“So the message you sent by Felicity,” said George, “was a genuine message, after all?”
Lucien shook her head, wretchedly. “It was a lot of things… I don’t know… I’m not proud of that. It was a vicious thing to do, but there she was offering to do anything for me, and I wanted her out of my hair, I needed to think and she wouldn’t let me think. And I did want my mother to come, while the whole place was nearly empty. I thought he’d be away by then, safely on his way to town. So I told Felicity what she could do for me, if she meant it. I knew what she’d think, I knew what she’d feel, I knew I’d hurt her. I meant to, though I wished afterwards I hadn’t. But I did believe she’d give the message to my mother, and I was sure she’d come.
“And instead, it was Arundale who came, with that damned murderous toy. It was like an unbelievably bad film. It was even funny at first, because I couldn’t believe in it seriously. I tried to talk to him, but I swear he never heard a word. I think in a way he was mad, then. All he wanted was to kill me, and he’d have done it, but then suddenly she was there… She must have heard us right from the gate, because she came running with the latch in her hand, and hit out at him like a fury, almost before I realised she was there. And then he was on the ground, and it was all over. Unbelievably quickly. He was dead in minutes.”
Lucien passed a tired hand over his face. “She hit out in defence of me. She never thought of killing, only of stopping him from killing. But afterwards she knew she had killed him. She was totally dazed, but quite docile. It was up to me. She did whatever I told her. I taught her what to say when you questioned her. But it was partly true, you know, he did behave like she said, after Felicity left them. He did put it all aside as a piece of childish spite, and made out he was leaving for town, just as he’d planned. It was only after he’d gone that she got frightened, and came herself, to make sure…”
“You didn’t know, of course,” said George, “and neither did she, that he’d telephoned to both bodies he should have addressed in Birmingham, and called off the engagements. Yes,” he said, answering the quick, dark glance, “he was going to make good use of those two days’ grace, too. He intended murder.”
“My own fault, I snatched the world away from under his feet. But that was something I never intended. I told her to go back to the house, and to be sure not to be seen on the way. And she did whatever I told her. Ever since her heart broke, between my father and me, she’s always done what people told her, what they expected of her. When she’d gone I tried to bring him round, but it was no good, and I knew he was dead. I threw him into the river, and the sword-stick and the latch after him. And I sneaked up to the yard and took his car and ran for it. I thought I was taking the whole load of guilt away with me, and she’d be all right. I should have known better, but I was in a pretty bad state myself. How could she ever be all right again?” He shook his head suddenly in a gesture of helpless pain. “How did you know? Why were you sure it wasn’t me? I thought I made out a pretty good case.”
George rose from his chair. It was late and it was over; and if these two could sleep, sleep was what they needed.
“I haven’t even read your statement yet, but if it’s any consolation, you convinced Rapier, all right. Don’t worry, we shall never be asking you to sign it. I knew the latch was still in its place when Felicity left you. And what did Arundale want with it? Like Lord Barnard, he came with a sword. And he was between you and the gate, he and forty yards of ground. You’d never have had the slightest chance of getting to it. No, someone else, someone who followed him there, dragged that latch out of its wards.” He cast a summoning glance towards the corner where Tossa and Dominic had sat silent throughout this elegiac conversation. “Come on, I’d better get you two home before I go in and report.” And to Lucien: “You’re staying here overnight?”
“Mr. Marshall was kind enough to suggest it. Then we can move into Comerbourne, if you still need us. I suppose we’ll have to stay within call until after the inquests?”
“Probably, but we can talk about that to-morrow.”
“I realise,” Lucien said abruptly, “that there must be a good case against me as an accessory after the fact.”
“Then so there is against me,” said Liri at once. “I warned you, and I warned her.”
She would probably never realise, George thought, how grateful he was to her for that. “What fact?” he said dryly. “There isn’t going to be any primary prosecution, why should I go out of my way to hunt up secondary charges? Much better just get on with the business of living. It may not always be easy, but it’s still worth the effort.”
“Is it?” Lucien raised bruised eyes in a challenging stare. “What did she ever get out of it? In her whole life she never had any real happiness.”
“You think not?” said George.
He walked suddenly to the door and out of the room, and they heard his footsteps receding along the passages now populous only with echoes. In a few moments he was back with a half-plate photograph in his hands. He dropped it in Lucien’s lap.
“Here you are, a souvenir for you. And you can add me to the crime-sheet – petty theft from Arundale’s estate. Incidentally, that makes you a receiver, too.” He watched the flooding colour rise in the boy’s dark cheeks, and the warmth of wonder ease the tired lines of his mouth. “Taken at that last prize-giving, unless I miss my guess. If I’m right, then he was still with her, and you were on your way. Maybe it didn’t last long, but believe me, she had it.”
Lucien looked down in a daze at the Audrey he had never seen before, with the bloom and the radiance and the spontaneity still on her, and caught at their height. If ever he doubted that he had been the child of love, he had only to look at this, and be reassured. And it was, for some reason, almost inevitable that he should look up in suddenly enlarged understanding from Audrey to Liri, whose eyes had never left him.
George wafted Tossa and Dominic quietly out of the room before him, and they went away and left those two to come to terms with the past and and the future in their own way.
Nobody had bothered to draw the curtains. Dominic looked back from the courtyard, before he climbed into the car, and there were the last two guests left over from Follymead’s folk-music week-end, framed in the softly-lighted window of the small library on the first floor, locked in each other’s arms. They must have sprung together and met in splendid collision as soon as they were alone. Their cheeks were pressed together as if they would fuse for all time, their eyes were closed, and their faces were timeless, as though love had fallen on them as a new and cosmic experience, original and unique in the history of man.
Dominic climbed hastily into the car and slammed the door, ashamed and exalted.
George Felse drove round the wing of the house, and out upon the great open levels of the drive, suddenly moon-washed and serene after the thunderous sulks of the evening. Follymead receded, the partial rear view of it grew and coalesced, became a harmonious, a symmetrical whole, making unity out of chaos. Gradually it withdrew, moonlit and magical, a joke and a threat, a dream and a nightmare, deploying its lesser shocks on either side of them as they retreated. Even those who escaped always came back; there was no need to set traps for them.