‘Madness to have a house eating its head off!’ Horace said. ‘Still, you’ve paid the deposit on it, not I.’227

Having agreed to leave, he was in a fever to go quickly. In the new house, he thought, he would not only be a healthier man, leading a less endangered life, he would be a different man, immune to backslidings and regrets, a man who would not be exposed to blackmail from such things as the shadow of a bough moving across an old wall, the creak of a staircase like the creak of a saddle, a door-knob so familiar that it was almost like a hand in his hand. He wanted to go at once, while going was still like an advance. Later on, it might seem more like a retreat.

But not many people came to see Bendish Hall, and those who did, gave it vague praises and went away. By the end of November, Horace told Bond more or less what he thought of him and put the house into the hands of a London agent. The London agent sent down a young man who took a number of very grand photographs, and followed him up with a flood of possible buyers, who were more articulate and flattering than those supplied by Mr Bond, but equally unbuying. The aconites were in flower and Horace was coming out of his second cold in the head when Mrs Leroy appeared. Neither agent had sent her. She had heard from a man at the local garage, where she had stopped to buy petrol, that Mr Winterton had a house for sale. Her car was large and ornate, so were her shoes, and she talked about knowing her own mind and following her own nose. Her nose, that instrument of destiny, had brought her to Bendish Hall, and she could see at a glance that she was meant to live in it.

‘It’s not in the least what I want, and it’s far too large,’ she said. ‘But I see myself here.’228

As Horace showed her round, more and more insight into futurity was vouchsafed to her. She saw her Boulle mirrors in the Indian room, her seaweed marquetry desk in the library, her Cromwellian chairs in the hall. She saw what could be done about the kitchen. She saw her husband being as happy as a sandboy in the woodshed.

‘Mr Leroy loves all the simple, natural things,’ she said. ‘Sawing logs and polishing silver … No, thank you. Do you mind if I smoke one of my own cigars?’

By this time, they were back in the library, and Mrs Leroy was seated as though she had already moved in. ‘Of course, for myself, I’m a passionate gardener,’ she continued. ‘I can’t look at as much as a window-box without seeing possibilities in it, and every time I pass a cemetery, I fill it with great herbaceous things—delphiniums and anchusa and hollyhocks and peonies. But out there I see something perfectly simple. Just a mass of lavender and lilies. Of course, those trees would have to go.’