Flight of a Witch gfaf-3

by Ellis Peters

  ‘Wide open. Her parents think they had a boy-proof fence erected round her, but you and I know there’s no such thing. There were three or four rather dull and respectable lads they allowed to squire her to dances, but always with the Gibbons girl in tow. But who knows whether they stay dull and respectable once they’re out of sight of the older generation? Here are the names of the approved, and we’re checking up on them, but I’m not expecting much from them. Still, you never know. Then there’s young Geoff Westcott, who would certainly not have been approved by mother. He’s danced with Annet several times, and started a fight over her at least once. And he chose to take the few days’ holiday Lowthers owed him from the summer this last week-end, and filled up at old man Hopton’s on Thursday afternoon. Scott is nosing around to find out what he did with his time. And then there’s an interesting outsider. I saw him this morning in Abbot’s Bale. Mrs Beck always reassured herself that the Blacklocks took care to send Annet home in the car when she worked late, or whenever the nights dropped dark early, or there was bad weather. If Regina or hubby didn’t drive her home, they sent her with the chauffeur. All very nice and safe, and when could she possibly have struck up an undesirable acquaintance? But was it so nice and safe? Braidie was sixty-five and past caring, but Braidie, it seems, retired about three months ago. The fellow they’ve got now – I wonder if the Becks have even noticed? – is one Stockwood, twenty-fourish, good-looking and altogether presentable. And because Mrs Blacklock was away at her conference, and Blacklock prefers to drive himself, Stockwood was given the week-end off after he’d driven Mrs Blacklock down to Gloucester, and he reported back only to fetch her home on Wednesday. Annet had the opportunity to get to know him, all right. Probably three, four times a week he’s had her in the car alone with him.’

  ‘And that’s all?’

  George said, with his eyes fixed on the roofs of Hill Street outside the window, and the small crease of personal anxiety between his brows, ‘It wouldn’t do any harm to get on to Capel Curig, and ask them to check up on the boys and their camp-site, I suppose. Shouldn’t take them long, we can tell them exactly where they were supposed to be.’

  ‘I did,’ said Duckett smugly, and grinned at him broadly through the smoke of his pipe and the stubbornly un-military thicket of his moustache; and anything that could raise a genuine grin that day was more than welcome. ‘I should have told you sooner – you can cross off young Mallindine. They were there, all right, both of ’em, we found people who saw them regularly two of three times a day, one couple who climbed with them all day Sunday. Saturday night, around the time we’re interested in, know where they were? In the local, with a couple of half-pints. The barman remembers, because he asked ’em, by way of a leg-pull, if they were eighteen. He says one of ’em looked down his nose at him and said yes, and the other blushed till his ears lit up.’

  ‘Good God!’ said George blankly, manfully suppressing the thankful lift of his heart. ‘I didn’t know he could.’

  ‘Plenty of things you don’t know about your Dom, you can safely bet on that. But his friend’s in the clear over this, and your boy hasn’t had to tell any lies for him. As for his crime against the Licensing Act, you take my tip, George, don’t waste it. Save it up till the next time he gets uppish with his old man, and then flatten him with it. You’ll have him walking on tip-toe for weeks, thinking you’re Sherlock Holmes in person.’

  ‘I wish to God I was!’ owned George, sighing, and rose somewhat wearily to put on his coat. Something was gained, at least, if Miles was safely out of the reckoning. Only let there be someone observant and reliable somewhere in Birmingham at this moment, reading the noon edition over his lunch, and suddenly arrested by Annet’s recognised and remembered face. Let him be able to set another face beside it, clearly, quickly, before that other turned the same page, to swallow his heart and pocket his shaking hands, and ponder at last, inescapably, that it was Annet or himself for it.

  ‘I’m going to snatch a meal,’ he said, picking up his hat from Duckett’s desk. ‘I’ll be back.’

  He had the door open when the telephone rang. Very quietly he closed the door again, and watched Duckett palm the hand-set, his shaggy head on one side, his thick brows twitching.

  ‘Ah, like that!’ said Duckett, after a few minutes of silences and monosyllables, and emitted a brief and unamused snort of laughter. ‘Yes, thanks, it does. Clears the decks for us, anyhow, and leaves us with at least a glimmer of a lead. Yes, let us have the reports. Thanks again!’ He clapped the receiver back and thrust the set away from him with a grunt that might have meant satisfaction or disgust, or a mixture of both.

  ‘Well?’ said George, his shoulder against the door.

  ‘One more you can cross off. His parents didn’t see him for most of Saturday, he came in after midnight. But there’s a girl. A clinger, it seems. All Saturday afternoon and evening she never let go. You can take the story he told to you as being on the level, tyre-tracks and all, for what they’re worth. Whoever knocked old Worrall on the head, your Number One didn’t.’

  Chapter VII

  « ^ »

  The evening paper wasn’t dropped into the Felse family’s letter-box until the last edition came in at about five o’clock. Bunty Felse was alone when it came, with the tea ready, and neither husband nor son present to eat it. Dominic was always late on rugger practice afternoons, but even so he should have been home before this time. And as for George, when he was on this kind of case who could tell when she would see him?

  She sat down with the paper to wait for them patiently, and Annet Beck’s face looked out at her from the front page with great, mute, disconcerting eyes, beneath the query: ‘Have you seen this girl?’

  ‘Anyone who remembers noticing the girl pictured above,’ said the beginning of the text more precisely, ‘with a male companion in the central or southern districts of Birmingham during last week-end, should communicate with the police.’

  Bunty read it through, and in fact it was as reticent as it could well be and still be exact in conveying its purpose and its urgency. She sank her head between her hands, threading her fingers into the bush of chestnut hair that was just one shade darker than Dominic’s, and contemplated Annet long and thoughtfully. ‘A male companion,’ ‘it is believed,’ ‘helping the police in their enquiries’ – such discreet, such clinical formulae, guaranteed non-actionable. But a real girl in the middle of it, and somewhere, still hidden, a real boy, maybe no older than Dominic.

  They were pretty sure of their facts, that was clear. They knew when they laid hands on the partner of Annet’s truancy they would have Jacob Worrall’s murderer. What they didn’t know, what nobody knew but Annet, was who he was. And Annet wouldn’t tell. Bunty didn’t have to wonder or ask how things were going for George now, she knew.

  No one could identify him but Annet. And she wouldn’t. Why, otherwise, should they be reduced to appealing to the public for information, and displaying Annet as bait? He might be anyone. He might be anywhere. You might go down to the grocer’s on the corner and ask him for a pound of cheese, and his hands might be trembling so he could hardly control the knife. You might bump into him at a corner and put your hand on his arm to steady yourself and him as you apologised, and feel him flinch, recoiling for an instant from the dread of a more official hand on his shoulder. He might get up and give you his seat in a bus, or blare past you on a noisy motor-bike at the crossing, and snarl at you to get out of his way. He might be the young clerk from the Education Department, just unfolding the paper in the bus on his way home. He’d killed a man, and he was on the run, but only one girl could give him a face or a name.

  How well did he know his Annet? Do you ever know anyone well enough to stake your life on her? When all the claims of family and society and upbringing pull the other way? If he was absolutely sure of her loyalty, there was a hope that he wouldn’t try to approach her at all, that he’d just take his plunder and make a quiet getaway while he was anon
ymous, leaving Annet to carry the load alone. Could she love that kind of youth? Plenty of fine girls have, owned Bunty ruefully, why not Annet? It might be the best thing, because if he started running he would almost inevitably lose his nerve and run too fast, and just one slip would bring the hunt after him. Somewhere away from here, where he couldn’t double back to remove, in his last despair, the one really dangerous witness.

  But if he couldn’t be sure of her, if he feared, as he well might, that under pressure she might break down at last and betray him, then from this moment on Annet’s life was in great danger. If you’re frightened to death, you stop loving, you stop thinking or feeling but in one desperate plane of reference, you fight for your life, and kill whatever threatens it. These, at least, thought Bunty, must be the reactions of an unstable young creature, not yet mature, the kind of boy who could have committed that brutal, opportunist crime in the shop in Bloome Street. The commonplace of today, the current misdemeanour, cosh the shopkeeper, clear the till, run; quick money to pay for this and future sprees, in three easy movements. It happens all the time. Preferably old men or old women in back-street shops, because they’re so often solitary. No, the boy who did that wouldn’t keep his love intact for long when it was his life or Annet’s.

  Bunty got up suddenly and went to the telephone in the hall. It wasn’t so much that she was really anxious about her offspring; just a sudden unwillingness to be alone with this line of thought any longer, and a feeling that company would be helpful. It might even help her to think. How could she leave alone a problem that was tormenting George?

  ‘Eve? You haven’t got Dominic there, have you?’

  ‘I did have, sweetie, for about ten minutes, but that was half an hour ago. They blew in and went into a huddle in the corner, and then they up and made a phone call, and went off again. They brought the paper in with them. I did wonder,’ said Eve Mallindine, resigning the idea reluctantly, ‘if they’d come to you. They never said a word. And when I looked at the “News” – well, you’ll have seen it.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bunty, and pondered, jutting a dubious lip. ‘Eve – they were where they said they were, surely? Over the week-end? They couldn’t, either of them—’

  ‘No,’ said Eve, firmly and serenely, ‘they couldn’t. Neither of them. Not in any circumstances.’

  ‘No, of course not! My God, I must be going round the bend. It’s such hell growing up, that’s all. And I’m afraid to think we’ve got angels instead of boys – such arrogance! And there was the first time, for Miles – don’t shoot me down in flames, but it did happen.’

  ‘Listen, honey,’ said Eve’s bright, confident voice, for once subdued into a wholly private and unmocking tenderness, ‘it didn’t happen. Not even that once. Don’t tell anyone else. I promised Miles I wouldn’t ask him anything, or tell anything, and I wouldn’t now if we weren’t all in a pretty sticky situation. Miles never tried to run away anywhere, with or without Annet Beck. So you can put that out of your mind.’

  ‘But they were picked up at the station,’ said Bunty blankly, ‘with two cases. And two tickets to London.’

  ‘So they were. Two cases. But both of them were Annet’s.’

  ‘Both of them? But Bill would have known! For goodness’ sake! He took Annet home with one case, and brought Miles back with the other. Do you mean to tell me he doesn’t know the family luggage?’

  Eve said, with curiosity, wonder, and not a little envy: ‘You know, George must be a tidy-minded man, to inspire such confidence in husbands. Bill?’ A brief, affectionate hoot of laughter patted his name on the head and reduced him to size. ‘Bill doesn’t know his own shirts. Every time we dig the cases out of the attic to pack, he swears he’s never seen half of them before. “When did we buy this thing, darling?” “I don’t remember this – did we pinch it somewhere?” I could filch a tie out of his drawer and give it him for his birthday, and he wouldn’t know.’

  ‘But how, then? I mean—’

  ‘I don’t know, I never asked. When Bill dropped on them and jumped to conclusions, Miles arranged it that way, that’s all. And she let him. I got the case back to Annet afterwards. I took advantage of Regina Blacklock’s car to do it, but she never knew, and you knew Braidie, he was so correct he was stone-deaf to everything but what he was supposed to hear. It was very easy, I just telephoned to Annet at the hall, and asked her to get Braidie to call here when he took her home, some day when her parents would be out. So I know what I’m talking about, my love. I’d thought the poor lamb had bought it specially for the jaunt, you see, and I started to unpack it, out of pure kindness of heart and helpfulness. Thank God Bill wasn’t there! All Annet’s best frocks! You should have seen his face! After he’d covered up for her so nobly, and then to see me meddling. I tell you, I had the honour of all mothers in my hands.’

  ‘I’ll be cheering in a minute,’ said Bunty, swallowing a sound that indicated other possibilities. ‘All right, I’m grateful, you preserved our reputation most nobly. But if you expect me to live up to your record, and not ask questions—’

  ‘Wouldn’t be any good, darling, I don’t know any more answers.’

  ‘Not even who the second ticket was for?’

  ‘That least of all. Because Miles doesn’t know it, either.’

  ‘Then I give up! Why should he—’

  But she stopped there, because there could be only one reason, and it made her stand back and look again at young Miles, with sympathy and respect, and a sudden flurry of consternation and dismay. If he was reaching after maturity at this rate, without any childish desire for acknowledgement or payment or praise, how far behind could Dominic be? She didn’t want them men too soon, she needed a little time yet to get used to it, even though the symptoms had begun already so long ago. She caught her breath in a rueful giggle, and said: ‘Eve, do you suppose there’s an evening class we could join – on growing old gracefully?’

  She expected something profane and cheering from Eve in return, but there was blank silence, as though her friend had withdrawn altogether and cut off the connection. On Bunty, too, the abrupt chill of realisation descended, freezing her where she stood.

  ‘Bunty—’ said Eve’s voice, slowly and delicately.

  ‘Yes, I’m still here. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’

  ‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Eve. ‘Great minds!’

  ‘Could it be the same person? Since it wasn’t Miles, that time – could it be? Then anything Miles knows – anything! – may be vital. Anything she ever said to him then, a name or something short of a name. Anything he noticed about her. Anyone he saw her with. She relied on him, she let him help her, she may have trusted him with at least a clue.’

  ‘No,’ said Eve, her voice anxious and still. ‘Miles doesn’t know. He – whoever he may be – was always a secret, from Miles, from everybody, just like this time. Terribly like this time, now you come to mention it.’

  ‘But there might be something that he does know, without even realising it. Eve, he must talk to George.’

  ‘You took the words out of my mouth. Call me if he shows up there. And if he comes back here,’ said Eve with grim resolution, ‘I’ll see to it that he comes round to your place and gets the whole story off his chest like a sensible man – if I have to bring him along by the ear!’

  No one, however, had to bring Miles along by the ear. About seven o’clock Bunty looked out as she drew the living-room curtains, and saw them striding briskly and purposefully up the garden path towards the front door, Dominic in the lead. Not merely two young, slender shapes, but three. Somewhere along the way, Bunty thought at first, they’d picked up a third sixth-former who had an uneasy conscience about something he knew and hadn’t confided; but when she ran to let them in, and they came into the light of the hall, she saw that the third was Tom Kenyon.

  Of all people in the world she would least have expected them to run to him for advice. He was too perilously near to them, and yet set apart by
the invisible barrier that segregates teacher from pupils; too old to be accepted as a contemporary, and too young to have any of the menace or reassurance of a father-figure. They liked him well enough, with reservations, these hard-to-please, deflationary young gentlemen, even if they had christened him Brash ’Arry, jumping to conclusions about the middle initial H on his brief-case; but to go to him in their anxieties was quite another matter.

  ‘Hallo!’ said Bunty, from long habit reducing even the abnormal to normality. ‘Come in! You’re in time for coffee, if you’d like some.’

  ‘I’m sorry if we look like an invasion,’ said Tom, with a brief and shadowed smile, ‘but this may be urgent. Is George home yet? We’ve got to see him.’

  ‘Yes, come along in.’ She threw the door wide and passed them through. Her son went by with a single preoccupied glance of apology for his lateness. Miles, always meticulous, said a dutiful: ‘Good evening, Mrs Felse!’ Tom marshalled them before him with an air of dominant responsibility that made Bunty smile, until she remembered the occasion that had almost certainly brought them here. ‘Visitors for you, darling!’ she said, and closed the door on them and went to reassure Eve.

  George had his slippered feet on the low mantelpiece, and his coffee-cup in the hearth by his chair. He looked up at their entrance with tired eyes, not yet past surprise at this procession.

  ‘Hallo, Kenyon, what is this? Are you having trouble with these two?’

  Two reproving frowns deplored this tone. Tom Kenyon didn’t even notice.

  ‘They came to me after they’d seen the paper tonight. It seems they’d been comparing notes and putting two and two together, and they came to the conclusion they had some information and a theory that they ought to confide to somebody in authority. Your boy naturally wanted to come straight to you, but Miles preferred to try it out on me first, before bothering you.’