Child’s Play. Reginald Hill

will!’ John Huby had posited mockingly. But the woman’s concern and agitation and unsparing attendance on her sick employer had impressed most observers deeply, causing even Lexie to admit a slight modification of her judgement.

      ‘Is Mr Lomas, Rod, ready?’ she now asked.

      ‘Just completing his breakfast. Have you time for a cup of coffee? Do step inside in any case.’

      It was Lexie’s first visit to Troy House since the funeral meats. Externally, the square, grey Victorian building was little changed. The well-kept garden with its gloomy shrubberies still had the goats on long tethers at the foot of the lawn while Hob the donkey grazed nearby, indifferent and free.

      Inside, however, there were signs of change, subtle but significant. Several of the doors off the large but gloomy entrance hall were closed for a start. In Great Aunt Gwen’s time, no door and few windows were ever closed as this interfered with her animals’ right of total access to every part of the house. Also the hall itself was surely not quite so gloomy as before. The heavy velvet drapes which, even when drawn open, still inhibited ninety per cent of the light entering via the stained-glass windows on either side of the door, had disappeared, and on the dark green silk wallpaper two lighter rectangles showed where half-length portraits of King Edward and Queen Alexandra had glowered out of gilded frames these past seventy-odd years.

      The kitchen had changed too, but not subtly. There were bright new chintzy curtains at the windows, a new sink unit in stainless steel had replaced the ancient deep-crazed pot one, yellow and white vinyl tiles covered the old stone floor and there was a new drop-leaf formica table in bright blue in place of the old solid-state wooden one which had impeded passage for all but the very slimmest.

      At this table sat Rod Lomas, drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette.

      ‘Lexie,’ he said, ‘you must be early.’

      ‘You’ve got two minutes,’ she said.

      ‘Time for another coffee, then,’ he replied.

      She didn’t answer but stared at him with that expression of nervous determination he was beginning to recognize.

      ‘All right,’ he said, rising. ‘I’ll get my jacket.’

      He left the room. Miss Keech poured a cup of coffee and handed it to Lexie. The Old Mill Inn girls had always thought of her as old, but today, aged about seventy, she looked somehow younger than Lexie could ever recall. It was perhaps the touch of colour which varied the hitherto unbroken blackness of her clothing; a red silk scarf at her neck, a diamanté brooch at her bosom.

      ‘You’ve got the kitchen nice,’ said Lexie.

      ‘Thank you. It’s never too late for change, is it?’

      Lexie sipped her coffee and did not reply.

      Miss Keech laughed, and this was as surprising as the vinyl tiles and the red scarf.

      ‘You must come again, Lexie, and talk over old times.’

      This time Lexie was saved from having to answer by Lomas calling, ‘Ready!’ from the entrance hall.

      ‘Thank you for the coffee,’ was all she said as she left, but Miss Keech only responded to this evasion with that surprising laugh once more.

      Outside, Lomas, though not particularly tall, made a great business of folding himself into the Mini.

      ‘This is a most selfish kind of car for you to drive,’ he complained. ‘Can’t you afford something larger?’

      ‘I can’t afford this,’ said Lexie, accelerating to the forty m.p.h. which both her own caution and the car’s limitations dictated was the optimum maximum speed.

      ‘But your mad social life demands that you have wheels,’ mocked Lomas.

      Lexie replied seriously, ‘The buses don’t run very late from town. And I like to get across to Leeds quite a lot.’