by Ellis Peters
DEAR MR. ARMIGER,
I’ve asked Mick Moore to bring you this on the dot of half past eight, because I need help with something at nine o’clock, and it’s desperately important, but I daren’t let it out more than half an hour before the time. If my father knew about it too soon he’d knock the whole thing on the head, but if he only knows just in time to be on the spot as a witness I hope he’ll let me go through with it, I hope he won’t be able to stop me. I don’t want to telephone home myself because it might be Mummy, and I don’t want to scare her. I don’t want her to know anything about it until it’s all over. So I thought the best thing was to leave this message for you.
This is what I want you to do. Please get on to my father and tell him to have the police watching the corner of Hedington Grove and Brook Street at nine o’clock. There’ll be a car there waiting to pick me up and drive me back home to Comerford. Please make them follow it, be sure they do, it’s urgent. I’ve done something to make things happen, but they have to be there to see it, otherwise it will all be wasted, and no good to Kitty after all.
If anything comes unstuck for me, please try to help Kitty, I don’tmind as long as she comes out all right.
Thanks.
DOMINIC FELSE.
“What the hell!” said Leslie blankly. “Is he fooling, or what?”
“No, not about Kitty, he never would. He’s dead serious. Leslie,” said Jean, her fingers clenching on his arm, “he’s frightened! What is it he’s done?”
“God knows! Something crazy, stuck his neck out somehow, , , Oh, lord!” said Leslie in a gasp of dismay as his eye fell on his watch. He sprang for the door and went clattering down the stairs. It was eleven minutes to nine, eleven minutes to zero hour. There was no time now to do anything but take the affair seriously.
He heard Jean’s heels rapping down the stairs close behind him, and turned in the open doorway to shout to her to stay where she was, that he’d see to everything, that he’d be back. But she was still close at his elbow, tugging her way breathlessly into her coat, as he wrenched open the door of the telephone booth at the end of the street.
It seemed to take him an age to locate George Felse’s number, and a fantastic time to get an answer when he dialled it, and even then it was Bunty who answered. Dominic’s assumption that mothers were not to be frightened inhibited Leslie’s tongue no less surely. No, never mind, it could wait, if Mr. Felse wasn’t there. Never mind, he’d call him again. He slammed the receiver back and tried again.
“Police, Comerbourne? Listen, this is urgent. Please do what I ask at once, and then stand by for the explanation. It’s the Armiger case, and this is Leslie Armiger, and I’m not kidding. If Mr. Felse is there, get him. Never mind, then, you, listen, , , “
Jean whispered in his ear: “I’m going to fetch Barney’s van. I’ll be back.” She shoved open the door and ran, the staccato of her heels dwindling along the street.
“Corner of Brook Street and Hedington Grove, nine o’clock,” Leslie was repeating insistently. “We’ll be coming along from this end to meet ‘em, you see you’re there to follow ‘em.”
It was two minutes to nine when he cradled the receiver for the second time.
CHAPTER XV.
DOMINIC STRUCK THE hundredth wrong note of the evening, corrected it with a vicious lunge of both normally adroit hands, and said resignedly: “Damn! Sorry! I’m making a hell of a mess of this. Wouldn’t you rather I shut up?”
“I would,” said old Miss Cleghorn frankly, “but your parents are paying for an hour, my lad, and an hour you’re going to put in, even if you drive me up the wall in the process. I’m beginning to think I ought to revert to the old ebony ruler, though, and fetch you a crack over the knuckles every time you do that to my nerves.”
Dominic flicked a phrase of derisive laughter out of the piano and made a face at her. She was plump, sixty-odd and as lively as a terrier, and on the best of terms with her pupil, indeed from his point of view she was the one redeeming feature in these Thursday evening lessons. It was Bunty who had insisted that the ability to play at least one musical instrument was an invaluable part of any young man’s equipment, and kept his unwilling nose to the keyboard; a feat which wouldn’t have been nearly so easy if some part of his mind hadn’t come to the generous conclusion that she was probably right about the ultimate usefulness of the accomplishment.
“Ebony ruler my foot!” scoffed Dominic. “I don’t believe you’ve even got one, much less that you ever hit anybody with it.”
“You be careful! It isn’t too late to begin, and it doesn’t have to be ebony. Come on now, you’re not getting out of it by trying to side-track me. Try it again, and for goodness’ sake keep your mind on what you’re doing.”
He did his best, but the trouble was that his mind was very insistently and earnestly upon what he was doing, and it had almost nothing to do with this harmless regular Thursday evening entertainment, which had merely provided the occasion for it. He set his teeth and laboured doggedly through the study again, but his thoughts were ahead of the clock, trying to speculate on all the possible developments which might confront him, and to compile some means of dealing with all of them. What worried him most was that he had had to base his actions so extensively upon speculation, that there was so much room for miscalculation at every stage. But it was too late to allow himself to be frightened by all the possible mistakes he had made, because there was no drawing back now.
“One certain fact,” said Miss Cleghorn, nodding her bobbed head emphatically when he had fumbled his way to the last chord, “you haven’t touched a piano since last Thursday, have you? Own up!”
He hadn’t, and said so. He quite saw that from her point of view it was reprehensible, and the tone in which he made his excuses was deprecating. He thought it would be nice if he could believe that some day such things would again have importance for him, too. The weight of the real world was heavy on his shoulders; the little cosy, everyday world in which mealtimes and music lessons mattered had begun to look astonishingly charming and desirable to him, but he couldn’t get back to it. Like an unguided missile he was launched and he had to go forward.
“And how do you expect to learn to play well if you never practise? No, never mind soft-soaping me with fancy finger-work, you take your hands off that keyboard and listen when I’m talking to you.”
He removed them obediently and sat meekly with them folded in his lap while she scolded him. It couldn’t be said that he listened, though his eyes stared steadily at her round pink face with a rapt attention which amply covered the real absence of his mind. To look at her was comforting, she was so ordinary and wholesome and unsecret, knowing and knowable, no partner to the night outside the closed curtains, which had begun to be terrifying to him. He dwelt earnestly upon her invariable hand-knitted twin set and short tweed skirt, the Celluloid slide in her straight, square-cut grey hair, the mole on her chin that bobbed busily as she abused him. He smiled affectionately, cheered by the human conviction that nothing sinister or frightening could exist in the same dimension with her; but as soon as he looked away or closed his eyes he knew that it could, and that he had invoked it and could not escape it.
“It’s all very well,” she said severely, “for you to sit there and smile at me and think that makes everything all right. That’s your trouble, my boy, you think you can just turn on the charm and get away with murder.”
She could have made a happier choice of words, of course; but how could she know she was treading hard on the heels of truth?
“I know,” he said placatingly, “but this week I’ve had things on my mind, and honestly there hasn’t been time. Next week I’ll do better.” I will if I’m here, he thought, and his heart shrank and chilled in him. He grinned at her. “Cheer up, it’s nearly nine o’clock, your suffering’s almost over.”
“Yours will begin in a minute,” she said smartly, “if you don’t watch your step. You know what you’re asking for, don�
�t you?”
“Yes, please. With lots of sugar.” He knew there was cocoa in a jug on the stove in her kitchen, there always was on cold nights. She got up good-humouredly and went to fetch it. “All right, pack up, we’ll let you off for tonight.”
It was still a few minutes to nine, and he didn’t want to be even one minute early for his appointment. If Leslie had done his part the police should be watching the corner of the street. To arrive ahead of time was to risk appearing there in full view, and having an irate father descend on him on the spot with a demand that he should explain himself, and wreck everything he had gone to such pains to build up. Even reasonable fathers were queer about allowing you freedom of action in matters which infringed their authority and involved your own danger; and of the reality of the danger he had brought down upon himself Dominic was in no doubt whatever. That was the whole point. If he was not in any danger, then he was hopelessly off the track, and all his ingenuity would have proved nothing, and left Kitty as forsaken and encircled as ever. Moreover, this danger was something he must not ward off. He would have to watch it closing in, and sit still like a hypnotised rabbit to let it tighten on him. If he fought his own way out he might fail of proving what he had set out to prove. He mustn’t struggle, he must leave it to others to extricate him and hope they would be in time. He was voluntary bait now, nothing more.
“You are in a state tonight,” said Miss Cleghorn, shaking him by a fistful of chestnut hair. “You don’t even hear when I offer you biscuits. Why I bother, when all you deserve is bed without supper, I can’t imagine. What’s the matter with you? Things being tough at school, or what?”
School! That was all they thought about. If you were sixteen, whatever worries you had must be about school.
“No, I’m all right, honestly. Just one of those days, can’t concentrate on anything. I’ll catch up by next time.”
“You’d better! Here you are, get this down you, it’s freezing outside, you need something to keep you warm, waiting for that old bus. I always say that’s the bleakest spot in town, that bus station.”
He made his cocoa last until the dot of nine. Better give her an extra minute or two, in case she got held up at the club.
“I’ll tell Mummy you said I was making steady progress,” he said impudently as he pulled on his coat. “That all right?”
“You can tell her I said you should be spanked, she might oblige. Now watch how you go, I can see the frost sparkling on the road already. Only just October and hard frost, I ask you!”
“Good night!” he said, already at the front gate.
“Good night, Dominic!” She closed the door on him slowly, almost reluctantly. Now what can be the matter with that child, she wondered vexedly, he’s certainly got something on his mind. Ought I to speak to his mother, I wonder? But he’s at a funny age, probably it’s something he doesn’t want her to know about, and he’d never forgive me if I interfered. No, better let well alone. She switched on the television and put her feet up, and in a little while Dominic Felse passed out of her mind.
He walked to the end of the street with a slowing step, trying not to notice that it was slowing, not to let it slow. Normality, be with me! I’ve got a load off my mind, not on it. I’ve got to do it right, otherwise I’d have done better not to do it at all. Come on, you’re in it now, give it everything you’ve got. Remember Kitty! He thought of her, and the tension within him was eased as by a sudden warmth relaxing every nerve. What, after all, does danger matter? You’re making Kitty safe. What happens now can’t hurt her, it can only deliver her. He took heart; he was going to be all right. Even when it came, he was going to accept it and not chicken out.
There was always, of course, the thought that she might not come to the rendezvous, that in all honesty she might have thought better of it. There was the possibility that she might come, but acting in all good faith, in which case she would simply take what he gave her, and reassure him and drive him safely home; and the thousand deaths he died on the way would be no more than he deserved, and the abject amends he owed her would be something he could never hope to pay. There were so many pitfalls, so many ways of being wrong; and yet all the time he knew in his heart that he was not wrong.
And she was there. When he drew near to the corner of the silent, frosty road, under the tinkling darkness and sparkle of the trees, he saw the long, sleek shape of the old Riley sitting back relaxed and elegant alongside the knife-edged glitter of the kerb. She opened the near-side door for him, smiling. Never before had he noticed how silent, how deserted this quarter of the town could be at night. There was not another person in sight, and only one lone car passed along the middle of the broad road as he approached. When it had gone everything was so still that his light footsteps sounded loudly in the quietness, reverberating between the frostlight and the starlight with a terrible, solitary singleness.
“Hallo, Dominic,” said Miss Hamilton, scooping up an armful of things from the front passenger seat and dumping them at random into the rear seat, scarf and handbag and a bunch of duplicated papers that looked like club notices, and a large electric torch that rolled to the far hollow of the hide upholstery.
“Hallo, Miss Hamilton! This is most awfully kind of you. You’re sure I’m not being a nuisance? I could easily get the bus home.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said placidly. “Get in. It will only take me a quarter of an hour or so, I shall soon be home. And it’s much too cold to hang about waiting for buses.” She leaned across him and snapped home the catch on the handle of the door. “It’s getting rather worn, I shall have to have a new handle fixed. I have to lock it or it might come open, especially on a bend. And as I’m apt to be carrying rather lively passengers sometimes it could be dangerous,” she concluded with a smile.
“None aboard tonight,” he said, glancing at the back seat.
“I’ve just dropped two of them. The club’s still in session, but I don’t have time to stay all the evening.” She settled back in the driving-seat, and looked at him with the indulgent smile that took into account both his youth and its extreme sensitivity, his helpless tears of the afternoon and his desire that she should forget them.
“Well, did you bring them?” she asked gently. “Or have you thought better of it and turned them over to your father? Don’t worry, I shan’t blame you if you have, I shall quite understand. It was entirely up to you.”
“I’ve brought them,” he said.
“Then the best thing you can do is hand them over right now, and I’ll take them and put them away, and you can forget the whole thing. I’ll never remind you of it again, and no one else can. You’ve not told anyone else?”
“No, not a word.”
“Good, then don’t. From tonight on you’re to stop worrying, you understand? Kitty’ll come out of it all right if she didn’t do it, and we two are agreed that she didn’t. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“Yes, of course.” He withdrew from his music-case a small, soft bundle rolled rather untidily in tissue-paper, so loosely that a corner of Polythene protruded, and in the reflected light from the sodium street lights there was just a glimpse of crumpled black kid through the plastic, soiled and discoloured. He put it into Miss Hamilton’s hand, his large eyes fixed trustingly upon her face, and heaved a great sigh as it passed, as though a load had been lifted from him.
Her eyes flickered just once from his face to the small package in her hand, and back again. She leaned across to open the dashboard compartment in front of him, and thrust the gloves into the deepest corner within. “Don’t be afraid,” she said, catching his anxious glance, “I shan’t forget about them. They’re quite safe with me. Do as I said, put them clean out of your mind. You need never see or think of them again. Not a word more about them, now or at any other time. This closes the affair. You understand?”
He nodded, and after a moment managed to say in a very low voice: “Thank you!”
She started the car. A motorbike whir
red by them towards the town, its small, self-important noise soon lost. A solitary old gentleman on his way back from the pillar-box turned into a side road and vanished. They inhabited a depopulated world, a frosty night world full of waiting, ardent echoes that had no sound to reduplicate. He must not look round. His head kept wanting to turn, his eyes to search the street behind them, his ears were straining for another engine turning over reluctantly in the cold, but he must not look round or even seem to wish to look round. He was an innocent, a fool without suspicions, a simpleton who had not said a word to anyone about this meeting. What should he be concentrating on, now that she had relieved him of his burden? Naturally, the car. It was worth a little enthusiasm, and at sixteen adults don’t expect you to have any tenacity even in your anxieties, they take it for granted you can be easily seduced by things like cars.
“What year is it?” he asked, watching the competent movements of her hands as the car moved off, and capturing one genuine moment of pleasure in its smooth, quiet lunge forward. “Is it actually vintage!”
It wasn’t, but it missed it by only a few years. She smiled faintly as she answered his questions, the controlled, indulgent smile of a considerate adult allowing a child his preoccupations, even stooping to share them, but distantly envying him his ability to lose himself in them as a blessing long passed out of her own experience. Precisely the kind of smile to be expected from her in the circumstances, and it told him nothing. He could have done with a few pointers. There should have been something revealing in that one glance she had cast at his carefully assembled package, something to tell him if he was on target or if he had guessed wildly astray and utterly betrayed himself; but there had been nothing, no sudden gleam, no sharpening of the lines of her face. It was too late now to wonder.
“You do keep her beautifully,” he said without insincerity.
