Fire and Hemlock. Diana Wynne Jones

on you. Keep it instead of a medal for life-saving.” At this, Polly tried to say thank you properly, but he cut her short by saying, “No, come on. I think your Granny may be worried about you by now.”

      Mr Lynn had to carry the picture, along with his five others. It bumped against Polly’s legs as she walked, which threatened to break the glass. The other funeral guests were having lunch by then. Polly could hear the chink of knives and forks as they hurried through the empty hall. Polly was glad. She knew, if they met Laurel on the way out, Laurel would know at once that Mr Lynn had all the wrong pictures.

      Thinking of Laurel, as she trotted beside Mr Lynn down the windy road, caused Polly, for some reason, to say, “When I come to work as your assistant in your ironmonger’s shop, I’m going to pretend to be a boy. You pretend you don’t know.”

      “If you want,” said Mr Lynn. “As long as that doesn’t mean cutting your lovely hair.”

      The lovely hair was blowing round Polly’s face and getting in her mouth and eyes. “It’s not lovely hair!” she said crossly. “I hate it. It drives me mad and I want it cut!”

      “I’m sorry,” said Mr Lynn. “Of course. It’s your hair.”

      “Oh!” said Polly, exasperated for no real reason. “I do wish you’d stop agreeing all the time! No wonder people bully you!” They came to Granny’s front gate then. “You can give me my picture now,” Polly said haughtily.

      Mr Lynn did not reply, but he looked almost haughty too as he passed the picture over. The silence was all wind blowing and leaves rattling, and most unfriendly. But Granny had clearly been looking out for Polly. As Polly hitched the picture under her armpit and managed to get the gate unlatched, the front door banged open. Mintchoc came out first. For some reason, she put her back and tail up and fled at the sight of them. Granny sailed out second, like a rather small duchess.

      “Inside, please, both of you,” she said. “I want to know just where she’s been.”

      Polly and Mr Lynn stopped giving one another haughty looks and exchanged guilty ones instead. Humbly they followed Granny indoors and through to the kitchen. There sat Nina, over a half-eaten plate of lunch, staring wide-eyed and full-mouthed. By heaving a whole mouthful across into one side of her face, Nina managed to say, “Where did you go?”

      “Yes,” said Granny, crisp as a brandy-snap. “That’s what I want to know too.” She stared long and sharp at Mr Lynn.

      Mr Lynn shifted the heavy pile of pictures to his other arm. His glasses flashed unhappily. “Hunsdon House,” he admitted. “She – er – she wandered in. There’s a funeral there today, you know. She – er – I thought she looked rather lost while they were reading the Will, but as she was wearing black, I didn’t gather straightaway that she shouldn’t have been there. After that, I’m afraid I delayed her a little by asking her to help me choose some pictures.”

      Granny’s sharp brown stare travelled over Mr Lynn’s lean, dark suit and his black tie and possibly took in a great deal. “Yes,” she said. “I saw the hearse go down. A woman, wasn’t it? So Madam gate-crashed the funeral, did she? And I’m to take it you looked after her, Mr – er?”

      “Well he did, Granny!” Polly cried out.

      “Lynn,” said Mr Lynn. “She’s very good company, Mrs – er?”

      “Whittacker,” Granny said grimly. “And of course I’m very grateful if you kept her from mischief—”

      “She was quite safe, I promise you,” said Mr Lynn.

      Granny went on with her sentence as if Mr Lynn had not spoken. “—Mr Lynn, but what were you up to there? Are you an art dealer?”

      “Oh no,” Mr Lynn said, very flustered. “These pictures are just keepsakes – for pleasure – that old Mrs Perry left me in her Will. I know very little about paintings – I’m a musician really—”

      “What kind of musician?” said Granny.

      “I play the cello,” said Mr Lynn, “with an orchestra.”

      “Which orchestra?” Granny asked inexorably.

      “The British Philharmonic,” said Mr Lynn.

      “So then how did you come to be at this funeral?” Granny demanded.

      “Relation by marriage,” Mr Lynn explained. “I used to be married to Mrs Perry’s daughter – we were divorced earlier this year—”

      “I see,” said Granny. “Well thank you, Mr Lynn. Have you had lunch?” Though Granny said this most unwelcomingly, Polly knew Granny was relenting. She relaxed a little. The way Granny was interrogating Mr Lynn made her most uncomfortable.

      But Mr Lynn remained flustered. “Thank you – no – I’ll get something on the station,” he said. “I have to catch the two-forty.” He managed somehow to haul up one cuff, and craned round the bundle of pictures to look at his watch. “I have to be in London for a concert this evening,” he explained.

      “Then you’d better run,” said Granny. “Or is it Main Road you go from?”

      “No, Miles Cross,” said Mr Lynn. “I must go.” And go he did, nodding at Polly and Nina, murmuring goodbye to Granny, and diving through the house in big strides like a laden ostrich. The front door slammed heavily behind him. Mintchoc came back in through her cat-flap in the back door. Granny turned to Polly.

      “Well, Madam?”

      Polly had hoped the trouble was over. She found it had only begun. Granny was furious. Polly had not known before that Granny could be this angry. She spoke to Polly in sharp, snapping sentences, on and on, about trespassing and silliness and barging in on private funerals, and she said a lot about each thing. But there was one thing she snapped back to in between, most fiercely, over and over again. “Has nobody ever warned you, Polly, never to speak with strange men?”

      This hurt Polly’s feelings particularly. About the tenth time Granny asked it, she protested. “He isn’t a strange man now. I know him quite well!”

      It made no impression on Granny. “He was when you first spoke to him, Polly. Don’t contradict.” Then Polly tried to defend herself by explaining that she’d thought she was following Nina. Nina began making faces at Polly, winking and jerking and twisting her food-filled mouth. Polly had no idea what Nina had told Granny, and she saw she was going to get Nina into trouble as well. She said hurriedly that Mr Lynn had taken her out of the funeral into the garden.

      Granny did indeed shoot Nina a look sharp as a carving knife, which stopped Nina’s jaws munching on the spot, but she only said, “Nina’s got more sense than to walk into people’s houses where she doesn’t belong, I’m glad to see. But this Mr Lynn took you back indoors again, didn’t he? Why? He must have known by then that you didn’t belong.”

      Granny seemed to know it all by instinct. “Yes. I mean, no. I told him,” Polly said. And she knew it had somehow been wrong to go back into the house, even if she had not made it worse by rearranging the pictures.

      She thought of Laurel’s scary eyes, and the way Mr Lynn had been careful not to explain to Laurel who Polly was, and she found she could not quite be honest herself. “He needed me to choose the pictures,” she said. “And he gave me this one for my own.”

      “Let’s see it,” said Granny.

      Polly held the picture up in both hands. She was sure Granny was going to make her take it back to Hunsdon House at once. “I’ve never had a picture of my own before,” she said. Mintchoc, who was a most understanding cat, noticed her distress and came and rubbed consolingly round her legs.

      “Hm,” said Granny, surveying the fire and the smoke and the hemlock plant. “Well, it isn’t an Old Master, I can tell you that. And Mr Lynn gave it you himself? Without you asking? Are you sure?”