From there they went darting across the boiling surface like a dragon-fly, skimming with the currents where the banks were swept too open and smooth to hold flotsam, swinging aside round the sergeant’s paddle in the marked spots; round the shovel-shaped end of Eel Island, which had scooped up a full load of branches, twigs, uprooted grass, and even more curious trophies, but not what they were seeking; a little way down the sluggish backwater beyond, until motion ceased in stagnant shallows, and still there was nothing; out into the flood again, hopping back on to the current as on to a moving belt that whisked them away; revolving out of the race again where the trees leaned down into the water at the curve by the Lacey farm, acting like a great, living grille to filter out debris; clean across the width of the river at the next coil, to where the long, sandy shallow ran out and encircled a miniature beach. Every junk-heap of the Comer on this stretch they touched at and ransacked. It was a game they could win only by losing; every possibility checked and found empty was a point gained, and with every one discarded their spirits rose towards optimism.
The sun was up, and they were a mile or more downriver, in wider and less turgid reaches, where some of the best fishing pools deepened under the right bank.
‘Looks like we’ve had our trouble for nothing,’ Jack said, with appropriate satisfaction. ‘Anything that’s run that gauntlet without getting hooked has got to be brother to an eel.’
It was one more case of famous last words. In the first dark pool under the hollowed bank the steady, rolling eddies went placidly round and round, smooth as cream, their tension dimpling the centre into a slow, minor whirlpool. And in the middle of the slanting span, circling upon a radius of about three yards, and light enough to maintain its place a foot or so below the surface, something pale and oval went monotonously round and round. First oval and single, then weaving as it span, like a water-lily on a stem, then suddenly seen as articulate in separate petals, a limp magnolia flower.
‘Why don’t you keep your mouth shut?’ said Sergeant Comstock, with deep and bitter resignation, and reached for the boat-hook they’d brought with them. His third nephew Ted had made it to family specifications in his forge in the village of Moulden. ‘Cop hold of this paddle, and move us in slow. And hold us clear of him, or he’ll go down.’
There was a second drifting flower now, deep below, and greenish brown with the tint of the water between. And presently, as Jack held the paddle like a brake and let them in by inches, a third, without petals, a pale disc trailing tendrils of weed. A spreading darkness wove lazily beneath it, keeping it afloat.
The boat-hook reached overside gently, felt its way under the leaves of dark material, was lifted delicately into their folds, and held fast. The three submerged flowers lost their rhythm, jerked into stillness, and hung quivering. A palpable bulk aligned itself beneath them, a fish on a line, but a fish without fight.
‘I’ve got him,’ said Sergeant Comstock gruffly. ‘Better take us down a piece, where the bank levels out. We can get him ashore there.’
The fish floated uncomplainingly with them, down to the gentle slope of grass fifty yards downstream. There they brought the coracle ashore lightly, and drew in, with reluctance and the reverence of finality, what they had been hunting with such assiduity, and so persistently hoped they would not find. To have settled something is always an achievement and, of sorts, a satisfaction. This they would rather not have settled, and yet there was a kind of relief in it.
The body came ashore into the grass with monstrous and majestic indifference, for the first time caring nothing at all what impression it made. A long, young body in correct school uniform, black blazer, white shirt, black tie, dark grey slacks. Very like its living counterpart still, because it had not been in the river very long. The Comer had not managed to loosen the knot of the tie, though its ends floated wide, or to hoist off one of the regulation black shoes. He even had a ball-point pen still firmly clipped to the top of his breast pocket.
‘That’s him,’ said Sergeant Comstock, looking down at the slow rivulets of storm-water trickling down out of clothing and hair to wind their way thankfully through the grass back to the river. ‘Hang on here, Jackie, while I cut up to the farm and ’phone.’
CHAPTER SIX
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George Felse telephoned his wife from the Sallows farm somewhat after eight o’clock in the morning. By that time he had not only set in motion all the police retinue that attends on sudden and unexplained death, but also attended their ministrations throughout, seen the body examined, photographed, cased in its plastic shell and removed by ambulance to the forensic laboratory, delegated certain necessary duties, placated the police doctor and the pathologist, come to terms with the inevitable grief and rage which do not reach the headlines, and made dispositions within his own mind for the retribution which is so often aborted.
‘We found him,’ he said. She, after all, had been left holding up the universe over the parents, and in all probability, whatever strict injunctions he issued now, she would, by the time he rejoined her, have relieved him of the most dreadful of all the duties his office laid on him, and somehow, with sense, sedatives and sturdy, unpretending sympathy, have gone part-way towards reconciling the bereaved to their bereavement. ‘Dead, of course,’ he said. ‘Some hours, according to preliminary guesses. Yes, in the river. Drowned? Well, provisionally, yes. Personally, I wonder. Don’t tell them that. They’re almost prepared for the other. I’ll tell them later—when we know.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Bunty Felse. It wasn’t, but he would know what she meant. ‘I was half expecting it. So are they, I know. When will you be home?’
He had been up half the previous night upon a quite different case, and all this night upon this, which had only just become a case, and his, after all.
‘As soon as I can, but it may be three hours or so. I shall take time out to call at Aurae Phiala. They won’t have heard officially. I want to be the one to bring the news. I’ve got to see their faces.’
‘Not the Rossignol girl,’ said Bunty. It was a little less than half enquiry, and a little more than half assertion. He had called her shortly after midnight, she already knew something of the personalities involved.
‘I want to see her face, too. But no—you’re right, not the Rossignol girl. On present form,’ he said, his voice warming wearily into a semblance of the voice she knew best, ‘she only pulls people out.’
His timing was good, though it was determined mainly by the exigencies of the situation. When he drove down the gravelled road along the edge of the site to the curator’s house, at half past nine, he found the bronze Aston Martin parked in front of the doorway, and Gus Hambro just handing out Charlotte’s suitcases. Both the Paviours had come out to greet their guest, Stephen Paviour long and sad and constrained as ever, Lesley eager and young and welcoming. Her movements as she ran down the steps had an overflowing grace of energy. Behind her Bill Lawrence appeared in the doorway. So much the better. One was apt to overlook Bill Lawrence, who nevertheless was there on the spot like all the rest, and able to move even more privately, since he lived alone in the lodge cottage, further along the Silcaster road. Probably he rode over here for his meals on most occasions. The Vespa was a handy transport for the mere quarter of a mile involved. He wore his usual air of meticulously contrived casualness, and the shadow of beard round his by no means negligible jaw was a shade more perceptible than on the previous day. Apparently he was setting out to grow whiskers of the latest fashion, for his lips were carefully shaved. Probably he knew and cared, in spite of his cultivated disdain for appearances, that he had a very well-cut and intelligent mouth, too good to be hidden. His lazy, supercilious eyes, too, managed their affectation of aloofness without actually missing a trick. It might be a great mistake to overlook Mr Lawrence.