“No stupid, gas. The gas left turned on. And where’s Chilthorpe, please?”
“It’s on the railway. If my memory serves me right, it is Chilthorpe and Gorrington, between Bull’s Cross and Lowgill Junction. But the man, you say, belongs somewhere else?”
“Pullford; at least it sounded like that. In the Midlands somewhere, he said.”
“Pullford, good Lord, yes. One of these frightful holes. They make perambulators or something there, don’t they? A day’s run, I should think, in the car. But of course it’s this Chilthorpe place we want to get to. You wouldn’t like to look it up in the gazetteer while I just get this row finished, would you?”
“I shan’t get your sock finished, then. On your own foot be it! Let’s see, here’s Pullford all right. . . . It isn’t perambulators they make, it’s drain-pipes. There’s a grammar school there, and an asylum; and the parish church is a fine specimen of early Perp., extensively restored in 1842; they always are. Has been the seat of a Roman Catholic Bishopric since 1850. The Baptist Chapel”——
“I did mention, didn’t I, that it was Chilthorpe I wanted to know about?”
“All in good time. Let’s see, Chilthorpe—it isn’t a village really, it’s a ship town. It has 2,500 inhabitants. There’s a lot here about the glebe. It stands on the River Busk, and there is trout fishing.”
“Ah, that sounds better.”
“Meaning exactly?”
“Well, it sounds as if the fellow had done himself in by accident all right. He went there to fish—you don’t go to a strange village to commit suicide.”