“Yes, of course.” He brightened perceptibly at the thought of being useful. “You’re going in to headquarters? Is it official, then?”
“It’s official, but it’s still not for publication.”
“Shall I meet you at the lodge again when you come back?”
“No need. I’ll drive up by the farm road at the back, and put my car in the yard there. I might need to get out and in quickly, later in the day.”
“Is there anything I can be doing?”
“Yes, but you won’t like it much.”
“I still might do it,” said Dominic generously, “seeing as it’s for you.”
“Be on the spot here, then, attend everything, and help to keep everybody occupied and out of our hair. Have a word with Professor Penrose, and ask him to lay on a session after lunch, too, even if it wasn’t in the programme. Keep everybody’s nose hard against this folk-music grindstone, and try to make the whole week-end pass off without anything of this business leaking out. Get the professor to ask Liri Palmer to take part in every session. If the stars back him up, the rank and file won’t want to miss anything.”
“And in the meantime,” Dominic asked soberly, perceiving one answer for himself, and not much liking it, “what will they be missing?”
“Maybe nothing. But I don’t want them down by the river. They wouldn’t get to the grotto, anyhow, I shall have a watchdog on duty. But I’d rather they didn’t know that, either, so keep them hard at work here in the house.”
“We can but try. Anything else?”
“Keep your ears open. I’d like to know what sort of comments they’re making. The professor will probably have to tell them some tale about Galt being called away, but, even so they’ll have their own theories. I want to know what they are, and who starts them. And anything else you notice that may be of interest.”
“When shall I see you, then, to report? Hadn’t we better have an arrangement?”
“Come down to the grotto as soon after lunch as you can, and come on the quiet. If I’m not there, Price will know where to find me.”
“There it is, then,” said Duckett, shuffling the typed pages across the table, “and much good it does us.”
And there it was, compressed, bald and completely barren, the fruit of Scott’s interim researches into the past history of Edward Arundale and Lucien Galt. And nothing could be more above-board.
Arundale, only son of an illustrious academic family, one sister, five years younger; father a historian, mother a specialist in Oriental languages, both dead; his school, his college, his degrees, all listed, all impeccable; a distinguished teaching career, culminating in the headmastership of Bannerets, which he held for fifteen years, and after that this appointment as warden of Follymead. Married in 1946 Audrey Lavinia Morgan, only child of Arthur Morgan, of Morgan’s Stores, a chain of groceries covering the south of England. The bride, it seemed, was then twenty years old, and Arundale, thirty-five. Her father’s money was recent and plentiful, his father having merely run two modest suburban shops, and limited his ambition to getting elected to the local council. Arthur, or maybe Mrs. Arthur, had bigger ideas for their offspring. Audrey had been sent to Pleydells, a good boarding-school in North London, though evacuated to Scotland during the war years, which must have been Audrey’s period. It seemed that the Morgans were then on the climb, bent on equipping their daughter for an outstanding marriage. Maybe Arundale’s was the kind of lustre they valued and wanted. No university career for Audrey, no mention of any special academic qualifications; just as Felicity had said, quoting, no doubt, her aggrieved mother. Her upbringing had been aimed at marriage, not a career.
Edward supplied all the scholarly distinctions necessary, she provided him with a hostess well-trained, conscientious and lovely to look at. All very satisfactory, and nowhere a shadow on it. Their life at Follymead was constantly in the public eye, and the public eye doesn’t miss much.
That was Arundale. And in the other file, this boy from a children’s home, bright, handsome, aggressive, disdainful, intolerant of adulation, and single-minded about his art. Lucien Galt, born 1943, son of John James and Esther Galt, who kept a small newsagent’s shop in Islington. Parents killed by a V-2, one of the last to fall on London, son taken into public care and brought up in one of a group of cottage homes in Surrey. Good school record, early development of musical ability, apparently well adjusted, never in anything worth calling trouble. Not interested in staying on at school, already set on music. Left at fifteen, and worked as a garage hand and mechanic until he broke into the record business, broadcasting and television, all in the same month, at the age of nineteen. Made a tremendous success as a folk-singer, several European tours behind him, heading for a South American tour very soon. Said to be still on the warmest terms with his former foster-parents at the home, visiting them regularly, and being credited with several gifts to the present household. Considered difficult in the entertainment world because there are songs he won’t sing, engagements he won’t accept, places he won’t go, and indeed nothing he will do except what he wants to do.
And all they knew of him, to add to that dossier, was that he had worn a silver medal on a chain round his neck, that he had told Liri Palmer it was all he had of his father’s, and that he had left it lying in the grass by the river when he vanished from Follymead.
“Not a thing in common between them,” said Duckett, “and not a thing to show that they’d ever clapped eyes on each other before Friday night. How can you get to the point of murder in only twenty-four hours?”
“How do you even get to the point of being on fighting terms in only twenty-four hours? With their kind of contact and at that kind of place?”
“There’s always the classic way,” said Duckett disgustedly. “Cherchez la femme!” He wasn’t serious, of course; Arundale’s past was so rigid with rectitude that the idea of connecting him with a crime passionnel managed to be almost funny. Besides, there was only one woman in his life, apparently, and that was his equally blameless wife, to whom he’d been married for twenty well-matched years. “Putting him on one side, just for argument, I gather there are others who might be capable of pushing this lad in the river?”
“Several, I’d say. The girl has all the necessary fire and guts, and Meurice hates him enough, given the opportunity. And either of them could have been there with him at round about the right time.”
Duckett breathed pipe-smoke heavily through his brigand’s moustache, and drummed a thick fingertip on the edge of his desk. “Well, I’ll keep Scott on the job. If we take anything out of the river,” he said grimly, “you’ll be the first to know about it. What can Scott most usefully be doing for you?”
George considered, frowning at the meaningless pages that yet must hold somewhere a more substantial image of the persons to whom they applied. “Seems to me that if Galt had anything to confide, the people he’d turn to would be his foster-parents, this house-father and mother – Stewart, the name seems to be. It might be worth a drive down there to see if they can shed any light. With a lot of luck he may have gone to them, or at least got in touch with them – if he’s alive, if this is some other sort of trouble that’s caught up with him. And Scott could call in on this service garage where the boy worked, that’s another possibility, if a thin one. Then there’s his business agent, of course. Send Scott down there, have him comb out the lot, all the people he might have turned to if he’s alive and in trouble.”