“Quite. Have you organized a job for me, too?”
Macdonald chuckled. “No, young fella me lad, but I’ll drive you back to town on government petrol tomorrow. It’ll save you a tiresome railway journey. If you have nothing else to do, you can write a volume in vers libre embodying the idiom and opinions of Mrs. Briggs, charlady, of Camden Town.”
“Be damned! Are all our private lives open books to you?”
“Books at which I have glanced, and closed again. Books returned to the library shelf. No further concern of mine.”
“You just feel that Valehead will not be itself again until I—and Keston—and you have left it?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
Macdonald got to his feet and stood looking across the sunlit valley.
“Things happen, but the place remains,” he said quietly, as though talking to himself. “Crime and punishment, wars and rumors of wars, yet the earth still brings forth its increase. Perhaps the nicest thing one can say about Mrs. Merrion is that she apprehends the beauty of this valley, and she won’t let it be spoiled for her by the errors of human beings.”
Lockersley nodded. “Yes, you old proser. You’re right in the main. All right, I’ll come back to London with you, but one day I shall sneak back and sleep in the Hermit’s Cave.”
“May you dream good dreams,” replied Macdonald.
TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.
Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.
[The end of Death Came Softly by Edith Caroline Rivett (as E. C. R. Lorac)]
Death Came Softly Page 22
