by Ellis Peters
He had begun to push his bike back towards Wood’s End, trailing his toes in the fallen leaves under the trees. He chose to walk because his mind was grinding over the meagre facts so slowly that his feet had to keep the same pace. Here she turned and drove back, and yet she didn’t get home to Comerbourne until after midnight. She was going along here, probably fast, running away from her sense of outrage and frustration and shame; and somewhere along here fright fell on her, too, the dread that she ought to have waited to make sure how badly he was hurt; but by then it wouldn’t stop or turn her, it would only drive her on all the faster. So why didn’t she get home soon after eleven, as she should have done?
And then he knew why.
It was so simple and so silly that it had to be true. He heard the busy low note of the engine cough and fail, felt the power die away, and saw Kitty reach for the tap with one impatient toe, to kick it over on to the reserve, and then draw back furious and exasperated because it was on the reserve already, and yet once again she’d done her inimitable trick. Half the day she’d probably been saying to herself cheerfully: “Plenty of time, I’ve got a gallon, I’ll call at Lowe’s before I leave Comerbourne, I’ll look in at the filling station at Leah Green, , , ” making easy promises every time the necessity recurred to her, until it didn’t recur to her any more.
“I never learn. I run dry in the middle of the High Street, or halfway up the lane to the golf links.” He could hear her voice now, and remember every word she had said about her two blind spots. Nobody who didn’t know Kitty as he did, nobody who wasn’t in her confidence as he was, could ever have unearthed this simple explanation for her lost hour. She just ran out of petrol! She was always doing it; she’d told him so herself.
The next question was: Where did it happen? He thought that over and decided that it must have been somewhere close to The Jolly Barmaid and well away from Comerbourne. If she had been near the town when she ran dry she would simply have stopped a car on the main road and begged the driver either to let her have some juice or to call in at her garage and leave a message; to be immobilised on the main road near Comerbourne at around eleven o’clock would be innocent enough, just as good as being home by ten past eleven, and there wouldn’t have been any missing hour, or any need for lies. But Kitty had lied, it was one of the main points against her. No, somewhere along here, somewhere unpleasantly close to the inn, she found herself stranded. And here she didn’t want to stop a car and ask for help, she didn’t want to have her garage man come out with petrol for her; she didn’t want to call attention to her presence in any way, or let anyone know that she had been here.
Dominic was imagining her state of mind with so much passion that his own heart-beats quickened and his temples began to throb with panic. Every minute that passed must have driven her a little nearer to hysteria. Supposing Armiger was desperately hurt, and she’d run away and left him? Supposing, even, that he should die? Maybe she’d thought of going back to him, but she simply couldn’t face it. She hadn’t meant to do anything so dreadful, but it had happened and she was to blame. In that state of mind she would have only one instinctive idea, and that would be to hide the fact that she had ever been near the place after she left by the main road at a quarter past ten.
Supposing it happened somewhere here, he thought, walking slowly along the left-hand side of the old road, she’d be in a spot about getting the car as far as possible off the fairway, because it’s rather narrow and winding. If I keep my eyes open I may be able to spot the place, because she’d have to try and run it almost into the hedge, and I wonder if maybe her paint may not show some scratches, too?
He was almost within sight of the Wood’s End cottages when he found one place at least where some vehicle had certainly been run as far as possible on to the bumpy grass verge, its near-side wheel-marks hugging the base of the hedge. There was no mistaking it; the crushing of the thick growth on the ground, the breaking of the overgrown shoots of the hedge, these were slight signs already partially erased by showers and winds and the passing of time, but the breakages were there to be seen if you looked for them, and the wheel-track was still evident. It might be Kitty, it might not, there was no way of knowing unless she chose to tell them.
However, supposing for the sake of the theory that this was where she ran dry, what would she do next? She would have to call on someone for help, and the obvious thing to do was to go to the telephone box at Wood’s End, and from there ring up some private person, someone she could trust absolutely. And the someone came in response to her appeal, and brought her petrol enough to get her home. But what had determined Kitty’s silence was surely the fact that this simple act had now laid her benefactor open to a charge as an accessory after the fact in a murder case. If they convicted her they could charge her helper. Kitty wouldn’t allow that; no word of hers was ever going to involve the friend who had come to her rescue. That was the kind of girl she was.
This long communion with himself had brought Dominic to the telephone box. He stood and looked at it for a moment, and then, without any clear idea of what he hoped to find within, pulled open the door and looked round the dusty interior. Absolutely impersonal, a piece of the mundane machinery of modern living, with the usual graffiti. He was letting the door swing to when he caught an incongruous gleam of gold, and pulled it hastily open again. Clinging in the hinge of the door, shadowy as cobweb but for a few torn gilt threads, a scrap of gauze hung like a crushed butterfly.
He put out a hand to pull it loose, and then checked himself in the act, and did no more than smooth out the delicate scrap tenderly with his fingertips until he could distinguish the minute embroidered flowers of gold on the almost impalpable silk. A corner of an Indian scarf, shot dark blue and red, embroidered with gold thread; the scarf Kitty had worn on the night of Armiger’s death. The one detail for which the police had no satisfactory explanation, the bit that didn’t fit in; but for Dominic it fitted in miraculously.
He mustn’t move it; he must let his father see it just as it was. He shut himself into the box and dialled with a hand trembling with excitement.
“This is Dominic Felse here. Can I speak to my father, please? I know, but this is important, it’s something to do with the case.”
George was up to his neck in paper work, and impatient of interruptions, but too sore from his recent mistakes to take any new risks where Dominic was concerned. He listened without any real expectations, and heard, incredulously: “I’m at the telephone box at Wood’s End, Dad. I’ve found the corner you said was torn from Kitty’s scarf.”
“You’ve what?
Dominic repeated his statement patiently. “It’s caught on a rough place in the hinge of the door, she must have pulled it clear in a hurry and torn the corner clean off. I know, I haven’t moved it. I’m keeping an eye on it until you come.”
“How on earth did you come to walk straight to it?” asked George, humanly aggrieved.
“I used me natural genius. Come along and I’ll tell you.” He couldn’t help the cocky note, but he wasn’t really feeling elated; there was still too far to go, and too much at stake. He debated within himself, while he waited, how much he ought to tell his father, how much he was committed to telling. All that was really evidence was that scrap of silk, but it tended to consolidate his theories into something like facts, and perhaps he ought to confide everything. His accidental acquaintance with Kitty’s idiosyncrasies in connection with cars, for instance, was evidence, too, and so was the shaved place along the hedge. In the end he told George the whole process of thought which had brought him to the telephone box, and was listened to with flattering attention. He added his initials to George’s on the envelope in which George enclosed the shred of gauze, though he had a faint suspicion that that was a sop to his self-love.
“It all makes remarkable sense, as far as it goes,” agreed George, inspecting the hedge. “We can check the car and see if it shows any traces. This chap’s wings were well into the
strong growth.”
“I suppose,” said Dominic, very carefully and quietly, “it wouldn’t be possible for me to see Kitty, would it?”
“I’m afraid not, Dom. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t consider it. You’d need a solid reason like being her legal adviser or a member of her family to get in to her, yet, at any rate.”
“Yes, I see. I didn’t think I could, really. But you could see her, couldn’t you? You could ask her all my questions for me, if you would, like where she ran out of petrol, and whom she telephoned. I don’t think she’ll tell you, of course, but she won’t be expecting you to know anything about it, and she may give something away without meaning to. She isn’t very good at telling lies, really,” said Dominic, suppressing the slight constriction in his throat. “She forgets and comes out with a bit of the truth, without thinking. Only if she’s lying for somebody else she’ll be twice as careful.” He scrubbed his toes along the deep grooves the wheels had left in the soft grass under the hedge, and scowled down at his feet. “I suppose you couldn’t give her a message from me, could you? Oh, nothing unconstitutional, I only meant just to give her my regards, and maybe tell her I’m doing what I can for her.”
“I’ll give her that message with pleasure,” said George gravely.
He didn’t tell him that Kitty’s car had yielded two faint, minute smears of blood from the edge of the driving-seat, obviously brushed there from the skirt of her dress, or that the fine scratches on the near-side front wing had already been preoccupying their minds for several hours. It seemed ungenerous to keep these things back from him, when he was making so notable a contribution, but there was no choice about it. They’d agreed on their terms of truce; Dominic wasn’t expecting concessions.
George went to see Kitty that afternoon. Raymond Shelley was just leaving her, his face worn and wretched, his bulging briefcase hugged to him defensively as he passed George in the corridor, as though he had Kitty’s life locked in it. It wasn’t easy for them even to talk to each other now, they had become representative of the two sides, and communication was an effort.
“You realise, of course,” said Shelley, “that her defence will be an absolute denial of the charge. Any competent doctor will be able to show that no woman could have been responsible for the attack, on physical grounds alone.”
George said nothing to that. He had tentatively raised the same point, and Duckett had given him a derisive glare, and said: “Are you kidding? What, with a sitting target all laid out for her against a brand-new floor about as hard as ebony? A fairly lusty ten-year-old could have done it.”
“I can’t realise it, even yet,” burst out Shelley, shaking his head helplessly. “Kitty! I’ve known her all her life, she couldn’t wilfully hurt even an insect. It just can’t be true, Felse, it simply can’t. I can’t forgive myself for leaving her alone that night. If I’d realised he had any such thing in his mind I could have stopped it.”
Could he, wondered George, looking after him with sympathy as he flung nervously away. How much influence had he with Armiger, if it came to the point? What was it Leslie had called him?, a cover man. He was the one who was used; he was in his master’s secrets only as far as Armiger chose to admit him for his own ends. No, Shelley would never have been effective in diverting the bull’s rush, but if he’d tried he might have made one more casualty.
Kitty had survived the first anguish, the agonised tears of helplessness and loneliness and shame that had scarified his heart yesterday. Dominic, thank God, knew nothing about that half-hour of collapse, and never would know. Whatever his imagination inflicted upon him, it would not be the reality George had seen and suffered. The first thing to-day’s Kitty did was to apologise for it, simply and directly, without embarrassment. It was past, it wouldn’t happen again.
“I’m sorry I gave you such a bad time. I hadn’t expected it myself, I was shocked. It just shows, you never know how you may react in a crisis. And I always thought I had an equable temperament.”
George said: “My son sent you his regards, and said I was to tell you that he’s doing what he can for you.”
She lifted her head and smiled at him, with a smile which he knew belonged by rights to Dominic. She looked pale and drained, but all her distress had done to her looks was to make her eyes look larger than ever, and the vulnerable curves of her mouth more plaintive and tender. She had on the same neutral-tinted sweater and skirt he had seen her in at her flat, and a book was turned down beside her; she looked like an over-earnest student surprised during the last week before a vital examination.
“Please thank him for me. He’s almost the only one who believes me when I say I didn’t do it. Out of the mouths of babes, , , ” She shut her hands suddenly on the air as if to snatch back the unforgivable indiscretion. “No, don’t tell him I said that. It isn’t even true, and it would hurt him. Just thank him for me, and give him my love.” At that she had taken a careful second look before she ever let her lips shape the single significant syllable, but she didn’t take it back. The soft bow of her mouth folded firmly, and let it stand.
“We found the place where you pulled the car into the hedge when you ran out of petrol,” said George in the same conversational tone. “Why didn’t you tell us about that? You might have known we were sure to find it.”
“He found it,” said Kitty, and smiled again to herself, and that smile, too, was for Dominic. “What a boy!” she said. “Fancy remembering that! But even he could be wrong, you know. Now I’m not talking about that any more, it isn’t a subject I like, and you can’t make me. Come to think of it, there’s absolutely nothing you people can do to me now. Except, perhaps, stop visiting me. I’d much rather see you than nobody. Poor old Ray looks so desperately sad he breaks my heart. And who else is likely to come near me?”
“You have hordes of friends, and you know it,” said George, consenting to follow her disconcerting leaps.
“I had. The most popular deb. of her year, that was Kitty. Do you know how many eligible young men have wanted to marry me, since they knew Leslie was out of the market? Seven actually got as far as asking, and about five more were hovering pretty near the brink. And do you know how many have been to try and see me to-day, to show how much they loved me? One. And that was Leslie, the one who never pretended to.” She laughed, and because Leslie had come it was a genuine, beautiful, even joyful laugh. Only then did George understand. Kitty had got something out of her disaster, after all.
“Did they let him in?”
“Oh, yes, he had a certain claim, you see, my victim’s son, and brought up almost like a brother to me. He was sweet,” said Kitty, looking down into her cupped hands and smiling with a brooding tenderness for which any man would have performed prodigies of love and loyalty. “And terribly upset.” She didn’t care who observed her personal sorrow or her personal rapture here; life had become so precarious as to be simple, there was no time for dissembling or being ashamed. “I believe he even feels responsible for me, simply because it was his father who got killed, as though he could help it. He feels almost as if it was he who got me into it. But I got myself into it, nobody else. You won’t mistake that for a confession, will you? It isn’t.”
“And kept somebody else out of it,” said George.
She turned her head and looked at him, not so abruptly that he could claim he had got a real reaction out of her, but at least so positively that he knew she was paying attention for once.
“The person you telephoned to come and help you out of your mess,” said George. “We know you did, you left a bit of your scarf caught in the door of the telephone box at Wood’s End. Did you think we shouldn’t get wise to that call? You may as well tell us all about that interlude, you know, it’s only a matter of time.”
“I’m in no hurry,” said Kitty, smiling, even teasing him, though the sadness that was in everything she did or said was in this perversity too.
“Who was it, Kitty? Better give us the name than have us giv
e it to you.”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about. Look, I’ve thought of something,” she said. “If I’m convicted, I can’t inherit from my victim, can I? So what happens to the money? I never thought to ask poor old Ray, I was so busy stroking his hand and saying: There, there! Do you know?”
“I’m not sure. But I should think it would automatically go to the next-of-kin, unless there’s some express veto on that in the will itself.” He didn’t know how much of this he could take, and still remember that he was a police officer, here on business. He wished he could think that she was doing it to him on purpose, to repay her own injuries, or out of bravado, to put them out of her mind, but he knew she wasn’t. She was evading being questioned, but she asked her own questions because she wanted to know the answers.
“Good!” she said with a sigh of satisfaction. “Then at any rate Leslie and Jean won’t have to worry any more, they’ll be loaded. I suppose I ought to make a will, too.”
George opened his mouth to answer her, and couldn’t get out a word. She looked up, her isolation penetrated for a moment by the quality of his shocked silence, and searching for the reason in her own words, came up with the wrong answer.
“It’s all right,” she said quickly and kindly. “I didn’t mean it like that. I know! Even if the worst comes to the worst, it isn’t capital murder.”
CHAPTER X.
“THERE SHE is,” said Leslie, stepping back from the table. “The Joyful Woman in person. I took your advice and fetched her back from Cranmer’s yesterday. What do you think of her?”
If George had told the simple truth in answer to that it would have had to be: Not much! Propped against the wall to catch the light from the window, what there was of it on this dull Sunday morning, the wooden panel looked singularly unimpressive, its flesh-tints a sallow fawn-colour, its richer shades weathered and dirtied into mere variations on tobacco-brown. Not very big for an inn sign, about twenty by eighteen inches, and even within that measure the figure was not so bold as it could have been. Against a flat ground that might once have been deep green or blue but was now grained with resinous brown varnishes coat after coat, the woman was shown almost to the waist. At the base of the panel her hands were crossed under little maidenly breasts, swathed in a badly-painted muslin fichu. Her shoulders beneath the folds of muslin were braced back, her neck was long, and in its present incarnation shapeless, and inclined forward like a leaning flower-stem to balance the backward tilt of the head. In half-face, looking to the right, she raised her large bland forehead to the light and laughed; and in spite of the crudity of the flat masses of which she was built, and the want of moulding in the face, there was no doubt that this was the laughter of delight and not of amusement; she wasn’t sharing it with an audience, it belonged to herself alone. Joyful was the just word for her.
