by Ellis Peters
That was one way of putting it. He knew very well why, of course. At first startled and disarmed by their telephone call, he had been tempted to believe that he had done even better than he had supposed during this first term, and established himself as the natural confessor to whom his seniors would turn in trouble. But he had too much good sense to let his vanity run away with him for long. A careful glance at the circumstances, and he knew a better reason. Neither of them would have dreamed of coming to him, if he had not betrayed himself so completely to Miles in that one brief interview. If there was one thing of which Miles was quite certain, after that, it was that Brash ’Arry would be guided in this crisis not by pious thoughts of the good of society or his moral duty, but by one simple consideration: what he felt to be in Annet Beck’s best interests. If he listened to their arguments, and then gave it as his opinion that they must go to the police, to the police they would go, satisfied that they were doing the best thing for Annet.
And he needn’t think he had the advantage of them as a result of this consultation, either; what it meant, he told himself ruefully but honestly, was that they had discovered in him weaknesses which could be exploited. And boys can be ruthless; he knew, it wasn’t so long since he’d been one. They might, on the other hand, be capable of astonishing magnanimity, too. There was stuff in Miles that kept surprising him; his address in this crisis, the direct way he approached his confession, without hesitation or emphasis, the way the ‘sir’ vanished from his tongue, and the greater, not less, respect and assurance that replaced it. Maybe there were things this boy wouldn’t use even against a schoolmaster, distresses he wouldn’t exploit, even to ease his own.
‘I didn’t wait to hear all they have to say, but I’ve heard enough. I said we ought to come straight to you, and tell at once. So here we are.’
Had his own motives, after all, been quite as single and disinterested as they had calculated? Anything that might uncover the identity of Annet’s lover he would naturally bring to George at a run, because it might remove the danger that threatened Annet’s life. And remove with it, prodded the demon at the back of his mind, the unseen rival, the tenant of that tenacious heart of hers, leaving the way free for another incumbent. He was afraid to look too closely at this dark reverse of his motive, for fear it should prove to be the main impulse that moved him. My God, but it was complicated!
‘Sit down!’ said George, getting up to pour coffee. ‘All right, Miles, we’re listening. What’s on your mind?’
‘I’ve been taking it for granted, of course,’ said Miles directly, ‘that I’m on the list of suspects, until you check up on our week-end. Because of the last time. I haven’t asked Mr Kenyon if he knows about that—’
‘I do,’ said Tom.
‘—but I know you do, of course. And this is going to sound as if I’m just trying to slide out from under, I realise that, but I can’t help it.’
‘Don’t let that worry you,’ said George. ‘We’ve already checked, you are out from under. We know where you were on Saturday evening, and what you were doing. Just go ahead.’
‘Oh, good, that makes it easier. You see,’ said Miles, raising sombre brown eyes to George’s face in a straight, unwavering stare, ‘I never did plan to go away anywhere, that last time, it wasn’t what it looked like at all. I’ve never said anything before, and I wouldn’t now, except that somebody did plan to go away with her then, and it might – I don’t know, but it might – be the same person who took her away this time. There’s been one murder,’ said Miles with shattering simplicity, ‘and there may well be another. Of Annet herself. If we don’t find him.’
The ‘we’ was significant. He watched George’s face, unblinking. ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘That’s right. Go on.’
‘So we have to find him. And the devil of it is that I didn’t try to find out anything about him when I had the chance. I never asked any questions. She asked me to help her to get away. She wanted to go to London. I knew she wasn’t happy. I knew they didn’t want her to go, and it was wrong, in a way, to help her to leave them high and dry. But she asked me, and I did it. She said her parents would be out when she was supposed to go for her piano lesson in the village that Friday afternoon, and she’d have her cases packed, and would I fetch her and take her to the station at Comerbourne. And I said yes. I’d only just passed my test about three weeks before, I wasn’t supposed to touch the car yet unless Dad was with me. But I said yes, anyhow. And I asked her, did she want me to get her ticket for her, so that she could slip in without being noticed at the booking office. And she said it was two tickets she wanted, not one. Singles.’
He had paled perceptibly, and for once he lowered his eyes, frowning down at his own hands clenched tightly in his lap. But only for a moment, while he re-mustered his forces. ‘And I booked them for her,’ he said, ‘the day before she planned to leave.’
‘It sounds,’ said George, carefully avoiding all emphasis, ‘as though she made fairly shameless use of you.’
‘No! No, you don’t know! It wasn’t like that at all. She was perfectly honest with me. I could have said no. I did what I wanted to do. I helped her, and I didn’t ask her anything. If she needed to go, as badly as that, I was for her. She didn’t owe me anything. And it was for me to choose what I’d do, and I did choose. I booked the tickets for her, and the next day I skipped my last period, and went down to where Dad leaves the car, just round the corner from his office, in the yard at the back. You can’t see it from his window, I knew that, and I had the spare key. I fetched Annet and her two cases from Fairford. Her parents were due home in half an hour, but they wouldn’t expect her back from her class until six, so she had a couple of hours’ grace. I took her to the station. We were a good twenty minutes early, but the train backs in well ahead of time. She said he would get on the train independently, with only a platform ticket, and then join her on board. So we went in together when there was a slack moment, and I took a platform ticket from the machine to get out again. We wanted both London tickets punched normally, you see, no queries, nothing to wonder about at all.’
‘And you never asked her outright who he was? Or even looked around to see if anyone was casing the pair of you? Anyone who might be the boy she was going to meet?’
‘No,’ said Miles, and flamed and paled again in an instant, remembering stresses within himself that had cost him more than his dignity was prepared to admit.
‘All right! This isn’t a matter of betrayal now,’ said George practically, ‘it’s Annet’s safety. I believe you didn’t ask, I believe you didn’t look for him. Leave it at that for now. Go on.’
‘Well, you know how it ended. Or rather you don’t, quite. I meant to have the car back in the yard before Dad ever missed it, and ninety-nine days out of a hundred I could have done it, but that was the hundredth. He had a call from a client who was breaking a train journey for one night at the Station Hotel, and had some bit of business he wanted to clear up quickly. And of course there was no car. He thought it had been stolen – there were several taken around that time, if you remember, locked and everything – some gang going round with a pocketful of keys. Anyhow, he reported it to the police, so after that there wasn’t going to be any hushing up the affair, naturally. And then he took a taxi across to the station, and the first thing he saw was his own car parked down the station approach. Well, of course he tipped off the constable from the corner to keep an eye on it, and he came down to the booking-office and the ticket gate to ask if anyone had seen it driven up and parked there. They know him – everybody does. And of course—’
Miles hunched his shoulders under the remembered load.
‘That was it! There we were on the platform, with two suitcases, and I had the two tickets in my hand. And he was furious already about the car. I didn’t blame him. Actually he was damn’ decent, considering. But after a bit of publicity like that it was all up with Annet’s plans, anyhow. We just let it ri
de, let him think what he was thinking. We didn’t have to consult about it, there wasn’t anything else to do. There’d be fuss enough about me, why drag the other fellow into it? All Annet could save out of it was her own secret. Dad said, back to the car, please, and back to the car we went like lambs. He drove out to Fairford, and handed Annet out of the car, and then he looked at the two cases, and neither of them meant a thing to him, but then he never remembers the colour of his own from one year to another. Mummy buys them for him, for presents, when the old ones are getting too battered. He wouldn’t notice. So I handed him one of them, it didn’t matter which, and gave Annet the item with one eye, and she caught on at once. Mummy got the other back to her, afterwards.’
‘You mean your mother knew?’ said Tom, startled, his respect for Eve’s unwomanly discretion soaring.
‘Oh, yes! I don’t think it would have taken her long to get the hang of it, anyhow, because Mummy does notice things. But she opened the case that same night, meaning to put my things away, so the cat was well and truly out of the bag.’
‘And she never said a word! Not even to your father?’ asked George.
‘No, she never did. She could have got me out of some of the muck, of course, but then we’d have had to leave Annet deeper in it, you see, and that was the last thing I wanted. I was all right, in any case, my parents never really panic. And at least nobody was pestering Annet about who, or how, or why, the way things were, because they thought they knew. If somebody’d crossed me out they’d have begun on her in earnest. Mummy let me play it my way, and that way there weren’t any questions. But you see,’ said Miles, contemplating his involuntary guilt with set jaw and dour eyes, ‘that that makes what’s happened since partly my doing. I stood in for him, and he stayed a secret. She still had him, they could try again. This time she didn’t ask anyone for help, they didn’t risk trains or places where there were people who might know them. And this time they pulled it off, if only for a week-end. A trial run for the real flight, maybe. Only this time,’ he said with the flat finality of certainty, ‘he ran out of funds and killed a man.’
‘It doesn’t necessarily follow,’ said George cautiously, ‘though I admit it’s a strong probability.’
‘I think it does follow. I think if there’d been any doubt, Annet would have spoken. As soon as she knew about the murder, she seems to have known whose life was at stake. Why else should she close up like this?’
‘Even Annet could be wrong,’ said George. ‘She never gave you any clue? You never noticed anything? Saw her with anyone special?’
Miles shook his head decidedly. ‘Maybe I was trying not to, I don’t know. I’ve tried all this evening to dredge up something that might be useful. But what I have is only deduction. He was from somewhere round here. That’s certain, because of the tickets. She wasn’t lying to me about that, I’m sure, he was going to board the train in Comerbourne. That time they were bound for London, this time it was Birmingham. That all ties in. She’s never been away from Comerford for long, it’s far more likely she’d get involved with someone here, someone she saw often, someone close at home. And someone hopelessly unsuitable,’ he said, watching George’s face steadily. ‘Even more unsuitable than I am now. I wasn’t warned off until after that fiasco. This one, whoever he is, would never have been allowed near her at all. That’s plain. There was a young fellow who drives long-distance lorries. Good-looking chap who danced—’
‘We know about him,’ said George.
‘Not that I know anything against him, mind you, only that they wouldn’t even have considered him for her. Or there’s a clerk from Langfords’ drawing-office, who used to make trips to London for the firm sometimes. He took her out once or twice, but there are tales about him, and her mother didn’t like him, and soon put a stop to it. Someone like that fits the picture. Someone who travels a fair amount and knows his way around. Because she doesn’t really. With all her assurance, and everything, she’s a milk-white innocent.’
The urgent, practical, purposeful level of his voice never changed, but suddenly it was sharp with an unbearable concentration of beauty and longing, as though he had charmed Annet into the middle of their close circle. There passed from one to another of them the electric tension of awareness, and every face was taut and still, charged with private anguish. Tom stared sightlessly before him with eyes that had reversed their vision, and were struggling with the uncontrollable apparitions within him. Dominic watched Miles protectively and jealously, and kept his lips closed very firmly upon his personal preoccupations. George saw them momentarily isolated hopelessly one from another. Loneliness is the human condition; we grasp at alleviations where we can find them, but most of the time we have to get by with tenuous illusions of communion. Only families, the lucky ones, and friends, the rare and gifted ones, sometimes grow together and inhabit shared worlds too securely for dispossession.
‘And then,’ pursued Miles, too intent upon his hunt to be aware of any checks and dismays, even his own, ‘there’s the matter of her reappearance. Nobody seems to have realised how odd that is, and how suggestive.’
‘And what do you know about her reappearance? There was nothing in the paper about that.’
‘I know, but Mr Kenyon began asking us some pretty significant questions the day after half-term, about where we’d been – about where I’d been,’ amended Miles more precisely, ‘over the week-end, and about the cart-road at the back of the Hallowmount. And Mrs Beck had been on the telephone to my mother, fishing about my whereabouts, too. So we knew there was something wrong at Fairford that I should naturally be blamed for unless I had an alibi, and that the track behind the Hallowmount had something to do with it. It had to be Annet, or why get after me? But Mr Kenyon said, when I asked him, that Annet was safe at home. So why all this about the road at the back of the hill, unless they knew she’d gone or come back that way? But that’s not all. The grave-vine’s got it now, with trimmings. Putting all the bits together, and adding what they fancy, as usual. They’re saying Annet was found wandering on the Hallowmount at night, and swore she hadn’t been anywhere, that she’d only been for a walk and was on her way home. They say she’d been lost to the world for five days under the Hallowmount, like those village girls in the eighteenth century, and remembered nothing about it. They say it in an ambiguous sort of way, if you know what I mean, half believing it really happened, half-sniggering over it as a tall tale invented to cover what she was really up to all that time. Round here they’re expert in having it both ways.’ He looked from George to Tom, and back to George again. ‘Is it true?’
‘Substantially, yes. Mr Kenyon saw her climb over the Hallowmount on Thursday, and he and her father went up there on Tuesday night, and met her just coming over the crest.’
‘And she did tell that tale? Pretending she knew nothing about the five days in between?’
‘Yes,’ said Tom.
‘Then she did it for a pretty urgent and immediate reason. Dom and I have been thinking about this. Nobody knows better than I do,’ said Miles with authority, ‘how Annet behaves in a jam like that. I’ve been through it with her once. She never told a single lie. She walked in at home again with a ruthless sort of dignity, told what she pleased of the truth, and wouldn’t say another word. She didn’t let me out of it, because I’d shown her I didn’t want that. But she never admitted to anything against me, either. She’d have done the same again. That was what she meant to do, I’m certain. If you’re thinking she cooked up that tall story as an alibi for the week-end, and turned up on the Hallowmount to give colour to it, you’re way off target. No, the boot’s on the other foot. She told it because she was caught there.’
‘What you’re saying, then,’ said George intently, ‘is that Annet was there on the hill for some private and sound reason of her own, and was taken completely by surprise when she came over the crest, intending to go straight home, and ran full tilt into her father and Kenyon.’
‘Exactly. And
she did the best she could with it on the spur of the moment. She’d have done better if she’d had time to think, but she didn’t, she had to act instantly. So she fell back on the old tales, not to cover her lost weekend, but to distract attention from what she was doing there, at that moment.’
‘Go on,’ said George, after an instant of startling silence that set them all quivering like awakening sleepers. ‘What do you think, in that case, she was doing there?’
‘She could,’ said Dominic, out of the long stillness and quietness he had preserved in his corner, ‘have been hiding something, for instance. Something neither of them wanted to risk taking home with them.’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as two thousand pounds worth of small jewellery, and what was left of the money after they’d paid their bills.’
‘No!’ protested Tom Kenyon loudly, rigid in his chair. ‘That’s as good as saying she was a party to the crime. I don’t believe it. It’s impossible.’
‘No, sir, I didn’t mean that. She needn’t have known at all. Suppose he gave her a box, or a small case, or something, and said, here, you keep this safe, it’s all I’ve managed to save, it’s our capital. Suppose he told her: Put it somewhere where we can get at it easily when we’ve made our plans, and are ready to get out of here together. He’d know what was really in it, and how completely it could give him away if it was found, but she wouldn’t, she’d only think he was afraid of his family prying, and getting nosey about his savings, maybe even pinching from them if it happens to be that sort of family. And it easily could. He may be in lodgings, he may have a father who keeps a close watch on him, or scrounging brothers, there could be a dozen reasons why it would be safer to trust to a hiding-place in the footways of the old lead mines, or in one of the hollow trees up there, than to risk prying eyes at home. She wouldn’t know how urgent it really was, but it would make sense even to her. And you see the one solid advantage of putting it somewhere outside rather than having it at either home – if by bad luck it was found, there’d be nothing to connect it directly with him. She wouldn’t question. She’d do as he asked, and think no wrong until you sprang the murder on her, two days later. Then she’d understand.’
