“Yes, I would, then. Twelve. Church clock sounded twelve, din’ it?”
“Is that right?” Alleyn asked Bruce.
“He can’t count beyond ten. It was nine when I knocked off.”
“Long job, you had of it”
“I did that. There’s a vein of solid clay runs through, three foot depth of it. And after that the pine boughs to push in. It was an unco weird experience. Everybody in the village asleep by then and an owl overhead and bats flying in and out of the lamplight. And inside the kirk, the leddy herself, cold in her coffin and me digging her grave. Aye, it was, you may say, an awfu’, uneasy situation, yon. In literature,” said Bruce, lecturing them, “it’s an effect known as Gothic. I was pleased enough to have done it.”
Alleyn lowered his voice. “Do you think he’s got it right?”
“That he slept under the hedge and woke as I passed? I daresay. It might well be, puir daftie.”
“And that he saw Carter, earlier?”
“I’d be inclined to credit it. I didna see anything of the man mysel’ but then I wouldn’t, where I was.”
“No, of course not. Well, thanks again,” Alleyn said. He returned to the front of the church, ran down the steps and found Fox waiting in the car.
“Back to Quintern,” he said. “The quest for Charmless Claude sets in with a vengeance.”
“Skiddadled?”
“Too soon to say. Bruce indicates as much.”
“Ah, to hell with it,” said Fox in a disgusted voice, “What’s the story?”
Alleyn told him.
“There you are!” Fox complained when he had finished. “Scared him off, I daresay, putting our chap in. Here’s a pretty kettle of fish.”
“We’ll have to take up the Dover possibility, of course, but I don’t like it much. If he’d considered it as a getaway port he wouldn’t have been silly enough to ask Bruce about trains. Still, we’ll check. He’s thought to have some link with a stationer’s shop in Southhampton.”
“Suppose we do run him down, what’s the charge?”
“You may well ask. We’ve got nothing to warrant an arrest unless we can hold him for a day or two on the drug business and that seems to have petered out. We can’t run him in for grubbing up an old fireplace in a disused room in his stepmother’s stable yard. Our chap’s found nothing to signify, I suppose?”
“Nothing, really. You’ve had a better haul, Mr. Alleyn.”
“I don’t know, Foxkin, I don’t know. In one respect I think perhaps I have.”
iii
When Verity drove home from the funeral it was with the expectation of what she called “putting her boots up” and relaxing for an hour or so. She found herself to be suddenly used up and supposed that the events of the past days must have been more exhausting, emotionally, than she had realized. And after further consideration an inborn honesty prompted her to conclude that the years were catching up on her.
“Selfishly considered,” she told herself, “this condition has its advantages. Less is expected of one.” And then she pulled herself together. Anyone would think she was involved up to her ears in this wretched business whereas, of course, apart from being on tap whenever her goddaughter seemed to want her, she was on the perimeter.
She had arrived at this reassuring conclusion when she turned in at her own gate and saw Basil Schramm’s car drawn up in front of her house.
Schramm himself was sitting at the iron table under the lime trees.
His back was toward her but at the sound of her car, he swung round and saw her. The movement was familiar.
When she stopped he was there, opening the door for her.
“You didn’t expect to see me,” he said.
“No.”
“I’m sorry to be a bore. I’d like a word or two if you’ll let me.”
“I can’t very well stop you,” said Verity lightly. She walked quickly to the nearest chair and was glad to sit on it. Her mouth was dry and there was a commotion going on under her ribs.
He took the other chair. She saw him through a kind of mental double focus: as he had been when, twenty-five years ago, she made a fool of herself, and as he was now, not so much changed or aged as exposed.
“I’m going to ask you to be terribly, terribly kind,” he said and waited.
“Are you?”
“Of course you’ll think it bloody cool. It is bloody cool but you’ve always been a generous creature, Verity, haven’t you?”
“I shouldn’t depend on it, if I were you.”
“Well — I can but try.” He took out his cigarette case. It was silver with a sliding action. “Remember?” he said. He slid it open and offered it to her. She had given it to him.
Verity said, “No, thank you, I don’t.”
“You used to. How strong-minded you are. I shouldn’t, of course, but I do.” He gave his rather empty social laugh and lit a cigarette. His hands were unsteady.
Verity thought. I know the line I ought to take if he says what I think he’s come here to say. But can I take it? Can I avoid saying things that will make him suppose I still mind? I know this situation. After it’s all over you think of how dignified and quiet and unmoved you should have been and remember how you gave yourself away at every turn. As I did when he degraded me.
He was preparing his armoury. She had often, even when she had been most attracted, thought how transparent and silly and predictable were his ploys.
“I’m afraid,” he was saying, “I’m going to talk about old times. Will you mind very much?”
“I can’t say I see much point in the exercise,” she said cheerfully. “But I don’t mind, really.”
“I hoped you wouldn’t.”
He waited, thinking perhaps that she would invite him to go on. When she said nothing he began again.
“It’s nothing, really. I didn’t mean to give it a great build-up. It’s just an invitation for you to preserve what they call ‘a masterly inactivity.’ ” He laughed again.
“Yes?”
“About — well, Verity, I expect you’ve guessed what about, haven’t you?”
“I haven’t tried.”
“Well, to be quite, quite honest and straightforward—” He boggled for a moment.
“Quite honest and straightforward?” Verity couldn’t help repeating but she managed to avoid a note of incredulity. She was reminded of another stock phrase-maker — Mr. Markos and his “quite cold-bloodedly.”
“It’s about that silly business a thousand years ago, at St. Luke’s,” Schramm was saying, “I daresay you’ve forgotten all about it.”
“I could hardly do that.”
“I know it looked bad. I know I ought to have — well — asked to see you and explain. Instead of — all right, then—”
“Bolting?” Verity suggested.
“Yes. All right. But you know there were extenuating circumstances. I was in a bloody bad jam for money and I would have paid it back.”
“But you never got it. The bank questioned the signature on the cheque, didn’t they? And my father didn’t make a charge.”
“Very big of him! He only gave me the sack and shattered my career.”
Verity stood up. “It would be ridiculous and embarrassing to discuss it. I think I know what you’re going to ask. You want me to say I won’t tell the police. Is that it?”
“To be perfectly honest—”
“Oh, don’t,” Verity said, and closed her eyes.
“I’m sorry. Yes, that’s it. It’s just that they’re making nuisances of themselves and one doesn’t want to present them with ammunition.”
Verity was painfully careful and slow over her answer. She said: “If you are asking me not to go to Mr. Alleyn and tell him that when you were one of my father’s students I had an affair with you and that you used this as a stepping-stone to forging my father’s signature on a cheque — no, I don’t propose to do that.”