Five days!’ said Bunty thoughtfully, over the breakfast table on Tuesday morning. ‘Late to bring in the Yard – for which I’m sure you’re grateful – but you do seem to be up against a long slog, don’t you? After the almost invisible man. Nothing from any of the local garages on cars with one front wing damaged?’

‘Any amount of reports,’ said George, ‘all of which petered out on examination. Probably hardly any damage at all, if the truth be known, maybe a slight dent, nothing to be noticed, and he had plenty of time to get well away before we even got the call, let alone felt sure it wasn’t an accident.’

‘So you’re left with a list of all those dealers in close competition with Rainbow, especially the ones who were frequent visitors up there, plus all the other guests at his house that particular Thursday evening. Plus,’ she added doubtfully as an after-thought, ‘Evan Joyce, who just may have let his scholarly passion run away with him at the sight of treasure. Two days to fill in, in detail, for all those. Quite an order! So I suppose,’ she ended with a sigh, ‘I can expect you when I see you!’

‘Not even then!’ said George, and kissed her, and set off to begin a long day of patient leg-work at the Golf Club.

At about this same hour Bossie Jarvis, brushed and fed and fit, his school cap at the approved angle, erupted in the doorway of Sam’s study and solemnly reported himself off to catch the school bus down to Mottisham. By this time his grazes had faded to a quiet light-brown colour, and ceased to be glaringly noticeable. He was wearing his Sunday choir-boy look, so glossily clean that it was plain no dirt would adhere to him, so neat that the experienced adult, confronted with him, must instantly be haunted by suspicion of such virtue. His bulging school-bag was slung on one shoulder, and his glasses shone urbanely in the morning sun of what promised to be a fine day.

‘I’m going now, Dad!’ He had the doctor’s permission, and the sense to be just a degree more dutiful and amenable than usual, for reassurance to parents whose nonchalance hadn’t got him fooled for a moment. ‘Ginger and Bill are outside, we shall all be together.’ Don’t overdo it! One step too far, and they’d smell a rat.

‘Push off, then,’ said Sam briskly, aware that he, too, was playing a part, and skating over even thinner ice. ‘Just as long as you all come back together, too.’ Not much could happen on a school bus full of riotous youths, and in broad daylight. No coddling, they agreed firmly. One, he wouldn’t stand for it, and two, he’s smug enough already, deploy an army round him and he’ll be unbearable.

‘Oh, yes, well, we always do. But, Dad, a bunch of our class are staying later this afternoon and going round Mottisham Abbey with a party. All right if I go with them? We’re going to do a project on it.’ Magic word, terror of all parents whose schooldays occurred before projects were invented to take the place of hard graft. ‘We’ll all be coming back together, only on a later bus. Our passes are OK for any of them. I wouldn’t want to miss it.’

That, at any rate, was a safe line. Of all the schoolboys Sam had ever known, Bossie was the least likely to want to miss what others might think a deadly dull archaeological visit.

‘Oh?’ said Sam, turning to look at his son more narrowly. ‘Who’s going from here?’

‘Ginger, and Bill, and Jimmy, and Spuggy Price – all our bunch.’

From the new comprehensive school at Mottisham to the abbey was not ten minutes’ walk, and the escort appeared to be more than adequate. ‘All right,’ said Sam, ‘just behave yourselves and keep off the walls. Don’t spin it out too late, though, we’ve got a visitor coming tonight.’

At any other time Bossie would instantly have demanded to know who, out of the practical need to adjust his own engagements according to his liking or dislike of the guest. This time he was too intent upon his own single purpose to prolong the interview, once he had got the permission he wanted.

‘Right!’ he said buoyantly, ‘I’ll see you later, then.’ And forthwith departed rapidly. Not until much later did it occur to Sam to remember this unusual want of curiosity, and feel uneasy about it.

Mottisham Abbey, according to record, had been in a sad state of dilapidation, physically and morally, even before the king’s commissioners made an end of it, and for centuries it had passed almost unnoticed among the ancestral houses of England. Only the former abbot’s lodging and a few attached buildings remained in full preservation, turned into a private house after the expulsion of the few remaining monks. Even the church had been in such a poor state of repair that it had been pulled down to provide a quarry for the enlargement of the parish church, half a mile away, and for the private purposes of the Macsen-Martel who had acquired the property. Nobody had ever investigated the relics, or suggested that a dig might be rewarding, until the family, sagging under the burden of maintaining the place, offered it to the National Trust with what endowment they could provide to accompany it. The resulting consultations had brought in various experts, and turned up evidence that the ground-plan of the vanished establishment was remarkably complete at and below soil-level, and showed some unusual features well worth investigating further. Gangs of enthusiastic volunteers had been at work under Charles Goddard’s guidance ever since, and still were, laying bare with love the intricacies of a Benedictine house in decline. The property would end up administered jointly by the National Trust and the Department of the Environment, and after renovation they would hope to find a tenant for the house.

This brief introductory history Bossie Jarvis expounded to his henchmen, as they stood waiting to be marshalled into a conducted party, just within the entrance gate at the inner end of the drive.

‘You mean they’re working like this for nothing?’ demanded Jimmy Grocott incredulously, eyeing the distant excavations where the kitchens and offices had once been, where half a dozen students were industriously brushing away at half-revealed stonework, or measuring, or fixing mysterious tags into position.

‘Of course they are. They like it!’ Bossie would have liked it, too, though he would have preferred something that would make faster headway than a small brush. ‘Not those, of course!’ he added, nodding towards the overalled men who were erecting a steel scaffolding round the walls of a huge round building half-seen among the trees of the grounds, and crowned with a fine conical roof. ‘Those are professionals, they’d never let the public do the restoration work.’

‘What is that thing?’ Spuggy Price wanted to know.

‘The dove-cote. That’s famous. Maybe they’ll let us inside there. There’s holes in that lantern in the roof for the birds to get in and out, and all inside there’ll be nesting holes in the walls, for thousands of birds. They kept them for food.’

‘Not much meat on a dove,’ said Toffee Bill disparagingly. Food was his special subject.

The entire site was a hive of activity, both professional and amateur. At this stage the gardens had naturally suffered somewhat, since half the revelations for which the enthusiasts were digging were under rose-beds and shrubberies. A bewildering number of people were moving about purposefully, paying no attention to the mere sightseers. One conducted party had vanished into the house itself about ten minutes previously, presumably those still waiting would be launched on the same round with another guide as soon as the group ahead had progressed far enough to avoid confusion. Meantime, they looked about them curiously at all this incomprehensible activity, and were not particularly impressed.

‘I don’t see why the National Trust would want it,’ said Spuggy, always outspoken. ‘There’s nothing much here.’

‘They’re only just finding out what’s here, and they say it’s turning out more important than anybody thought.’ But Bossie was tolerant of those who did not share his thirst for knowledge, and appreciated their loyalty in assisting him regardless. ‘What does it matter, anyhow? You know what we’re here for.’

A few stray adults and a family had joined them by this time. A youngish, dark, sombre man who seemed to be in an official capacity here was looking out from the ticket office, to which he had just crossed from the house, and visibly counting them, and equally visibly frowning at the sight of a bunch of schoolboys at an age he did not trust. He eyed them coldly, said something probably derogatory over his shoulder, to the girl in the kiosk, and went away as abruptly as he had come.

‘I hope we don’t get him,’ said Spuggy, his hackles already rising. ‘You know what, I’ve seen that bloke somewhere before. Up our way. He’s been hanging round Mrs Rainbow, but I don’t think she’s keen.’

Their guide, however, when he emerged from the house and crossed the sweep of gravel to collect them, turned out to be a very different person, large, blond and friendly, in a polo-necked sweater and charcoal slacks, casual and reassuring. He had sharp, quirky features, and mobile eyebrows that acknowledged juvenile scrutiny with a tilt that was as good as a wink, and a philosophical grin. He had an air of finding his role as guide, though pleasant and even important, slightly funny. That didn’t put Spuggy Price off him at all, quite the contrary. Spuggy, though aware of their reason for being there, was also finding this funny, and if his guide felt the same, the whole round might be enlivened.

‘All right, let’s go!’ said the fair young man briskly, and led his sheep off across the gravel to the arched doorway of what had once been the abbot’s lodging. Fourteen in his party, nine of them children. Some of his volunteer colleagues would have blenched, he seemed to be stimulated.

The comparative gloom of the house closed over them, the huge, vaulted hall, the panelled drawing-room. The panelling had been scoured free of all accumulated varnishes, and gleamed pale and shimmering in fine oak, and the ceilings were renovated and beautiful. The guide talked just enough, and listened if other people talked, willing and glad to answer questions, even when the questions were silly, and very soon paying particular attention to Bossie’s questions, which were not silly.

‘You’ve been doing your homework, haven’t you?’ he said appreciatively. ‘Yes, this is where the king, or any other noble guest, would have been entertained. This wasn’t one of the greater houses, but even here, in its heyday, the abbot may have had five hundred guests to dinner. If there was a king among them, the whole house would be given over to him. Of course, when it became a private house, however wealthy, those days were over. The rooms you see have almost all been adapted later. But not the hall.’

From the house he led them eastward through a wilderness of truncated flower-beds and scoured areas of excavation, towards what was now the stable block, or had been when the Macsen-Martels could still afford horses and carriages, and arrayed them along a slightly bumpy aisle of grass on the outer side of the stable-block’s northern wall.

‘Now you’re standing in what was once the nave of the abbey church. You can see it’s completely gone, at least above-ground. Not so much as the base of a pillar. It wasn’t one of the greater efforts, but all its stone was used for other purposes after the Dissolution. And you can see, if we’re in the nave of the church, that inside there, in the stable enclosure, that same square was once the abbey cloister. It usually adhered to the south wall of the church, and so it did here. We’ll look at that from the inner side on the way back, for that’s one wall that’s practically untouched since the secularisation.’

Bossie was gazing with absorbed attention at that rough stone wall, under its roof of yellow-lichened tiles. Spuggy, on the other hand, was staring in the opposite direction, where, in the middle of what had certainly once been the cemetery of the brothers, two pick-ups were unloading more sections of scaffolding, and two folding metal ladders, and a lorry was tipping cement. There was a mixer turning busily in a corner, under what would once have been the north transept, and a thickset elder shovelling in sand. So much more interesting to Spuggy that he almost got left behind when the party moved on, over the site of the altar and through the gardens, to the dove-cote, where there was a pause to allow everybody to duck inside by the low doorway, and gape up at the vast expanse of wooden framework inside, and the tier after tier of nesting-alcoves.

Jimmy Grocott, whose father kept racing-pigeons, stared with glazing eyes, imagining the flock needed to people such a palace. The guide laughed goodhumouredly, and invited him to start counting, but he lost count before he was a third of the way up the walls. Even when Spuggy Price was discovered three tiers up, head and shoulders into one of the nesting-places, he was merely slapped amiably on the behind, and invited to get down before the warden spotted him. He slid down backwards, grinning, scouring the toes of his school shoes raw on the stonework. They had come to the conclusion that they were lucky in their guide. He seemed quite impressed with Bossie, by the way he kept drawing him out and inviting him to display his knowledge.

‘Now we’re coming to the edge of the grounds, and as you can see, we’ve uncovered the outline of a whole range of buildings, that actually stretch away beyond the hedge, under the lane and into the village. Probably the outlying barns and stores go halfway under this side of the housing estate. But these four rooms you see laid out here form a sort of hospital block. The monks’ infirmary – then that small apartment, which was the misericorde.’ He caught Bessie’s knowing eye, and grinned. ‘Go on, you tell ’em what the misericorde was.’

‘It was where the rules were relaxed, so that the monks who were ill could have special food, and eat meat, and all that.’

‘Quite right! That leaves two more rooms to the block, the kitchen, and their own chapel. Some of them would be too feeble to get as far as the main church. And close by here was a small cloister, handy for them to take the air if they were fit enough. You can see the shape of the square maintained in the arrangement of these flower-beds, though we may have to take those up later, to see what we’ve got there.’

They had turned back now on a more southerly line.

‘Here along the north side of the small cloister a passage ran through to the great cloister, and along this passage were the cells of the scriptorium. I’m sure you can tell us what happened there?’

‘It was the place where they did their writing,’ said Bossie.

‘It was indeed. The provision here was fairly lavish, though neglected later. Ten cells, with doors on to the passage and windows to the north. And what sort of writing do you see them working at?’

‘Well, letters – there’d be a lot of business to conduct. And then they made their own copies of the Gospels and church service books, and decorated them with coloured initials, and gilt, and all that.’ Bossie was slightly shaken to hear himself drawing so close to the secret purpose of their visit, led on by this friendly chap who could put up even with Spuggy’s exploratory excursions into the stonework, and refrain from saying: ‘Don’t touch!’

‘You know, you could volunteer to do guide duty here any time you’ve got a free afternoon’ said the fair young man, laughing. ‘OK, what else did they write? Not here necesarily, I’m not sure our lot were all that scholarly by the end, but no doubt they had their day earlier. You can’t imagine them writing novels, now, can you?’

‘Lives of the saints?’ suggested Bossie tentatively. He had seldom had this sort of encouragement anywhere but at home. ‘And they were the historians, weren’t they? I mean, nearly all the records from the Middle Ages were written by monks.’

‘They were indeed! At St Albans, and Abingdon, and Malmesbury, and Evesham, and a dozen others. What should we do without the monastic chronicles? Yes, they had plenty of writing to do. Right, come along, then! Now we’re about at the end of that row of ten cells, passing what was once the south transept of the church, and coming to what looks to you, I’m sure, like a perfectly solid eighteenth-century stable-block, renovated from earlier work, but mainly eighteenth-century.’

That was exactly what it looked like, a huge, square enclosure of brick walls, under mellow tiled roofs coloured gold and lime with mosses. There was a little turret over the entrance archway, with a drunken weather-cock leaning at an angle of forty-five degrees, and a clock-face that had been inscrutable probably for a century. A wrought-iron gate had been fitted into the archway, but stood open now, during visiting hours, and admitted the party to a spacious cobbled yard, a filigree of fine green grasses, with coach-houses and stalls round three sides, somewhat decrepit now, with doors sagging or missing. On the fourth side, the north, the full length was obviously one great room, with only one door, at the northeastern corner, and a range of very high, small windows along the rest of it, tack-room, store and hay-lofts all in one.

‘You’re looking at the actual shape of the great cloister,’ said their guide, with a companionable hand on Bossie’s shoulder as they entered. ‘The Macsen-Martel who got this place after the Dissolution kept the whole range of the cloister as stables and stores, and long after that the early eighteenth-century one pulled down some of the decaying brickwork and rebuilt in contemporary style. Just one side he let alone, it was still serviceable. That’s this north range. Come on, let’s have a look inside.’

The corner door was new, and fitted with a lock. This bit was precious, and under treatment. They trooped in after their guide, Bossie with eyes mildly crossed in his passionate concentration, and nostrils quivering.

It was rather dim within there, after the bright daylight outside. The inner wall, windowed as they had observed, let in a certain amount of light, enough to show the lofty timbering of the open roof, and the layout of the flooring, which was carefully roped off in the centre to convey visitors round an area of newly-uncovered tiles, thick russet ceramic patterned in lighter reds and yellows, in designs that added up in fours. Bossie knew them for originals from the Middle Ages, and stared entranced. Spuggy, less impressed, shoved a toe under the rope and prodded the nearest corner.

A voice behind them in the doorway rapped loudly and indignantly: ‘Don’t do that!’ They all whirled guiltily to stare at the morose and officious young man who had distrusted them on sight at the entrance. He was just entering from the stable-yard, with an overalled workman at his shoulder, and obviously armed with authority. ‘We’re trying to get this entire pavement restored,’ he said sternly. ‘If you disturb what’s been done you can cause a lot of trouble. Now, please keep outside the ropes, or you’ll have to leave this section.’ And he gave even their guide a glower, but at once went on with his companion to the far end of the long room, and almost vanished in the dimness.

Bossie had paid attention to this interruption with no more than the surface of his mind. He was staring intently at the rugged surface of the north wall, windowless, jagged, of big, hewn stone blocks. The guardian ropes allowed access to this wall, indeed invited its inspection. It was massive but irregular, probably due for careful restoration, since it was obviously extremely old. The touchy warden and his foreman were conferring over it in the far corner, pointing out certain places to each other, where the stone had weathered badly, for at least three different types of stone appeared to have been used, so that some blocks were hollowed and worn into dimples, while some had shaved off into thin slivers at the corners. It had taken centuries to do it, but time was gradually winning if the game was to bring the wall down. Officialdom had stepped in just in time to save it.

‘You know where we are now?’ asked the guide.

They knew. They were on the other side of the wall he had pointed out to them at the beginning of their tour of the grounds. Beyond it lay what had once been the nave of the church. They were in the north walk of the great cloister.

‘This is the walk that was given over to study. Along the inner side it was glazed in for shelter, and all along it, where the brick wall is now, there were little secluded alcoves with desks, where the monks could sit and read. Come on, don’t let me down, tell us what they were called.’

‘Carrels,’ said Bossie, responding almost automatically. His gaze remained fixed on the stone wall, studying the ground along its base, beaten earth cut down to the gravel, all very neat and freshly cleaned. If the tiling extended to this point, it was still buried.

‘Full marks! Carrels they were. And on the other side, the church side, that is, along this stone wall, were the aumbries, big cupboards where the manuscripts were kept. I doubt if ours were very elaborate, but beautiful examples do exist, carved and decorated with beaten metalwork. This is the only wall left intact from the very earliest foundation here at Mottisham, that’s why it’s so precious.’

‘It’s been knocked about since, then,’ observed Ginger critically. His father was an excellent small builder. ‘Look at all this loose fill-in rubble stuck into it where it’s getting worn. They should have done something better than that to keep it in repair. Look how it’s crumbling. And you can see daylight through it in several places. Wouldn’t take much to start that piece there, look, it’s got a bulge already.’

It was true enough. The light inside there was dim enough to let the day glance in clearly in several minute interstices, and the section of wall had indeed a distinct bulge.

‘That,’ said the guide cheerfully, ‘is exactly why we’re taking steps to put it back into condition, but it has to be done with due regard to the old materials, you know. Couldn’t knock a section out and fill it in with modern brick, now, could we?’

‘You’re going to have a big hole here any minute,’ pointed out Spuggy Price helpfully, and prodded with an exploring finger where a long, narrow, crumbling wedge of mortar was sagging from its place. Proof positive of his rightness, the slice promptly fell out with a clatter, and the warden whirled from his colloquy with the working foreman just in time to detect the crime. Whether he was in a bad temper that day for some quite extraneous reason, or whether he really felt as strongly as this about his charge, he came surging out of his corner in a rage.

‘That’s enough! Now get these kids out of here, before they bring the whole place down. I knew we were going to have trouble, the moment I set eyes on them. No teacher with them, of course! Pure vandalism! If it rested with me the abbey would be closed to school parties. You, keep your hands to yourself from now on, and please leave this section at once.’

‘Sorry!’ sighed their guide, not greatly troubled but willing to be conciliatory. ‘I should have put a ban on touching at the start. No harm done, actually, all this rubbish will have to come out, once we begin the job. But I grant you we don’t want it out just yet. Might bring the roof down over us,’ he concluded, and met Spuggy’s offended gaze with a twinkle in his eye, and got a furtive grin in return.

The warden distributed a black glare among them, and stalked out with his attendant on his heels, and the boys breathed again, even giggled a little. ‘I didn’t do his precious wall any harm,’ said Spuggy. ‘How did I know that piece would fall out if I touched it?’

‘Still, you know,’ pointed out their guide reasonably marshalling them towards the door, ‘we’d better do what he says. After all, he’s the caretaker here, it’s his job to preserve what we’ve got, not connive at knocking it down. You can’t blame him for doing his job.’

They supposed not; and they left peaceably, all the more circumspectly, in fact, because the warden had gone no further than the open yard, and was clearly waiting to see them safely off the premises.

‘Was it a big library they had here?’ asked Bossie, as they walked back towards the gate. ‘Is there any of it left now?’

‘Not a thing, as far as I know. By the end, from all accounts, scholarship was very little regarded here, or sanctity, either. This was one of the houses that had degenerated badly before they were dissolved. There were only four or five monks left, and they had no very good reputation. They’re even supposed to have robbed travellers who came here, maybe even murdered one or two. The place was badly run down. Closing it was more or less recognising a fact, though of course the family that got the property benefited.’

‘But there must have been books. I wonder what happened to them?’

‘I wonder, too, laddie,’ agreed the guide whimsically, as he let them out to the drive, ‘I wonder, too! Maybe they’d sold them long before, maybe they bartered them for wine, maybe they used them for fuel when wood ran short in the winter. There’s certainly no record of any remaining at the end to be dissipated or destroyed. I doubt if the last few monks had any Latin between them. Maybe they used the leather to make shoes!’

They gathered at the bus shelter in the village, all of them watching Bossie, who had walked this far in unusual silence and deep, grim thought.

‘Was that where he found it?’ asked Ginger at last.

‘Yes. But it’s all been cleaned out there. It was silted up with rubble then, soil and stuff, and grass growing. There’s nothing there now. Not unless it’s still under the floor.’

‘Maybe they already found it,’ suggested Toffee Bill.

‘No, there’d have been a terrific to-do about it if they had, in the papers, on television, the lot. We should have heard!’

‘Well, we can’t do any searching while there’s parties going round,’ said Ginger. ‘Let alone when he’s about!’

‘No,’ agreed Bossie weightily. ‘Not any time when there’s anybody about there.’ The statement sounded faintly ominous, and he was staring so hard into his own mind that his eyes crossed and remained crossed. ‘I’ve been thinking about that man. You said you’d seen him up at our place. I think I have, too. I think he came with Mr Macsen-Martel the first time, but he’s been to Rainbow’s house since then. He didn’t like us going in there, did he? Maybe he’s like that with all kids, but maybe it was because it was us. If we’ve seen him around, he may have seen us, too.’

‘You don’t think,’ breathed Ginger, open mouthed, ‘that it’s him.’ And they all drew closer, awed and chilled, their voices sinking to secretive undertones.

‘I don’t know,’ said Bossie. ‘I can’t say he is or he isn’t. I just have this feeling about him. He could be. He’s here right on the spot, isn’t he? And he didn’t like us showing up at the abbey at all, and he specially didn’t like us poking around by that wall, did he? He followed us in, and he took the first chance to order us out, and he talked about barring school parties altogether, though that may have been just cover, it’s us he didn’t want there.’ Bossie made up his mind, instantly and irrevocably, as he usually did. ‘I’m going to get in there after they’re closed!’

They were stricken mute, and could only stare and doubt.

‘That’s the only chance! And it’s got to be tonight. If he’s installed there, like this, then maybe he knows already where he has to look, he’s just playing it easy and taking his time. It’s now or never for us, if we’re going to get there first. No,’ he corrected himself heroically, ‘for me. I started this, and anyhow, it’s better only one should go.’

‘But how will you get in?’ they protested, shaken, half wishing themselves bold enough to go with him, half thankful that he was bent on going alone, and that it was he who habitually called the tune. ‘And what about your folks? They’ll go up the wall if you don’t show up with us.’

‘No, they won’t, because I’ll fix that.’ He had a friend with whom he occasionally stayed overnight here, when the school had evening events arranged; and though he hadn’t involved Philip in this adventure, since it belonged exclusively to Abbot’s Bale, he knew he could pop in at the Mason home and ask to use the phone to call his mother. A telephone box, of course, would be a complete give-away. With luck he might not even have to let Philip into what he wanted to say, or turn him into an accomplice. Let him go on serenely believing that his friend was merely calling to let his mother know he’d be home by a later bus. While she, naturally, accepted the version that Philip’s mum had asked him to stay overnight and go with Philip to the birthday party of another classmate, here in Mottisham. With every possible safeguard, of course! Bossie had a rudimentary conscience where his friends were concerned, but it had elastic properties, too. So even if he had to let Philip into his deception, Philip could be terrorised into secrecy, and Philip’s mum would be entirely innocent.

‘Anybody got a torch on him?’ demanded Bossie, getting down to details. ‘And any lunch left? But I’ve got some money, I can buy a pie at Cough’s. And if you like to stop over one more bus, you can come along and help me find the right place to get inside the fence. It’s long enough, there must be half a dozen good places. And we know the layout now.’

He rubbed his hands, already in action.

‘But, lamb,’ protested Jenny mildly, blissfully unaware that she was talking rather to a tiger on the prowl, ‘you can’t just dump yourself on Mrs Mason without notice, like that. Now don’t kid me, I know she’d have called me before if she’d had any idea she was going to have to find you a bed.’

‘But, Mummy,’ fluted the distant voice of her offspring, ‘nobody expected me to be back at school today, that’s why. But I was, and so I could go with Philip, do you see? So can I, please? You know I’ll be all right here.’ That was a stab to the heart, signalling his awareness that his parents might well worry on his account, recent events considered.

‘Well, I know birthdays don’t occur every day, and can’t be shifted, but…’

‘Ask Dad, though,’ entreated Bossie.

‘Dad is off scouring the library for a reference he couldn’t find, you devil. It’s me you’re putting on the spot. And listen, you don’t know the whole of it! We’re expecting Toby tonight! He rang through early this morning from Comerbourne, they’ve got a three-day theatre stand there. You surely want to see Toby, don’t you?’

Dead silence and dismay on the line for a moment. Then the voice, very much chastened: ‘Oh, Mum, you know I do! But if he’s got three days… Look, you’ve got to tell him to come again. And we could go and see what they’re planning, couldn’t we? They want customers! I’d love that, I really would.’

Bossie was really aggrieved. Fate ought not to do such unkind things to him. His idol would arrive only to find himself deserted by his most faithful admirer. But he stuck to his guns. ‘Still, I would like to stay tonight. If I can?’

‘If Mrs Mason can put up with you, why should I complain?’ At least she knew he’d be under safe-conduct with the Masons. ‘All right, stay, and mind you make time to do your homework. And telephone tomorrow, to let us know you’re OK and on your way to school, you hear me?’

He heard. He said: ‘Yes, Mum!’ with unaccustomed docility, and rang off rather abruptly.

How he was going to get out of this, in the end, he didn’t know, but now he knew past any doubt that he was in it, up to the neck.

‘I don’t like it!’ said Ginger rebelliously at the last moment. ‘We ought to go with you, at least some of us. It isn’t right!’

‘Don’t be daft! One can get by, but if there was a crowd of us we’d be sure to get caught.’

‘We could hang around here, though, within call. If you were in trouble, you’d only have to yell.’

‘I’m not going to be in trouble, and I don’t want you hanging about, you’d attract attention, lurking about here in a quiet back lane like this. What you’ve got to do is get on the bus and go home, and keep everything looking normal, otherwise it’s all wasted. If I’m lucky, and find something out in time to nip out again before night, I will, and I’ll go straight home and tell them. I’m not looking for trouble, all I want is a chance to go over the ground without anyone else knowing, and then it’s up to the police. Now I’m going. And you’d better push off, too.’

And in the end, unhappily and reluctantly, they did as they were instructed. They were so used to thinking of him as the brains of the outfit that they feared to make any alteration to his planning, in case they wrecked the show. Ginger looked back from the bend in the lane. The loose pale in the tall manorial fence was back in position, there was no rustling or movement among the bushes of the shrubbery within. Bossie had vanished, with his pocket torch, borrowed from Philip Mason under fearful oaths of secrecy, his collection of left-over sandwiches, one apple, and a pork pie from Cough’s, in case he really had to stay out all night. Ginger shook his head forebodingly, and all the way home on the bus he said never a word, and even Spuggy Price caught the habit of silence, and stared glumly out of the window.