“Yes!How did they find out about the malefactor?”exclaimed Violet.
Pip tossed the paper aside.“I can make a guess,” he said.
They all looked at him in surprise.
“Miss Fairweather,” said Pip shortly, taking out a cigarette.
“Oh, I remember the Fairweather boy and girl at the wedding,” Violet interjected.Violet had been out walking all day, butwouldkeep roaming about the room like a restless colt.
“You don’t mean Stephen’s daughter, Penelope?”Uncle George asked.“Are you quite sure, Pip?”
Pip nodded grimly.“She’s…ambitious.”
Uncle George sighed heavily into his teacup.“I do wish Emily were here,” he was barely heard to say.
“You’re very tight-lipped about them, Pip.Didn’t you get on?”Violet asked, now on one side of the room, now on the other.It was making Una’s head whirl.
“It was very kind of them to have me to stay with them,” he said, but his tone belied the words.
In the few letters Pip had written Una, he had never hinted at any friendship with the younger Fairweathers.
“The boy was a bit of a stick, but the girl seemed jolly enough to me.What was Penny like with you?”asked Violet, plucking the paper from where Sir George had consigned it—the wastebasket.
Pip played with his cigarette, though Una suspected he wouldn’t light it while Uncle George was about.
“She was forever running out to meetings and hauling signs about,” Pip said.“I don’t think she noticed me the whole time I was there.”
Una detected a new nadir of bleakness in his tone.
“Yes, that’s all very well, but is she the sort to leak something to the press?”Violet persisted.
Una wished Violet would leave him alone.
“If you think I have any insight into the mind of Penelope Fairweather, you are much mistaken,” said Pip grimly.“We’re not the same sort at all.I’m just a humble Yorkshire lad.”And he stubbed his unlit cigarette on the case so hard that it crumpled.
“What do you intend to do with yourself this year, Pip?”asked Uncle George.
“I’m sure I can’t say, sir,” Pip said, shoving the cigarette back in its case.“But I’d like to go abroad.”
“And what do your parents say to that?”Uncle George asked.
Pip studied his shoe.“My stepfather is more concerned with finding me a job.Less concerned with what it is.”
“What if we had a job for you here?”Uncle George said.
Pip stiffened, and so did Una.
“The frescoes in the Great Hall,” Uncle George explained.“They are in sore need of restoration.Did you learn anything about that sort of work at school?”
“A little,” Pip said, his face slowly relaxing.
Una was tremendously relieved—for a moment she’d been afraid Uncle George would offer Pip a job as part of the household staff again!
Violet made a noise from behind the newspaper.“Accomplished as she is beautiful, Miss Una Worms was considered one of the most eligible daughters of the landed gentry before her brutal attack.”
There was a silence.
“Violet,” said Uncle George in a tone that was ominously mild, “I’m not sure why you chose that excerpt.”
