“Caro!” she said. “I want ’oo to propose. Daisy and me, we silly women, we want ’oo and Georgie to tell us what to do. But if Lucia must speak, I fink—”
She paused a moment, and observing strong disgust at her playfulness on Mrs Quantock’s face, reverted to ordinary English again.
“I should do something of this sort,” she said. “I should say that dear Daisy’s Guru had left us quite suddenly, and that he has had a call somewhere else. His work here was done; he had established our classes, and set all our feet upon the Way. He always said that something of the sort might happen to him—”
“I believe he had planned it all along,” said Georgie. “He knew the thing couldn’t last for ever, and when my sisters recognised him, he concluded it was time to bolt.”
“With all the available property he could lay hands on,” said Mrs Quantock.
Lucia fingered her tassel.
“Now about the burglaries,” she said. “It won’t do to let it be known that three burglaries were committed in one night, and that simultaneously Daisy’s Guru was called away—”
“My Guru, indeed!” said Mrs Quantock, fizzing with indignation at the repetition of this insult.
“That might give rise to suspicion,” continued Lucia calmly, disregarding the interruption, “and we must stop the news from spreading. Now with regard to our burglary … let me think a moment.”
She had got such complete control of them all now that no one spoke.
“I have it,” she said. “Only Boaler knows, for Peppino told her not to say a word till the police had been sent for. You must tell her, carissimo, that you have found the hundred pounds. That settles that. Now you, Georgie.”
“Foljambe knows,” said Georgie.
“Then tell her not to say a word about it. Put some more things out in your lovely treasure-case, no one will notice. And you, Daisy.”
“Robert is away,” said she, quite meekly, for she had been thinking things over. “My maid knows.”
“And when he comes back, will he notice the loss of the tankard? Did you often use it?”
“About once in ten years.”
“Chance it, then,” said Lucia. “Just tell your maid to say nothing about it.”
She became deliciously modest again.
“There!” she said. “That’s just a little rough idea of mine and now Peppino and Georgie will put their wise heads together, and tell us what to do.”
That was easily done: they repeated what she had said, and she corrected them if they went wrong. Then once again she stood fingering the tassels of her Teacher’s Robe.
“About our studies,” she said. “I for one should be very sorry to drop them altogether, because they made such a wonderful difference to me, and I think you all felt the same. Look at Georgie now: he looks ten years younger than he did a month ago, and as for Daisy, I wish I could trip about as she does. And it wouldn’t do, would it, to drop everything just because Daisy’s Guru—I mean our Guru—had been called away. It would look as if we weren’t really interested in what he taught us, as if it was only the novelty of having a—a Brahmin among us that had attracted us.”
Lucia smiled benignly at them all.
“Perhaps we shall find, bye and bye, that we can’t progress much all by ourselves,” she said, “and it will all drop quietly. But don’t let us drop it with a bang. I shall certainly take my elementary class as usual this afternoon.”
She paused.
“In my Robe, just as usual,” she said.
CHAPTER NINE
The fish for which Mrs Weston sent to Brinton every week since she did not like the look of the successor to Tommy Luton’s mother lay disregarded on the dish, while with fork and fish-slice in her hand, as aids to gesticulation, she was recounting to Colonel Boucher the complete steps that had led up to her remarkable discovery.
“It was the day of Mrs Lucas’s garden-party,” she said, “when first I began to have my ideas, and you may be sure I kept them to myself, for I’m not one to speak before I’m pretty sure, but now if the King and Queen came to me on their bended knee and said it wasn’t so, I shouldn’t believe them. Well—as you may remember, we all went back to Mrs Lucas’s party again about half-past six, and it was an umbrella that one had left behind, and a stick that another had forgotten, and what not, for me it was a book all about Venice, that I wanted to borrow, most interesting I am sure, but I haven’t had time to glance at it yet, and there was Miss Bracely just come!”
Mrs Weston had to pause a moment for her maid, Elizabeth Luton (cousin of Tommy), jogged her elbow with the dishcover in a manner that could not fail to remind her that Colonel Boucher was still waiting for his piece of brill. As she carved it for him, he rapidly ran over in his mind what seemed to be the main points so far, for as yet there was no certain clue as to the purpose of this preliminary matter, he guessed either Guru or Miss Bracely. Then he received his piece of brill, and Mrs Weston laid down her carving implements again.
“You’d better help yourself, ma’am,” said Elizabeth discreetly.
“So I had, and I’ll give you a piece of advice too, Elizabeth, and that is to give the Colonel a glass of wine. Burgundy! I was only wondering this afternoon when it began to turn chilly, if there was a bottle or two of the old Burgundy left, which Mr Weston used to be so fond of, and there was. He bought it on the very spot where it was made, and he said there wasn’t a headache in it, not if you drank it all night. He never did, for a couple of glasses and one more was all he ever took, so I don’t know how he knew about drinking it all night, but he was a very fine judge of wine. So I said to Elizabeth, ‘A bottle of the old Burgundy, Elizabeth,’ Well, on that evening I stopped behind a bit, to have another look at the Guru, and get my book, and when I came up the street again, what should I see but Miss Bracely walking in to the little front garden at ‘Old Place.’ It was getting dark, I know, and my eyes aren’t like Mrs Antrobus’s, which I call gimlets, but I saw her plain enough. And if it wasn’t the next day, it was the day after that, that they began mending the roof, and since then, there have been plumbers and painters and upholsterers and furniture vans at the door day and night.”
“Haw, hum,” said the Colonel, “then do you mean that it’s Miss Bracely who has taken it?”
Mrs Weston nodded her head up and down.
“I shall ask you what you think when I’ve told you all,” she said. “Well! There came a day, and if today’s Friday it would be last Tuesday fortnight, and if today’s Thursday, for I get mixed about it this morning, and then I never get it straight till next Sunday, but if today’s Thursday, then it would be last Monday fortnight, when the Guru went away very suddenly, and I’m sure I wasn’t very sorry, because those breathings made me feel very giddy and yet I didn’t like to be out of it all. Mr Georgie’s sisters went away the same day, and I’ve often wondered whether there was any connection between the two events, for it was odd their happening together like that, and I’m not sure we’ve heard the last of it yet.”
Colonel Boucher began to wonder whether this was going to be about the Guru after all and helped himself to half a partridge. This had the effect of diverting Mrs Weston’s attention.
“No,” she said. “I insist on your taking the whole bird. They are quite small, and I was disappointed when I saw them plucked, and a bit of cold ham and a savoury is all the rest of your dinner. Mary asked me if I wouldn’t have an apple tart as well, but I said ‘No; the Colonel never touches sweets, but he’ll have a partridge, a whole partridge,’ I said, ‘and he won’t complain of his dinner.’ Well! On the day that they all went away, whatever the explanation of that was, I was sitting in my chair opposite the Arms, when out