Appleby's Answer by Michael Innes Page A

thoughts do culpably stray at times during a service. I’m sure it’s not something that ever happens in one’s congregation. There! You’re fit for the road again. Shall you be home in time for evensong?’
    He was laughing at her – and in a manner, surely, that ill befitted his cloth. But Miss Pringle found that, though perturbed, she was not indignant. There was something rather exciting about Dr Howard. She wondered why so masculine and handsome a man wasn’t married. He had a vocation for celibacy, perhaps. If so, it seemed a pity.
    â€˜Thank you very much, indeed,’ she said, as she climbed into the driving seat of her car. ‘It has been most kind of you. And I hope I haven’t too much delayed your work on that beautiful hedge. Gibber Porcorum is a delightful place. I shall always remember it.’
    â€˜Either here or at Long Canings’ – Dr Howard was suddenly decorously conventional – ‘we are always glad to welcome visitors.’
    â€˜That is something very nice to know.’ And Miss Pringle extended a gracious hand, let in the clutch, and drove away.

 
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9
    In fact our heroine stood not upon the order of her going, but went at once. And this proved to be a mistake, since her more haste ended in the less speed. The road out of Gibber Porcorum was less a road than a lane; it wound; it ran between high banks. Rounding a bend with her foot a little too confidently on the accelerator, Miss Pringle received a confused impression of imminent collision with a large brown mass, and pulled up with her bonnet sited alarmingly and grotesquely beneath the hind quarters of a horse.
    The horse had pulled up too. Miss Pringle, calling out words of apology (for the horse had a rider), put her car abruptly into reverse. The horse screamed in agony. The rider swore. Miss Pringle, who hadn’t even known that horses could scream, or even that a lady (for the rider was a lady) could swear quite like that , managed to arrest her retrograde progress just before the brute would have been brought sprawling to the ground. The disastrous truth was evident. Incredibly, the greater part of its tail had got itself tangled in her radiator.
    Lady Pinkerton, who had looked at Miss Pringle stonily in church, was looking at her stonily now. That she was doing this from the saddle made the effect the more intimidating. But at least she had stopped uttering those quite shocking imprecations. She seemed, indeed, to be going through the process known as choosing one’s words.
    â€˜Who are you?’ Lady Pinkerton asked.
    This is a question, inoffensive in many tones and contexts, into which much arrogance can be stuffed. Lady Pinkerton had stuffed it. And Miss Pringle instantly reflected – for she was a woman of swift-moving mind – that if Sir Ambrose Pinkerton’s diffident air so much belied him that he was at all like his wife, then the lethal feelings and intentions of Captain Bulkington had a good deal to be said for them. She decided, however, to ignore the unmannerly question flung at her.
    â€˜I am afraid,’ she said politely, ‘that you will be obliged to dismount. Your horse has thrust its tail into my engine. If it has caught in the fan-belt we shall need a pair of scissors. Do you happen to carry one?’
    â€˜Don’t be a fool, woman.’ Lady Pinkerton, nevertheless, climbed from her horse. ‘And I know you perfectly well. You are the gardener’s aunt.’
    â€˜And this, I suppose, is the car of the gardener’s aunt?’ The indignation of Miss Pringle was mounting rapidly, and had produced this sarcasm.
    â€˜Impertinence will not be of service to you. I expressly forbade Lurch to have you visit him, or come near the village. Your husband is a shop steward in Swindon, and you are both notorious agitators.’ Lady Pinkerton paused, and regarded Miss Pringle fixedly. ‘Good God!’ she exclaimed.