“No, perhaps we needn’t disturb them.” Chase was relieved to escape the necessity of giving an order to a servant.
They went downstairs together.
“Hold on to the banisters, Mr. Chase; these polished stairs are very tricky. Fine old oak; solid steps too; but I prefer a drugget myself. Good gracious, how that peacock startled me! Look at it, sitting on the ledge outside the window. It’s pecking at the panes with its beak. Shoo! you great gaudy thing.” The solicitor flapped his arms at it, like a skinny crow beating its wings.
They stopped to look at the peacock, which, walking the outside ledge with spread tail, seemed to form part, both in colour and pattern, of the great heraldic window on the landing of the staircase. The sunlight streamed through the colours, and the square of sunlight on the boards was chequered with patches of violet, red, and indigo.
“Gaudy?” said Chase. “It’s barbaric. Like jewels. Astonishing.”
Mr. Nutley glanced at him with a faint contempt. Chase was a sandy, weakly-looking little man, with thin reddish hair, freckles, and washy blue eyes. He wore an old Norfolk jacket and trousers that did not match; Mr. Nutley, in his quick impatient mind, set him aside as reassuringly insignificant.
“Farebrother and Colonel Stanforth are in the library, I believe,” Nutley suggested.
“Don’t forget to introduce me to Colonel Stanforth,” said Chase, dismayed at having to meet yet another stranger. “He was an intimate friend of my aunt’s, wasn’t he? Is he the only trustee?”
“The other one died and was never replaced. As for Colonel Stanforth being an intimate friend of the old lady, he was indeed; about the only friend she ever had; she frightened everybody else away,” said Nutley, opening the library door.
“Ah, Mr. Chase!” Mr. Farebrother exclaimed in a relieved and propitiatory tone.