The Dragonfly Pool

People had been streaming into the school all day: parents and sisters and aunts. Some came by train, some by car using their saved-up petrol coupons. The hotels in the neighborhood were fully booked, though some of the visitors were staying in the school itself or in houses in the village.

It was the end of term; the parents would see a performance of Persephone and take their children home the following day.

And it was spring. After days of grayness and rain, Delderton was bathed in sunshine; primroses and violets studded the hedgerows. In the pet hut the large white rabbit was molting; Borro’s cow had had her calf, and Delderton was in a festive mood. As well as the play, there were exhibitions of the children’s paintings, and the garments made out of Josie’s carded wool, and all the things that are made in school carpentry workshops the world over: bookends and small tables with wobbly legs and boxes into which things could be put (provided one didn’t need to shut the lid). But the play was what everyone had come for.

Tally’s aunts were among the first to arrive; her father had an urgent meeting at the hospital and was coming on a later train. They wanted to see everything that Tally had described in her letters. The cedar tree, Magda’s room, Mortimer, the library, Clemmy’s art room, and Clemmy herself. They admired everything, knew where everything was—it was as though they had been to the school there themselves.

“Oh yes, yes, of course,” they cried as Tally led them through the building. Karil they knew already; he had stayed the night with them in London after his grandfather’s funeral and was coming to spend the Easter holidays. After a while they disappeared into the kitchen because it looked as though Clemmy could do with some help.

Thank God I decided to stay, thought Daley, as he watched the visitors arrive. Well-trained visitors, whose children had told them about the importance of the cedar tree and who stopped to admire it or pat its trunk. They all came: Barney’s father, Borro’s parents, the older sister who had brought Tod up . . .

Early in the afternoon a guest arrived in a large closed car—a man wearing a shabby dark suit, with straggles of silver hair under his hat—and was taken to Magda’s room, where she was frantically sorting the children’s clothes for packing.

“Oh!” she said. “You were able to come—we hoped, but . . .”

The minister of culture nodded. “There is not so very much to do at the moment—we watch and hope that things will change and that one day Bergania will be free again. But there is certainly time to visit my nephew.”

“He’ll be in the hall—they’re very busy with the play. We haven’t said anything to him in case you were detained. It is such splendid news that you and the prime minister will act as Karil’s guardians till he is of age.”

“Yes, we agreed as long as Matteo joined with us. Neither of us is young anymore.”

But now he had seen the manuscript laid out on Magda’s desk.

“Ah, Schopenhauer,” he said. “You are nearly finished?”

“Well nearly, but not quite,” admitted Magda. “You see, there is the question of this washerwoman. Here is a man who has devoted his life to Reason and the Will—is it likely that he would throw a washerwoman down the stairs?”

The minister of culture bent over the page she showed him.

“It’s a problem, certainly; don’t you think perhaps what really happened was that he just gave her a little push—nothing serious—and her legs were weak from standing over a washtub all day, and she fell?”

Magda looked at him gratefully. “Yes. Yes, that seems very probable. You think I should write it like that?”

They were still discussing this urgent matter when the door opened and Karil burst into the room.

“Magda, we need—”

Then he stopped, drew in his breath—and threw himself into the old man’s arms. “Oh, Uncle Fritz, I never thought you’d be able to get away.” And then: “Have you brought him?”

Uncle Fritz nodded. “He’s in the car.”

He led Karil to the shabby limousine and opened the door—and the last of the Outer Mongolian pedestal dogs lifted his head from the seat and wagged his tail. Committing a dreadful crime seemed to have done him good. He looked younger and fitter.

“Poor little murderer,” said Uncle Fritz, scratching his ears.

For it was Pom-Pom who had killed the Duke of Rottingdene.

Trying to get away from the duke as he stamped and raged and swore, the little dog had taken shelter on the hearth rug in front of the fireplace in the Red Salon. The room was usually quiet during the day, and Pom-Pom was fast asleep when the duke came rampaging in, looking for his hearing aid and cursing the servants who must have stolen it and sold it at a vast profit. He started to pull open drawers and throw sofa cushions onto the ground, and in his fury he knocked over a heavy brass lamp.

The lamp clattered to the floor and Pom-Pom leaped up terrified, just as the duke staggered backward, stepped on him, and crashed with his full weight into the marble edge of the chimney piece.