So Tom sent for Dominic Felse, half against his conscience and a little against his will, but already launched and incapable of stopping. Dominic confirmed that he and Miles had spent all the week-end together. Yes, they’d packed up together and left about half past five, maybe a little earlier. No, they hadn’t been separated at all during the whole trip, except for half-hour periods while Miles took the scooter and went shopping, and Dominic cooked. Miles was no good as a cook. Yes, they’d come straight back to the Mallindines’ for supper.
Why?
Dominic was nearly a year younger than Miles, and less impeded by his dignity and sophistication from asking the obvious questions. Moreover, he was the son of a detective-inspector, and had a consequent grasp of the rights of the interrogated which made him an awkward customer to interrogate. With sunny politeness he answered questions, and with reciprocal interest asked them. Tom got rid of him in short order, for fear of giving away more than he got.
He met the two of them in the corridor as he left when afternoon school ended. They gave him twin civilised smiles, very slight and correct, and said: ‘Good-night, sir!’ in restrained and decorous unison.
The sight of the two of them thus, shoulder to shoulder, with similarly closed faces and impenetrable eyes, settled one thing. They had pooled everything they knew, and were preparing to stand off the world from each other’s back whenever the assault threatened.
He had seen it coming, and he didn’t make the mistake of thinking that either of them would as lightly confide in a third party. All the same, he began to regret what he had set in motion. Would it really do any good to find out what had happened, and who had made it happen? Wasn’t it better to creep through the next few days and weeks with fingers crossed and breath held, walking on tiptoe and praying to know nothing – not to have to know anything – like Beck and Mrs Beck? Thankful for every night that closed in with no trap sprung and no revelation exploding into knowledge; frightened of every contact in the street and every alarm note of the telephone, but every day a little less frightened.
Annet came and went with fewer words than ever, but with a tranquil face. Something of wonder still lingered, and something of sadness and deprivation, too, and sometimes her eyes, looking through the walls of the house and the slope of the Hallowmount into whatever underworld she had left behind there, burned into a secret, motionless excitement that never seemed quite to be able to achieve joy. She went to Cwm Hall in the morning, and Regina Blacklock’s chauffeur drove her home in the evening, and nobody there seemed to notice anything wrong with her or her work. Thank God that was all right, anyhow! There were bushels of Regina’s notes from the conference to decipher and type out, and a long report to her committee, which Annet brought home to copy on Thursday evening. On the incidence and basic causes of delinquency in deprived children!
She was working on it when Tom came through the hall after supper to go out and stable the Mini for the night. He heard the typewriter clicking away in the dingy little book-lined room Beck still called his study, though all he ever did in it was accumulate endless random text-notes of doubtful value on various obscure authors, with a view to publishing his own commentaries some day. No one believed it would ever be done, not even Beck himself; no one believed the world stood to gain or lose anything, either way.
Tom opened the door gingerly and looked in, and she was alone at the desk. It was the first time he had been alone with her, even for a moment, since her return. He went in quickly, and closed the door softly at his back.
‘Annet—’
She had heard him come. She finished her sentence composedly before she looked up. He could see no hardening in her face, no wariness, no change at all. She looked at him thoughtfully, and said nothing.
‘Annet, I want you to know that if there’s anything I can do to help you, I will, gladly. I’d like to think you’d ask me.’
She sat and looked at him for a long moment, looked down at her own hands still poised over the keys, and back slowly to his face. He thought he caught the bleak, small shadow of a smile, at least a shade of warmth in her eyes.
‘You’d much better just go on thinking me a liar,’ she said without reproach or bitterness. ‘It’s nice of you, but I really don’t need any help.’
‘I hope you won’t, Annet. Only I’m afraid you may. I know, I feel, it isn’t over. And I don’t want you to be hurt.’
‘Oh, that doesn’t matter!’ said Annet, startled into a rush of generous words. ‘Not at all! You mustn’t worry about me.’
She smiled at him, the first real, unguarded smile he had ever had from her. If she had asked him to believe in fairyland then, he would have done it; any prodigy he would have managed for her. But the moment was over before it was well begun; for it was at that instant that the knocker thudded at the front door.
He shivered and froze at the sound. Annet’s smile had grown suddenly, mockingly bright. ‘It’ll be Myra, coming for me,’ she said, quite gently. ‘What are you afraid of?’
But it wasn’t Myra. They heard Mrs Beck cross the hall, quick, nervous steps, running to ward off disaster. They heard the low exchange of words; a man’s voice, quiet and deep-pitched, and Mrs Beck’s fluttering tones between. He was in the hall now; only a few steps, then he was still, waiting.
The door opened upon Mrs Beck’s white, paralysed face and scared eyes.
‘Annet – there’s someone here who wishes to speak to you.’
He came into the doorway at her shoulder, a tall, lean man with a long, contemplative face and deceptively placid eyes that didn’t miss either Tom’s instinctively stiffening back or Annet’s blank surprise.
‘I’m sorry to interrupt your work, Miss Beck,’ said Detective-Inspector George Felse gently, ‘but there’s a matter on which I’m obliged to ask you some questions. And I think, in the circumstances, it should be in your parents’ presence.’
CHAPTER IV
« ^ »
From the very first she seemed startled and bewildered, but not afraid; a little uneasy, naturally, for after all, George Felse was the police, and clearly on business, but not at all in trouble with her own conscience.
‘Of course!’ she said, and slid the bar of her typewriter into its locked position, and stood up. ‘Shouldn’t we go into the living-room? It’s more comfortable there.’
‘But Mr Kenyon—’ began Mrs Beck helplessly, and let the words trail vaguely away. An old, cold house, where was the paying guest to sit in peace if they appropriated the living-room?
‘That’s all right,’ said Tom, torn between haste and unwillingness, ‘I’ll get out of the way.’
But he didn’t want to! He had to know what he had let loose upon her, for he was sure this was his work. He should have let well alone. Why had he had to question Mallindine, and then go on to confirm what he well knew might still be lies by dragging in Dominic Felse? They’d compared notes almost before his back was turned; and young Felse had promptly gone home and let slip the whole affair, with all its implications, to his father. How else could you account for this?
But no, that wouldn’t do; as soon as he paused to consider he could see that clearly. If Dominic had informed on Annet, it was because something else had happened during that lost week-end, something that could be linked to a strayed girl and an improbable fairy-story. Something of interest to the police, whose sole interest in a pair of eighteen-year-old runaways would be to restore them to their agitated parents, and let the two families settle it between them as best they could; and even that only if their aid had been sought in the affair. No, there must be something else, something that had frightened Dominic with its implications, and caused him either to blurt out what he knew unintentionally, or driven him to deliver it up as a burden too heavy and a responsibility too great to be borne.