“I’ll do that with pleasure, sir,” the veterinary promised. “There’s a sale at Norwich next week. I’ll be over yonder, surely.”
Mr. Johnson drank his sloe gin and held out the glass for replenishment.
“Good warming stuff,” he pronounced. “By-the-by, you may all like to know that I heard from the Squire this morning. They found the villa at Cannes in great shape, and her ladyship has walked a mile every day since they’ve been there.”
“It do seem wonderful!” the innkeeper declared.
“A most amazing recovery,” Mr. Craske echoed. “To see her lying on that chair month after month, no one would ever dream that she’d end her days marrying and walking about like any one else. There’s been a-many changes in these parts, Mr. Johnson, sir, since you’ve come.”
The latter nodded his head thoughtfully.
“There have indeed,” he agreed.
“One did feel six months ago,” the grocer continued, “as though some sort of cloud were hanging over the village, what with the poor gentleman as we thought had been murdered, and the police acting so suspicious-like round the place, and all the time talk about the Hall and the Ballaston lands coming under the hammer, and you, Mr. Johnson, not half the cheerful gentleman you are now, looking so solemn as though you had something on your mind all the time, if one might make so free.”
“Things have changed certainly,” Mr. Johnson acquiesced, knocking out the ashes from his pipe and relighting it, preparatory to departure. “The Ballaston mortgages, for instance, as every one knows, have been paid up to the last farthing, and enough left over from Mr. Gregory’s little enterprise to keep every one in comfort for the rest of their lives. No talk nowadays either of having to sell the old pictures or bits of china that weren’t heirlooms. There’s Mr. Henry up at Christie’s once a month looking for missing pieces. He’s starting a new catalogue the first of the year.”
“And the poor gentleman, as was supposed to have been murdered, found to have shot himself!” Mr. Foulds remarked. “That sort of lifted a weight from the place.”