Читать книгу The Woman at the Door - Warwick Deeping - Страница 7

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Mr. Temperley was a man who did not allow his curiosity to cheat him into shirking details. So, Mr. Luce was satisfied that the place was habitable. Very good, and did Mr. Luce realize that the sanitation was primitive, and the water just well-water, and that in muddy weather you could not get a car within a mile of the place?

“Thank God for that,” said Luce.

Did he propose to furnish the tower? O, very sketchily. He was accustomed to sleeping in a camp-bed. And could Mr. Temperley tell him how the last tenants had moved their furniture? He could. They had managed to get a waggon and a team within two hundred yards of the tower; it had been dry weather and the old trackway through the Brandon woods had been usable.

“I shouldn’t advise you to send down a pantechnicon.”

Luce laughed.

“I shan’t. I’ll charter a light motor-van, and a couple of stout fellows. I’m not exactly a weed myself.”

Mr. Temperley smiled at him, for Luce suggested a Viking who had ceased from plunder and the blood lust, and become gentle.

“Well, we had better have an agreement.”

“Yes,—I’m a complete stranger. But what are you going to charge me?”

“How would forty pounds a year strike you? And the tenancy to be a yearly one? Though, if you want to give us notice—I daresay we can meet you.”

“I shall get quite a cheap country house. But would your people sell?”

“Possibly.”

“You might put it to them, Mr. Temperley. If I like the place—I might buy. By the way, I suppose it is insured?”

“Against fire? Yes. That’s our business.”

“And what about repairs? You won’t expect me to decorate all five stories? I propose having the lower two rooms and the kitchen papered or distempered and painted.”

“O, we’ll do that for you.”

“Soon?”

“We still employ our estate workmen. I can put them on at once.”

“So—I could move in in about a fortnight?”

“I should think so.”

And then Luce invited Mr. Temperley to dine with him at the Chequers. Not that the Chequers’ dinner was in any way unique. Mr. Temperley chuckled. “Very good of you. Better come and dine with me.” Luce thanked him, but confessed to a feeling that Mr. Temperley was conferring all the favours. But he did agree that an old gentleman in the seventies might prefer to be humoured, and to drink his own port and mix himself his own glass of toddy.

“You’ll get a much better dinner here, Luce.”

“I expect so, sir, and much better company.”

“Thank you. Interested in flint implements, and pottery?”

“Yes,—I happen to be particularly so.”

“Splendid! I’ll show you my collection, all local produce. I’ve got some bronzes too, and a few Roman things from Forley. Yes, you may remember that wretched fellow Hugo Hodge plundered Forley in the ’forties. I would like to have had his scalp.”