The Old English Peep Show by Peter Dickinson Page A

fabulous wads of lolly to satisfy their whims. But Harvey says it does you no good in the long run if word gets out that you can be bought. He soaks the advertising people for all they’re worth, for instance, but he puts a fantastic penalty clause in the contract so that they can’t mention the name of Clavering or Herryngs in the copy. I suppose I mustn’t ask what you want to see Maureen about.”
    Pibble shivered as a little flaw of wind drifted the ostrich plume in their direction, enveloping them in a momentary microclimate of Scotch mist. It made him realize how close winter actually was, how illusory the slant sun’s warmth.
    â€œI heard she might know something about Deakin’s love life,” he said.
    â€œOh dear,” said Mrs. Singleton. “I’m afraid that’s only too likely. Poor Deakin.”
    They walked on in a private two-minute silence for the dead man and his stilled lusts.
    On the far side of the ha-ha, which they crossed by a pretty little Gothick bridge at a point where the railway lines had ceased, the parkland tilted away to form a wide hollow. The near slope was dotted with copses and thickets, so placed that though there seemed to be wide reaches of turf between them they completely screened the whole stretch of land that lay in the hollow. The path twisted through a clump of bamboo, and they reached a little gate in an enormously high fence of stout pig wire.
    â€œWe don’t often bring visitors this way,” said Mrs. Singleton. “The Rocket takes them all through the Lion Ground on a loop on their way back from Maureen’s stall. It saves all the tiresome business of guides—white hunters they call them at Longleat. I’d better just load this thing.”
    She jerked the magazine off, fished half a dozen rounds out of the pocket of her tweed skirt, pressed them expertly in, and slapped the magazine home, working the bolt to send the first round into the breech.
    â€œI won’t offer to carry it,” said Pibble, “because I suppose it would invalidate the insurance. Besides, you look as if you’d do better with it than I would.”
    â€œYou’re right about the insurance, anyway,” she said, with her golden-syrup chuckle. “I’m afraid we keep the key under that stone there, and that’s not in the insurance, but we simply couldn’t find a sensible way of making sure it was available when anybody wanted it, because it always seemed to be in Uncle Dick’s pocket on the other side of the park.”
    Pibble found the key and opened the gate.
    â€œHang it up on that little hook,” said Mrs. Singleton, “so we can reach it on the way back. If a lion comes right up to you, stand still. They’re very inquisitive, and if you start jumping about they think it’s a game and I’m afraid they play very rough. Don’t worry—it isn’t likely.”
    They saw several lions in the next few hundred yards, but none close except for a sleeping lioness who was draped across two low lime-tree branches beside the path, so floppy with indolence that she looked as if she were composed of some immensely viscous liquid. Two cubs scratched at another tree, leaving deep gouges in the bark, and around a fallen trunk a group of five or six adult lions had posed themselves in greenery-yallery attitudes. Two of them turned their heads to watch the passing humans with an amber, unblinking stare.
    The lion enclosure did not seem to be very large, but now that Pibble’s position relative to the screening copses had changed, he began to catch glimpses of chimneys and roofs beyond it. The basin through which they were walking itself sloped southward, and then dipped quite sharply. It was in this dip that the hitherto hidden building stood.
    â€œIs that the old Abbey?” he said.
    â€œIt isn’t really an abbey,” said Mrs. Singleton, “except that parts of it came from an