by Ellis Peters
‘He’s gone, is he? Come and have a drink, Kenyon. I don’t usually indulge, but I felt I needed something to steady my nerves.’ He cast a hunted look towards the ceiling. ‘My wife’s with Annet. I don’t know! You don’t think it could be all a mistake?’ he pleaded pathetically, and shrank from the direct encounter of their eyes. ‘No, I suppose not. If the man’s dead— But it’s some mistake about Annet. She couldn’t have picked up that sort of young man. Bad as it is with her, I’m sure that can’t be true. She wouldn’t encourage the wrong type of boy. She’s hard to please, our Annet. She never liked the flashy type. These Teddy boys, they used to ask her to dance, and she’d dance with them, and be polite, but they never got anywhere with her. Myra always tells us what kind of evening they have.’
Myra always tell us! Not Annet. And Annet knew, none better, that Myra always told them, that her very function was always to tell them. The closer you watch, thought Tom, the more you do not see. You didn’t trust her – I wonder why, in the first place? There must have been a time when she was to be trusted absolutely – you didn’t trust her, and you wouldn’t let her have her soul to herself, but she got it in spite of you, and shut you out from it. And it’s late now to complain of what she did with it, unaided and unadvised.
‘But you haven’t got a drink, my dear boy, do help yourself to a drink. I’m sure you need – we all need a little reinforcement. Please! Let me!’
He struggled to rise and reach the bottle, and there was nothing to be done but forestall him. Tom made his glass pale with soda, and hid its insipid colour with a careful hand.
‘And then, in Birmingham, is that feasible! I ask you! No, no, there’s some mistake, it was another girl. How could Annet know a young man in Birmingham? She’s hardly ever been there even overnight, only once or twice with Mrs Blacklock to educational conferences or extra-mural classes, you know. And now and then shopping, of course, with her mother, or with Myra, but only for the day. It’s absurd! With so little opportunity, how could she possibly have formed an intimate association with a young fellow in the city? It’s a mistake, isn’t it? It must be a mistake.’
‘If it is,’ said Tom encouragingly, though encouraging was the last thing he felt just then, ‘the police will find it out. You can be sure of that. The best possible thing Annet can do is tell George Felse everything she did during the weekend. There’ll be people who’ve seen her, and can confirm her story, if only she’ll speak.’
‘Yes – yes, that’s true, isn’t it? There are always ways of verifying such statements. If only she’ll tell us! And even here at home, you know, Tom, where does she ever go alone for more than an hour or two? Myra’s always with her when she goes to dances, and we see to it that they have reliable escorts. And even if she works late the Blacklocks always send her home by car. From choir practice Mr Collins walks her home, or Mr Blacklock brings her himself. It isn’t as if we’ve been neglectful. All our friends think the world of her, and care for her like their own. When can she have formed an undesirable acquaintance? We should have known. Someone would have warned us.’
Only too surely they would. That was why she had to learn to cover every trace, to erase the very prints of her feet where she had passed, to open her own escape hatches into the underworld below the Hallowmount.
‘There was the affair of young Miles, of course. But that was understandable folly. And since then we’ve watched her even more carefully.’
What was the sense in telling him now that that was where they’d made their mistake? And in fact it was only one in a wilderness of mistakes, and not, Tom felt, the fatal one. Something else had gone wrong with Annet’s daughterhood, something basic and incurable.
‘Don’t upset yourself, that won’t help. You’ve always done your best for her, everybody knows that.’ He leaned and extracted the quivering glass from Beck’s fingers, for it was slipping slowly through them as he watched. Beck did not seem to notice its going, only in a distant way to be relieved to find his hands free. He took his quaking head between them, staring blindly through a mist half drunkenness and half tears.
‘We did do our best. They’ll find out they’ve made a mistake. It wasn’t Annet. It couldn’t have been.’
But he was crying his denials because he knew it had been. Her charged stillness, braced to bear whatever pressures were loosed on her, and still cover up her known sins for the sake of her partner; this spoke loudly enough. And her cry of passionate denial and fearful realisation when she was forced to contemplate the sin of which she had not known; and the violence of her retreat into a semblance of death; and the ring on its ribbon round her neck.
The old man was weeping feebly, without even knowing it, letting the tears find a desultory way down the furrows of his grey, despairing face.
‘It wasn’t good enough, that’s all, our best wasn’t good enough. Where did we go wrong? Was it my fault? I never carried much weight, you know, not with anyone. Managing the children at school was too much for me sometimes. They always know,’ he said drearily, ‘who can hold his own with them, and who can’t. I never could find out how it was done. But to fail with Annet! To fall short even with her!’
‘Nonsense, of course you haven’t always fallen short. You mustn’t think like that, what good does it do? The best girl in the world can very well throw away her affection on a bad lot, we all know it happens. Is that your fault?’
Tom’s voice was gentle and reasonable; he marvelled at it himself, while his mind dallied with the thought of filling the old man to the brim with whisky, and sinking him completely. Then at least he could be manhandled to bed, and he’d be blessedly silent, affording a respite for himself and everyone else. But he’d probably be sick, and not even put himself happily to sleep. No, better not risk it. Let him talk. If it helped him, at least somebody was getting something out of it.
Drearily, drearily the fumbling voice, thickening a little now, proceeded lead-footed along its inevitable downhill road of confession, laying out his inadequacies like pilgrim stones along the way.
‘But then, why should I be expected to succeed with her? You don’t know, Tom, do you – about Annet? I’ve never told you. We never told anyone. It isn’t the sort of thing you write to your friends—’
He was laughing now, and still crying. Maybe the whisky was taking hold, and he’d pass out. Tom put a hand on his arm and shook him gently.
‘That’s all right, there’s nothing you need to tell me. Wait till tomorrow. There’ll be new developments then, maybe they’ll have found the real girl they’re looking for.’
‘They have found her,’ said Beck with dreadful clarity, and gripped Tom’s arm in his heavy, trembling hands. ‘I want to tell you. It’s been on my mind so long, I’ve got to tell someone. She isn’t mine, you see. Things might have been different if she had been. I never understood her, I never had any influence over her. I was always ashamed and afraid, because she isn’t even mine.’
He sagged into Tom’s shoulder and lay there, as it seemed, thankfully, almost comfortably. And, my God, what do you say now? What can you say?’
‘You’re a little tight, you know, better come to bed and rest. You don’t mean this. All parents have these doubts sooner or later, it’s one of the hazards of fatherhood.’
His own voice sounded to him like the phoney effort of one privately in acute pain. He got to his feet brusquely, wild to break up this inconceivable party, and lugged Beck up after him, propping him against the arm of the chair until he could get a firm hold on him. And Beck yielded. When had anyone pulled or pushed or propelled him, that he had not yielded? But he went on talking, too, with remorseless misery, all across the room and all along the empty hall.
‘You don’t believe me. But it’s true. My wife told me,’ he said with self-mutilating satisfaction. ‘She’d waited long enough for me to give her a child. In the end she got one where she could. She never told me who. She said what was that to me? I couldn’t help her. She held it against m
e. She still does.’
Somehow, he was never very clear how, Tom got him up the stairs and into his bedroom, and there frankly abandoned him. Sick with disgust and pity, he shut himself into the bathroom and washed the sweat and the prickling of shame from his face in cold water. He felt like vomiting, but he hadn’t had enough whisky. Maybe he ought to go down again and put himself out for the count. It would be one way of shutting the door on all this for a little while.
Was it true? Had she ever really told him such a thing? She might have, she was a woman who could if driven to it, and he was a man to whom it could be done, so crushable that in the end there might be nothing to be done with him but crush him once for all, and finish it. But even if she had told him that, need it necessarily be true? Or a gesture of hatred and cruelty engendered by the bitter frustration of their marriage?
Tom went over and over the bleak sentences he had tried hard not to hear and could not now forget, and for the life of him he couldn’t judge what was truth and what wasn’t.
But Annet herslf was the heart of the evidence. Was there anything of Beck there, in her clear-cut, self-contained, fastidious dignity? And if she was alien, and the root of their alienation, she might well be wandering, lost, trying to find her own way in a desert without asking for help from anyone. And if she knew—? How could she know? No one could be so inhuman, so insanely self-centred as to tell her? But if she knew—
And there was nothing he could do for her. Nothing to help or comfort her. Nothing, nothing to make her aware of him.
CHAPTER VI
« ^ »
They came down from the Hallowmount in the fresh morning light, and separated on the road below, Tom heading for school, George for the southern end of the ridge and the straggling village of Abbot’s Bale in the long, bare cleft of Middlehope.
There was an hour yet before he could call the doctor and receive his verdict on Annet; and when he went to Fairford this time he must have a sergeant and a constable with him. Meantime, he could view the escape route and its strategic possibilities, the filling stations, the natives, the chances of picking up evidence. Annet was striking in any circumstances; even flying past on the pillion of a motorbike (probably stripped of its silencer and ridden with vile technique and viler manners), she might be noticed. If they’d halted at a filling-station with healthily normal young men in the forecourt instead of girls, she certainly would be. Someone might remember.
‘So Miss Myra Gibbons always reports back, does she?’ said George sceptically. He had received a half-account of last night’s unsought confidences, but it stopped well short of the revelation about Annet’s parentage. If anyone re-told that tale, short of the most desperate emergency, it would have to be Beck himself.
‘Not as fully as father supposes, I fancy. I bet I know one or two things that never got back to the parents. As, for instance, that a couple of uniformed men had to show up at the hall late one Saturday night, to stop what promised to be a first-class fight. Over Annet. Not her fault, unless she’s to blame for looking like she does. A handful of the local ton-up club have taken to looking in at the ballroom about ten to ten, just in time to beat the no-entry or re-entry after ten rule. They know a good-looker when they see one, and they think a good-looker ought to go for their kind. Annet didn’t do anything except dance with the leader of the bunch when he asked her. It was her escort who objected when he promptly asked her again. There’ve been other clashes, too, occasionally, less serious. Oh, yes, even among the respectable and ultra-respectable Annet can set the sparks flying.’
‘Then this youngster who tried to corner her had a motor-bike,’ said Tom hopefully. ‘All the round-the-houses brigade seem to have big, powerful jobs, five hundreds mostly. What beats me is they never seem to do anything or go anywhere with them – only round and round the block.’
‘Oh, they do now. They go all the three-quarters of a mile between their favourite roosting-ground on the corner of the square and the Rainbow Café on the edge of town. And back. One or two,’ admitted George on reflection, ‘might have the enterprise to get as far as Birmingham. One or two, literally, might get a good deal farther and venture a good deal more, but I wouldn’t put it higher than two. And one of ’em’s the youngster who fancied her at the dance. And he works,’ said George reflectively, sliding into the driving-seat of his almost-new MG, ‘at a haulage concern in Abbot’s Bale.’
‘He does?’ A spark of hope kindled professionally in Tom’s eye at the thought that the hunt might veer so blessedly away from the school. Not one of ours! One of the black-leather lads, born scapegoats! But could so close an association be formed over a few dances, without a single strictly private meeting? Maybe it could, but the odds seemed against it. He’d never, for instance, taken her home afterwards. She always went home with Myra. Or did her parents merely suppose that she did?
‘Of course,’ he said dubiously, ‘it seems more likely, on the whole, that it was someone from Birmingham, someone who came here to fetch her, and isn’t necessarily known here.’
‘With Annet planning the operation and telling him exactly where to wait for her and how to get there? It would well be.’ It could; she had the stuff of command in her, and passion enough for two if the partner proved deficient. ‘We’re checking at both ends, anyhow,’ said George. ‘Properly speaking it’s Birmingham’s case, not ours.’
He was turning the key in the ignition when Tom came loping across to ask: ‘You didn’t ask your boy, did you? About my questioning them both?’
He was glad to have the full story of that incident off his chest, but very reluctant indeed that it should get back to Dominic. Nothing had been published yet about Annet. Nothing would, if they could get the information they urgently needed some other way; and surely, surely she’d talk this morning, and save herself? It would be superhuman to keep silence still. Supposing she told everything, did her best to co-operate, and she herself turned out to have known nothing about the crime, then her part in the affair, even if it could not be suppressed, would be for ever toned down to its most innocent, and maybe need never erupt into the headlines at all.
‘I asked him about their week-end. He told me what he told you.’ George’s eyes did not commit him at all as to how completely he had believed; but the ghost of a rather rueful smile showed for a moment. ‘I didn’t say I had any deep motives for asking, and I didn’t say you’d tipped me off – even inadvertently. But I suspect he already smells a sizeable rat.’
‘Did he say anything to make you think so?’
George’s smile lost its sourness for an instant. What Dominic had actually said, and very belligerently, was: ‘What business is it of Brash ’Arry’s, anyhow?’ But there was no need to broadcast, that. ‘My thumbs pricked, that’s all.’ This time he did turn the key. ‘So long, Tom, and thanks!’
He drove southward along the flank of the Hallowmount, past the turning to Wastfield, past the new plantations, on towards the slow, descending tail of the ridge, that took such an unconscionable time to decline far enough to permit the passage of a road. Yes, if the boy had needed to keep a strict time-table on his return home he might very well be forced to cut that long drive round, and drop Annet where he had picked her up, to climb back over the hill. But why not simply drop her on the bus-route to the village, and let her ride the last stage home as though she’d been to a cinema? Who would have thought anything about her appearance on an evening bus? It might even have disarmed some who had been gleefully scenting a trail of fresh trouble. But half the ‘why’s’ involved in any crime must be answered without too nice a reference to logic. At our best we are not creatures of absolute reason and consistency. Having killed, we are not at our best.
Not much time to do more than run into Abbot’s Bale, and take a quick look at the upland road which soon dwindled into a cart-track, plunging at last through a farm-gate to climb the first rough pasture; and then fill up at Hopton’s as an excuse for a word with old man Hopton, who was su
re to be the only one pottering about the forecourt at this hour. A powerful, bowed, cross-grained little elderly man with an obstinate, surly face that never took anyone in for long. It was one of the very few places where George and the probation officer had ever been able to place their most perilous problem-boys with goodwill and confidence. If they failed there, you were on your way to despairing of them. Some did fail; there was more than enough to despair about in human nature, twentieth-century style. Some, against all the odds, stuck it out and got a stout foothold on life again; there was plenty of ground for hope, too.
George asked after the latest of them, as Hopton flicked his leather squeaking across the windscreen. Hopton opined that the latest was an idle, cheeky layabout with a chip on his shoulder as big as a Yule log; he reckoned he’d shape up about average. Rightly interpreting this as a considerably more encouraging report than it sounded, George turned to the matter that was nearer his heart.
‘Ever see young Geoff Westcott these days? He’s still driving for Lowthers, isn’t he?’
‘Hear him more than I see him. Comes clattering in to fill up sometimes, week-ends. Oh, ay, he’s still there. Good driver, too, on a lorry. Pity he leaves his manners in the cab when he knocks off. He’s hell on that three-fifty of his.’
‘Fill up last week-end?’ asked George.
‘Didn’t see him. Why? You got something on him?’ The shrewd old eyes narrowed on George’s face expectantly. ‘Didn’t see him since Thursday, come to think of it.’
‘He’s clean, as far as I know,’ said George amiably. ‘When on Thursday? Just a little job involving a motor-bike, nothing special on him, just eliminating the barely-possibles.’
