The Shorthorn side of Charlton’s character steadied him against this reminder of the past; even if the murderer had stolen those letters to Mary with a project of blackmail, second thoughts would have shown that such blackmail would lead to identification and a death sentence. But a few weeks after the tramp’s acquittal, the aunt, Mildred Glasscastle, wrote to The Times asking for the loan of any relevant material for a proposed biography of the late Mary Glasscastle. This threw Charlton into a panic. Though he could not remember everything he had written to Mary, there had been enough authorship on his side of the correspondence for a great deal to recur to his mind, and what recurred was deplorable. Not content with praising Mary’s bosom, etc.—such praises do not get into commemorative biographies—he had praised her poetry, and the writings of other people who had been about at the time, committing himself to approvals that would be death to his reputation 49as an Aquinas, and to enthusiasms—he recalled a headlong approbation of that Blue Horse—that would make it impossible for him ever again to pronounce on a pedigree bull. It was the more painful to be thus menaced by the sins of his youth, because he had not merely grown out of them, as most of us do; he had turned his back on them. From the hour when an unforeseen legacy gave him an income, leisure and a small estate in the country, Charlton Mackrell had repudiated the shame and frustration of being an unregarded poet who was liable to be called Stiggins. His ambition, and a genuine longing to be responsible for a perfection, had turned him to cattle breeding. He bred some almost perfect animals; he established himself as an authority. From there, he had reinserted himself into literature as a critic. He was creditably placed in two worlds. Now, because Mary Glasscastle had been murdered, he saw himself being hissed out of both of them.

So there was nothing for it but to be humble and to be intrepid; he must be humble enough to visit Mildred Glasscastle, and he must be intrepid enough to get hold of those letters. As he was still rather afraid of his new car, and as all the special reporters had concurred in making their way to Buttercups by a series of stiff climbs and rugged lanes, he decided to go as far as he could by railway and then hire a taxi. A taxi, too, being anonymous, was more in keeping with the simplicity of his errand. To render its simplicity more apparent, perhaps fortuity should be added. He would not write beforehand; he would simply, quite simply, arrive. This decided on, Charlton had to exercise 50all his self-control to wait till a week had gone by after the letter in The Times.

It was a lowering May day, cold as March and flailed by an east wind. Slashes of sunlight gave a false drama to a landscape scabby with old mine-workings, a landscape that seemed bold for no worthier reason than that it was small in scale with sharp contours. Gusts of wind rattled the ill-fitting windows of the taxi. Tossing and swaying, the newly leaved ash trees in the hedgerows looked hysterically green. It seemed a landscape fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils, and, for that matter, murders.