Загадочные события во Франчесе / The Franchise Affair

It was the usual collection of protests, poems, and pedantry; the place of honour among the protests being accorded to Nevil’s future father-in-law, who spread himself for three-quarters of a column on England’s shame in that she refused sanctuary to a fugitive patriot.

The Bishop of Larborough had long ago extended the Christian philosophy to include the belief that the underdog is always right. He was wildly popular with Balkan revolutionaries, British strike committees, and all the old lags in the local penal establishment.

(The sole exception to this last being that chronic recidivist, Bandy Brayne, who held the good bishop in vast contempt, and reserved his affection for the Governor; to whom a tear in the eye was just a drop of H

O, and who unpicked his most heart-breaking tales with a swift, unemotional accuracy.) There was nothing, said the old lags affectionately, that the old boy would not believe; you could lay it on with a trowel.

Normally Robert found the Bishop mildly amusing, but today he was merely irritated.

He tried two poems, neither of which made sense to him, and flung the thing back on the table.

“England in the wrong again?” asked Ben Carley, pausing by his chair and jerking a head at the Watchman.

“Hullo, Carley.”

“A Marble Arch for the well-to-do,” the little lawyer said, flicking the paper scornfully with a nicotine-stained finger. “Have a drink?”

“Thanks, but I’m waiting for old Mr. Wynyard. He doesn’t move a step more than he need, nowadays.

”

“No, poor old boy. The sins of the fathers. Awful to be suffering for port you never drank! I saw your car outside The Franchise the other day.”

“Yes,” said Robert, and wondered a little. It was unlike Ben Carley to be blunt. And if he had seen Robert’s car he had also seen the police cars.

“If you know them you’ll be able to tell me something I always wanted to know about them. Is the rumour true?”

“Rumour?”

“Are they witches?”

“Are they supposed to be?” said Robert lightly.

“There’s a strong support for the belief in the countryside, I understand,” Carley said, his bright black eyes resting for a moment on Robert’s with intention, and then going on to wander over the lounge with their habitual quick interrogation.

Robert understood that the little man was offering him, tacitly, information that he thought ought to be useful to him.