The first showed her in school uniform. How old? Sixteen? Surely no more, and already a beauty, indeed perhaps she had never been so beautiful since. No puppy-fat here, a slender, ethereal, glowing girl, not at all awkward or immature, indeed with a lustre upon her like a woman already admired and coveted and glad of her femininity. She must have been a thorn in the flesh of the others at that exclusive school to which her shopkeeper parents had sent her at such cost. On her, adolescence, so often a torment and an affront, hung like an apple blossom splendour, fragrant and joyous.
None of the subsequent pictures of her had this look.
George turned the half-plate portrait, and found the imprint of the photographer in blurred mauve type:
Castle Studios
E. McLeod, A.R.P.S.
Auchterarne 356.
Yes, of course. Nineteen-forty-two or thereabouts, this must have been, and Pleydells had been exiled into Scotland, like so many British institutions disseminated into the wilds to avoid bombing.
The second of the three pictures was of Audrey in tennis clothes, laughing, with her racket in her hands. The same imprint was on the back, the girl was approximately the same age. Probably all these Scottish pictures were taken within a few months. And the third…
The third was of Audrey in a white, virginal party-dress, impeccably suitable for a school festival, with small puff sleeves and the Pleydells version of a décolletage, pretty liberal for its time and circumstances. The same indefinable aura of bliss hung about her; it might have been merely youth and health, but it seemed to George to be more than that, a sort of radiant fulfilment rare enough at sixteen. Mr. McLeod had done well by her. A good photographer, not concerned with glossing the lines of a face and showing up in immaculate definition every detail of a costume, the focus faded at her sleeves and the neck of her dress, leaving the face brilliant and surely almost untouched as the centre of attention. So successfully that George had returned the picture to its fellows and was retying the pink tape before he realised what he had seen depending from the silver chain round her neck.
He uncovered it again in a hurry, and stared disbelievingly. The fading definition blurred the design, but that was probably what had nudged his memory. This had been taken twenty-four years ago; the armoured saint in the nutshell helmet had been sharper and newer then, the hazing of his outlines only brought him nearer to what he was to-day. The spread eagle on his shield was faint but recognisable. Saints have their hall-marks, exclusive for all time. Saint Wenceslas had his copyright in this princely armour and heraldry, and once noted, could not be mistaken for any other sanctity in the calendar. So Dominic had said, and the books bore him out.
There couldn’t be two of these things circulating among these few people. This was the same medal Lucien had worn. It was from Audrey he had got it!
There had been altogether too much and too conflicting evidence about that small disc of worn silver. Audrey swore that she had known Lucien only six weeks, Liri, on the other hand, testified that he had worn this medal round his neck ever since she had known him, which was a matter of two years. Lucien had said, according to Liri, that he had got it from his father. And now this picture said clearly that the thing had belonged to Audrey, and Audrey must have given it to him. So how many of them were lying?
Or, wondered George, the premonitory quiver of intuition chilling his flesh, or were none of them lying?
He had to hunt out a road atlas and gazetteer to find out where this Auchterarne place was. Stirlingshire. He’d never yet had any communication with the Stirling police, but they’d be the quickest way to what he wanted to know. Probably the school had been evacuated to one of those Gothic mansions that decorate the Scottish countryside, to remind one that while England is for ever England, Scotland is in many ways Europe. With upland wastes around it on all sides, and every kind of embattled refugee group deployed there, from Scandinavian timber-men to Polish pioneers. Maybe army, he thought, as he lifted the telephone and asked for a line to the police at Stirling; there were a lot of wild and mixed army units waiting their time up there. But more likely air force. That was where the young, the cultivated, the engaging, were, in those strange and wonderful days when life had an enormous simplicity and purpose, and everybody knew where he was going, even if the way there proved uncommonly short.
“I’m sorry,” said the operator, after a few minutes of waiting, “there’ll be a slight delay, but I’ll get you through as soon as I can. Can I call you back?”
“Please do. I’ll be right on hand.”
He heard the students emerge from their session, and the gong pealed for lunch. Marshall had taken to sending him in a tray as soon as the party were all accounted for and busy. Not long to go now; this evening they would disperse, he hoped with only pleasant memories of this extraordinary week-end at Follymead, and then the survivors could look round without secrecy, and see what could be salvaged.
George propped up before him the photograph of Audrey in her party-dress, and sat waiting, eye to eye with all that youth and innocence and happiness. He wondered if she’d ever looked like that for Edward Arundale.
Ten minutes later the telephone shrilled, and he reached for it eagerly, expecting his Scottish connection. But the voice that grated amiably in his ears was that of Superintendent Duckett, in high feather.
“George? We made it in time, after all. You can relax. They picked up Lucien Galt at London Airport half an hour ago.”
“Nothing to it,” Duckett was elaborating happily a minute later. “Came in by taxi and checked in as if nothing had happened. Best thing he could do, of course, only he didn’t do it quickly enough. Yesterday morning he could have flown out like a V. I. P. and no questions asked.”
“Why in the world didn’t he?” George wondered. “Inexperience?”
“Money. It takes a little time to knock together about three thousand pounds in notes.”
“That’s what he had on him?”
“In his case. As much as he could turn into cash in the time, obviously. He had a ticket for Buenos Aires. They’re holding him at the airport for us, and I’ve started Price and Rapier off to fetch him back. On the car charge, of course – taking away without owner’s permission. And even for a holding charge that must be the understatement of the year.”
“How did he react when they invited him to step aside and talk things over?” asked George. He’d seen that moment walk up behind so many men and tap them on the shoulder, and he had a pretty clear picture of this young man he’d never yet seen, proud to arrogance, impetuous, used to respect and adulation, even if he thought he despised it.
“Quietly. From what I hear, he looked round smartly for a way out, and might have tried to make a break for it if he could, but he sized things up at once, and went along without any fuss. He hadn’t a chance, and I fancy he’d hate to make an unsuccessful scene. Now the question is, how do we handle him. It’s your case, George, you know the people and the set-up there, you’re up with all the new developments, if there are any since you fished up that queer affair the boys are working on. You suggest, I’ll consider.”
So now it was up to George, and he had to make up his mind a shade too early, before he really had anything but a hunch to go on. It was a gamble, and he was no gambler, and yet all his instincts told him to trust the conviction in his blood.
“All right, I’ll tell you what I’d like done. Have him brought straight back here to me, to Follymead. I’ll be waiting for him, and I’ll be responsible for him.”