‘It doesn’t necessarily follow,’ said George cautiously, ‘though I admit it’s a strong probability.’
‘I think it does follow. I think if there’d been any doubt, Annet would have spoken. As soon as she knew about the murder, she seems to have known whose life was at stake. Why else should she close up like this?’
‘Even Annet could be wrong,’ said George. ‘She never gave you any clue? You never noticed anything? Saw her with anyone special?’
Miles shook his head decidedly. ‘Maybe I was trying not to, I don’t know. I’ve tried all this evening to dredge up something that might be useful. But what I have is only deduction. He was from somewhere round here. That’s certain, because of the tickets. She wasn’t lying to me about that, I’m sure, he was going to board the train in Comerbourne. That time they were bound for London, this time it was Birmingham. That all ties in. She’s never been away from Comerford for long, it’s far more likely she’d get involved with someone here, someone she saw often, someone close at home. And someone hopelessly unsuitable,’ he said, watching George’s face steadily. ‘Even more unsuitable than I am now. I wasn’t warned off until after that fiasco. This one, whoever he is, would never have been allowed near her at all. That’s plain. There was a young fellow who drives long-distance lorries. Good-looking chap who danced—’
‘We know about him,’ said George.
‘Not that I know anything against him, mind you, only that they wouldn’t even have considered him for her. Or there’s a clerk from Langfords’ drawing-office, who used to make trips to London for the firm sometimes. He took her out once or twice, but there are tales about him, and her mother didn’t like him, and soon put a stop to it. Someone like that fits the picture. Someone who travels a fair amount and knows his way around. Because she doesn’t really. With all her assurance, and everything, she’s a milk-white innocent.’
The urgent, practical, purposeful level of his voice never changed, but suddenly it was sharp with an unbearable concentration of beauty and longing, as though he had charmed Annet into the middle of their close circle. There passed from one to another of them the electric tension of awareness, and every face was taut and still, charged with private anguish. Tom stared sightlessly before him with eyes that had reversed their vision, and were struggling with the uncontrollable apparitions within him. Dominic watched Miles protectively and jealously, and kept his lips closed very firmly upon his personal preoccupations. George saw them momentarily isolated hopelessly one from another. Loneliness is the human condition; we grasp at alleviations where we can find them, but most of the time we have to get by with tenuous illusions of communion. Only families, the lucky ones, and friends, the rare and gifted ones, sometimes grow together and inhabit shared worlds too securely for dispossession.
‘And then,’ pursued Miles, too intent upon his hunt to be aware of any checks and dismays, even his own, ‘there’s the matter of her reappearance. Nobody seems to have realised how odd that is, and how suggestive.’
‘And what do you know about her reappearance? There was nothing in the paper about that.’
‘I know, but Mr Kenyon began asking us some pretty significant questions the day after half-term, about where we’d been – about where I’d been,’ amended Miles more precisely, ‘over the week-end, and about the cart-road at the back of the Hallowmount. And Mrs Beck had been on the telephone to my mother, fishing about my whereabouts, too. So we knew there was something wrong at Fairford that I should naturally be blamed for unless I had an alibi, and that the track behind the Hallowmount had something to do with it. It had to be Annet, or why get after me? But Mr Kenyon said, when I asked him, that Annet was safe at home. So why all this about the road at the back of the hill, unless they knew she’d gone or come back that way? But that’s not all. The grave-vine’s got it now, with trimmings. Putting all the bits together, and adding what they fancy, as usual. They’re saying Annet was found wandering on the Hallowmount at night, and swore she hadn’t been anywhere, that she’d only been for a walk and was on her way home. They say she’d been lost to the world for five days under the Hallowmount, like those village girls in the eighteenth century, and remembered nothing about it. They say it in an ambiguous sort of way, if you know what I mean, half believing it really happened, half-sniggering over it as a tall tale invented to cover what she was really up to all that time. Round here they’re expert in having it both ways.’ He looked from George to Tom, and back to George again. ‘Is it true?’
‘Substantially, yes. Mr Kenyon saw her climb over the Hallowmount on Thursday, and he and her father went up there on Tuesday night, and met her just coming over the crest.’
‘And she did tell that tale? Pretending she knew nothing about the five days in between?’
‘Yes,’ said Tom.
‘Then she did it for a pretty urgent and immediate reason. Dom and I have been thinking about this. Nobody knows better than I do,’ said Miles with authority, ‘how Annet behaves in a jam like that. I’ve been through it with her once. She never told a single lie. She walked in at home again with a ruthless sort of dignity, told what she pleased of the truth, and wouldn’t say another word. She didn’t let me out of it, because I’d shown her I didn’t want that. But she never admitted to anything against me, either. She’d have done the same again. That was what she meant to do, I’m certain. If you’re thinking she cooked up that tall story as an alibi for the week-end, and turned up on the Hallowmount to give colour to it, you’re way off target. No, the boot’s on the other foot. She told it because she was caught there.’
‘What you’re saying, then,’ said George intently, ‘is that Annet was there on the hill for some private and sound reason of her own, and was taken completely by surprise when she came over the crest, intending to go straight home, and ran full tilt into her father and Kenyon.’
‘Exactly. And she did the best she could with it on the spur of the moment. She’d have done better if she’d had time to think, but she didn’t, she had to act instantly. So she fell back on the old tales, not to cover her lost weekend, but to distract attention from what she was doing there, at that moment.’
‘Go on,’ said George, after an instant of startling silence that set them all quivering like awakening sleepers. ‘What do you think, in that case, she was doing there?’
‘She could,’ said Dominic, out of the long stillness and quietness he had preserved in his corner, ‘have been hiding something, for instance. Something neither of them wanted to risk taking home with them.’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as two thousand pounds worth of small jewellery, and what was left of the money after they’d paid their bills.’
‘No!’ protested Tom Kenyon loudly, rigid in his chair. ‘That’s as good as saying she was a party to the crime. I don’t believe it. It’s impossible.’
‘No, sir, I didn’t mean that. She needn’t have known at all. Suppose he gave her a box, or a small case, or something, and said, here, you keep this safe, it’s all I’ve managed to save, it’s our capital. Suppose he told her: Put it somewhere where we can get at it easily when we’ve made our plans, and are ready to get out of here together. He’d know what was really in it, and how completely it could give him away if it was found, but she wouldn’t, she’d only think he was afraid of his family prying, and getting nosey about his savings, maybe even pinching from them if it happens to be that sort of family. And it easily could. He may be in lodgings, he may have a father who keeps a close watch on him, or scrounging brothers, there could be a dozen reasons why it would be safer to trust to a hiding-place in the footways of the old lead mines, or in one of the hollow trees up there, than to risk prying eyes at home. She wouldn’t know how urgent it really was, but it would make sense even to her. And you see the one solid advantage of putting it somewhere outside rather than having it at either home – if by bad luck it was found, there’d be nothing to connect it directly with him. She wouldn’t question. She’d do as he asked, and think no wrong until you sprang the murder on her, two days later. Then she’d understand.’