“Yes of course, if that’s what you would like. But let’s try taking a picture in the wood if we can find the right spot.”

“I know just the place. There’s a glade where I sit sometimes, just for a few moments’ contemplation.” He began to walk, leading the way to his private place.

In the centre of a clearing was a carved seat carefully wrought with a back and arm rests.

He turned to me. “It’s not too dark?”

“It will be in another hour, but not now.”

“Jimmy Noakes the gardener created this, when he came back from the war. The dream of it kept him going during his time in the trenches. He lived for the moment when he could come back, and make this chair from a tree that fell before it all began. He thought of sitting here, listening to birdsong, hearing a gentle wind disturb the leaves.”

“This is a beautiful spot.”

“He said for me to feel free to sit here whenever I want, even though I passed the war in the admiralty with Mr. Brockman.” He sat down.

Sometimes the very first shot is the right one, and I felt that. All the same, I took a few more, just to be certain.

When we were finished, and walking back to the house, I asked Raynor about using the telephone to speak to my housekeeper.

“Of course. You can use the telephone in the hall, unless you would like privacy.”

“The telephone in the hall will be fine.”

“I’ll leave you to it.” He opened the door to Benjie’s study. “Some papers for me to sort for Mr. Brockman.”

He closed the study door behind him.”

I put in the call, and waited for the operator to ring back.

After a few minutes, I was speaking to Mrs. Sugden.

I kept the conversation short. Would she let my mother know I would not be there for Sunday dinner? She would, and assured me all was well at the house, and with Harriet and the dog. We said goodbye. She hung up. I waited. There was a click on the line.

Someone had listened in.

It would not be safe for me to make calls from Thorpefield Manor.

Later, I asked Milly. “Are there many telephones in the house?”

“The one in the hall, Mrs. Brockman’s bedroom, and Mr. Brockman’s study.”

Benjie had set Raynor to spy on me. It was nothing to worry about. We were on the same side, after all, but I needed to stay in touch with Sykes and Mrs. Sugden. Perhaps Philip’s idea about my leaving messages in the third bee bole was not so outlandish.

I went up to my room, to read Philip’s schoolboy treatise on rhubarb. He must have scoured his dictionaries and encyclopaedias, probably after one of our illicit cycling trips to the rhubarb fields. We were all so very young, thought we knew everything, and that grown-ups were extremely dense.

Chapter Fourteen

RHUBARB by Philip Goodchild, age 11, of Wakefield, Yorkshire, England, Great Britain, the World