?’
    ‘Absolutely nothing,’ he shrugged.
    ‘Then why are you telling me? I mean, where does it get me?’
    ‘Nowhere, but it is a pointer.’
    ‘You’re suggesting that I should write to the Department?’
    ‘No, you would be as much a disinterested party in the Department’s eyes as I was, so would receive a similar answer.’
    ‘Which was?’
    ‘How are you connected with this? As you leave kindly close the door.’
    ‘But I am connected,’ she insisted.
    ‘You are not, Josephine, so face up to it. But use the clue on the kids themselves. A Mines Department naturally enough deals with mines. Perhaps this Mark had made a nickel find or something of the sort and been paid a royalty, perhaps there’s more to come. Probe around. Pump them.’
    ‘Yes,’ Jo said uncertainly. She wondered if this man called Abel had the faintest idea what he was asking. Pump those three clams!
    ‘Ask them about their father, their mother, where they were before they were at their school. Get anything at all from them that you can.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Jo again.
    A few minutes went by in silence, thoughtful minutes. Then:
    ‘Still doing the elimination?’ Abel asked idly, but Jo knew the