‘All right, I won’t!’
George walked away from him as far as the hollow shadow under the archway, walked his heat and exasperation out of him for a few minutes in the chill of it, and came back to begin all over again. It went on and on and on through the sparse, barren exchange, two, three, four times over; but at the end of it, it was still no. Quivering with tension, exhausted and afraid, Stockwood looked up at him with apprehensive eyes, waiting for the inevitable, and still denied him.
‘All right,’ said George at last, with a sigh, ‘if that’s how you want it, there are more ways than one of finding her.’
But were there? Had he discovered even one way yet of finding the man who had picked up Annet and taken her to Birmingham? The city might be, must be, more productive.
‘We’ll leave it at that,’ he said, ‘for the moment. And on your own head be it.’
‘Are you taking me in?’ asked the young man from a dry throat.
‘No. Not yet. I don’t want you yet, and you’ll keep. But you won’t do anything rash, will you? Such as deciding to get out of here, fast. I shouldn’t. You wouldn’t get far.’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ said Stockwood steadily, and sat with his clenched hands braced on his knees, tense and still, as George turned and walked out of the stable block.
Peter Blacklock was waiting in the leaf-strewn border of the drive, just out of sight of the windows of the house.
‘Well, did you satisfy yourself?’ His kind face was clouded, his eyes anxiously questioning. ‘You know, Felse, you’re barking up the wrong tree. I’m sure Stockwood had nothing whatever to do with it.’
‘I’ve finished with him for the time being,’ said George noncommittally, his voice mild.
‘I’m glad. I was sure—’
He fell into step beside George, shaking his head helplessly over his thoughts, and feeling for words.
‘You know, Regina and I are very worried about Annet. One can’t help realising, from what was published in the papers, that she’s very deeply implicated. What I wanted to say— to ask— You do realise, don’t you, that she must have been dragged into this terrible position quite innocently? We know her, you see, very well. It’s quite impossible that she should willingly hurt or wrong anyone. She can have known nothing, nothing whatever, about the crime – before or after the act.’
He waited, and George walked beside him and said nothing.
‘Forgive me, but I had to tell you what we feel about her, we who know her, perhaps, as well as anyone. We’re very fond of her, Mr Felse. I’m sure you can understand that.’
‘I can understand it,’ said George. ‘I’m beginning to think I know her pretty well myself.’ And could be very fond of her, too, his mind added, but he kept that to himself.
‘Then you must have realised that she can’t have known anything about murder or theft.’ He looked up into George’s face with the shadowy, emasculated reflection of his wife’s confidence, authority and energy. ‘I know this isn’t professional conduct, but I should be very grateful to you for some reassurance – a hint as to how you’re thinking of her—’
‘I think of her,’ said George, goaded, ‘as a human creature, not a doll, a whole lot more complicated and dangerous than any of you seem to realise. She isn’t anyone’s hapless victim, and she isn’t a pawn in anyone’s game, and when I pity her I know I’m wasting my time. But if it’s any consolation to you, I don’t think she’s a murderess.’
He climbed into the MG, swung it round, hissing, on the apron of rosy gravel, and drove away down the avenue of old lime trees, leaving Blacklock standing with a faint, assuaged smile on his lips and the deep grief still in his eyes; slender and tall and elegant in his ancient and excellent clothes, like a monument to a stratum of society into which he had been drafted just in time to decay with it.
George telephoned Superintendent Duckett from home, over the hasty lunch Bunty had spent so much time and care preparing, and he had now no leisure to enjoy.
‘The bike again,’ said Duckett hopefully. ‘If you can find where they stayed there may be a real chance of finding out if anyone saw the bike around. And if so, then it’s looking unhealthy for our friend. But why, for God’s sake, say he spent the week-end with a woman, if he really is the one who was off with the Beck girl? You’d have thought he’d turn out absolutely any tale rather than go so near the truth.’
‘He did, originally. It fell down under him. This time he was pushed. And of course,’ said George cautiously, ‘there’s always the chance that it may be true – even provably true, if it’s that or his neck. He’s a good-looking chap, and there could be other women, besides Annet, who’d think so. Even some others he might risk a good deal before he’d name.’
‘You’ve got one in mind?’ said Duckett alertly, hearing the note of wary thoughtfulness he knew how to interpret.
‘I have, but it’s far-fetched. I’d rather plough other ground first, it’s more likely to yield.’
He could picture in Technicolor Duckett’s face if the receiver should blurt out baldly in his ear: ‘Well, he could have gone off back to Gloucester, and spent the week-end amusing Mrs Blacklock between lectures and discussions. She’s noticed him, all right. She speaks up for him, as well she might if she knows where he was but doesn’t want to have to say so – and a little more freely than you would normally for a good chauffeur you’d had only three months, and who otherwise meant nothing to you. And what would be more likely to shut his mouth, and make him stick out even the threat of a murder charge rather than come out with the real facts? A blazing scandal, her reputation gone and his job, and where would he get another in a hurry? If it was Regina, it all makes sense!’
No, that was all true enough, but not for publication, and for the moment non-essential in any case. It couldn’t catch their murderer for them, even if they proved it, it could only cancel out one more possibility. The elimination of Stockwood could wait its turn.
‘I’m making for Birmingham now,’ he said, aloud. ‘It looks the more profitable end at the moment.’
‘Give ’em my love,‘ said Duckett. ‘And keep off them corns.’
George drove to Birmingham, and conferred with his opposite numbers there briefly and amicably. They had worked together on other occasions, and understood each other very well. Hag-ridden and undermanned, the city CID were hardly likely to chill their welcome for someone who came with a handful of suggestions, however dubious; all the more if he was willing to investigate them himself.
The sum of their own discoveries, up to then, was two shop assistants who had sold clothing to Annet in one of the big stores, and one elderly newsboy from whom she had bought a paper on Friday evening.
‘Never reads the damned things himself,’ complained the Superintendent bitterly, ‘except the racing page. Says he’s seen too many of ’em to care. Waving the girl’s face in front of the rush hour crowds, and never noticed it himself!’
‘She was alone when they saw her?’
‘Every time.’
‘Well, let’s see if we can get anything out of her old class-mates.’
The student of literature was out of town for the weekend; he should, of course, have thought of that. But her lodgings were easy enough to find, shared with three other students, and presided over by a competent matron of fifty, who had reared a family of her own, and knew all the pitfalls. It was clear within ten minutes that it would be quite impossible for any irregularities to creep into her well-ordered household, or any of her girls to misbehave herself or entertain a misbehaving visitor within these walls. Contact with Beryl there might have been, but on the whole even that was improbable. The one girl who was spending the week-end in town, over a crucial essay, had never heard Annet mentioned, and never seen her, and from her George gathered that Beryl’s time and attention was very largely taken up by men friends rather than women. He wrote that one off, and made for the retired teacher who had enjoyed Annet’s liking and confidence.