'You see Conrad today?'
Charles Richards looked preoccupied and tired as he repeated the word absently: 'Conrad?'
'Isn't it the duty of your dear little brother Conrad, as co-partner in your dear little company-?'
'Conrad.' Sorry, yes, darling. I'm a bit whacked, that's all. Conrad's fine, yes. Sends his love, as always. Enjoyed his trip, he said. But the meeting finished at lunchtime-well, the formal part of it-and then I had some er some rather delicate business to see to. That Swedish contract-you remember me telling you about it?'
Celia nodded vaguely over her gin and said nothing. Her momentary euphoria was already dissipated, and with a blank look of resignation she sank back into her armchair, an attractive, smartly dressed, and wealthy woman on whom the walls were slowly closing in. She knew, with virtual certainty, that Charles had been unfaithful to her in the past: it was an instinctive feeling-utterly inexplicable-but she felt she almost always knew. Had he been with another woman today? Dear God, could she be wrong about it all? Suddenly she felt almost physically sick with worry again: so many worries, and none greater than her awareness that she herself was quite certainly the cause of some of Charles's orgiastic escapades. Sex meant virtually nothing to her-never had-and for various reasons the pair of them had never seriously considered having children. Probably too late now, anyway, with her thirty-eighth birthday shortly coming up…
Charles had finished his whisky and she went out to the kitchen to serve the evening meal. But before she took the casserole out of the oven she saw the gentleman's black umbrella, opened and resting tentatively on two fragile points, in the broad passageway that led to the rear door. The place for that (Charles could be so very fussy about some things!) was in the back of the Rolls-just as the place for her own little red one was in the back of the Mini. She furled the umbrella, walked quietly through into the double garage, flicked on the lights, opened a rear door of the Rolls, and placed the umbrella along the top of the back seats. Then she looked around quickly in the front of the car, sliding her hands down the sides of the beige leather upholstery, and looking into the two glove-compartments-both unlocked. Nothing. Not even the slightest trace of any scented lady lingering there.
It was almost half-past eight when they finished their meal-a meal during which Celia had spoken not a single word. Yet so many, many thoughts were racing madly round and round her mind. Thoughts that gradually centred specifically around one person: around Conrad Richards, her brother-in-law.
It was three-quarters of an hour later that someone had rung the Police in St. Aldates and told them to go to Jericho.
Chapter Four
I lay me down and slumber
And every morn revive.
Whose is the night-long breathing
That keeps a man alive?
– A. E. Housman, More Poems
At exactly the same time that Bell and Walters were climbing the stairs in Canal Reach, Edward Murdoch, the younger of the two Murdoch brothers, was leaning back against his pillow with the light from his bedside table-lamp focused on the book he held in his hand: The Short Stories of Franz Kafka. Edward's prowess in German was not as yet distinguished and his interest in the language (until so recently) was only minimal; but during the previous summer term a spark of belated enthusiasm had been kindled-kindled by Ms. Anne Scott. Earlier in the evening he had been planning the essay he had to write on Das Urteil, but he needed (he knew) to look more closely at the text itself before committing himself to print; and now he had just finished re-reading the fifteen pages which comprised that short story. His eyes lingered on the last brief paragraph-so extraordinarily vivid and memorable as now he saw it: In diesem Augenblick ging uber die Brucke ein geradezu unendlicher Verkehr. In his mind the familiar words slipped fairly easily from German into English: 'In this moment there went across the bridge a' (he had difficulty over that geradezu in its context and omitted it) 'a continuous flow of traffic.' Phew! That was while the hero (hero?) of the story was hanging by his faltering fingertips from the parapet, determined upon and destined for his death by suicide, whilst the rest of the world, unknowing and uncaring, passed him by, driving straight on across- Ah, yes! That was the point of geradezu, surely? He pencilled a note in the margin and closed the slim, orange volume, a cheap white envelope (its brief note still inside) serving to mark the notes at the back of the text. He put the book down on the table beside him, pressed the light-switch off, lay on his back, and allowed his thoughts to hover in the magic circle of the night…
It was Anne Scott who dominated and monopolized those thoughts. His elder brother, Michael, had told him one or two stories about her, but surely he'd been exaggerating and romanticizing everything? It was often difficult to believe what Michael said, and in this particular case quite out of the question until-until last week, that was. And for the hundredth encore Edward Murdoch re-enacted in his mind those few erotic moments…
The door had been locked the previous Wednesday afternoon, and that was most unusual. With no bell to ring, he had at first tapped gently in a pusillanimous attempt to make her hear. Then he had rapped more sharply with his knuckles against the upper panel and, with a childlike surge of relief, he was aware of a stirring of activity within. A minute later he heard the scrape of the key in the lock and the noisy twang as the key was turned-and then he saw her there.
'Edward! Come in! Oh dear, I must have overslept for hours.' Her hair, usually piled up high on the top of her head, was resting on her shoulders, and she wore a long, loose-fitting dressing-gown, its alternating stripes of black, beige, brown, and white reminding Edward vaguely of the dress of some Egyptian queen. But it was her face that he noticed: radiant, smiling-and somehow almost expectant, as if she was so pleased to see him. Him! She fussed for a further second or two with her hair before standing back to let him in.
'Come upstairs, Edward. I shan't be a minute.' She laid her hand lightly on his arm and shepherdessed him up the stairs and into the back bedroom (the 'study', as she called it) where side by side they invariably sat at the roll-top desk while Edward ploughed his wobbling furrows through the fields of German literature. She came into the study with him now and, as she bent forward to turn on the electric fire, the front of her dressing-gown gaped wantonly open awhile, and he could see that she was naked beneath it. His thoughts clambered over one another in erotic confusion and the back of his mouth was like the desert as she left him there and walked across the little landing to the front bedroom.
She had been gone for two or three minutes when he heard her.
'Edward? Edward?'
Her bedroom door was half open, and the boy stood beside it, hesitant and gauche, until she spoke again.
'Come in. I'm not going to bite you, am I?'
She was standing, with her back towards him, at the foot of a large double-bed, folding a light-grey skirt round her waist, and for some inconsequential reason Edward was always to remember the inordinately large safety-pin fixed vertically at its hem. With her hands at her waist, tucking, fastening, buckling, he was also to remember her, in those few moments, for a far more obvious cause: above the skirt her body was completely bare, and as she turned her head towards him, he could see the swelling of her breast.