Flight of a Witch gfaf-3 Page 6

  ‘Spend the whole time up there? When did you leave? And when did you get back yesterday?’

  ‘Oh, left about half past five on Thursday, I think, sir. I called round to pick up Dom first, and we did the packing at our place. We’d been in about half an hour when you looked in at home last night – just long enough for a wash and supper.’

  He didn’t ask point blank: ‘Why?’ but the slight tilt of his head, the attentive regard of his remarkably direct and disconcerting eyes, put the same question more diplomatically; and a small spark deep within the eyes supplemented without heat: ‘And what the hell’s it got to do with you, anyhow?’ ‘Sir!’ added the very brief, engaging and impudent smile he had inherited from his mother.

  Tom was tempted to soften this apparently pointless and unjustifiable interrogation with a crumb of explanation, or at least apology; but the boy was too bright by far. To try to disarm him with something like: ‘I’m sorry if this makes no sense to you, but if it makes no sense you’ve got nothing to worry about!’ – no, it wouldn’t do, he’d begin tying up the ends before the words were well out. No use saying pompously: ‘I have my reasons for asking.’ He knew that already, he was only in the dark at present as to what they could be, and at the first clue he’d be off on the trail. The fewer words the better. The more abrupt the better. They took some surprising, these days, but at least he could try.

  ‘Did you take your Vespa out earlier on Thursday afternoon? A trial run, maybe, if you’d been working on her? Say – round through Abbot’s Bale to the track at the back of the Hallowmount?’

  If Miles didn’t know what it was all about now, at least he knew the appropriate role for himself. He had drawn down over his countenance the polite, wooden, patient face of the senior schoolboy. It fitted rather tightly these days, but he could still wear it. Ours not to reason why; they’re all mad, anyhow. Ours but to come up with: ‘Yes, sir!’ or: ‘No, sir!’ as required. The mask had an additional merit, or from Tom’s point of view an additional menace; from within its bland and innocent eye-holes you could watch very narrowly indeed without yourself giving anything away.

  ‘No, sir, I didn’t. I had her all ready the night before, there was no need to try her out.’

  ‘And you weren’t round there yesterday, either? Before you got home?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  He waited, quite still but not now quite easy; he was too intelligent for that. And something subtle had happened to the mask; the young man – not even the young man-of-the-world – was looking through it very intently indeed. Tom got up from his chair and turned a shoulder on him, to be rid of the probing glance, but it followed him thoughtfully to the window.

  ‘I take it sir, I’m not allowed to ask why? Why I might have been there?’ The voice had changed, too, frankly abandoning the schoolboy monotone, and far too intent now to be bothered with the experimental graces of sophistication that were its natural sequel.

  ‘Let’s say, not encouraged. But if you’ve told me the truth, then in any case it doesn’t matter, does it? All right, thanks, Mallindine, that’s all.’

  He kept his head turned away from the boy, watching the dubious sunlight of noon scintillating from the thread of river below the bridge. He waited for the door to open and close again. Miles had turned to move away, but nothing further happened.

  After a moment the new voice asked, with deliberation and dignity: ‘May I ask one thing that does matter?’ No ‘sir’ this time, Tom noted; this was suddenly on a different level altogether.

  ‘If you must.’

  ‘Has anything happened to Annet?’

  It hit him so hard that the shock showed, even from this oblique view. He felt the blood scald his cheeks, and knew it must be seen, and felt all too surely that it was not misunderstood. This boy was dangerous, he used words like explosives, only half-realising the force of the charge he put into them. Has anything happened to Annet! My God, if only we knew! But the simpler implication was what he wanted answered, and surely he was owed that, at least. Even if he was the partner of her defection, lying like a trooper by pre-arrangement, and sworn to persist in his lies, that appeal for reassurance might well be genuine enough, and deserved an answer.

  ‘I hope not,’ said Tom with careful mildness. ‘I certainly left her fit and well when I came out this morning.’

  He had his face more or less under control by then, the blush had subsided, and he would not be surprised into renewing it. He turned and gave Miles a quizzical and knowing look, calculated to suggest benevolently that his preoccupation with Annet, in the light of history, was wholly understandable, but in this case inappropriate, not to say naïve. But the minute he met the levelled golden-brown eyes that were so like Eve’s, he knew that if anyone was involuntarily giving anything away in this encounter, it wasn’t Miles. He knew what he was saying, and he’d thought before he said it. Fobbing him off with an amused look and an indulgent smile wouldn’t do. Shutting the door he’d just gone to the trouble to open wasn’t going to do anyone any good.

  Tom came back to his table, and sat down glumly on a corner of it. ‘You may as well go on,’ he said. ‘What made you ask that?’ Even that fell short of the degree of candour the occasion demanded. He amended it quite simply to: ‘How did you know?’ If he was the lover, he had good reason to know, but no very compelling reason to show that he knew; and if he wasn’t – well, they were all a bit uncanny round here, so he’d said, cheerfully including himself. Maybe Eve was a witch, and had handed on her powers to him for want of a daughter.

  ‘My mother had a telephone call on Thursday evening,’ said Miles with admirable directness. ‘From Mrs Beck.’

  There couldn’t have been much communication between those two ladies during the last few months, no wonder Eve’s thumbs had pricked.

  ‘She made some excuse about asking when the Gramophone Club was starting its winter programme. But then she worked the conversation round to me, and fished to know what I was doing over the week-end. My mother told me, when I came back last night. I didn’t think there was anything in it, actually, until you began asking – related questions. Oh, you didn’t give anything away,’ he said quickly, forestalling all observations on that point. His head came up rather arrogantly, the wide-open eyes dared Tom to stand on privilege now. ‘My mother can connect, you know. But so can others. And I don’t suppose our house was the only one she ’phoned – if it’s like that.’

  We ought to have known, thought Tom. In a small place where everyone knows everyone else’s business, where half the women compare notes as a matter of course, we ought to have known it would leak out. How could she hope to go telephoning around the whole village and half Comerbourne, without starting someone on a hot trail?

  ‘No,’ he said flatly, ‘I’m afraid it wasn’t.’

  ‘She wouldn’t realise,’ said Miles generously. He might not have occult powers, but he had a pair of eyes that could see through Tom Kenyon, apparently, as through a plate-glass window. ‘My mother had good reason to look under the mat – if you see what I mean. But some of ’em don’t need a reason, they do it for love. And my mother doesn’t talk. But plenty of them do.’

  How had they arrived at this reversal? The kid was warning him, kindly, regretfully, like an elder, of the possible unpleasantness to come; warning him as though he knew very well how deeply it could and did concern him, and how much he stood to get hurt. Without a word said on that aspect of the matter, they had become rivals, meeting upon equal terms, and equally sorry for each other.

  It was high time to close this interview, before somebody put a foot wrong and brought the house down over them both. They had to go on confronting each other in class for the best part of a year yet, they couldn’t afford any irretrievable gaffes.

  ‘Too many,’ he agreed wryly. ‘But gossip without any foundation won’t get them far. And I take it that you and I can include each other among the non-talkers, Mallindine.’

  ‘Yes, sir, naturally.
’

  ‘Sir’ had come back, prompt on his cue. This boy really wanted watching, he was a little too quick in the uptake, if anything.

  ‘If there’s anything you want to ask me, do it now. But I don’t guarantee to answer.’

  ‘There’s nothing, sir. If—’ He did waver there, the elegantly-held head turned aside for a moment, the eyes came back to Tom’s face doubtfully and hopefully. ‘—if Annet’s all right?’

  ‘Yes, perfectly all right.’ He had nearly said: ‘Of course!’, which would have been a pretence at once unworthy and unwise in dealing with this very sharp and dangerous intelligence. He dropped the attitude in time, but a faint, rueful smile tugged at Miles’s lips for an instant, as if he had seen it hovering and watched it snatched hastily away. The young man was back in charge, and formidably competent.

  ‘Thank you, sir. Then that’s all.’ For me it is, said the straight eyes, challenging and pitying; how about you?’

  ‘Right, then, off you go. And I shouldn’t worry.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’ said the flicker of a smile again, less haughtily. Either Tom was beginning to see all sorts of shades of meaning that weren’t there, or that last, long, thoughtful, level stare before the door closed had said, as plainly as in words: ‘Come off it! You know as well as I do there was another fellow in the case – nothing for you, nothing for me. Now tell me that doesn’t hurt!’

  He knew, as well as he knew his own name, that if he questioned Dominic Felse on the subject of the weekend in Wales, Dominic would go straight to Miles and report the entire conversation word for word; and yet it seemed to him that he had very little choice in the matter. Since he’d begun this probably useless enquiry, he couldn’t very well leave an important witness out of it. He might be primed already, he might lie for his friend; but that was a hazard that applied to all witnesses, surely. And for some reason Tom felt sure that Miles would not yet have unburdened himself about that morning interview, he took time, when it was available, to think things out, and he had himself been considerably disturbed. He might not keep it quiet, but he wouldn’t run to confide it until he knew what he wanted to say.

  So Tom sent for Dominic Felse, half against his conscience and a little against his will, but already launched and incapable of stopping. Dominic confirmed that he and Miles had spent all the week-end together. Yes, they’d packed up together and left about half past five, maybe a little earlier. No, they hadn’t been separated at all during the whole trip, except for half-hour periods while Miles took the scooter and went shopping, and Dominic cooked. Miles was no good as a cook. Yes, they’d come straight back to the Mallindines’ for supper.

  Why?

  Dominic was nearly a year younger than Miles, and less impeded by his dignity and sophistication from asking the obvious questions. Moreover, he was the son of a detective-inspector, and had a consequent grasp of the rights of the interrogated which made him an awkward customer to interrogate. With sunny politeness he answered questions, and with reciprocal interest asked them. Tom got rid of him in short order, for fear of giving away more than he got.

  He met the two of them in the corridor as he left when afternoon school ended. They gave him twin civilised smiles, very slight and correct, and said: ‘Good-night, sir!’ in restrained and decorous unison.

  The sight of the two of them thus, shoulder to shoulder, with similarly closed faces and impenetrable eyes, settled one thing. They had pooled everything they knew, and were preparing to stand off the world from each other’s back whenever the assault threatened.

  He had seen it coming, and he didn’t make the mistake of thinking that either of them would as lightly confide in a third party. All the same, he began to regret what he had set in motion. Would it really do any good to find out what had happened, and who had made it happen? Wasn’t it better to creep through the next few days and weeks with fingers crossed and breath held, walking on tiptoe and praying to know nothing – not to have to know anything – like Beck and Mrs Beck? Thankful for every night that closed in with no trap sprung and no revelation exploding into knowledge; frightened of every contact in the street and every alarm note of the telephone, but every day a little less frightened.

  Annet came and went with fewer words than ever, but with a tranquil face. Something of wonder still lingered, and something of sadness and deprivation, too, and sometimes her eyes, looking through the walls of the house and the slope of the Hallowmount into whatever underworld she had left behind there, burned into a secret, motionless excitement that never seemed quite to be able to achieve joy. She went to Cwm Hall in the morning, and Regina Blacklock’s chauffeur drove her home in the evening, and nobody there seemed to notice anything wrong with her or her work. Thank God that was all right, anyhow! There were bushels of Regina’s notes from the conference to decipher and type out, and a long report to her committee, which Annet brought home to copy on Thursday evening. On the incidence and basic causes of delinquency in deprived children!

  She was working on it when Tom came through the hall after supper to go out and stable the Mini for the night. He heard the typewriter clicking away in the dingy little book-lined room Beck still called his study, though all he ever did in it was accumulate endless random text-notes of doubtful value on various obscure authors, with a view to publishing his own commentaries some day. No one believed it would ever be done, not even Beck himself; no one believed the world stood to gain or lose anything, either way.

  Tom opened the door gingerly and looked in, and she was alone at the desk. It was the first time he had been alone with her, even for a moment, since her return. He went in quickly, and closed the door softly at his back.

  ‘Annet—’

  She had heard him come. She finished her sentence composedly before she looked up. He could see no hardening in her face, no wariness, no change at all. She looked at him thoughtfully, and said nothing.

  ‘Annet, I want you to know that if there’s anything I can do to help you, I will, gladly. I’d like to think you’d ask me.’

  She sat and looked at him for a long moment, looked down at her own hands still poised over the keys, and back slowly to his face. He thought he caught the bleak, small shadow of a smile, at least a shade of warmth in her eyes.

  ‘You’d much better just go on thinking me a liar,’ she said without reproach or bitterness. ‘It’s nice of you, but I really don’t need any help.’

  ‘I hope you won’t, Annet. Only I’m afraid you may. I know, I feel, it isn’t over. And I don’t want you to be hurt.’

  ‘Oh, that doesn’t matter!’ said Annet, startled into a rush of generous words. ‘Not at all! You mustn’t worry about me.’

  She smiled at him, the first real, unguarded smile he had ever had from her. If she had asked him to believe in fairyland then, he would have done it; any prodigy he would have managed for her. But the moment was over before it was well begun; for it was at that instant that the knocker thudded at the front door.

  He shivered and froze at the sound. Annet’s smile had grown suddenly, mockingly bright. ‘It’ll be Myra, coming for me,’ she said, quite gently. ‘What are you afraid of?’

  But it wasn’t Myra. They heard Mrs Beck cross the hall, quick, nervous steps, running to ward off disaster. They heard the low exchange of words; a man’s voice, quiet and deep-pitched, and Mrs Beck’s fluttering tones between. He was in the hall now; only a few steps, then he was still, waiting.

  The door opened upon Mrs Beck’s white, paralysed face and scared eyes.

  ‘Annet – there’s someone here who wishes to speak to you.’

  He came into the doorway at her shoulder, a tall, lean man with a long, contemplative face and deceptively placid eyes that didn’t miss either Tom’s instinctively stiffening back or Annet’s blank surprise.

  ‘I’m sorry to interrupt your work, Miss Beck,’ said Detective-Inspector George Felse gently, ‘but there’s a matter on which I’m obliged to ask you some questions. And I think, in the c
ircumstances, it should be in your parents’ presence.’

  CHAPTER IV

  « ^ »

  From the very first she seemed startled and bewildered, but not afraid; a little uneasy, naturally, for after all, George Felse was the police, and clearly on business, but not at all in trouble with her own conscience.

  ‘Of course!’ she said, and slid the bar of her typewriter into its locked position, and stood up. ‘Shouldn’t we go into the living-room? It’s more comfortable there.’

  ‘But Mr Kenyon—’ began Mrs Beck helplessly, and let the words trail vaguely away. An old, cold house, where was the paying guest to sit in peace if they appropriated the living-room?

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Tom, torn between haste and unwillingness, ‘I’ll get out of the way.’

  But he didn’t want to! He had to know what he had let loose upon her, for he was sure this was his work. He should have let well alone. Why had he had to question Mallindine, and then go on to confirm what he well knew might still be lies by dragging in Dominic Felse? They’d compared notes almost before his back was turned; and young Felse had promptly gone home and let slip the whole affair, with all its implications, to his father. How else could you account for this?

  But no, that wouldn’t do; as soon as he paused to consider he could see that clearly. If Dominic had informed on Annet, it was because something else had happened during that lost week-end, something that could be linked to a strayed girl and an improbable fairy-story. Something of interest to the police, whose sole interest in a pair of eighteen-year-old runaways would be to restore them to their agitated parents, and let the two families settle it between them as best they could; and even that only if their aid had been sought in the affair. No, there must be something else, something that had frightened Dominic with its implications, and caused him either to blurt out what he knew unintentionally, or driven him to deliver it up as a burden too heavy and a responsibility too great to be borne.