Free The Lily Hand and Other Stories by Ellis Peters

looking as down-in-the-mouth as we knew how, for fear he should smell a rat, and I could see him peering over the windowsill at us when we left, fairly quaking with glee. He thought he’d done us good and proper this time. He wouldn’t have been so pleased with himself if he’d known that the little van that fetched the instruments away on the Monday didn’t take ’em any farther than our house.
    Tom Lowther was grinning all over. ‘I’ve brought you five quid back, and all,’ he says, ‘it worked like a charm. And I’ll give you the cost of my petrol, I was going up to our Win’s, anyhow, so I’ve hardly come out of my way. My word, I wouldn’t like to be within a hundred yards of the Black Horse when Langley gets to hear about this deal! He’ll have another stroke, I shouldn’t wonder.’
    â€˜Come out and have a drink,’ I says, beaming at all that nice brass lying about our parlour again. ‘We certainly owe you one.’
    â€˜Not tonight,’ he says, ‘I’m driving. After we’ve blown you lot clean out of the park at Hillingdon Royal, you can buy me a double. Nice stuff!’ he says, looking where I was looking. ‘What a pity you can’t play ’em!’
    We let him have that – he’d saved our bacon for us. We put our heads together after that, and did some hard thinking, but we couldn’t think of anything else Langley could do to us now. We didn’t trust him as far as we could throw him, though, so we used to drift in for a drink by twos and threes, just to find out it there was any funny business going on, but all we found out was that he’d nearly thrown a fit when he got the news, and had been foaming at the mouth for three days, and nobody dared to go near him except his missus, and after all she hadn’t got much choice. So after a bit we relaxed, and concentrated on practising for the contest; and what with the stimulation we got out of having won the first two rounds, we were playing well.
    We hadn’t exactly hired Burke’s bus for the trip to Hillingdon Royal on the day of the contest, it was just that we had an understanding with him. Some of us worked Saturday mornings, so we couldn’t start off until half past one. Buses were always busy Saturdays, winter with football matches and summer with trips to the seaside or into Wales, so I’d just stuck my head into Burke’s garage, three weeks ago, and said: ‘Okay for the championship, Bill?’ and he’d said: ‘Okay, Les!’ from under an old Alvis, and that was all the booking we ever did, but I knew it would be all right.
    Only this time it wasn’t all right, because on the Saturday morning I came off shift early, and there was Bill Burke dancing about on our doorstep like a flurried hen, and he grabs me by the arm and says: ‘Les, something awful’s happened! I’ve let you down!’
    â€˜What’s up?’ I asked him. ‘What’s come to the bus?’ It had to be the bus, how else could Burke have let us down? And at this hour there wouldn’t be another within fifty miles radius that wasn’t booked up. Saturdays are like that in Worbridge and district; when you’ve got a fine day and time off, you light out as far as possible out of it.
    â€˜He’s bought it!’ says Burke in a wild groan. ‘I couldn’t help it, Les! He owns the ground my garage is on, and the lease has only got a couple of years to run, and he as good as told me I could say goodbye to the place if I didn’t do what he wanted. Tried to get me to put the old engine out of commission and pretend I couldn’t get it right again, but when I wouldn’t he offered me such a price for it – my God, I couldn’t believe me ears! I’m no millionaire, what am I supposed to do when I get a windfall like that dropped in my lap? I’ve got kids to keep! And