‘I shouldn’t think you’ve ever been so glad to cross off your prime suspect,’ said Tom, feeling his own heart lift perceptibly, even in its passionate preoccupation with that other hapless young creature for whom there was no such relief.
‘Well, he wasn’t that, exactly, he was rather down the list, as a matter of fact. Though as it turns out,’ said George with soft deliberation, ‘we’ve lost Number One as well.’
‘You have? Who—?’ But perhaps he wasn’t allowed to ask; it was all too easy to assume that goodwill entitled you to the confidence of the authorities. ‘Sorry, I take that back. Naturally you can’t very well talk about it.’
‘Oh, in this case I think I could.’ George cast one brief glance at him along his shoulder, and saw the young, good-looking, self-confident face paler and more thoughtful than usual, but unshakable in innocence and secure as a rock. ‘Number One was an obvious case for investigation. In close contact with her daily, then clean away from here for the week-end just as she vanished. Involved closely in her reappearance, too, as if he knew where to look for her, and was interested in creating the atmosphere for her return. Anxious to be around when I began to ask questions, very anxious to know the odds. And falling over himself to point out to me indications that someone else had been on the scene.’
Tom was staring back at him blankly, searching his mind in all the wrong directions, and still quite unable to see this eligible lover anywhere in the case.
‘But there wasn’t anyone. The trouble from the beginning was that there was no one in close contact with her like that—’
‘No one?’ said George with a hollow smile. ‘Yes, there was this one fellow. Right age, right type, and rubbing shoulders with her every day. You mean to say you never noticed him? But we’ve checked up on his movements all the week-end, too, and he’s well and truly out of it. He went home like a lamb, just as he said he was going too, and he was in a theatre with another girl when Jacob Worrall was killed. For God’s sake!’ said George between irritation and respect, ‘do you want me to tell you what they saw?’
Then it came, the full realisation, like a weight falling upon Tom and flattening the breath out of him. He froze in incredulous shock, heels braced into the gravel, staring great-eyed through the dark and struggling for words, confounded by this plain possibility which had never once occurred to him. What sort of complacent fool had he been? He stood off now and looked at himself from arm’s-length, with another man’s eyes; and that, too, was a new experience to him.
‘You mean to say you never realised? Why do you suppose I asked Doctor Thorpe to stay with Annet, that night, until my man came to keep watch on her? Who else knew at that time that we were on to her? Who else could have known that she was a threat to him? Did you think I was protecting her from her father? You weren’t a very likely murderer in yourself,’ said George gently, propelling the stricken young man along the path towards the waiting boys, ‘and you could hardly have been her partner in that first attempt at flight, six months ago, that’s true. But even now it isn’t by any means certain that the man we’re looking for is the same person, it’s merely a fair probability. And on circumstantial evidence alone, until Miss MacLeod put you clean out of the reckoning today, you were undoubtedly Number One.’
CHAPTER VIII
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George came to Fairford very early in the morning, intent on being unexpected, appearing when Annet was still in a housecoat, pale and silent and unprepared for the renewed assault. But it seemed there was no time of the day or night when she was not armed against him and everyone. Her great eyes had swallowed half her face, the fine, clear flesh was wasting away alarmingly from her slender bones. She looked as if she had not slept at all, as if she had stared into the dark unceasingly all through the night, gazing through her window at the ridge of the Hallowmount, stretched like a slumbering beast against the eastern sky.
He asked her the old questions, and she was silent with the old silence, patient and absolute. He sat down beside her and told her, in clipped, quiet tones, everything he knew about Jacob Worrell’s narrow, harmless, shabby life, about his poor little backroom hobby of collecting local Midland porcelain, about the two blows that had splintered his fragile skull and spilled his meagre, old-man’s blood over the boards of his workroom. He chose words that made her tremble, and pushed them home like knives, but she never gave him word or sound in return. The room was full of pain, but the only words were his words. He wanted to stop, but she had to speak, she had to be made to speak.
It occurred to him at length, and why he did not know, to send Policewoman Crowther out of the room, to wait below until he should call her back. As soon as the door had closed behind her Annet leaned and took his hand and smoothed it between hers, entreating him with clinging, frantic fingers and desperate eyes.
‘Let me go!’ Her voice was only a breath between her lips, a small, broken sound. She held his hand to her cheek, and the drift of her dark hair flowed over it. ‘Take her away from me, take them all away, and let me go! Oh, please, please, take them all away and leave me alone!’
‘No, Annet, I can’t do that. You know I can’t.’
How well Miles knew her, and how deeply he understood the real threat to her now. Whether she understood what she was trying to do was another matter. All George was sure of was that he had only to remove all restrictions from her, and sit back and watch, and she would lead him to her lover; and that he could not let her do it, that he would not risk her even to catch a murderer. He could not make her speak, and she could not make him grant her the freedom of action she wanted, to throw her own life away after the old man’s life.
‘You must! Please! I’ve done nothing. Let me go! You must let me go!’
‘No.’
‘Then there’s nothing I can do, nothing, nothing – Oh, please help me! Help me! Take everyone away and let me go free!’
The dark hair slipped away on both sides to uncover the tender nape of her neck, and its childishness and fragility was more than he could bear. He took his hand from her almost roughly, and walked out of the room, and her long, shuddering sigh of despair followed him down the stairs.
‘No,’ he said wearily, meeting her mother’s questioning eyes in the doorway of the living-room. ‘Hasn’t she said anything to you that could offer us a lead?’
‘She says nothing to me. She might be struck dumb. She’s like this with everyone.’
‘And no one’s asked to see her? Or to speak to her on the telephone?’
‘Not to speak to her, no. The vicar rang up to ask after her. And Regina, of course.’ Even in this extremity she could not suppress the little, proud lift of her voice, at being on Christian name terms with Mrs Blacklock of Cwm Hall. ‘Last night, that was, after the papers came. She and Peter were both very distressed about her. They asked if there was anything they could do, and if they could come and see her. I told them you didn’t wish anyone to see her yet. Though she isn’t charged with anything,’ said Mrs Beck, staring him hard in the eye, ‘and we have a right if we choose—’
‘Of course you have. But you also have the good sense to understand the sound reasons why you should listen to me and do what I say. When you stop agreeing with me, let them all in,’ said George patiently.
‘We know you have a job to do, of course. And I suppose it gives an impression of activity to mount guard on my girl, when there’s nothing else you can think of doing. Naturally you want to keep up your reputation—’
‘What I chiefly want,’ said George, walking past her to the door, ‘is to keep Annet alive.’