Free Touch and Go by Patricia Wentworth Page A

untidy canvas strap. It was the paint box, a corner of which stuck out through a gaping tear, which enabled them to feel quite certain that the stranger loafing through Lucilla’s woods was the client who had Uncle Geoffrey’s permission to sketch there.
    Sarah was rather amused by the way in which Lucilla went up to him.
    â€œAre you Mr. Brown?”
    Mr. John Brown said that he was.
    â€œI’m Lucilla Hildred. My uncle told us you would like to sketch here. This is my friend Miss Trent.”
    Lucilla was being rather grand, because she was shy, and she wasn’t at all used to being shy.
    Mr. John Brown responded politely. He said it was very nice of her to let him wander about. He smiled slightly, and his eyes, which seemed lighter than they really were against the deep brown of his skin, looked at her for a moment as if they were looking right through her—an odd piercing look with a hint of amusement in it. And then he wasn’t looking at Lucilla any more. It was Sarah who was being looked through and wasn’t sure that she liked it. It may be said at once she hadn’t the slightest idea that this was not their first meeting. When she had stopped his car by the east drive of Holme Fallow, she had been aware of no more than a shadow and a voice—Mr. John Brown had taken good care of that. At the Lizard she had not seen him at all. Not that it would have mattered to Mr. Brown if she had. He had good enough reasons for not wishing her to remember that she had seen him in the neighbourhood of Holme Fallow that night, but anyone may go to the Lizard, and she was welcome to remember that she had seen him there. As it turned out, she had not seen him.
    She looked at him now for the first time, and might have liked him if he had not made her angry by looking through her and looking amused. He was well enough—the sort of man she rather liked—not young, not old—forty or something less. He looked hard and fit, and quite extraordinarily brown, and he wore his old tweed suit easily. But what in the name of all that was outrageous did he find amusing about Sarah Trent? He had a quiet, pleasant voice and an American accent. The motorist who had been stopped by Miss Trent had had no accent. Sarah did not think of this, because she had no reason to think of it. She was engaged in being angry with Mr. John Brown. She did not in any way connect him with the motorist.
    He had now turned back to Lucilla.
    â€œMr. Hildred has very kindly asked me to dinner to-night.”
    â€œAre you coming?” Lucilla had stopped being grand. She now looked and spoke with the naive directness of a child.
    â€œI should like to come very much,” said Mr. Brown.
    And that was all. They went one way, and he another.
    He came to dinner in the evening, and made a very good impression. Miss Marina took a great fancy to him. What she chiefly desired was a good listener, and Mr. John Brown listened very well indeed. During dinner he lent a respectfully attentive ear to one of her longer stories, the one about the house which her parents had so nearly taken when she was in her early teens and which turned out afterwards to have a skeleton buried in the garden.
    â€œSuch an escape! And so much more suitable that it should have been the Bishop of Blackminster who took it.”
    Mr. Hildred said, “Nonsense, Marina!” and Lucilla asked “Why?” rather pertly, but Mr. John Brown went on listening a little vaguely but still very respectfully while Miss Marina told him all about the skeleton being the skeleton of the gardener’s wife.
    â€œOnly of course he wasn’t gardener there any longer, because the whole thing had happened about thirty years before, and he said the poor thing had run away to America with their lodger, and all the time he’d killed her and buried her in the garden. So wasn’t that a merciful escape?”
    â€œFor her, or for him?” said Ricky with