CHAPTER TWO

During the afternoon Rex Ransome had found his thoughts turning continually towards the Prentis family and in particular Fenella.

He had been obliged to drive some twenty miles to his Headquarters in another County, but all the time he was journeying there and back he found himself thinking of a small pointed face with large dark eyes.

‘Simon Prentis – Simon Prentis – ’

Rex Ransome repeated the name over and over to himself as he tried to remember more clearly the gossip and chatter of the past.

Snatches of it came back to him, but the whole picture of the man remained intangible in his mind.

He could remember his paintings, of course, they were unforgettable and far too famous to be forgotten.

From the point of view of the popular press Simon Prentis had made his name by his daring suggestive pictures of redheaded women, but the world that understood art knew him as a painter of genius, capable of portraying many different aspects of life.

His still life studies, for instance, Rex Ransome could remember one, a breakfast table in Paris set before a window through which one could see the house opposite and the first pale glimmer of spring sunshine and the effect of light and shade had been amazing.

There was another too which he could remember very clearly. A monastery gateway painted at midday with the effect of sunlight on the grey stone, which even when bathed by light and warmth seemed to retain the austerity and the frigid chill of age and isolation, had been symbolic.

There was no doubt that the man was one of the brilliant personalities of the century and Rex Ransome hoped that he would meet him.

For one thing he would like to know the real meaning of the picture he himself possessed. What was it that had made the woman laugh?

Despite his anxiety to get away from camp and back to Four Gables, Rex was kept later than usual. There were a great many matters to be seen to and the places where he had been able to billet his men were not entirely satisfactory.

However, at last he found himself driving up the long unkempt drive that led to Four Gables.

The house itself stood on the top of a hill overlooking the village and was sheltered at the back by a thick belt of trees, part of the extensive woodlands that stretched for miles and almost entirely surrounded Wetherby Court, Sir Nicholas Coleby’s place.

He switched off the engine and lifted out his suitcases.

He had meant to bring his batman with him, but it was the man’s supper time and he had arranged for him to bicycle up afterwards and do what unpacking there was to be done.

“You will have to make yourself useful in lots of ways,” Rex had told him. “They have no help in the house and it’s rather an imposition my having to billet myself on the ladies anyway.”

He fancied that he had detected an expression of resentment in the man’s eyes, but he could not be quite sure.

‘Lazy devil!’ he thought. ‘It won’t hurt him for once to do a little extra, they have an easy enough life.’

He well knew that he was noted for driving his men hard, but it was no harder than he drove himself, in fact, of the two his was the worst.

At times Rex Ransome’s brother Officers wondered what it was that galvanised him into such unremitting ac