Free A Change of Heir by Michael Innes Page B

produced, so that attention was now focused on him and everybody appeared to await his answer. And he had no answer. He had only – but this was something – a rapidly achieved grasp of what the problem was.
    The Pollocks, he had told himself, were not dangerous. Their memories of Bruton didn’t go back far enough. They had never set eyes on him until a few weeks ago. But in forming this opinion, he now saw, he had simply missed out, so to speak, a whole dimension of possibilities. Nicholas Comberford had scarcely been at Bruton since he was a boy. But he had, after all, been elsewhere. In one place or another, and named with his own name, he had lived in some sort of normal contact with his fellows. For a good many years, indeed, his residence seemed to have been mainly abroad. But there was always a possibility of running up against people who had known him, or at least against people who could dredge up some common acquaintance. This was almost certainly what was happening now.
    But who was the Master? There was quite a range of possibilities. He might be an MFH. But Aunt Prudence had turned out not to approve of hunting, and was on somewhat chilly terms with its supporters in the neighbourhood. This reference, therefore, was unlikely. The heir apparent to a Scottish peerage, Gadberry knew, is frequently designated as the Master of This or That. Since Mintons and Comberfords were alike supposed to be persons of aristocratic pretention perhaps this was the territory involved. Mrs Pollock might for some reason know, for instance, that Nicholas Comberford had been at school with a Master in this sense, and be proposing to strike an agreeable social note with the topic. But then again, the thought of schools introduced another possibility. Some public schools – Wellington, for example – call their Headmaster plain Master. So there was that possibility too. Again, the heads of certain Oxford and Cambridge colleges are styled Master. But the real Nicholas Comberford was not a university man, any more than the false one was. So that didn’t seem to help. Meanwhile, the silence was (to Gadberry’s sense) painfully prolonging itself.
    ‘Well, no,’ he said. ‘You see, I’ve been living abroad a good deal.’
    ‘But that, of course, is why I ask.’ Mrs Pollock’s tone expressed surprise. ‘Naturally,’ she added.
    Gadberry experienced an unpleasant sensation down his spine. Mrs Pollock struck him as an obstinate and tactless woman; she would press on with a piece of senseless chit-chat even when it had become evident that something had gone wrong with it. And it was just through the chink of some such small and peripheral occasion as this, Gadberry knew, that the waters of disaster might first trickle and then swell to a sudden flood. What was the answer?
    ‘Mr Comberford,’ Miss Bostock said suddenly, ‘tell Mrs Pollock about the donkeys.’
    ‘The donkeys?’ Gadberry was bewildered. For one thing, although Aunt Prudence’s companion did, through long association, occasionally fall into something like her employer’s manner of speech, she had spoken in an oddly abrupt and commanding fashion.
    ‘Your mention of residence abroad has put it in my mind. Your struggle against the mortadella factory.’
    ‘Yes, of course.’ Seizing on this as upon a straw, Gadberry plunged into elaborate improvisation. Considering the degree of his perturbation, he was conscious of doing it rather well. He found it hard to believe that Miss Bostock had not performed a deliberate rescue operation. But why on earth should she do so? She had never suggested herself to him as one alert to obviate minor social embarrassments. Yet any other motive than this opened up possibilities too dire to contemplate. Desperately, Gadberry talked on. Every now and then he stole a glance at Mrs Pollock in the endeavour to decide whether she was simply biding her time, determined to bob up again with her enigma as soon as opportunity offered.