It must be nice to be able to take a brush and a box of paints and put on record for one's own pleasure and satisfaction a beauty that could otherwise never belong to one. To have it to keep and look at whenever one wanted to until one died.

'Elizabeth Garrowby! she said to herself. 'In no time at all you will be hanging up actor's photographs.

But no; it wasn't like that at all. It was no more reprehensible than loving a-than admiring a work of Praxiteles. If Praxiteles had ever decided to immortalise a hurdler, the hurdler would have looked just like Leslie Searle. She must ask him sometime where he went to school, and if he had ever run races over hurdles.

She was a little sorry to see that her mother did not like Searle. No one would ever suspect it, of course; but Liz knew her mother very well and could gauge with micrometer accuracy her secret reactions to any given situation. She was aware now of the distrust that seethed and bubbled behind that bland front, as lava seethes and bubbles behind the smiling slopes of Vesuvius.

In that she was, of course, right. When Walter had borne his guest away to show him his room, and Liz had gone to tidy for dinner, Mrs Garrowby had catechised her sister about this unknown quantity that she had unloaded on the household.

'How do you know that he ever knew Cooney Wiggin at all? she asked.

'If he didn't, Walter will soon find out, Lavinia said reasonably. 'Don't bother me, Em. I'm tired. It was an awful party. Everyone screaming their heads off.

'If his little plan is to burgle Trimmings, it will be too late tomorrow morning for Walter to find out that he didn't know Cooney at all. Anyone could say they knew Cooney. If it comes to that, anyone could say they knew Cooney and get away with it. There was practically no part of Cooney Wiggin's life that wasn't public property.

'I can't think why you should be so suspicious about him. We have often had people we didn't know anything about down here at a moment's notice —

'Indeed we have, Emma said grimly.

'And so far they have always been what they said they were. Why pick on Mr Searle for your suspicions?

'He is much too personable to be wholesome.

It was typical of Emma to shy at the word 'beauty', and to substitute a bastard compromise like 'personable'.

Lavinia pointed out that since Mr Searle was staying only till Monday the amount of unwholesomeness he could manage to disseminate was necessarily small.

'And if it is burglary you are thinking of, he's going to have a sad shock when he goes through Trimmings. I can't think, off-hand, of anything that is worth lugging as far as Wickham.

'There's the silver.

'Somehow I can't believe that anyone went to all the trouble of appearing at Cormac's party, and pretending to know Cooney, and asking for Walter, just to obtain possession of a couple of dozen forks, some spoons, and a salver. Why not just force a lock one dark night?

Mrs Garrowby looked unconvinced.

'It must be very useful to have someone who is dead when you want to be introduced to a family.

'Oh, Em, Lavinia had said, breaking into laughter as much at the sentence as at the sentiment.

So Mrs Garrowby sat and brooded darkly behind her gracious exterior. She was not afraid for the Trimmings silver, of course. She was afraid of what she called the young man's 'personableness. She distrusted it for itself, and hated it as a potential threat to her house.

3

But Emma did not, as Marta Hallard had prophesied, get the young man out of the house first thing on Monday morning. By Monday morning it was incredible to the inhabitants of Trimmings-all but Emma herself-that on the previous Friday they had never heard of Leslie Searle. There had never been any guest at Trimmings who had merged himself with the household as Searle did. Nor had there ever been anyone who intensified the life of each one of them to the same extent.

He walked round the farm with Walter, admiring the new brick paths, the piggery, and the separator. He had spent his school holidays on a farm, and was knowledgeable as well as receptive. He stood patiently in green lanes while Walter recorded in his little notebook a hedgerow sprout or a bird-note that would do for his broadcast next Friday. He photographed with equal enthusiasm the seventeenth-century honesty of the little farmhouse, and the surrealist irrelevance of Trimmings, and contrived to convey the essential quality of each. Indeed, his photographic comment on Trimmings was so witty that Walter after his involuntary laughter had a moment of discomfort.