“Lost her again?” Rooke inquired with alcoholic gravity. “Last time I saw her she was talking to you.”
“That was an hour ago.” Railton glanced irritably at his watch. “Damned odd.”
He drifted away, spoke to two or three people, and returned to the bar with a carefully simulated expression of mild anxiety on his heavy face. He said once again that it was damned odd.
“What’s odd?” Rooke asked.
“I can’t find my wife. Where’s Saunders? Has he gone home?”
“Saunders?” Rooke surveyed the crowd, thinner now than an hour ago. “Haven’t seen him for quite a while.”
Railton said in a sharper voice to Dwyer, “Have you seen my wife?”
“Had a dance with her around nine,” Dwyer said. “Haven’t seen her since then.”
“I wonder if Saunders…”
“What’s that about Saunders again?” Rooke asked.
“Nothing.” Roger shook his head, well aware that both men were looking at him with mouths slightly open. “Seems queer, that’s all.”
He didn’t say what seemed queer, which only added to their curiosity.
Roger drove home, feeling moderately well-pleased with himself.
Home was a large, fairly modern structure set among trees near the river, well away from the industrial smoke that the town produced. It was a house without servants, except for day help — a factor Roger had carefully considered.
He garaged his car and let himself in. Agnes was kneeling in front of the fire. There was no sign of Saunders.
“He had a drink and went home,” she said indifferently.
A slight disappointment. Some mutual attraction between Agnes and Saunders would have helped, but perhaps that was too much to expect. Agnes was as frigid as a December morning and Bernard Saunders was obsessed with his work. Fortunately, the ultimate issue was out of their hands.
“I sometimes wonder why you bother to go to these affairs,” he said. “If it’s too much trouble to make yourself plesant to my business associates—”
“I don’t care for them.”
“I don’t care for them,” he mimicked. “I wonder what you do care for?”
She looked at him over her shoulder, her brown hair shining in the firelight. “Kindness, and perhaps a little flattery sometimes. Quiet pleasant things that you consider a complete waste of time. But most of all, kindness.”
He stared down at her. She was so much stronger than he was. He could snap every bone in her body, but he could never quench the mocking gleam in her eyes.
“You checked so many things before you married me,” she told him. “Other things, maybe more important, you missed… You wanted money so badly, didn’t you?”
“Most people do. And talking of money, your money, if you’ve changed your mind about the offer I made—”
“I haven’t. You didn’t do quite as you liked in my father’s day. You won’t in mine.”
And by saying that, he thought grimly, you’ve put the seal on your own death warrant.
For some weeks Roger Railton had been painstakingly copying his wife’s handwriting.
A few days after the Unionist dance he wrote an entirely imaginary letter from his wife to an entirely imaginary character, then promptly burned it. This was not such lunacy as it appeared to be. He wanted, not the letter, but its impression on the page underneath.
When Rooke came into the office the following afternoon, he found Railton standing near the window with a sheet of blank paper in one hand and a magnifying lens in the other. It was a posture and a preoccupation so emphatically out of character that Rooke stared in astonishment. Railton glanced up and hurriedly stuffed the paper into his pocket.
He came back to his desk, and Rooke opened a folder, drawing Roger’s attention to the columns of figures. But for once — indeed, for the first time in Rooke’s memory — Railton’s mind did not appear to be on his work.
“Is anything wrong, Mr. Railton?” he asked.
“Wrong? What the hell should be wrong?”
“I thought you seemed a bit upset, that’s all.”
Railton was breathing hard. “Nothing, nothing.”
He bent over the accounts that Rooke had brought in, then suddenly pushed them away and smacked his hand down on the desk. “I wonder how far you’re to be trusted?” he said, well-knowing that the distance could be measured in millimeters. “What d’you make of this?”
Rooke took the sheet of paper. “It’s blank,” he said.
“The sheet above it wasn’t.”
Rooke gave him a keen glance, then peered again at the sheet. “Your sight’s better than mine.”
“What about the third line? Is that word better?”
“Could be.”
“Follow that line on. And the next.”
Rooke sat down and gave the sheet his full attention. “Where did you get this?” he asked, after several minutes of scrutiny.
“Never mind where I got it.” Railton reached for the sheet and held one of the corners over his cigarette lighter. He dropped the curling ash into the wastebasket. “Best thing to do with it. Shouldn’t have bothered you, but—”
He mopped his forehead. “Get me a glass of water, Rooke. And oblige me by forgetting about this, will you?”
Rooke brought the glass of water and went out. Railton’s eyes followed his progress along the corridor. How long before Rooke told someone? — in strictest confidence, of course. Not long. Give him a mere quarter of an hour.
Rooke, as the firm’s Secretary, was perfectly well-acquainted with Agnes’ signature. Though not, perhaps, with those scraps of frustrated sentiment expressed on that sheet and now burned beyond further reference.
Some circumstances intolerable… Better perhaps to die if one had the courage…
Railton smiled craftily to himself. The subtle touch! Today has seemed like twenty days… If you mean all you say then for heaven’s sake…
Nothing extravagant, no purple prose. Agnes wasn’t that kind.
He drank the water that Rooke had brought. Nothing like being thorough.
By Saturday he was conscious of Rooke’s curious stare whenever he encountered the man. Rooke and Dwyer were members of the same golf club. There was a perceptible difference in Dwyer’s manner too. A slight — could it be concern, a man-to-man sympathy?
For a week Railton sat tight, carefully cultivating that preoccupied manner. It was late on Friday evening when he strolled along the corridor to the Export Department. The staff had left, and Dwyer was clearing his desk.
“When is Saunders putting that strut job into production?” Railton asked.
“It’s jigged up,” Dwyer told him. “Only a matter of days to run the lot off,”
Railton nodded. “Is Saunders anywhere about?”
“Maybe in the staff canteen. He’s working late tonight.”
Railton went to the door, then turned round. “By the way, was Saunders working late last Wednesday?”
“Wednesday?” Dwyer’s eyes veered sharply. “Couldn’t say offhand.”
“After — say, eight o’clock?”
“I’d gone home myself before then. Why all this about Saunders?”
“Eh? Oh, nothing, nothing. Don’t mention it to him, will you? It was — well, just a notion, that’s all.”
Tongue in cheek, he left Dwyer to make what he could of it.
There was no light in Saunders’ office. Railton slipped quietly inside. Saunders kept a little-used briefcase behind the filing cabinet. He found it, took the small risk, and carried it to his own office.
The gambit was over, and Railton was now ready for the middle game. One small touch, and he supplied it on Monday. Seeing Rooke’s angular shadow on the ribbed-glass door, he picked up the phone and pretended to be talking into it when Rooke entered.