“You think he’d come? On those terms?”
“I’m sure he would. It’s better for them, too, if they have notice of these things in time to judge. If it turns out to be something quite harmless and on the level, so much the better. May I call him?”
“Please do,” said Henry Marshall thankfully. “Perhaps you could meet him at the lodge, when he arrives? You do drive? Take the station wagon down and wait for him. I’ll talk to Professor Penrose, and see to everything here. We shall be most grateful. Most grateful!”
CHAPTER IV
« ^ »
GEORGE FELSE SWORE, but with resignation, listened, and came. Dominic was not in the habit of going off at half-cock; he had been a policeman’s son too long for that. If the affair turned out to be a mare’s-nest after all, there was no harm done; and if it didn’t, far better to take a close look at the circumstances as soon as possible, rather than after the scent had gone cold.
“Save it,” he said, cutting off the details. “I’m on my way, we’ll have all that when I come.‘’
It took him twenty minutes to drive from Comerford to the Follymead gates; there wasn’t much on the roads at this hour, and the going was good. The college station wagon was parked just behind the lodge, already turned to point back up the drive, with Dominic and Tossa waiting beside it.
“We thought it might be better if you leave the car here at the lodge,” said Dominic. “Just in case there’s somebody who knows it.”
“In that case,” said George reasonably, “the somebody would be even more likely to know me.”
“Yes, but we hope you’ll be able to stay out of the general view. There’s only a handful of us know what’s happened. If anything has happened. And that way, if it all turns out to be nonsense, there’s no fuss, and nobody’s made to look a fool. It seemed the best thing. It’s this second-in-command, you see, he’s left holding the baby, and he’s terrified of calling the police, and terrified of not calling them. Whatever he does is probably going to be the wrong thing.”
“So I’m the working compromise. He realised that if there does turn out to be anything in it, it becomes an official matter?”
“If there’s anything in it, the fat’s in the fire, anyhow. Yes, of course he understands that. Even Arundale couldn’t help that.” Dominic climbed into the driving seat of the station wagon, and set it rolling up the long, pale drive, bordered now, by fitful moonlight and scurrying cloud, with phantoms of Cothercott ingenuity even more monstrous than by day. “Is Bunty very mad at me? I’m sorry about it, but honestly, this business… I don’t like the look of it.” He had only recently taken to calling his mother Bunty, and it didn’t come quite naturally yet, but using the old, childish form of address had suddenly become as constricting to him as a strait-jacket. He’d never so much as given it a thought until Tossa entered the house; but it still hadn’t occurred to him to work out the implications.
“Not with you. Maybe with your missing folk-singer, for his bad timing. Cold, Tossa?” She was between them on the broad front seat, and shivering a little in spite of the camel-coloured car coat in which she was huddled.
“No, it’s just tension, don’t mind me.” She relaxed against George’s shoulder, reassured by his presence. There were going to be times when Dominic would feel a little jealous of George, who, after all, was only forty-five, and tall and slim, and not that bad-looking as middle-aged men go. “I’m glad you’re here. I don’t like this much, either. There are too many over-developed personalities around, things could happen.”
“Well, let’s hear it.”
Dominic told it, as succinctly as he could, and Tossa added an occasional comment. There was no time for all the background detail now, only for the facts. Nevertheless, glimpses of personalities emerged, and they were seen to be, as Tossa had said, a little distorted, drawn from a world where bizarre and improbable things could happen. The moon came out and silvered the pagoda roof, beyond the heronry where there were no herons, and picked out like a lance-thrust the black entrance of the hermit’s cave, distant in its concrete rocks. Anything was believable here.
“With a house full of about eighty people,” said George, “he thinks he’s going to be able to keep this secret?”
“If it has to be a full-scale investigation, no. But long enough for you to have a look at the set-up and judge, yes, I reckon with luck we might. Because almost everybody was right away from here all afternoon, you see, with these two coach-parties. They left before we saw Lucien Galt go out into the park. And they came back only just on time for tea, and came milling in all together. They’re out of it. They can’t know anything.”
“That leaves how many? More than enough.”
“Not really, because the staff were working indoors as usual, and they’re sure to be O.K. Mostly they’d be in pairs or more all the time, what with washing up after lunch, and then preparing for tea and dinner. We were here, of course, you know about us. Then there’s Felicity, that’s the young one I told you about, Arundale’s niece. And Liri Palmer… she was in the grounds, too, we saw her start off towards that phoney ruin, over that way. And we four, and Mr. Marshall, are the only ones who know about what I found by the river, so far. Then there’s Professor Penrose, he knows about Lucien being missing, but he doesn’t know the rest yet. He’d just got them all into the drawing-room for his after-dinner session when we came back to the house.”
“And you think all that lot can be trusted to keep it dark?”
“We can only try. Yes, I think we might.”
“Even the girl? This Felicity?”
“Yes,” said Tossa positively. She cast a quick glance at Dominic, and went on, encouraged: “She has a special reason for keeping quiet. Dominic didn’t tell you quite all about her afternoon. Oh, he told what we know, but not what we think we know. You see, she’s an odd child. But no, it isn’t odd to be like that, not at her age, it’s not odd at all. She’s awkward and tense and self-conscious, and she’s a sort of poor relation here, and things are pretty much hell for her, even though everybody means well. And this weekend she’s gone right overboard for Lucien Galt, that’s all about it. That’s why she followed him out this afternoon. And when we met her coming back, we felt pretty sure he’d got fed up with having her round his neck, and sent her off with a flea in her ear. So if she seems to be covering up, that’s what she’s covering. And whoever tells more than they need about this afternoon, it won’t be Felicity.”
“I see,” said George, touched by what she had omitted rather than what she had said. “Don’t worry, I’ll leave her her dignity.”
“I know,” said Tossa warmly.
“What about the mere fact that one of the artists has missed two sessions? I suppose he should have appeared in all of them? Aren’t quite a number of people going to wonder about that? Even if they don’t notice your absence from the audience.”
“I don’t think we need worry about that. We sit where-ever we happen to, find a place, it’s liable to be different every time, and if you’re not along there now, why shouldn’t you be somewhere at the back? They won’t wonder about us, among so many. But about Galt it is rather different. We left that to the professor. Unless he saw a need, I don’t suppose he’s told them anything at all, just sailed on as if everything was just as it was meant to be. But if he thought they were beginning to do some serious wondering, I bet he could hand them an absolutely first-class lie.”
“He may have to. Keeping it quiet suits me, too. I don’t want seventy excited people tramping all over the place and getting in the way, any more than the county or the warden want their cherished college to get the wrong sort of advertisement. Will they still be in at the lecture now?”