Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 101, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 610 & 611, March 1993

The pattern became a little threadbare round the next corner. There, sitting in the hedgerow like a pile of household rubbish dumped by a passing vandal, was Old Tommy. Some tramps are picturesque at a distance. Close or far, Tommy was revolting. Such skin as could be seen through the layers of rags and the tangles of lank gingery hair was a mottled grey, like moldy bread. He was stuffing some sort of food he held wrapped in an old newspaper into the mouth which doubtless lay beneath the beard and he didn’t even look up as I passed. I would have ignored him also if it hadn’t been for a sudden shock of recognition.

That was no ordinary food he was eating! That was one of Alice’s solid fried eggs!

Surely a man could get no lower than this? I stopped and shared the horror of his degradation.

Now he looked up and acknowledged my presence.

“I would appreciate a little more salt,” he said. “If you could manage that one morning.”

Now my shock was doubled, or even trebled. He knew who I was! No wonder I’d seen him so frequently on my post-breakfast trips. Whenever I was at Millthwaite, it must have been like room service to him!

But worse still was his voice. This was no mumbling, half-witted derelict, but an educated man. The Times wasn’t just a container — he was holding it the right way up and reading the grease-stained news.

“Watch it, mate!” I blistered. “I’ll have the law on you.”

I daresay he looked surprised beneath the hair.

“What for?” he said. “Stealing your breakfast? You shouldn’t leave it lying around in ditches, should you? Now push off, will you, I want to get on with my paper.”

So saying, he opened it wide and I observed the words “Rose Cottage” scribbled plainly on the front page. If Jarvis questioned him about the money and the tarts, not only did he have the articulacy to defend himself, he had the evidence to support a counterattack. If this got back to Alice, her fury would be formidable.

I could see that there was little profit to be gained from arguing with Old Tommy. Threats weren’t going to work and I lacked the wherewithal to bribe him. In any case, as I’d found with young Lennie, bribery only got you in deeper. So with an affection of indifference, I began to retrace my steps.

The countryside round Millthwaite is thickly wooded and it was easy to step off the road round the first bend and find a vantage point among the trees from which I could observe what Old Tommy did next. The ground sloped sharply here. Far above me I could still hear the farmer stuffing pigeons full of buckshot. Behind me, in a small field carved out among the beechwoods, a couple of dozen sheep grazed, baa-ing contentedly as they chewed the lush grass. Bees buzzed, birds chirruped, leaves rustled. And over all the sun shone hotter and hotter.

God, how I hate the bloody countryside!

My fear was that Old Tommy might succumb to the general somnolence but, after only a minute or two, I saw him rise. If I read him aright, he was very willing to argue the toss with impotent civilians, but, empty though he believed my threat of the law to be, he preferred not to run the risk of an encounter with P.C. Jarvis. Or perhaps it was my connection with Rose Cottage and the ultimate deterrent of Aunt Alice which inspired him. Whatever the case, he began to walk with unwonted briskness along the lane in a direction which would ultimately bring him to the arterial road about two miles distant, and once over that he was off Jarvis’s patch.

I watched him out of sight with a lightening heart and whistled merrily as I. strolled through the sheep in the little field and out of the gate back onto the road.

But it seemed to be the fate of my bubbles of joy that summer morning to be rapidly burst.

As I came in sight of Rose Cottage again, I saw the lean and hungry figure of Constable Jarvis leaning on the gate in deep conversation with Alice. But it wasn’t just the sight of the constable that bothered me, it was what accompanied him.

On all my previous visits, Jarvis had moved majestically around the countryside on a very old, very upright, and very slow bicycle. The young and the hale could leave him far behind, and many of the old and the halt could give him a good run for his money.

But now a profligate state had seen fit to provide him with a shiny new motor scooter! Since Leonard’s death, I had frequently come into close and unpleasant contact with the Inland Revenue, and this blatant waste of taxpayers’ money filled me with rage.