Colin tried to take the man’s raincoat from him, but he kept it clutched around him as if he feared it might be cold in the room; or perhaps it was merely to show that he had no intention of staying more than a few minutes. He held his black beret in one hand, his grey hair hanging greasily over his ears. When Colin had told Dorothea that this was Mr. Waterman, and had invited him to sit down, he sat on the very edge of a chair, as if to make it plain that this was to be a very short visit.
“They’re setting me up for murder again,” he announced.
This was embarrassing. No one said anything.
He repeated it in a louder tone, as if he feared that he had not been heard. “They’re setting me up for murder.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t see how we can help,” Colin said.
The man waved his beret at the door. “There’s a man out there waiting till I come out. They’re following me wherever I go.”
“I suppose that must give you an uncomfortable sort of feeling,” Colin said.
“I tell you, they’re setting me up for murder.”
“Have they any evidence?”
“As if they care about that! They’ve my record. That’s enough for them. You probably think I’m a murderer too.”
“I don’t think any of us have very definite opinions,” Colin said. “But you came to us for some reason, I imagine.”
“I want to talk to that man, whoever he is,” Waterman said, pointing at Andrew and glaring at him with his strange, crooked eyes.
“He’s Professor Basnett,” Colin said. “A friend who’s spending Christmas with us.”
“The man I talked to the other morning,” Waterman stated, and seemed to expect someone to contradict him.
Andrew said, “That’s correct. For a moment you seemed to think I might be Sir Lucas Dearden.”
“I expected to see him, but as soon as I saw you I knew you weren’t him. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes, I think it is,” Andrew said.
“Not that I was sure, just for a second. I didn’t really know what he’d look like after all this time. And the only times I saw him he was dressed up in a wig and all that, and I can’t say I was quite myself. I’d too much else on my mind, and it was all so long ago. If you’d said you were Dearden, I’d have believed you.”
“But I didn’t,” Andrew said.
“No, you didn’t.”
“So how can I help you?”
“You don’t much want to help me, do you? It’s easiest for you to believe I’m a murderer. It’s easiest for everyone.”
“If you aren’t,” Andrew said, “what did you come down here for?”
Waterman twisted his beret between his hands. He brooded for a moment.
“I wanted to meet the man,” he said. “I wanted to talk to him, that was all. I’ve had time to do a lot of thinking in the last few years, and in the early days there was nothing I wanted so much as to get my hands round his throat and throttle him. I used to lie awake in bed and dream about doing it. Then after a time I got tired of it, and I saw that what I had to do when I got out was to put it all behind me and get him and the bloody old judge out of my system, or there wasn’t much point in getting out of gaol. Then the judge died, so I couldn’t see him, but Dearden was living here, comfortably retired. And I thought I could come here and talk to him and see what kind of man he was who could do what he did to me.”
“Are you saying you were innocent of the murder of your wife?” Colin asked.
“No need to do that now, is there?” Waterman said. “I’ve paid for it. I can say what I like about it and no one can do anything more to me. No, I did it and never been sorry for it either. Sorry I ever married her, yes, knowing pretty well as I did what she was, but thinking, as I expect other men have thought before me, that I could straighten her out if I cared for her enough and gave her security and all that. I should have known you can’t change people. Funny thing, she hadn’t really much use for sex. Always seemed to be looking for something she couldn’t find in one man after another. Frigid as hell all the time. That’s what a lot of these tarts are like, so I’ve been told. I was told a lot of things in prison I didn’t know when I went there. Don’t they call them universities of crime? Isn’t that the fashionable thing to say about them nowadays? Not that I ever learnt anything that’s been much use to me. I didn’t learn how to make bombs. I didn’t learn how to make sure I’d a good alibi when there was a smell of murder in the air. I didn’t learn how to talk nice and politely to the police when they start shouting at me.”
“But you think that I can help you in some way,” Andrew said.
Waterman edged even further forward on his chair. It looked as if he were ready to leap up from it, perhaps at Andrew, perhaps for the door.
“Did you or did you not tell me that Dearden was in London?” he demanded.
“Yes, I did,” Andrew replied.
“And you said you didn’t know when he’d be back.”
“Yes.”
“Then how the hell was I to know he’d be coming back that evening? First I didn’t know he’d be away, so how was I to know about his coming back?”
“That’s what’s puzzling a good many people at the moment,” Andrew said. “How did anyone know?”
“Oh, they knew in the other house all right. He phoned them to say he was coming.”
“Apparently not. There were no phone calls that day.”
“Who says?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Dearden and a visitor who’s staying with them, a Miss Goddard.”
“And why should you believe them? Oughtn’t you to be asking yourselves, is it probable?” Waterman started to massage his knees with his big, bony hands. His crooked eyes still dwelt intently on Andrew’s face. “I’d no motive for killing that old devil. Like I was telling you, I outgrew that long ago. The only motive I could have had is if I fancied another long spell in prison and thought it might as well be Dearden I finished off as anyone else. And I may come round to that yet. Life outside hasn’t been much better than inside. I’d no worries there, no need to think about where the next meal was coming from, no getting the brush-off when I tried to get a job, no need to queue up for my unemployment benefit.” He stood up suddenly, tall and very thin, his raincoat still tightly clutched about him. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to get talking. I’m not trying to make you sorry for me. I just want to know if you’ll tell the police you didn’t tell me when Dearden was expected home.”
“I think I’ve told them that already,” Andrew said.
“Just a minute.” Jonathan stood in front of the door as Waterman moved towards it. “Has it occurred to you that the bomb may not have been meant for Sir Lucas? I wonder if you can prove that no one gave you that bomb and paid you to plant it in the lane to blow up somebody else.”
“Jonathan!” Dorothea yelped. “Do you know what you’re saying?”
“Of course I do,” he said. “And so do you and so do the police. What I’m advising Mr. Waterman to do is to stop worrying about who could have known Lucas was coming home and concentrate on proving that he’s never been in touch with anyone who wanted to blow me up. His coming here, a well-known murderer like him, just when a murder was set to happen, seems to me a bit too much of a coincidence unless it had somehow been arranged for him to be the fall-guy. Isn’t that the word for it?”
Waterman gave him a hard stare, then thrust past him out of the house. They heard the bang of the front door behind him.
Jonathan went to his mother, stooped over her and gave her a kiss.
“I’m sorry, Mum, I didn’t mean to worry you, but you’d thought of all that yourself, hadn’t you?” he said. “I think it’d be best for us all if we accept that the bomb was almost certainly meant for me.”
“I’d never have thought of what you said to that man,” Dorothea said. “I mean that he was, well, someone else’s instrument. I thought he was quite innocent.”
“Perhaps he is,” Jonathan said. “I said he may have been got down here by someone just to be a useful suspect.”
“Then why hasn’t he said what brought him here?” she demanded.
“Ah yes, why? And who hates me quite enough to try a thing like that?”
Colin’s plump face was uncharacteristically sombre. “If you’re right,” he said, “it was a very carefully planned, cold-blooded murder, worked out some time ago. No, you know, Jonathan, when I think about it carefully, I don’t believe a word of it.”
Jonathan gave a sudden laugh, as if he were pleased by what his father had just said.
“That’s a relief, though I don’t know why you don’t,” he said. “It all sounded pretty convincing to me. So we’re back, as always, to who knew Lucas was coming down.”
“I suppose there’s a possibility,” Andrew said, “that the bomb was meant for Colin or Dorothea.”
This, as he had intended, produced mirth. No one thought even for a moment that there could be any truth in it. Dorothea laid down her knitting and stood up.
“I’ll get tea,” she said and went out.
A little while later Andrew said, “I suppose someone ought to take that manuscript back to the Deardens. I’ll do it, if you like.”
He had a feeling that it would be a good thing for the Cahills to have a little time to themselves, without even as old a friend as he was there to hear their discussion.
“Will you?” Colin said. “Thanks very much. But all you can say to them is that it appears to be entirely innocuous.”
“I wonder if they’ll be glad of that, or not,” Jonathan said. “I mean, if you’d spotted some good old clue in it, it might have helped.”
Dorothea had picked it up, and though she had not settled down to read it, she had been leafing through it.
“Have you noticed that page 96 is missing?” she asked.
“No. Is it?” Colin asked.
“Yes, it just caught my eye. It goes from 95 to 97.”
“I didn’t notice it,” he said. “Did you, Andrew?”
“No.” Andrew took the manuscript from Dorothea and looked at the pages that she indicated. All the pages were numbered neatly at the top with a number enclosed in a little circle. As she had pointed out, page 96 was missing. “But it reads quite coherently as it is,” he said. “Perhaps it was just a slip.”
He held the manuscript out to Colin, who looked at it and nodded.
“Makes perfect sense as it is,” he said.
On page 95 there was a mention of the fact that Lucas’s daughter Erica had just become engaged, and on page 97 it went on to say that Henry Haslam had recently become senior partner of the firm of accountants for whom he worked, followed by a few words of commendation. As Colin had said, it made perfectly good sense.
“Well, we’ll never know what was on page 96, if there ever was one,” Jonathan said after he too had looked at the manuscript. “I think Andrew was right, Lucas just made a slip numbering his pages, though I suppose he might have torn it out for some reason and thrown it away.”
“Erica was always her father’s favourite, was she?” Andrew said.
“I think she was,” Colin replied. “You think Nicholas felt that? That it’s another thing against him at the moment?”
“I was just wondering if Dearden said something disparaging about Nicholas on that missing page, then had second thoughts about it and tore it out,” Andrew said. “But really I’ve no opinion about it at all. Shall I take the manuscript back now?”
It was handed over to him very willingly. He went upstairs and changed his shoes, then walked out into the lane and along it to the Deardens’ gate.
The front door was opened to him by Lyn Goddard.
“Ah, you’ve brought the manuscript back,” she said as she invited him in. “Have you read it?”
“Yes, and so has Colin,” he said. “We seem to agree about it.”
“That it’s a wretched dull thing?”
She led him into the high, gracious drawing room with its incongruous modern furniture. A fire was burning on the hearth of the fine old Adam fireplace, casting flickering shadows about the panelled walls, but there was no light on in the room. She pressed a couple of switches and light sprang on in several lamps. There was no sign of Nicholas or Gwen. Andrew wondered if Lyn had been sitting there alone, dreaming in the early winter dusk—it would have been too dark to read—or if she had only just come downstairs when she heard his ring.
Taking the manuscript from him and putting it on a table, she gestured to a chair and sat down herself.
“Nicholas is lying down,” she said. “He had to go and make a formal identification of what was left of his father today, Christmas or not, and he came home and straight away started vomiting. Vomiting several times. It must have been a terrible thing for him to have to do, and Nicholas is really very sensitive.”
It sounded as if she herself might have made the identification without needing more than perhaps a small whisky after it.
“And how’s Gwen?” Andrew asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “She’s been gone all day. She drove up to London to see Erica. I should think she’ll be back any time now.”
“How is Erica?”
“Doing pretty well, I believe. It was a nasty accident, but luckily not too serious.”
“Lyn, there’s something I want to ask you.” Andrew had promptly remembered on seeing her what it was that he had wanted to ask her. His mind had been a blank on the subject until a short time ago, when he had seen Dorothea’s Christmas tree with its decoration of cards. But now he knew what it had been. “I believe, when you came down by train, you were writing Christmas cards.”
“It’s true, I was,” she said. “I’ve kept meaning to do it ever since the beginning of the month, and I actually bought them a couple of weeks ago, but I kept forgetting about them, or finding something I had to do that seemed more urgent. And of course they’ll arrive days too late, because you know how slow the post is around Christmas time. But I did scribble them in the train. Why?” She gave a puzzled frown. “Do they matter in some way?”
“I’m only wondering when you posted them,” Andrew said. “Or didn’t you post them at all? Have you still got them?”
“Oh no, I posted them.”
“At the station?”
“No. Oh—!” She had understood what he was asking her. “I posted them as soon as we got here. There’s a letter-box at the end of the lane. I noticed it as we were driving along, and before I took my things upstairs or did any unpacking I went straight out and popped them all into it. And that means I was out of the house for about five minutes, and someone could have rung up while I was out and I shouldn’t have heard the telephone. Isn’t that what you’re thinking about?”
“It’s true, it is,” Andrew admitted. “You were so positive no one could have rung up to tell the Deardens Sir Lucas was on his way home, but if a call had come through during the short time you were out of the house you wouldn’t have known about it.”
“And so Nicholas could have planted the bomb to kill his father? Always supposing he had a bomb handy.” There was mockery in her tone.
“Suppose he had,” Andrew said.
She looked shocked at the seriousness of his tone.
“It sounds to me very improbable,” she said.
“So it does to me,” Andrew admitted. “But the improbable sometimes happens. And I thought I’d just ask you about it.”
“Well, I did go out and the telephone could have rung while I was gone,” she said, “that’s obvious. But didn’t it happen at the wrong time of day? I mean, I’ve been told Erica had her accident about midday, but it wasn’t long after midday that the Deardens brought me here from the station. So if Henry rang up then to tell them that Lucas was on his way home, it would have meant that Henry had done it almost as soon as he had the news of the accident himself, just when he was talking to the police and seeing about getting Erica into hospital and all that sort of thing. Isn’t that unlikely?”
“Suppose it was Dearden himself who rang up,” Andrew said.
She nodded. “Yes, I can just imagine that. The first thing he’d have thought of when he heard that Erica wouldn’t be available to look after him over Christmas would have been that the most comfortable thing for him to do would be to go home. But I’m not sure that he’d have bothered to telephone. I think he’d probably simply have left Henry to cope with everything and got into his car and driven home.”
“You didn’t like him,” Andrew said. “That’s evident.”
She gave a sigh. “Isn’t it difficult to say that of the dead? Specially of someone so horribly dead. If he’d died in his bed, say after a long illness, and we’d all been agreed it was a merciful release for everyone, I don’t think I’d have hesitated to say he was an old bastard. Or perhaps I should. I don’t know. He was never unkind to me and always made me feel I was welcome here. But he was selfish and demanding and exploited Nicholas and Gwen in every way that occurred to him. All the same, if you think that Nicholas murdered him, it won’t do. Nicholas isn’t that kind of man.”
“And Gwen?” he said.
She gave a start of surprise. “Gwen?”
“It doesn’t take a lot of muscular strength to plant a bomb in a lane,” he said, “and there’ve been plenty of woman terrorists.”
“What an extraordinary idea,” she said, yet she did not sound much disturbed by it. “But you know, I think if she’d wanted to kill him she’d have put some insecticide in his soup or something like that. That’s how I’d have done it myself. You’ve wondered about that, of course. You’ve wondered if I could have had any possible motive for killing Lucas.”
“That’s the kind of thing I sometimes think about,” he said, “but I don’t usually take it very seriously.”
“I suppose we all do it from time to time.” She stirred in her chair, moving her gaze from his face to the manuscript on the table. “You say you’ve read that thing.”
He nodded.
“And you thought it pretty dreary stuff. But was that all you thought?”
“Is there anything more that I ought to have thought?”
“I don’t think so. I’ve only glanced through it, but Nicholas said that he doubted if it would ever get published unless the old man paid for it himself.”
“Did Dearden know that he thought that?”
“I don’t think so. Nicholas would never have risked saying a thing like that to his father. I think in his way he was always rather afraid of him. He could be wickedly sarcastic, you know. It could be vicious. I don’t want to give you the idea that anyone as quiet and gentle as Nicholas could carry out a particularly brutal murder, but I do think, though I’ve a feeling, as I’ve just said, that one shouldn’t say such things, that he’ll be better off now.”
“Financially?”
“Oh yes, of course financially. But that isn’t what I meant.” “Tell me, have you or Nicholas noticed that page 96 in the manuscript is missing?”
Her gaze came sharply back to him. “No. Is it?”
“It appears to be,” Andrew said. “Yet it reads as if there’d been nothing left out. It could be that in writing Dearden simply made a slip and wrote 97 after 95. Or it could be that he tore out a page and threw it away. Do you happen to know who typed it for him before he sent it to his agent?”
“I believe some woman in the village, someone who I believe had been somebody’s secretary, then got married and settled here, but welcomed the odd job of work. Is it important? Nicholas or Gwen would know, I expect.”
“It might be important,” Andrew said. “I don’t know.”
“I’ll ask Nicholas about it and let you know.”
But as she spoke, Nicholas came into the room. His thick fair hair was dishevelled and the cardigan that he was wearing was wrongly buttoned, so that it looked as if he had tumbled off his bed, or wherever he had been lying down, without troubling to tidy himself. He looked startled at seeing Andrew.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know you were here. I’ve been trying to rest, but it doesn’t really work, though I haven’t had much sleep the last night or two.” He turned to Lyn. “Gwen not back yet?”
“No,” she said.
“I don’t know why she went,” he said with some petulance in his voice. “There wasn’t any need for it. Erica wouldn’t have been expecting her, after hearing what happened here.”
“I suppose Henry did tell her,” Lyn said. “But mightn’t he have felt she could be spared the shock for a few days of knowing about it?”
“All the more reason why Gwen needn’t have gone. But I think Henry told Erica everything. Did I tell you he’s probably coming down here tomorrow? He phoned just a little while ago. Seemed to think he might be able to help us, though I don’t know how.” He turned back to Andrew. “Have you met Henry?”
Andrew shook his head.
“You haven’t missed much, though there’s no harm in him,” Nicholas said with an edge on his voice. He seemed to be in a thoroughly bad humour.
“Your father seemed to think a good deal of him,” Andrew said.
“What? Oh, you’ve been reading that manuscript.” Nicholas glanced towards it, then threw himself down in a chair. “Yes, he says some reasonably complimentary things about him, doesn’t he? Henry knew how to handle him.”
“Of course you know there’s a page missing from the manuscript,” Andrew said.
“No. Is there?” Nicholas did not look much interested.
“The numbering of the pages goes from 95 to 97,” Andrew told him. “It could have been a slip your father made as he was writing, or it could be that he decided to remove the page for some reason.”
“I suppose that’s odd,” Nicholas said. “I read it through, but never noticed it. It makes sense as it is, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, I read it straight on without noticing it myself. It was Dorothea who pointed it out.”
Nicholas gave a slight shrug of his shoulders. “Probably isn’t important anyway. What did you make of the whole thing?”
“Nothing much.”
“No, he was very careful not to say anything about himself, wasn’t he? Or about Erica or me, I’m glad to say.”
“The missing page, if that’s what it was, seems to have been about your brother-in-law. There’s a mention on page 95 of your sister’s engagement, then it goes on on 97 with the statement that Henry Haslam was senior partner in the firm he worked for.”
Nicholas stood up and reached for the manuscript. He flicked the pages over.
“You’re quite right, it’s missing,” he said, “but I’d guess it was just a mistake in the numbering. I wonder if it will get published now. If it’s got out in a hurry the publicity at present might help it.”
Andrew would not have expected him to sound as callous as he did. But the cause of that, he thought, might be simply that the stress of the last days had exhausted Nicholas’s emotional capacities. His face was very pale and showed deeper lines than usual. He had never had the toughness for which his father had once been famous. Yet several people seemed inclined to think that he might be a murderer. But perhaps murder could be a last resort of weakness.
“I was asking Lyn who typed the manuscript,” Andrew said. “She told me a woman in the village did it. Might she know anything about the missing page?”
“Doesn’t seem likely,” Nicholas said. “If it ever existed and if my father tore it out, he’d have done that before taking it to be typed, wouldn’t he? She won’t have seen it.”
“No, that’s true,” Andrew agreed.
“But it was done by a woman called Mrs. Cambrey, who lives in a bungalow with the odd name of Elsinore, next to the church. Not that you need expect to meet a ghost walking on the battlements if you go there. I believe she and her husband thought of the name for their home because her name is Elsie and his is Norman. I believe a lot of people name their houses in that way, and sometimes it has some rather bizarre results.” He had dropped back into his chair. “Now why the hell doesn’t Gwen come home?”
Andrew stood up. He thought it possible that he might visit Elsinore, though not that evening, and perhaps by next day he might have lost the inclination to do so. But the puzzle of the missing page roused his curiosity and although he did what he could to control it, curiosity had always been a powerful part of his character. Nicholas showed him to the front door, opened it and, standing there looking out, said, “The lane’s still roped off. Gwen will have to drive round by the village. I wonder how long it’ll be before things get back to normal.”
He sounded less callous now than sad, as if something that had been precious to him had been irremediably destroyed.
“Do the police know for sure yet if the bomb was planted in the lane,” Andrew asked, “or if it was attached to your father’s car, or put into it, in London?”
“Oh, it was in the lane,” Nicholas answered. “They’ve found traces of explosive there. It was a land mine of sorts. Anyone coming along could have been blown up. The lane’s so narrow that whoever did it could be sure that anyone driving down along it would explode it. You’ve thought of that, I suppose.”
“That it could have been meant for Jonathan? Yes, we’ve talked it over.”
“Only somehow I don’t think it was. Well, thank you for bringing the manuscript back.” Nicholas turned back into the house and closed the door.
Andrew started down the drive towards the gate.
He had only gone a yard or so when a car stopped in the gateway and someone got out. It was too dark for him to see who it was, but the figure started walking back along the lane, perhaps towards the village or perhaps only to the house next door. The car turned in at the gate, and continued to the Deardens’ garage. There was no reason why Andrew should linger, since this was certainly Gwen returning from London and she would have nothing to say to him, but he paused and after a moment she emerged from the garage and walked towards the door.
As she came close to him he could see her face in the light from one of the windows in the house, and it was certain that she must have seen him in the headlights of her car; yet she walked past him as if he were not there, a stiff, erect figure with eyes staring glassily out of the pallor of her face. Opening the door, she disappeared into the house.
He gave an unhappy sigh as he walked towards the gate. It was almost certain, he thought, that the figure whom he had seen get hurriedly out of the car had been Jonathan, and it was only a moment before he was sure of this, for Jonathan was standing near the door of the Cahills’ house, waiting for him. As Andrew approached, Jonathan came a few steps towards him.
“So you saw us,” he said.
“Yes,” Andrew answered. “Does that matter?”
“Only that perhaps you needn’t mention it to my parents,” Jonathan said. “They knew I was going out, but they didn’t know where.”
“Where did you go, or is that a private matter too?” Andrew asked.
“Not really. I suppose actually I’ll tell them about it myself.” The porch light was on, but Andrew could not see much of Jonathan’s face. “I’ve got some things I’ve got to think out. The fact is, Gwen phoned me from The Running Man and wanted me to meet her there. She’d been up to London to visit Erica, who seems to be doing all right, but as far as I can make out, between them they’ve come to the conclusion that Nicholas must have murdered his father, only they don’t think it was his father he was trying to kill, it was me. And Gwen wanted to see me to implore me to go away. She thinks I’m in real danger. But she told me she won’t give evidence against Nicholas, because he’s her husband. She’s very loyal to him.”
“Has she any evidence to give?” Andrew asked.
“You mean solid evidence, not just some hysterical guesses?”
“Yes, that’s what I mean.”
“As a matter of fact, I asked her that and she wouldn’t tell me. My impression is…” Jonathan paused and turned towards the door. As he turned the handle to open it, he added, “I believe she knows something. Something. I don’t know what. But what would you do if you were me?”
“I’d be on the next plane to South America.”
Jonathan laughed. “I knew you’d say something like that. I needn’t have asked you. But you see, it isn’t a joke to me.”
He pushed the door open.
“Actually not to me either,” Andrew said as he stepped inside. “If you don’t like South America, there are still the Antipodes.”
Jonathan stood still in the hall, looking at him with a perplexed frown on his normally cheerful, confident face.
“I believe you really mean that,” he said.
“But then I’m no hero and I’m not in love with anyone,” Andrew replied. “That may make a difference.”
“I’m not in love with anyone either,” Jonathan said quickly. “If you’re thinking of Gwen and me—” Just at that moment Dorothea called out from the sitting room.
“Jonathan, is that you?”
“Yes,” he called back. Then he dropped his voice to almost a whisper in Andrew’s ear. “They think I’ve been having a drink with a friend in the village. They don’t know it was Gwen. But I’ll think about South America.”
He leapt up the stairs and Andrew heard the door of his bedroom slam as he went into it.
Andrew went into the sitting room. Colin gave him sherry and Dorothea told him that supper was waiting for him. There was going to be cold roast beef with biscuits and cheese. Andrew sat down, wondering what he ought to say to them. He had given Jonathan no promise not to tell them that Gwen had been the friend with whom he had been having a drink.
“I don’t think I’ll ever make mince pies again,” Dorothea said. “There are still some left over, but all they’ll ever do to me is remind me of these awful days. Had they anything to say about the manuscript over at the Deardens’, Andrew?”
“Nothing much, except that they told me who typed it for Dearden,” he answered. “A woman called Mrs. Cambrey. I’ve been wondering if she could know anything about that missing page.”
“I suppose it’s possible,” Colin said. “It might be worth asking her.”
“Will you do it?” Andrew asked.
“Wouldn’t it be better if you did? She knows me. She’ll think I’m just being inquisitive. If you handle it the right way she might even think you’re connected with the police and that she ought to tell you everything she knows.”
“Face it, that’s probably nothing.”
“Of course. All the same, its being missing is just a little odd. It somehow isn’t in character for Lucas simply to have made a slip in numbering the pages. You know how neat it all was and how carefully he’d crossed out all the bits he wanted to delete. Still, I admit anyone can act out of character once in a while. But there can’t be any harm in asking her if she knows anything.”
Andrew nodded, making up his mind that next morning he would call on Mrs. Cambrey, but his thoughts were really on Jonathan. How deeply involved was he with Gwen Dearden, and how much did that mean to Nicholas?
Jonathan came down for supper, but then returned upstairs while Colin, Dorothea and Andrew watched a film on television. They all went to bed early, Andrew settling down for a time to his Rex Stout before switching off his light, half-dreading to do so because he felt that in the darkness he would once more be assailed by the vision of the flames in the lane, the blazing car and the charred figure inside it.
However, he fell asleep fairly soon, after making up his mind that after breakfast next day he would visit Mrs. Cambrey. It seemed a futile thing to do, but as Colin had said, it was unlikely to do any harm.
He was woken in the morning by Dorothea coming suddenly into his room. She was not carrying a breakfast tray and she left the door open behind her. Her face was pale with shock.
“He’s gone, Andrew—Jonathan’s gone!” she cried. “His bed hasn’t been slept in and he’s taken a suitcase and his car. What’s happened? Where has he gone? What in God’s name are we to do about it?”