“I take it we’re lucky he—or they—didn’t just dig it out and dispose of it on the spot.”
“Hell’s own job getting it out of that lot. No, if it had to be covered up, then the knocker was probably the easiest way, as well as the most thorough. I bet your boy didn’t have any easy work recovering it. But odd, in a way, going to all that trouble, when you consider that this little fellow never was guilty of anything except being fired into a door.
No crime there—except maybe retaining a war souvenir without any legal right.”
“No,” agreed George, “no crime there. Yet we’ve got a couple of ’em now, murder and attempted murder, all because people got too inquisitive about that bit of misdated camouflage. Thanks, anyhow! Let us have it in writing when you can.”
“Right away. So long, George.”
George hung up, and sat back in his chair. “All right, then, that’s it. Come on, we’ll pick up Reynolds and make a move. The way things are developing, it’s high time we paid a formal visit on Robert Macsen-Martel, and took an official look at that cellar of his.”
CHAPTER 8
« ^ »
He had been relying on Dinah to be present and equal to the occasion, as sisters should be when welcoming possible future sisters-in-law, but he had still refrained from telling her any more than that he was fetching a Miss Trent from Birmingham to volunteer some important information to the police, and might— might!—be bringing her home for tea later on. Not a word about how important the lady and the occasion were to him. So he could hardly complain when he found no Dinah in the house to greet them. Earlier in the day he had felt that he would need her as a guarantee of his seriousness and respectability; but when it came to the point, Alix and he were so relaxed and so close, after fulfilling their public duty, that they had no need of any third party or any guarantees.
Dinah, as was her habit in such circumstances, had left a note to explain her absence, written on the white card round which a new pair of stockings had once been folded inside its plastic envelope, and propped on the kitchen table, so that he could not miss it when he went to make tea.
“Gone out,” she had written unnecessarily. “Robert M.-M. rang up and asked me over to tea. Very pressing! Something fishy, or why pick the day Hugh’s away? Must go, if only out of curiosity.
Hugh called. Pipped for first place by just two points. Shame!
Dinah.”
“Something wrong?” asked Alix, observing the slight frown the note called up.
“Oh—no, not really, I suppose. Unusual, though!” On impulse he gave her the note to read; provided she chose to be, she was already as good as one of the family. “Of course, they did break the ice by asking her over to dinner a few days ago, but that was with Hugh. What can he have to discuss with Dinah that wouldn’t have waited until Hugh gets home tomorrow? Unless it’s about Hugh! And there’s no mention of the mother.”
“M-M.—that’s this Macsen-Martel family?” She was almost completely in the picture now, she knew who Hugh was, and what were his relations with his mother and brother. “Still, you know, they are his people. Maybe the elder brother feels bound to make an effort to be social.”
But she knew very well the source of his uneasiness. Suddenly every thread of this murder case seemed to be tracing its way back to the old house where the Macsen-Martels, entrenched and isolated, staved off a changing world. However reluctant he might have been to put his reservations into words, he would very much have preferred that Dinah should not go there alone.
“Excuse me a moment, I’ll just find out if she took the Mini.”
No, said Jenny Pelsall, looking up from her typewriter in the office, Dinah had chosen to walk. She had left probably no more than a quarter of an hour before Dave’s return.
He came back into the kitchen to find Alix making tea.
She looked at ease and at home, as though she had already mapped the working outfit in her mind’s eye.
“I’m sorry,” she said, smiling at him, “I shouldn’t take things for granted like this, but it seemed a pity just to let the kettle boil for nothing. Did she take the car?”
“No—walked. It gives me a good excuse to go and call for her, later on, but she hasn’t been gone all that long, so I suppose we’d better give them an hour or so. After all, it’s broad daylight.”
“And still will be in an hour’s time, or practically. I’ll come with you, if you like, I can be part of your excuse.”
“Would you, Alix?” Everything that prolonged her stay confirmed his conviction that in a sense she would never again be leaving. They had tea together in the kitchen, which had certainly not been his original intention. Whatever vicissitudes their relationship might be in for later, it had undoubtedly made the leap into intimacy with a speed and surefootedness in which Dave could hardly believe.
And after tea, when a decent interval had elapsed, they set off to rescue Dinah.
It was cold in the huge drawing-room at the Abbey, and the windows, pinched between heavy curtains faded with long use, brought in too little light, although the day was clear and the time still only late afternoon. But Robert had placed the small tea-table close to the fire, and turned Dinah’s chair—the most comfortable in the room, she noticed— considerately towards the warmth. He was a punctilious host; but then, so he would be even to his enemies.
Dinah had put on her most becoming dress, not so much to charm as on the principle of arming herself for battle with every weapon she had. She was even looking forward, with natural curiosity, to the encounter; with even more curiosity now, because there was no sign of the old lady, and the table was clearly prepared only for two. Robert had apologised at once, and with slight embarrassment, for his mother’s absence.
“She would have been happy to see you again, I know, but unfortunately—perhaps Hugh may have mentioned it to you?—she has a very bad cold. She’s been in bed since yesterday, the doctor is rather worried about her.” He accepted Dinah’s expressions of concern correctly, and went on to talk of other things, with some constraint but admirable fluency. The guest must not be pestered with family troubles and illnesses.
Everything he did and said, Dinah could have predicted; or so she thought repeatedly through the first half of this tête-à-tête. Of course he would take it for granted that she should preside, and place the tray conveniently to hand for her. Of course he would talk about general subjects until she had nibbled her way through a few minute sandwiches and a scone or two, and enjoyed her first cup of tea. First the social demands must be met, only later can a host talk business with a guest. But there was business to be talked, she sensed it in every meticulous word he spoke, and every nervous but controlled movement he made. A sad, withdrawn, proud, chilly person, she thought, gazing back steadily into his face because he was watching her with such undisguised and earnest concentration. His eyes reminded her of the eyes of certain portraits, trained so unwaveringly upon the observer that the presence of the sitter is palpable, alive inside there, behind the motionless trappings, but unable to get out. Perhaps no longer even wanting to get out.
“Hugh was hoping to win the Mid-Wales this year,” she said, making exemplary conversation in her turn when he fell suddenly and intensely silent. “It’s a pity—still, he did come in second, and there’ll be other years. I suppose events here recently haven’t exactly been conducive to concentration, not for any of us. It takes a lot to put Hugh off his stroke, but murder in the village isn’t a trifle, and we’ve all been rather shaken up.”