The police had found neat lists, in flies going back four years, of the money he had collected from the little terrorized businesses; and occasionally against the name of a caf‚ or a shop or a pub, Lodge told me, was written the single word, 'Persuaded'.
The racing record was shorter and contained lists of sums of money which the police did not know the purpose of; but one sheet headed 'Joe Nantwich' was clear enough. It was a list of dates and amounts, of which the smallest was one hundred pounds. And underneath was drawn a thick line, with the words: 'Account closed' printed in Uncle George's neat handwriting.
With Kate gone, the press men had drifted away. Their fun was over.
'Are you ready to go?' I asked Lodge. I had picked him up in Maidenhead on my way down. He nodded, and we went out to my car.
I drive faster when I'm happy. That day I had no trouble at all in keeping within the speed limit through all the twisty Sussex villages; and Lodge endured my gloomy silence without comment half the way back to Maidenhead.
Finally he said, 'Miss Ellery-Penn was very useful to her uncle. Everything you did in pursuing him went straight back to him through her. No wonder he was so well informed about your movements.'
I had lived with this thought for a long time now; but hearing someone else speak it aloud had a most extraordinary effect. A tingle ran up my spine and set my brain suddenly alive, as if an alarm bell were ringing in my subconscious.
We were running through shrub and heathland. I slowed, swung the car off the road on to the peaty verge, and stopped. Lodge looked at me questioningly.
'What you said- I want to think,' I said.
He waited a while in silence, and then said, 'What's worrying you? The case is over. There are no more mysteries.'
I shook my head. 'There's someone else,' I said.
'What do you mean?'
'There's someone else we don't know about. Someone in Uncle George's confidence.' In spite of everything, I still thought of him as Uncle George.
Lodge said, 'Fielder, the manager, was rounded up. So were all the L. C. Perth operators, though they have been freed again. Only two of the clerks had any idea of what was going on, one who went to the race tracks and one in the office. They received their instructions through Fielder about which horses to accept unlimited money on. There are no niggers left in the woodpile.'
'Joe was stopping horses for months before Uncle George gave Heavens Above to Kate, and she had never been racing before that. Someone else who goes racing must have been working for Uncle George,' I said with conviction.
'Penn would need only the morning paper and a form book for choosing a horse to stop. He wouldn't need to go to the races himself. He didn't need an accomplice at the races apart from his bookmaker – Perth. You're imagining things.'
'Uncle George didn't know enough about horses,' I said.
'So he made out,' said Lodge sceptically.
'Kate told me that for as long as she remembers he was a dead loss on the subject. He started the Marconicar Protection racket only four years ago, and the racing racket less than a year ago. Before that he had no reason to pretend. Therefore his ignorance of horses was genuine.'
'I'll give you that,' he said, 'But I don't see that it proves anything.'
'He must have had a contact on the racecourse. How else did he manage to pick on the one jockey who could most easily be corrupted?' I said.
'Perhaps he tried several, until he found a taker,' suggested Lodge.
'No. Everyone would have talked about it, if he had.'
'He tried Major Davidson,' said Lodge. 'That looks like a very bad mistake from your mythical adviser.'
'Yes,' I conceded. I changed to another tack. 'There have been one or two things which have been relayed recently to Uncle George which Kate herself didn't know. How do you explain that?'
'What things?'
'Joe's bit of brown wrapping paper, for instance. He told everyone in the weighing-room at Liverpool about it. Kate wasn't at the meeting. But two days later, on Uncle George's instructions, Joe was killed and the paper taken away from him.'
Lodge pondered. 'Someone might have rung her up on the Sunday and mentioned it in passing.'
I thought fleetingly of Dane. I said, 'Even then, it was surely not interesting enough for her to have told Uncle George.'
'You never know,' he said.
I started up and drove on in silence for some miles. I was loath to produce for his scepticism the most deep-rooted of my reasons for believing an enemy still existed: the near-certainty that in the concussed gap in my memory I already knew who it was.
When at last I tentatively told him this, he treated it more seriously than I expected. And after some minutes of thought he pierced and appalled me by saying, 'Perhaps your subconscious won't let you remember who this enemy of yours is because you like him.'
I dropped Lodge at Maidenhead and went on to the Cotswolds.
Entering the old stone house with the children noisily tumbling through the hall on their way to tea was like stepping into a sane world again. Scilla was coming down the stairs with her arms full of Polly's summer dresses: I went over and met her on the bottom step and kissed her cheek.
'Joan and I will have to lengthen all these,' she said, nodding at the dresses. 'Polly's growing at a rate of knots.'
I followed her into the drawing-room and we sat down on the hearthrug in front of a newly lit fire.
'Is it all over?' asked Scilla, pushing the dresses off her lap on to the floor.
'Yes, I think so.' Too much was all over.
I told her about the inquest and the verdict. I said, 'It was only because of Bill that George Penn was ever found out. Bill didn't die for nothing.'
She didn't answer for a long time, and I saw the yellow flames glinting on the unshed tears in her eyes. Then she sniffed and shook her head as if to free herself from the past, and said, 'Let's go and have tea with the children.'
Polly wanted me to mend a puncture on her bicycle. Henry said he'd worked out some gambits in chess and would I play against him after tea. William gave me a sticky kiss and pressed an aged fruit drop into my palm as a present. I was home again.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The almost unbearable belief that I had lost Kate grew very little easier as the days passed. I couldn't get her out of my mind. When I woke in the morning the ache rushed in to spoil the day: when I slept I dreamed continually that she was running away down a long dark tunnel. I thought it unlikely I would ever see her again, and tried to make myself be sensible about it.
Then, a week after the inquest on Uncle George, I went to ride at Banbury races, and Kate was there. She was dressed in dark navy blue and there were big grey hollows round her eyes. Her face was pale and calm, and her expression didn't change when she saw me. She was waiting outside the weighing-room, and spoke to me as soon as I drew near.
'Alan, I think I should apologize for what I said to you the other day.' The words were clearly an effort.
'It's all right,' I said.
'No- it's not. I thought about what you said- about those children going to school with the judo expert- and I realize Uncle George had got to be stopped.' She paused. 'It was not your fault Aunt Deb died. I'm sorry I said it was.' She let out a breath as if she had performed an intolerable duty.
'Did you come all the way here especially to say that?' I asked.
'Yes. It has been worrying me that I was so unjust.'
'My dear precious Kate,' I said, the gloom of the past week beginning to vanish like morning mist, 'I would have given anything for it not to have been Uncle George, believe me.' I looked at her closely. 'You look very hungry. Have you had anything to eat today?'