From the new book The Return of Sedgewick Harris.
I saw him before I heard him – a flicker of motion at the bend in the lane, where the hawthorns pressed in close and the sun, even at noon, barely touched the road. A figure on a bicycle, pedalling hard, head down. A thin ribbon of dust trailing behind the wheels.
The sight of the bicycle was at first a curiosity, then a realisation that it was perhaps coming my way – to the cottage.
Messenger?
The word came to me without thought, like a reflex.
I stepped back from the window, not enough to vanish, just enough to see without being seen. The cottage was quiet – no radio, no kettle on the boil, just the slow tick of the barometer on the kitchen wall and the sound of bicycle tyres crunchin over loose stones.
The boy was young – sixteen, perhaps seventeen – all elbows and awkward limbs, dressed in a raincoat and a cap. His clothes were clean and his shoes, though scuffed, had been
polished recently. I notice things like that – it’s the influence of Sedgewick Harris.
169He dismounted clumsily, left the bicycle leaning against the fence, and stared at the door for a moment as if summoning up his nerve. His hand hovered. Then he knocked – three quick raps, oddly tentative, like someone not used to delivering news.
I didn’t move but stayed by the window, watching the boy fidget. He was the kind they sent when something couldn’t be posted. When it had to be known that it had been delivered.
I opened the door.
‘I have a message for Sedgewick Harris,’ he said, his voice high pitched and unsteady.
‘He is not here. You can give it to me.’
The boy blinked. ‘Oh.’ He looked down at his shoes, then back up again. ‘I was told to deliver it directly to him.’
‘Give me the message and I will make sure he gets it.’
‘I don’t know if I should, sir.’
‘Please yourself,’ I said abruptly beginning to close the door.
‘Sedgewick Harris is to go to the Priory Hall immediately and meet Sir Percy.’
‘Why?’