PART TWO

The day began quietly enough.

By half past four in the morning I had still had no sleep, although I had been lying on my bed for some time. Izzy was restless too, I noticed, as he lay on the rug before the dressing-table. His ears were pricked forward and he whimpered a little every time the school clock struck the quarter hour.

My wretched curlers were abominably uncomfortable and I was tempted to take them out, but I am one of those people who read instructions very carefully and in this case they were specific that five hours was the drying time. I bore the discomfort grimly. Il faut souffrir pour être belle, said the proverb. I didn’t know if I was going to look particularly belle, but at any rate I thought I’d be a bit better. I had come to hate my role of the forlorn wife, and I was thankful I’d made a start at least to stop looking like one.

At five I got up and made myself another pot of the milkless tea. While I was drinking it dawn broke, and rather guiltily I took another look at the sheet of blotting paper I’d brought upstairs. I wanted to see if I could find out when the revealing message had been written. But all the other fragments were meaningless to me, and there seemed nothing to show how long the paper had been in use. I rolled it up again and put it in the long bottom drawer of the chest which I had emptied when I packed.

By this time I had decided where Victor was. I had made up my mind that he had driven to London to meet someone who had probably gone up there from Tinworth by train. I felt fairly certain he had intended to come home during the night but had changed his mind and stayed. I thought he had not telephoned because he had not wanted to bother to make excuses. He knew that I would put up with it, or had decided that it did not matter if I did not.

The more I thought about it the more obvious all this appeared. The tone of the note had suggested an old love affair, which argued that the woman, whoever she was, probably was one of the local ladies who had caused the scandal last winter. It was because of that scandal that I thought they wouldn’t risk spending an evening together nearer than the city, and I guessed he had not kept, me informed because he knew that I would never fly into a panic and start telephoning round the town. He had trained me never to do that. There had been a most unfortunate incident a few weeks after our marriage when Victor had gone over to Tortham College for an evening conference. The meeting had gone on much longer than anyone had expected and he had accepted a bed from one of the house-masters without letting me know. I had got frightened that he might have had an accident with the car and had telephoned the Head’s house at one in the morning. My call had caused no end of fuss in that fortress of academic conventionalism, and the savagery and the sarcasm of the reprimand I had received from Victor still brought the colour to my face whenever I remembered it. It had not been very fair, of course, but then that had been one of the lessons which had taught me not to expect ordinary fair behaviour from the man I had married.

I crawled back into my bed and lay there wondering who the woman was. I was ashamed of myself for not feeling more bitter about her. All my upbringing had taught that a good wife ought to know by some sort of magical divination the woman whom her husband prefers, but my intelligence warned me that this was moonshine. Victor had always kept me at arm’s length. I did not know him. I did not know his taste, even.

I thought I had only closed my eyes for an instant, but when I opened them again the sun was pouring in through the window, Izzy was barking like a lunatic, and standing at the end of my bed was a little old woman in a bright overall and a shabby black hat which boasted a bunch of tousled but valiant feathers in it. She was watching me with a strange intensity, her eyes very wide open and her thin nose twitching like Izzy’s own.

‘E’s gorn,’ she said with dramatic suddenness. ‘’Is bed ain’t slep’ in. Did you know?’

I lay looking at her stupidly for a moment while all the facts slowly reassembled themselves in my mind, and I remembered the charwoman Miss Richardson had promised to send me.

‘You’re Mrs Veal,’ I said at last.

‘That’s right.’ Her unnerving gaze never left my face. ‘Come to do for yer. ’Aven’t slep’,’ave yer?’

‘Not very well,’ I admitted, struggling up into a sitting position and wondering what on earth had happened to my head that it should feel as if it had been scalped. ‘What’s the time? Nine?’ I stared at the clock on the bedside table with unfocusing eyes. ‘How awful. I’m so sorry.’

‘Don’t you move.’ In Mrs Veal’s dramatic tones, which I had not yet learned were habitual with her, the words were a command. ‘Stay where you are. You ’aven’t slep’ a wink, you ’aven’t. I saw it as soon as I come in. Lie there until I get you a cupper-tea, and particularly don’t look at yerself in the glass. It’ll give yer a turn. You look like a pore young corp. Don’t you worry about nothing. I’ve got milk in me bag and a small brown loaf. “There won’t be nothing there,” Miss Richardson said,’ she said, ‘and so I come prepared.’ She paused for breath and gave me another searching stare. ‘You can’t ’ave slep’. I saw my sister’s youngest when the undertaker had done with ’er and she looked more alive than you do now, and that’s the truth. Tossin’ and turnin’ all night, that’s what you must ’ave been. Lie where you are until I come back.’

She scuttled out as suddenly as she had arrived and I pulled myself wearily out of bed and peered fearfully in the looking glass. The sight was almost reassuring. It was still me. I looked a bit of a mess and my eyes were smudgy and hollow, but I was recognizable. I began to pull out the curlers which had made my head ache, and was gratified to see a gentle but unmistakable wave. I put a comb through it gingerly, but it persisted and there was no sign of the frizzing I had feared. I was still examining my handiwork when the door opened uncermoniously.

‘There’s no kitchen in this ‘ouse.’ Sheer astonishment seemed to have robbed Mrs Veal of her histrionic powers. She spoke almost mildly.

‘No,’ I said, and added almost idiotically, ‘I know.’

‘No kitchen!’

‘Well,’ I began apologetically, ‘you see, in the ordinary way the school …’

‘Oh yers, I daresay.’ She swept my explanation aside with magnificent contempt. ‘The school looks after yer like a mother, I don’t doubt, but no kitchen … and they call it a gentleman’s residence. Well, I never did, I never did! I didn’t really. I’ll go straight to Mrs Williams and see what she can provide and no one shall stop me.’

She was gone again with the speed of a bird, only to put her head in a moment later.

‘No master in ‘is bed and no kitchen,’ she remarked devastatingly. ‘Whatever next?’

She went out again and I hurried after her and called to her down the stairs. It had occurred to me that if she was going into the Williamses I ought to make some sort of excuse for Victor’s absence, since I’d asked the porter to leave the gate for him.

‘It’ll only be breakfast for one, Mrs Veal,’ I said, ‘and I shan’t want anything much. The Headmaster rang up late last night. He’s been detained in London.’

She paused without looking round. I could see her little figure foreshortened on the stairs below me. Presently she turned and peered up.

‘What yer going to do for ‘is dinner?’

‘What? Oh, I’ll think of something. We’ll probably go into the town. I don’t know when he’s coming home, you see. I expect he’ll ring again.’

‘I see.’ She sounded very dubious. ‘Don’t know when ’e’s coming.’ She nodded as if it was a lesson she had learned and I suddenly realized that she must have had a word or so with the Williamses already. I went back to my bedroom and began to dress. I felt trapped again, back in the atmosphere of gossip and commiseration. I was very conscious of being a bad liar, too, and I was furious with Victor for putting me in a position when these white lies seemed so necessary.

I was in the little dining-room when Mrs Veal returned. She came steaming up the stairs with a laden tray which she placed proudly on the table before me.

‘She done the lot, Mrs Williams did. Wouldn’t even look at me brown loaf. Said she was only too pleased,’ she announced breathlessly as she prepared to whip off the white napkin with which the offering was covered. ‘She’s a real good woman, a real good woman, in spite of ’er being under the doctor with ’er legs. Nothink is too much trouble. Is it yer birthday?’

The sudden question bewildered me. ‘Birthday?’

‘Yes, well, as I said, you never said nothink to me about it, but we wondered if it was yer birthday because of the present, you see.’ She removed the covering and displayed a pyramid of stiff white florist’s paper amid the breakfast things. ‘The doctor brought it,’ she rattled on, ‘the young one with the eyes. You know. ’E’s doing the job while the old gentleman, ‘oo is a bit past it, is on ‘is ‘olidays. He never took an ’oliday before ’e was on the Government, so it shows yer, don’t it?’

I laughed. She was doing me good. She was what I needed, a human voice. It occurred to me that if I’d met her before my ignorance of the real and inner life of Tinworth would not be nearly so abysmal. All the same I was shaken by the flowers. It wasn’t like Andy to do anything so graceful. I took off the wrappings and smiled. It was a little clump of speckled blue flowers in a small ornamental bowl. I’d seen some like it in the good florist’s next the cinema. It was a line they were selling that month and it looked like Andy, charming and unpretentious and somehow solid. The envelope which the florist provided to hold the card was stuck down and I tore it open unsuspecting. The message was scribbled in the handwriting I had once known so very well.

Clearing out today. Fixed it with the local man. All the best, Andy.

I sat staring at it until I became aware that the colour was pouring up my neck and into my face. It was dismay, and yet I had not once permitted myself to hope that our good-byes had not been final. How strange it was, I thought suddenly, that one’s body seems to go on living a life of its own, feeling emotions and reacting to them however strictly one makes one’s mind behave.

I glanced up to find Mrs Veal watching me with unveiled curiosity. There was nothing of the ghoul about her. She was perfectly friendly and quite clearly on my side, but she liked to know what was going on.

‘It suits yer, that bit o’ colour in yer face,’ she remarked disconcertingly. ‘Now you’ve got it you look better-looking, more like you did when you first come. It’s the bit of a curl, I suppose. It’s wonderful what it does for yer. That young doctor’s goin’ away.’

‘Oh, is he?’ I said in an ineffectual attempt to sound casual.

‘So Mrs Williams told me. She’s ever so sorry. ’E come round early to take a last look at ’er legs. Nice of ‘im, wasn’t it? Some wouldn’t, that they wouldn’t, not today. ’E said ’e was off. Couldn’t stick it, ’e said. Known ’im long, ’ave yer?’

It was one of those direct questions which cannot be sidetracked, so I said we were both on the same hospital staff before I was married.

‘Oh, I see.’ It was obvious that she did, too, the whole story. I could see it in the wisdom of her old grey eyes. ‘Oh well,’ she said, giving me a friendly little grimace, ‘it’s just as well, ain’t it? I mean people are always ready to talk in a place like this. You mayn’t believe it but you’d be surprised. It’s not like London. Make up anything, they will, and say it. So it’s just as well ’e’s gorn. Per’aps ’e saw it ‘isself. Nice of ’im to send the flowers, wasn’t it? I’ll put ’em on the side. There, don’t they look pretty?’

‘Very,’ I agreed faintly. ‘I – er, I don’t know what they are, do you?’

‘Nemo-phila,’ said the amazing woman calmly. ‘They grow a lot of ’em round ’ere, for seed. They mean “May success crown your wishes”. That’s surprised yer, ain’t it?’

‘It staggers me.’

She laughed. ‘I used to work in a card factory when I was a girl. Birthday cards we used to make, very elaborate. We were give the cards, see, with the motters and a pictcher on ’em, and then we ‘ad to stick on the right pressed flower. There was lots of ’em. “Thoughts I bring you” – that was pansies, and oh, I don’t know what else. Come on, drink yer coffee. So there you are, “Success crown your wishes”, that’s what ’e sent you.’ She hesitated, honesty getting the better of her romanticism. ‘I don’t really suppose ’e knew.’

‘Perhaps not.’

‘Still it was very nice of ‘im. You’ll remember ’im gratefully.’

‘I shall, very.’

I thought she was going to leave me at last but she still hovered.

‘Oh, and there’s this,’ she said, planking a crumpled piece of paper on the cloth before me. ‘Williams give me this to bring over. If the master wasn’t ’ere, ’e said, perhaps you’d look after it. It’s the receipt for the luggage, see?’

‘The …?’ I checked my exclamation and took up the paper. It was not easy to decipher. My hand seemed to be shaking so much that I could hardly see it. Mrs Veal explained. Her fund of information seemed to be inexhaustible.

‘It’s the master’s climbing-luggage, the ’eavy stuff that’s kep’ in the locker room. It’s gorn to Switzerland to be ready for ‘im. It’s sent every year. Williams always sees to it. ’E told Williams to get it off for ’im and Williams did, yesterday.’

‘When was Williams told?’ For the life of me I could not keep the revealing sharpness out of my voice.

‘Oh, I don’t know, dear, I mean madam. Sometime in the term, I expec’. Didn’t the master tell yer?’

‘I expect he forgot.’

‘Yers, well, they are forgetful, aren’t they, men are. Can’t ’elp themselves. So bloomin’ conceited they don’t know if they’re goin’ or comin’ ’alf the time. Still, it’ll be a weight off your mind, won’t it, to know it’s safely sent? You’re goin’ with ’im this time, are yer? When you settin’ off?’

‘Soon. I’m not quite sure, exactly.’

She clicked her tongue against her teeth with tolerant commiseration. ‘Keep us on the ‘op, don’t they, all the time? Well, I’ll get on.’ She went out at last and left me with the receipt. I folded it carefully and tucked it into the little Chinese vase on the mantelshelf. The whole incident had alarmed me. If Victor had made this arrangement without telling me, what others might he have fixed? For one wild moment it went through my mind he might have just gone off on his trip already, calling in somewhere on the way to see the lady of the note. Perhaps I should get a letter sometime during the day telling me what he’d decided and enclosing a little money for me to carry on with. It seemed incredible, but only because I envisaged it happening to me. I had heard of husbands who behaved like that, and what was worse, I knew that if I simply related the fact to some disinterested person – a lawyer for instance – it was by no means certain that he would be sympathetic. How was he to know that it was not merely some phase in a private sex war between us? There would be only my word for it. At that moment I could see, as never before, that the way Victor treated me was my business, and the only person on earth who could do anything about it was myself.

If Victor had behaved like this I’d have to go after him. I went into his room and tried to discover which of his clothes were missing. A more experienced wife would have thought of this before, of course, but once again I was at a disadvantage. Victor’s personal affairs had been under control for years before I had appeared on the scene. There was a sort of resident batman, a school valet, who had made it part of his work to look after Victor’s clothes and to attend to his mending and laundry, so I had never been permitted to interfere. The man came in every so often, and must now have gone off on holiday with everyone else. I went through the wardrobe and chest, but apart from the fact that I recognized some of the items they might have belonged to a stranger. I simply couldn’t tell if a modest holiday outfit had been packed and taken away. The bed was made up with clean sheets and there were no soiled pyjamas about, but on the other hand there seemed a good stock of clean pairs in the drawer. The bathroom was more revealing. His shaving things were there in the toilet cupboard. I realized he might well possess a small travelling outfit, but I had never seen one and I felt mildly comforted. I thought perhaps after all he intended to come back and explain before going abroad. He wasn’t going to behave quite so disgustingly. All the same, it was not conclusive evidence, by any means, and after a while I got nervy again and went down to his study.

It was just as I’d last seen it, very bare and shiny. The clean sheet of blotting paper in the folder on the desk made the gleaming expanse of mahogany look even more deserted. I opened the drawers tentatively. They were all very tidy, papers pinned neatly together, letters in spring clips, folders tidily stacked. The school servants were very good, I reflected idly. The polish on every wooden surface was perfect. My finger marks seemed to show wherever I put them. I’d have rubbed them off after me but I hadn’t a duster, and I recollected that the place was to be left for a couple of months.

Here again, as in the bedroom, I could tell so little because I knew so little. We never sat in the study and there were very few occasions when I had even entered it. It was Victor’s workroom. I had only seen the desk drawers open half a dozen times. I did not go through the papers; I could not bear to. The notion of finding a bundle of incriminating letters from some wretched local girl filled me with such distaste that I was astonished at myself, and I suddenly realized how lucky I was. I realized some women must find themselves in just this same position but with one vital difference. If I had ever loved Victor, then I should have tasted bitterness. As it was, I was hurt and even outraged, and what pride I had was suffering badly, but I was not annihilated. It was my ideals and beliefs and conventions which were crushed, but not the basic me. He had not touched that because it had never belonged to him. And then I thought that if I’d loved him this would never have happened quite like this. I’d have known more about him. We were both to blame. A marriage without love is not marriage. We were playing at it, Victor and I. We were not married at all and it had taken me six months to find out.

I closed the last drawer and stood back. There was only one thing missing that I remembered seeing there before and that was a revolver. It was a big army thing in a service holster. It had lain in the back of the middle drawer and I had seen it there one day in the winter when I had taken Victor some typing he had asked me to do for him. He had opened the drawer to get a clip for the sheets and I had seen the gun and commented on it. He told me that he kept it as a souvenir of the war, and that he had a licence for it, and I said that with so many children about it was dangerous and that he ought to keep it in the safe. Now that it had gone I assumed that he had agreed with me, and I was glad to have had some little influence over him, however small.

I looked round the room again but there was nothing left about, not even a newspaper. The only thing in the least untidy was the charred sheet in the empty grate, a single oblong, quite large. I only noticed it idly and I had no time to consider it or the odd little incident which had put it there, for just then the telephone bell sounded from the deserted secretary’s room just across the hall. I caught my breath. This was it. Now I should hear some sort of explanation and I knew I must take myself in hand and be as firm and ruthless as he.

But when I took up the receiver it was not Victor but a much slower, deeper voice which greeted me. I must have been in hypersensitive mood that morning, for although it was the first time that ever I heard it, yet it made me vaguely uneasy from the start. I can only say it sounded friendly but sly, like an uncle asking trick questions.

‘Would that be Buchanan House? I wonder if I could speak to the Headmaster, Mr Lane. It’s the police here as a matter of fact. Superintendent South. Just put me through to him, will you?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘he’s out.’

‘Oh. And when are you expecting him back?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know.’

‘I see.’ The avuncular voice sounded dubious. ‘Would that be Mrs Lane by any chance?’

‘Yes. Can I help you?’

‘Well, I don’t know, Mrs Lane. It’s a little difficult. It’s an enquiry from the Metropolitan Police, Northern Division, about a John O’Farrell Rorke.’

‘Oh dear,’ I said involuntarily.

‘Pardon?’

‘Nothing. What’s happened to him?’

‘Well, he seems to have been involved in an accident and quite a nasty one. He’s in the Watling Street Hospital with multiple injuries, but he seems to have been inebriated at the time and the driver of the bus which ran him down has got a story which has got to be confirmed. Meanwhile, the police want details of any relatives he may have. He’s unconscious and the only address they have is the school’s. They got that from a couple of envelopes in his pocket.’

‘I’m terribly sorry, and I don’t see how I can help,’ I began. ‘I don’t know anything about Mr Rorke’s home life, but I’ll tell my husband to ring you the moment he comes in. Meanwhile, I wonder if you’d like to ring his secretary? She might know something.’

There was silence for a moment and then he said, ‘Would that be Miss Maureen Jackson?’

‘Yes. She knows …’

He cut me short. ‘As a matter of fact, Mrs Lane, I’ve been on to her already. I know her quite well, d’you see? She and her family are old friends of mine. I thought of her at once and I rang her because I wasn’t sure if the Headmaster had gone off on his holiday or not, and I thought it would save time.’ He laughed apologetically, but making it quite clear to me that he was as parochial and gossipy as anyone else in the town. He added shamelessly. ‘We have to save time, you know, Mrs Lane. Maureen, that is Miss Jackson – she’s in bed with a chill, by the way – told me that Mr Lane was at home last night so I thought I’d catch him.’

I hesitated. I nearly told him that I hadn’t seen Victor for twenty-four hours and that I’d lied to Maureen because she had irritated me. It would have been an embarrassing confession but I have an ingrained respect for the police and I am fairly certain I would have done it if I hadn’t realized that he was on neighbourly terms with the Jacksons and guessed the sort of chatter which must inevitably have followed. As it was, I simply said good-bye.

‘I’ll tell him to ring you as soon as he comes in,’ I finished.

He was not satisfied. ‘Do you know where he’s gone, Mrs Lane? I’d like to get hold of him.’

‘No, I’m afraid I don’t.’

‘Did he take his car?’

‘Yes.’

‘And he didn’t leave any message, didn’t say anything at all? Just drove away?’

‘No.’ It was beginning to sound awful and I groped round for something to say which would at least convey that we were more or less on speaking terms. The Superintendent forestalled me.

‘Hell be in for his lunch anyway, won’t he?’

‘I don’t know. I mean, the school is shut. We’re not eating here. I think he will be back this morning, but I – I …’ I made a great effort to struggle out of the morass of words and succeeded. ‘I know,’ I said suddenly, ‘I know who is sure to be able to help you. Do you know Mr Seckker?’

‘Now that’s an idea, Mrs Lane.’ To my relief the Superintendent gave up worrying about Victor at once. He sounded approving. ‘Mr Seckker’s a friend of Mr Rorke’s, is he?’

‘I think so, in a way.’

There was a laugh at the other end of the wire. ‘You’re going to say that Mr Seckker is a friend of every lame duck.’ The voice had lost its slyness and sounded merely hearty. ‘You’re right there. So he is. I’ll get on to him immediately. But, Mrs Lane, do tell your husband the moment he comes in, because I think there may be a bit of trouble about this case – or not trouble, exactly, but publicity, and a thing like that never does a school any good. A word from your husband now might save a lot of bother later on. See what I mean?’

‘I do,’ I assured him. ‘Thank you very much.’

‘Not at all. We’re all very proud of the school in Tinworth, so it’s in everybody’s interest to keep everything clean and sweet. So if you do happen to remember where your husband’s gone this morning, and you can reach him on the telephone, have a try, see? Good morning.’

‘Good morning,’ I said huskily, and hung up.

I made a note on a pad for Victor and left the sheet propped up on the hall table where he could not fail to see it. Then I went slowly upstairs.

I told Mrs Veal that Mr Rorke had been run over. There seemed no harm in telling her and it kept her from chattering about Victor or, what was worse still, Andy. She had put the bowl of flowers in the middle of the dining-room table, I saw, and was prepared to mention it as soon as I appeared. My news sidetracked her.

‘Run over? In hospital?’ She echoed my words with genuine pity. ‘What a shame! What a shame after all ’e’s done to keep ’imself you-know-what after all this time. Never once, never once not in two terms ’as ’e been – well, we-won’t-mention-it. I was only saying so to Mr Williams. “It’s a miracle,” I said, “and ’e ought to ’ave a medal for it.” It’s not easy, no it’s not easy, that it isn’t, to keep yerself you-know-what once you’ve let it get ‘old of you like ’e did. And now runned over as well. I never!’

She made herself perfectly plain for all her ladylike censorship and I understood why Mr Rorke had not struck me as the drinker his reputation had suggested. His sobriety since I had met him had been the result of effort. I had not realized that.

‘I am afraid the end of term was too much for him,’ I murmured.

She considered me with serious eyes and nodded her head like a Chinese mandarin.

‘The night before last, that was when it started again. Pore chap! As I said to Williams, you would ’ave thought ’e’d ’ave waited until ’e got off school premises, I said, but no, ’e couldn’t. Down the town ’e went and come back when the pubs closed, swearing, Williams says – well, ’e couldn’t tell me what ’e said and I’m sure I didn’t want to ’ear.’

‘It’s a great pity,’ I said. ‘I had not realized it was a habit with him.’

‘It used not to be,’ she assured me earnestly. ‘Not for years it wasn’t. And then last year it seemed to come over ’im and it was quite bad. Then there was the noise at the end of the winter term and we all thought ’e’d pulled ‘isself together.’

‘Noise?’ I inquired, fascinated.

She dropped her eyes modestly. ‘Some persons say “row”,’ she explained primly, ‘but it’s not a very nice expression. ’E did somethink and the ’Eadmaster ’eard of it and oh my! we all thought ’e’d ’ave to leave, we did really. Then it all blowed over and the next term – that was the term you come – ’e was as good as gold and sober as a judge. Did ’im good.’

I felt I ought not to gossip but she seemed to hold the key to the school and to Tinworth. No one else had been half so informative. In fact she was the only person who had treated me like a woman. Everyone else had seemed to think I was a new boy.

‘What did he do?’ I inquired guiltily.

‘I’m not dead certain.’ She lowered her voice conspiratorially. ‘But we understood at the time that ’e said something to one of the boys – I’m not sure ’e didn’t write it, which would ’ave been worse – something in the swearing line, it was. The boy was a bit soft and told ‘is parents, and the parents were a bit soft and told the ’Eadmaster. That’s what we ’eard. There was a to-do! The ’Ead, well, ’e can use ‘is tongue, can’t ’e? Sarcastic! Vinegar’s milk when ’e gets goin’, vinegar’s milk, I say.’

She glanced at me anxiously. ‘Not that I ought to say such a thing to you, dear – I mean madam. I must get on. Still, I’m sorry that Mr Rorke’s runned over, I am indeed. People are never the same again after that ‘appens, sober or – well, we won’t mention it. No, they’re not.’

She began to sweep with great vigour, and since there was nothing I could do I took Izzy and we went round the school grounds, battered and deserted in the morning sun. I saw no one at all No one was at work. No one came up the drive. No tradesmen. No visitor. No boy.

I sat down on one of the well-worn seats on which generations of children had carved their names, and waited, watching the gates, but there was no sign of Victor. Finally I saw Mrs Veal wobble off down the path on a bone-shaking bicycle. She waved to me and shouted that she’d ‘see me termorrer’ and then she was gone and I was quite alone. I thought of Rorke and wished there was something I could have done for him. He seemed to be an unhappy sort of person, probably most unsuited to be a schoolmaster, and yet someone had said that he taught brilliantly. Possibly it had been Victor; I couldn’t remember. At any rate, I was glad that Mr Seckker would be his rescuer on behalf of the school. I felt pretty certain that if one was in some sort of scrape it would be nicer to be rescued by Mr Seckker than by Victor.

My thoughts returned to Victor and I rehearsed what I had decided I must say to him. I could imagine his opening sarcasms as he began to reply, but I had made up my mind that I must wear all that down. I must stand up to it and defeat it and get my point into his head. Andy was always creeping back into my mind but I pushed him out resolutely. As Mrs Veal had put it so devastatingly, it was just as well he’d gone, and perhaps he’d seen it himself!

At last I went back to the house, dressed myself for the street with as much care as possible, and, taking Izzy on the lead, went down the town. Izzy loathed the lead but he was a fighter, and I seldom dared to take him into a crowd where every second woman had a dog with her. However, today I did not feel like parting with him even for a moment.

The Flower Club lecture was at a quarter after two in the Public Library’s smaller room, and I thought I’d go. It seemed to me that I’d found out a great deal about Tinworth in the last twenty-four hours, and I wanted to see all these people who had seemed so unaccountably alien to me during the few months I had known them, in the light of all this new information. It was a chance I did not imagine I should have again. Everyone would be there. The Flower Club was Tinworth’s latest craze. It was amusing, it was elegant, and it was cheap.

As in most British provincial towns, even the well-to-do ladies of Tinworth managed their lives on a very rigid budget, and local crafts and crazes were apt to fade very quickly if the materials required cost even a little actual money spent. Flowers had the enormous advantage of being practically free. Everybody grew flowers; the seed fields round the town were full of them and the garden bloomed like the Sunday hats of long ago. So the art of floral decoration flourished, and the cult took on a seriousness which was almost Japanese. In that year the Flower Club was definitely the thing to join, so I should have plenty of opportunity of seeing everyone. As I walked down the road I reflected that I must also eat. This idiotic business of my being taken so utterly by surprise by the sudden closing down of the school commissariat had shaken me more than I cared to admit. I am not incapable. I was quite able to cater and care for myself and a family, and I was eager to do it. To be caught out like this suddenly, without even a saucepan or a stove to put it on and no way of telling what, if anything, was required of me, put me in wrong. I did not like to rush out and buy some temporary equipment which I should not need for long, because I had very little money. This was another irritation. I was used to earning a reasonable living, but I had no inheritance and after six months my savings were dwindling rapidly.

I bought myself a cheap lunch at the Olde Worlde Teashoppe in the High Street and managed to smuggle half of it to Izzy, hidden behind me on the olde worlde settle. We dawdled over it as long as we decently could and then went over to the Library.

The staircase was cool and quiet after the sun-baked streets and I assumed I was the first to arrive, but as I crossed the landing I saw that the doors of the lecture room were open and heard the sibilant mutter of voices inside. I picked up Izzy and, carrying him under my arm, walked in.

As I appeared on the threshold there was sudden and absolute silence.

The big shabby room was dim as a church and nearly as cool, with the same smell of dust and paper faint in the air. The rows of cane chairs stretching up towards the platform made a vast flimsy barrier between me and the four women who stood together in the aisle before the front row. For a full minute they stood quite still, a picture of arrested movement, their bodies still bent towards each other as if they had been whispering. But every head was turned, every face blank, every eye watching me. It only lasted a short time but it was long enough to tell me that they had been discussing me.

I did not care in the least. At least I felt sure once again that I knew a great deal more about my own business than anyone else did, and that was a very good feeling.

I knew all four women slightly. There was the inevitable Mrs Raye, looking at least half ashamed of herself; Mrs Roundell, the pretty, pleasant wife of the Town Clerk; Miss Bonwitt, a slightly vague spinster who was chiefly remarkable for her wonderful garden out on the hill above the golf course; and Mrs Amy Petty.

Amy Petty was rather better known to me than the others. She was Maureen Jackson’s widowed elder sister, for one thing, and I had met her calling at the school several times. She had the Jackson family’s direct manner, their money, and their clannishness, but her face was like a mean little hen’s set atop a long flat figure clad in very good but very ugly country clothes.

I had often thought that for some reason she disliked me, but in the normal way she was polite enough. Today she astonished me by letting her eyes flicker away from me without a gleam of recognition, while her mouth shut in a firm hard button. It was a brief reaction, and by the time I had found my way round the chairs towards her she was pleasant, yet there was something new and strange about her which I did not understand. The idea seemed ridiculous, but it did go through my mind that she was behaving as if she were afraid of me.

There was something strange about them all. Even Mrs Raye did not seem sure of herself. It struck me as odd at the time because Tinworth ladies were so often caught gossiping by the subjects of their scandal that it was hardly considered a social contretemps any longer. The conversation began jerkily, with me the only person quite at ease.

Mrs Raye said it was good of me to come. Miss Bonwitt agreed with her rather too quickly. Mrs Roundell hoped the lecturer wasn’t going to make flower arrangement too scientific, and Amy Petty asked me bluntly if I knew when I was going on my holiday. I was prepared for that one by this time and I said the day was not actually fixed but I expected to be off by the end of the week. Hester Raye came back into form at that point and slid her arm through mine.

‘My dear,’ she said, her words tumbling over one another in her usual rush, ‘the Chief Constable and I were wondering if you and your husband could come to dinner with us tomorrow night? I do know it’s terribly short notice and I am so sorry, but we’ve been terribly rushed lately and I do want to fit you in.’

I opened my mouth, but she forestalled me.

‘Don’t say no until you’ve heard me. We’ve got some quite interesting people coming – the Wedgwoods, the Rippers, that girl Sally French, and – oh, by the way, did you know that that nice young doctor of yours had gone? Left the town, my dear. Fixed it up with young Pettigrew, wrote Dr Browning, and simply left. I believe it was fearfully sudden, he made up his mind last night. Dick Pettigrew told me.’ Her eyes peered brightly into mine. ‘Perhaps you knew about it?’

‘I – I wasn’t surprised. I mean it doesn’t astonish me.’ It was not a good effort on my part but then she had flustered me, as she always did with her well-meaning blunderbuss tactics.

‘You’d known him before, had you, Mrs Lane? I thought he was a complete stranger.’ This came from little Mrs Roundell, trying to be nice in her fluttering ingenuous way. ‘We all liked him so much. He attended Mother last week and she adored him. Said he was sweet.’

‘And now he’s gone.’ Hester Raye grimaced. ‘Just our luck in Tinworth. Well now, Mrs Lane, what about tomorrow? Could you pin Victor down for a quarter to eight or eight o’clock? Do come.’ She was still holding my arm and now she shook it slightly and came out with one of her typical pronouncements. ‘My Reggie is dying to see you both. I told him all about meeting you yesterday and he was terribly intrigued. He’s been worried about you too, you know, just as we all have.’

How dared she say it! She took my breath away, although she had long since ceased to amaze me. I could not believe that the old Chief Constable, who was a very decent but not particularly sensitive man, could have grieved much on my account, but I could easily guess what she had told him.

It was on the tip of my tongue to say that I did not imagine that Victor and I would ever be going out to dinner together again, but that after all was a thing that Victor had a right to know before anybody else and so I merely stalled.

‘It’s very kind of you,’ I said, ‘but I really think you’ll have to count us out. I don’t think I dare fix up anything definite at the moment.’

‘Why not?’ This was Amy Petty. She spoke too sharply and too brashly for even the known Jackson family manner to excuse her. Everybody turned and stared at her. She looked very odd, her small eyes defiant and bright spots of colour on her high cheekbones. She said no more but stood her ground, waiting for me to reply. In the end I had to say something.

‘I’m not at all sure what Victor has fixed,’ I explained. ‘He’s in London at the moment and I’m not quite sure when he’ll be back.’

It seemed an ordinary social pronouncement to me but its effect was extraordinary. There was dead silence. Amy Petty remained looking at me while everybody else glanced awkwardly away.

‘He was home last night. You told my sister so.’ The words were forced out of Amy. She was being more impolite than even Tinworth permitted and she realized it, but she appeared to be incapable of controlling herself. I felt almost sorry for her.

‘Why yes,’ I said glibly, more, I think, with the idea of putting her at ease than for any other reason, ‘so I did. I thought I’d heard him come in, you see, but he was detained in London and couldn’t get back. He telephoned this morning.’

There was a little sigh from them all. Mrs Roundell alone smiled contentedly, as though to say that she had been right after all, and I was just going to pass on down the row to find myself a seat when Miss Bonwitt, who until now had been perfectly silent, said quietly: ‘I am so glad. It was his car, you see. There is just one place in my garden where one can look down through the trees and see it in that corner by the cottage wall.’ She had one of those high-pitched apologetic voices which seemed to make every pronouncement sound like a spirit message, inconclusive but faintly ominous.

I swung round on her, startled into frankness. ‘Cottage?’ I demanded.

‘Yes, your cottage. Mr Lane’s little cottage,’ she continued placidly. ‘I daresay you feel it’s quite remote out there on the edge of the golf course. I know if it were mine, I should. But actually, as I say, there is one point in my garden where one can look round the shoulder of the hill and see down through the leaves right into the corner where Mr Lane parks his car. I can’t see any other part of the cottage, just that one wall at the back. I happened to notice the car there yesterday and naturally I thought nothing of it, but when I went to the same place this morning to see if I’d dropped one of my gardening gloves I saw the car was still in the same place.’

I stood staring at her, my face drawn and frozen. The cottage! I thought. Oh, how could Victor do such a thing so near, so dangerously near? How could he subject himself and me to this humiliation?

‘Go and look for him, Mrs Lane.’ Once again Amy Petty spoke explosively, as if she could not keep the words back.

‘Oh no,’ I protested far too violently, ‘no, of course not. I mean to say, I think Miss Bonwitt must have caught sight of the car on the only two occasions when it happened to be there. I know Victor was calling at the cottage to – to take some things on his way to town, and I expect he called there on the way back. He keeps his golf clubs there, of course. He’s probably home by now.’

Miss Bonwitt shook her wispy grey head at me and I noticed for the first time that her eyes were hooded, with webby lids, and were not just dull as I had always thought.

‘Oh no,’ she said in a quiet singsong, ‘it wasn’t like that, Mrs Lane, it wasn’t like that at all. I first noticed the car about four o’clock yesterday afternoon when I was tying up my chrysanthemums, and when I went in about seven it was still there. This morning I got up very early because there is a lot to do in the garden, and it is so cool and pleasant in the dawn. I was out about five and, as I say, I went up to the chrysanthemums to see if I had dropped one of my gloves. The car was still there with the hood still down and the rug half hanging out as I’d seen it before. I did wonder, because you know we had a very sharp shower during the night.’

‘Victor must have forgotten it,’ I murmured, and even to my own ears I sounded idiotic.

‘I hope so,’ murmured Miss Bonwitt, ‘I hope so indeed. But since the car was still there, and still in exactly the same condition when I set out for the lecture three quarters of an hour ago, I did wonder if Mr Lane could have been taken ill up there alone. I was just mentioning it to the others when you came in … Mrs Lane.’

She made it sound frightful. Although her voice was placid and there were no undertones in it, yet she made it perfectly clear to everybody that she had watched that car all through the hours during which there was light enough to see it.

Hester Raye attempted to come to my rescue in a pleasant heavy way. She had her faults and was often rude, but she had the remnants of a decent upbringing and Amy Petty’s performance had shocked her.

‘But if Mrs Lane says Victor telephoned this morning there’s some other explanation for the car,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Quite probably someone gave him a lift to London from the golf club so he hid his own car. It sounds as if it was hidden if it was in such a funny place, behind the cottage, I mean, and not in front.’

‘Yes,’ said Miss Bonwitt quietly, ‘no one could have seen it from the road. That’s why I wondered.’

She was silent for a long time and I felt myself shudder. It was a rather extraordinary and unlikely thing for Victor to do. I could believe he might be sufficiently inconsiderate to entertain someone at the cottage for an hour or so, even, since he seemed to have made an effort to conceal the car, all the evening, but I couldn’t think that he’d stay there all day, especially without looking at his car. He was fussy about things like that. I had not noticed that there had been a shower, but Victor would have made sure, particularly if he had left the hood down.

‘I suppose he did telephone, Mrs Lane?’ continued Miss Bonwitt after a long pause, and she raised her wrinkled lids and gave me a surprisingly intelligent stare. ‘Himself, I mean?’ She was offering me an easy way out and I hesitated. It occurred to me that she knew rather a lot and had probably seen things before when she was tying up flowers at seven at night or pottering about in the dawn. I did not know what to say. It was rather peculiar, rather alarming.

‘Who sent the message, my dear?’ Hester Raye’s practical mind was troubled. ‘Who spoke on the telephone?’

‘It came from his club,’ I said. It was the only lie I could think of and I hated it and myself and wished to goodness I’d stuck to the truth in the first place. If Victor had been taken ill, broken an ankle or something, as they suggested, I had put up some fine behaviour!

Little Mrs Roundell laughed and clapped her hands. ‘How mysterious!’ she said. ‘Or didn’t you get it right? I often don’t. I hate telephones. Percival says I’m mentally defective when it comes to messages. People gabble and the thing goes plop-plop-squeak, and you get cut off …’

‘Go out there and see, Mrs Lane. I’ll drive you.’ Amy Petty made it a command and when I glanced at her I saw that there was a queer sick look in her small eyes.

Hester Raye objected. ‘Not now,’ she said with characteristic blindness to everything but her own convenience. ‘Not before the lecture. The hall is filling up, thank God, but there aren’t nearly enough people here yet. My lecturer will be here any minute. Stay. You must stay for the talk.’

‘But if he has been taken ill,’ said Miss Bonwitt with gentle firmness, ‘and I think he has, you know – the car has never been there so long bef … I mean I think she ought to make sure, Mrs Raye, I do indeed. I think Mrs Lane really ought to make sure.’

Amy Petty’s big thin hand closed over my shoulder blade as if she were arresting me, and Izzy, feeling me jump, growled at her from my arms.

‘Go and see.’

‘I would,’ announced Mrs Roundell with sudden decision. ‘I think I would. Telephones are the limit, and if he’s there in pain or something, well, you’d never forgive yourself, would you? Just go and make sure and then tear back. I’ll bag some seats for you near the door. Then you can just slip in.’

‘I’ll never forgive you two if you clear off now,’ Mrs Raye began, but turned away with a cry of welcome as a stout woman with her arms full of mixed flowers, followed by a pale girl staggering under a tray of vases, came sweeping down the hall towards us.

Amy Petty turned me bodily towards the nearest exit. ‘I’ll drive you,’ she repeated woodenly.

I went out into the side street which runs down past the back door of the Library with her, but as I reached the pavement I hesitated.

‘Don’t trouble,’ I said. ‘I’ll go back and get a bicycle. You go to the lecture.’

‘No. I’ll come with you. My brother will drive us.’

I stared at her. I knew she had eight or nine brothers, in fact Tinworth appeared to be populated with Jackson menfolk, but I hardly expected to find one standing about in the street waiting to do taxi work.

‘Good heavens, no!’ I exclaimed so loudly that a woman passing turned to look at us. I recognized her as the younger of the two sisters who kept the Teashoppe. I smiled at her awkwardly. ‘You certainly won’t,’ I added to Amy. ‘It’s probably all nonsense. I’ll go home and see if Victor’s back and if he isn’t I’ll cycle over to the cottage and investigate.’

‘No. We’ll drive you.’ The Jacksons seemed to be obstinate as well as outspoken. ‘Come along.’

I went with her, her determination adding to my growing alarm. I was through with Victor and in the moments when I permitted myself to think about him I rather hated him, but I didn’t like the idea of him lying helpless on a stone floor with a broken leg, him or anybody else. After Miss Bonwitt’s tale about the car I knew I’d got to go to the cottage.

As we came over the road I realized why Amy had mentioned her brother. Jim Jackson owned the leather shop on the corner and kept his car in the open yard at its side. He came out of his office at once when she called him and listened to her explanation with tremendous interest. As I observed his slightly foxy face, pink under his sandy hair, my misgivings returned.

‘I can’t give you all this trouble,’ I said. ‘Let me take a taxicab.’

His eyes were bright and knowing and, under his secret amusement, kindly, I thought.

‘Oh, it’s no trouble,’ he said, and if he had added, ‘It’ll give her something to talk about for weeks,’ he could not have made himself more clear. ‘You sit in the back with her,’ he went on, looking at his sister.

There was nothing for it. They had decided to take me and take me they did. If I’d not been so worried and embarrassed I should have found them comic. To all intents and purposes I was kidnapped. Jim refused point-blank to call at the school.

‘It’s not worth it,’ he explained, treading on the accelerator as we passed the gates. ‘It’s only a mile and half to the cottage. If he’s not there we’ll call coming back, unless you want me to run you to London.’

This last remark appeared to strike him as inordinately funny and he kept grinning to himself over it all the way to the golf course. I could see his face reflected in the high polish of the dashboard. I sat in a corner of the car with Amy very close to me and Izzy crouching on my knee. I did not want Victor to be injured, but I found that I was praying that we should find anything in the world rather than an unexplained and inexplicable visitor.

The cottage lay on the farther side of the golf course, at the end of a long overgrown lane tucked into a grove of lime trees. I had not seen it since my last visit in the early spring, when the trees had been bare. It was one of those very primitive lathand-plaster hovels which looked like something out of a fairy tale but turn out to be about as comfortable as a heap of rubble. When I came near I saw that a pink rose in full bloom had climbed all over the discoloured front, obliterating one window and even dislodging some of the tiles on the crazy roof. Ragged grass and untended flowers grew up almost to the eaves, and any passer-by must have thought it derelict.

As Jim Jackson put his foot on the brake I leant forward and felt suddenly sick. The front door stood wide open. Amy Petty got out before I did, scrambling over me in her haste, but she did not cross the moss-grown path. She hesitated and looked back and waited for me. Jim, too, seemed in no hurry. He remained at the wheel, leaning back and watching me still with the same silly grin on his face. I let Izzy out on to the path and climbed after him, my knees weak.

‘Victor!’ I shouted, ‘Vic-tor!’

I think we all held our breaths. There was something quite horrible about the open door, a dark rectangle in the flowery wall.

No one answered. There was no sound at all save the hum of the bees in the limes and much twittering in the branches. I could see where the car had been driven round to the back of the house. The tall grass was beaten down in a line which ran past the open door to the derelict water butt in the corner. I followed it without speaking and Amy Petty came with me. We found the car. It had been driven into the bushes and was as completely hidden as one would have thought possible had one not known that the minute triangle of colour far away up the hill was a corner of Miss Bonwitt’s garden. The car was quite damp inside and lay just as she had described it, the hood down and the rug hanging carelessly over the door. I hurried back with Amy at my heels and stepped into the cottage.

It was dark inside and cool. My feet sounded sharply on the brick floor. I was in the one reasonable room the place contained, a pleasant square place with a ceiling of white-washed beams and a few pieces of old furniture scattered round the walls. There was a couch covered with a faded cotton thread, an armchair with a crumpled cushion in it, a gate-legged, table and a rug. On the whitened chimney-piece was an empty glass. A newspaper lay on the floor and Victor’s bag of clubs leaned against a chest in the corner.

Amy Petty pushed past me and pounced on something lying in the armchair. I looked over her shoulder as she leant forward and I saw what it was, a half-filled packet of cigarettes.

I called again, startled by the tremor in my voice.

‘Victor! Victor! Vic-tor!’

Once more everything was silent. Not a breath, not a sigh, replied to me.

There was only one inner door, which led, as far as I recollected, to a back kitchen which looked and smelled like a dungeon. This door also stood open and I was advancing upon it when one of the most unnerving and horrible sounds I have ever heard in my life cut through the sleepy quiet of the afternoon. It was a long-drawn-out quavering howl which sent me starting back, while Amy made a noise in her throat. Immediately afterwards I knew what it was, Izzy of course. He had pottered on, investigating on his own account unheeded by either of us.

I rushed into the kitchen, which was minute and quite derelict, plaster falling off its walls and a trail of yellow-looking bindweed creeping in through a crevice under the old brick copper. I heard him howl again but I could not see Izzy.

It was a moment or so later when there was a movement in the darkest corner of all and a cupboard door which was swinging on a loose hinge opened wider as the little dog came backing out, his tail down and his ears flattened. He gave me one long meaning look and then, sitting back on his haunches, threw up his head so that the full sack of his hairy throat was showing and began to howl in earnest. Scotties are not noisy dogs, but when the occasion does arise they can hold their own with any breed on earth.

The noise was like an air-raid siren, horrible with the quaver of fear. Amid the wailing I heard from afar off the door of the Jacksons’ car slam as Jim sprang out and the clatter as he blundered into the house behind us. Amy clutched me with a shaking hand.

‘Look,’ she commanded. ‘Go on, look.’

As I pulled the cupboard door open Izzy stopped howling and began to bark, snapping at my dress and dancing about like a lunatic. It made me careful, which was fortunate because there was practically no floor to the deep recess and I could have stepped into the yawning hole at my feet.

It took me some seconds to make out what it was. It was the old iron pump with its corroded bucket which I first saw, I think, and then I looked down and the whole thing became frighteningly clear. The cupboard was not a cupboard but a door put over an alcove to hide the pump. It was a construction which is fairly usual in very old cottages. The iron pump handle came through the wood at the side so that one could use it while standing in the kitchen. The well was under the pump, its head level with the floor directly under the place where the bucket would hang. When it had been put in upwards of a hundred years before the cover had been made of elm three inches thick. The years of dripping water had won, however, and now the crazy lid, rotten as tinder wood, had disintegrated. A hinge tongue, sharp with years of rust, stuck out over the dark hole and attached to it was a six-inch sliver of newly rent wood.

I strained my eyes to see down into the darkness, and damp air, chill and revolting, reached my nostrils. Mercifully I was standing in my own light so I could see nothing, but it was not difficult to imagine what might be floating in the dark bottom of that narrow pit. I felt a scream coming up in my throat and pressed my hands over my mouth to silence it, just as Jim pulled me out of the way.

The thing I remember best of the next ten minutes was the character displayed by the Jacksons. They were sound people, thoroughly country and thoroughly crude, but once they had got their own way, and once there was something obvious to be done wherein their motives could not be questioned, I found them willing, and in a domineering fashion good to me. Jim insisted on pushing us into the outer room while he went to the car for a torch. When he returned with it, it proved to be a typical Jackson possession, expensive and highly efficient. It was quite two feet long and threw a beam like a searchlight. He took it through into the kitchen while I sat in the chair and held Izzy. Amy stood with her back to the chimney, her face white as the lime-washed wall but with a queer satisfied expression in the curl of her tight lips.

We could only have waited for three or four minutes before Jim’s high-pitched East Coast voice sounded from the inner room.

‘Amy, come in here, girl, will you?’

She went hurrying in and I could hear them whispering for a bit before she returned with Jim following her, his face nearly as white as her own but his eyes bright with a shamed excitement.

Amy paused before me, her lips trying out phrases silently without uttering one of them. At last she gave up any attempt at finesse.

‘He’s in there, Mrs Lane.’

I showed no astonishment. I am not half-witted and it had been perfectly obvious to me from the first moment I set eyes on the broken trap door that something of the sort must have occurred. I was stunned by the shock and I remember that the two silver bangles on my wrist were rattling together with a sound like fairy bicycle bells. But I was no longer astonished. That first reaction was over.

‘How – how awful,’ I said huskily.

Amy Petty looked at me for a long time and then she opened her bag and took out a clean handkerchief which she gave me gravely. I don’t know why, but the precaution struck me as funny and to my horror an explosive snort escaped me. To cover it I said I’d rather have a cigarette. She gave me one as if she was a hospital nurse inserting a thermometer, and her brother lit it for me with a great trembling hand which had curling yellow hairs and tiny beads of sweat standing out on it. He was so relieved that I was taking it quietly that he made the mistake of treating me as a disinterested spectator.

‘There isn’t above a foot of water in there!’ he burst out. ‘I can see just what happened. Mr Lane went to get himself a drop of water for the kettle, stepped on the little old door, which was as rotten as piecrust, and down he went, stunning himself most likely. He’s lying in there, his head right under. I’d know him anywhere.’

I tried to stand up. My whole world and all its problems had taken a complete somersault and I felt as if I had nothing to hold on to.

Amy forestalled me. ‘He went to get a drop of water,’ she repeated thoughtfully. ‘That’s about it. We’ll have to get him out. You go down to the clubhouse, Jim, for help. Just tell them quietly that there’s been an accident. We don’t want a whole lot of them coming up here. Tell – now I wonder who you’d better tell? Ring up Maureen.’

I heard her as if I were listening to a play and suddenly my common sense reasserted itself.

‘That’s no good at all,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to fetch someone in authority. You’ll have to get a doctor and –’

‘The police!’ Amy exclaimed as if she had had an original idea. ‘That’s it, Jim, ring up Uncle Fred South. He’ll be at the Chief Constable’s office as it’s Friday.’

I was not surprised to hear her call the Superintendent ‘Uncle’, and I remember reflecting with that part of my mind which was still working normally that quite probably he was their uncle. It would be positively queer if anyone totally unrelated to the Jacksons had any sort of responsible job in the town.

They argued with country thoroughness on the exact form of procedure suitable to the occasion, while I stood listening to them in a stunned sort of way and wondering why Victor should try to get himself a drop of water for the kettle, and where the kettle was now, and what he had intended to do with it when he had it full. There was no fire in the house. I also wondered why he should have stepped into the cupboard at all when the pump handle was outside.

There was no answer to any of these questions and I made the mistake of thinking that they did not matter. I was absorbed by the one staggering fact: Victor was dead. I found I was desperately sorry for him but not in the least for myself. However awful this accident was, it still meant I was free, free to be myself and free to earn my living, free to live.

With Jim’s departure, Amy became more of a menace. I found that I couldn’t sit still in the room with her and I began to potter about, tidying up absently. It seemed that she felt the same way because she joined me and we used the worn cushion cover as a duster. How we could have been so criminally stupid I do not know, except that we both accepted it as a fact that Victor had trodden on the trap door by mistake, and we were both tidy women to whom dust in that neglected room was an affront.

Amy found the carton. It was on the shelf behind the curtain near the couch. She took it down with both hands and, as I met her eyes, set it on the table. I recognized it at once, as would anyone who shopped in Tinworth. Bowers, the delicatessen people in West Street, put them up in dozens for people who wanted picnic luncheons. The cardboard box was covered with a willow-pattern design and tied with a scarlet cord. In comparison with everything else in the room it was very clean and new-looking. Without saying a word, Amy pulled the string and turned back the lid. Inside there were two packets of sandwiches in cellophane, two plain cakes and two cream ones, two cardboard plates, two drinking cups, and two apples. Everything was quite fresh. We stood on opposite sides of the table looking down at this forlorn meal, each waiting for the other to speak. After what seemed an interminable pause she took the initiative. When it came her blunt remark epitomized Tinworth, its interest, its perception, and its inescapable common sense.

‘This’ll cause talk,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I agreed sadly, but not now with any bitterness. ‘Poor Victor.’

Her small eyes opened wide at that. ‘That’s a funny attitude to take,’ she remarked disapprovingly. ‘No one thought you knew what he was. Well, there’s no need to make more trouble than there is. I’ll do this.’

While I watched she took out one cup and one plate, crushed them into the smallest possible wodge, and stuffed it into her leather handbag.

‘That can go out of the window when Jim drives me home,’ she explained coolly. ‘Then I’ll take the box and put it in Mr Lane’s car. Any man can take some food for himself if he’s going to golf. You couldn’t eat one of the apples, could you?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I couldn’t.’

All the same, she removed an apple before retying the string. Two looks a lot for one person,’ she explained. I’ll take a bite out of this and break it up in the grass. You never know what that Miss Bonwitt might rake round and find.’

She went out on that line, taking the carton with her and leaving me alone in the cottage. I was astounded by her prompt handling of the embarrassing incident, and even admiring. I had not realized that she had it in her to do anything so charitable for anybody’s reputation. I was grateful too. I was going to look pretty idiotic anyway after my crazy story of the telephone call. If there was concrete evidence of scandal as well, there would be an outburst of twittering.

Jim came back at last with the secretary of the club, two local members, and a rope. The police were on their way out, he said, and meanwhile he’d had orders from ‘Uncle’ Fred South to drive Amy and me home at once so that she could put me to bed with tea and a hot bottle. It sounded a miraculous suggestion and I blessed the man, whoever he might be, for his kindness. However, it soon became rather obvious that neither Jim nor his sister had any intention of leaving the scene. Excitement of any kind was rare in Tinworth. Yet ‘Uncle’ appeared to have considerable authority and they were in a great pother about it until one of the club members, a pleasant youngster who had brought his own car, offered to drive me to the school and turn me over to Mrs Williams.

I never went anywhere so willingly. Izzy and I curled up under a rug at the back of the car and shivered together. Shock makes one cold. I had learnt that in my A.R.P. days, but I’d never realized it before. My hands were icy, and to make things really horrible I had begun to imagine I could smell again the damp, chill reek which had come up from the well. I knew this was hysteria and I had got myself on a very tight rein, but when the boy drew up at the school gates I begged him not to bother to disturb Williams and swore through chattering teeth that I’d call him myself. He drove off gratefully and I fled down the path to the Headmaster’s Lodging. I could not stand any more just then. I wanted to be alone more than anything in the world.

The hall struck cold when I opened the door and the first thing I saw was my own note to Victor, telling him to telephone the Superintendent about Rorke, propped up on the hall table. It might have been a hundred years since I had put it there, and it brought home the awful thing that had happened to Victor more vividly than anything else could have done. I snatched up the paper and crumpled it into a ball. I was glad of Izzy. Without him the house, empty and surrounded by empty buildings, would have been fearful. But he kept close to me, very much aware of all that was happening and very much on my side.

I went straight up to my bedroom. To run up and downstairs with boiling water seemed too difficult, so I thought I’d do without the tea and the bottle. I kicked off my shoes and pulled off my suit and only then remembered that all my things were packed. I found the right suitcase at last and got out my thickest dressing-gown and some slippers. I gave Izzy some water and stripped the blankets off the bed. I though if I could roll myself in them and curl up in a sort of bundle I might possibly get warm again. I also thought I might take a couple of the sedative sleeping-pills which Dorothy had given me last holidays when she spent a week-end with me while Victor was away. I did not remember packing these and I looked into the empty chest to see if the tiny phial could have slipped under the paper with which the drawers were lined.

The first thing I found was the roll of blotting-paper which I had taken from Victor’s desk, left there ready for me to show him as soon as he came in. I took it out and tore it up. I tore it into little square pieces and let them float down in a shower into the wastepaper basket. Poor Victor! At least we had both been spared one beastly half-hour, and if Amy Petty of all people could protect his reputation so at least could I.

Then I went back to my search for the sleeping-pills, but I could not find them anywhere and as I was growing colder and colder I got on to the bed and tried to doze. It was hopeless. My head began to throb violently and I could not stop shivering. Also, of course, I couldn’t stop thinking. Finally I got up and went down to the dining-room and lit the gas fire. Izzy came and sat on the rug with me and the heat slowly soaked into our bones.

I suppose it was about an hour later when the detective came. He made such a noise hammering at the door that I was quite angry with him when at last I got down to the hall to answer the knock. I had thought it must be Williams and the sight of the sturdy fresh-faced young man in the clumsy blue suit took me by surprise.

‘Hullo,’ I said, ‘what is it?’

‘It’s the police, madam.’ He was breathless, as if he had been running. ‘I am a detective officer. Will you allow me to enter?’

Now even in England policemen do not talk quite like this unless they are very young or very new to the job. I decided he was both. He had taken a slanting glance at my old flannel dressing-gown which covered me most decorously from chin to toe, and a deeper scarlet had stained his cheeks. I thought I should probably make him most comfortable by being as formal as he.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I’ve been sitting by the fire in my room upstairs – my dining-room. Would you like to come up there?’

He thought he would and clumped after me up the stairs, treading as cautiously as if he thought the parquet were glass. Once in the dining-room, he sat down on the extreme edge of a hard chair and I took the low one by the fire.

‘Well?’ I inquired at last.

He cleared his throat. ‘My orders were to stay with you, madam.’

‘Stay with me?’

‘Yes, madam. I understood that a Mrs Williams from the lodge gates would be available to sit with us, and I called on her as I came in. But she, I understand, has been took bad and her husband is seeing to her. They have sent for a Mrs Veal. Meanwhile I must ask you to stay where you are and await the Superintendent.’

He finished with a gasp and grew redder than ever.

I was puzzled and uneasy. It seemed to me very extraordinary that the Superintendent had not telephoned.

‘Why does he want to see me?’

The full pink lips closed in a line. ‘That, madam, I cannot say.’

‘I see,’ I murmured, and there was a long silence during which Izzy made the most thorough examination of the visitor’s boots which any sleuth alive could have achieved.

The pause went on and on and finally I just had to say something or burst. I said, ‘Have you been a detective long?’

‘Two weeks.’ His face was beetroot red. ‘When we’ve done two years in the uniformed police we’re allowed to volunteer for the plain-clothes branch. I volunteered.’

Because anything was better than the awful breathy silence, I went on asking him about himself, and since, presumably, he had had no orders to prevent it he went on answering me. I learned that he was about twenty-two, was ambitious, was going to get married – nearly married, he said he was – and that he liked dogs but kept pigeons. Gradually I wore down his excessive formality and he hitched himself a little further back in his chair.

He was telling me how lucky he was to have been chosen for the exalted brotherhod of the County C.I.D. when he forgot his caution altogether.

‘It’s a privilege to serve under “Uncle”, madam. You wouldn’t believe. When he sent me out here today I was as proud as if I’d got the Police Medal.’

I gaped at him. ‘Good heavens,’ I said, ‘the Superintendent can’t be your uncle too?’

That made him laugh and we were buddies. ‘I didn’t ought to have said that,’ he confessed. ‘It slipped out. That’s the sort of thing you have to be so careful about. One slip and you’ve got a black mark against you. It’s a nickname the Superintendent’s got. He’s always been known by it, ever since he was first in the force. Everybody calls him by it to themselves. You can’t help it. You’ll find you will.’

‘He sounds pleasant.’

‘Pleasant?’ My visitor’s laughter was derisive. ‘Not half! He’s pleasant all right. He’s wonderful.’ He shook his head admiringly. ‘You think he’s your father and mother rolled into one and then – crash! He’s seen right through you and bit your head off.’

I made no comment. There seemed little to say. The two-week detective was not looking at me. He was smiling with the fatuous delight of hero-worship.

‘He thinks of everything, Uncle does,’ he murmured. ‘Look at today. The second they see the bullet wound he turns to me. “Root,” he says, “this ain’t accident, it’s murder. You nip down to ‘is wife, don’t let her out of your sight until I come” … oh, lor’!’

His dismay was as comic as anything I had ever seen in my life, but I had heard his words and every drop of blood in my body felt as if it had congealed. We sat staring at one another.

‘You’ll have to explain,’ I said at last.

‘I daren’t, I daren’t, m’m. They’ll send me back to the uniformed branch and –’

They’ll sack you altogether if you don’t use your head,’ I said brutally. ‘Come on, out with it. Do you realize you’re talking about my husband? You can trust me not to give you away if you’re not supposed to talk, but you certainly can’t leave it like this.’

He licked his lips. Poor young man! He’d never make a policeman.

‘I don’t know much more, m’m,’ he muttered. ‘I went and told you about the lot, I’m afraid. That’s all there was. We thought we were going to an accident but when we got there Sergeant Rivers – that’s my sergeant – got down the well and tied a rope on the chap who was drowned. We heard him holler something as if he was surprised, and then we all pulled.’ He considered me helplessly. This’ll just about finish me, this will,’ he mumbled wretchedly. ‘Diane, that’s my young lady, said I’d never be any good at this lark, and it looks as if she’s ruddy well right.’

‘What happened when you pulled?’

The body came up. That was when Uncle stepped forward. “’Ullo ’ullo ’ullo,” he says, and shouts down to the sergeant, “Got a gun down there, Charlie? Have a look for one, will you, now you’re there,” and he turns to me and tells me what I’ve just told you. If you tell …’

I did not hear any more.

Murder.

Victor murdered, shot presumably, although it sounded a spot diagnosis unless Detective Root was trying to spare me gruesome details. After the first paralysed moment I decided it was nonsense. It was too incredible. It simply couldn’t have happened. Victor, of all people. Who would want to kill Victor?

I think it was that final question which brought the position home to me. I think it was only when I asked it of myself that the elementary and obvious answer occurred to me. I was the person with real cause to hate him.

I totted up the motives as Tinworth knew or guessed them and added the new personality which Mrs Raye had invented for me and had already discussed with her husband, the Chief Constable. And finally there was my own behaviour during the past thirty-six hours! Steadily, and with the reientlessness of a machine, my mind played the record back. There was my conversation with Mrs Raye, my lie to Maureen. I’d actually told her that Victor was in the house! My lie to Mrs Veal. My lie, heaven help me, even to the Superintendent. And then there was my bicycle ride. Who could swear where that had taken me? There was my reluctance when the Flower Club ladies wanted me to go to the cottage. There was my behaviour when I got there, the dusting and the tampering with the luncheon carton. As I sat remembering, it seemed as if every tiny thing I had done during the whole time could be misconstrued.

I felt beads of sweat coming out on my hairline and I stole a fearful glance at the detective, but he was lost in his own misery and sat there glumly, staring at his feet. On and on the dreadful catalogue of circumstantial evidence piled up in my mind until I was almost frantic. I found I was searching for replies to imaginary cross-questioning, explaining, twisting, trying to wriggle out of the net which I had woven for myself.

An hour passed and then another, but there was no sign of the Superintendent. Nobody telephoned. The detective sat on, moody and silent, afraid to open his mouth.

At dusk Mrs Veal arrived in a great state. She had not got the Williams message until she had come in from ‘the pic’chers’ and ‘could never forgive herself’ for the delay. Fortunately for me, she diagnosed my condition as shock and not terror, and she bundled me into bed and made tea and brought hot-water bottles. She let Izzy out for a run and promised to feed him, and she did not try to talk to me. I think she sized up the unfortunate Detective Root and decided that for information he was the better bet.

At first he wanted to sit in the room with me but she was so scandalized and so scathing that once more he failed in his duty and was prevailed upon to sit on the stairs outside. For a long time I could hear the drone of her questions and the wariness of his monosyllabic replies.

I drank the tea and lay looking at my suitcases. I could not tell whether it would be worse to unpack them again very quickly, or to say that I had thought that Victor and I were going on holiday at once. Either was impractical because I’d packed everything I owned, so I lay there and just thought.

The Superintendent arrived about midnight. His appearance was quiet and sudden, like an amiable demon’s in a children’s play. He made no sound at all. One moment I was dozing with my eyes closed against the bright light, and the next, when I opened them, there he was smiling at me from the middle of the room. As soon as I set eyes on him I knew who he was and why he had got his nickname. He was plump and grey-haired and amusingly ugly, with a face which could have been designed by Disney. His eyebrows were tufts over bright little eyes which danced and twinkled and seemed ever stretched to their widest. His old tweed clothes were a little too tight for him, so that he looked disarmingly shabby, and his step was the lightest and most buoyant I have ever seen. The moment I saw him I felt assured.

He waited for the effect to sink in and then he said, ‘Awake?’

‘Yes. Yes, I haven’t slept.’ I scrambled into a sitting position. ‘I know who you are. I’ve been waiting for you. What have you found out?’

He spun round and flicked on every remaining light, and, in continuation of the same movement, took up a chair and sat down astride it so that he was looking at me from over its back.

‘Everything,’ he replied, and his movements had been so swift that there did not seem to have been a pause between question and answer. ‘How much do you know?’

I remembered the unhappy Detective Root, at this moment trembling on the stairs no doubt.

‘I know that my husband was found in the well.’

His brows shot up, but his eyes still twinkled, intelligent, worldly, bright with secret entertainment.

‘But you found him, didn’t you?’

‘Mr Jackson found him. I looked first, but I hadn’t a torch.’

‘Nor you had. A very nasty thing to happen to a young girl. A dreadful experience. I’m not going to ask you if you were fond of him because you won’t want to be asked anything like that yet. It’s too soon. It’ll only upset you.’

He paused, but I did not speak and he nodded as though with satisfaction.

‘Do you want to know what happened to him?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes of course I do.’

‘He was shot.’ He pulled out the information like a rabbit from a hat and held it up for comment.

‘Shot …’ I echoed. The light was full in my eyes and I blinked as I spoke.

‘With his own gun.’

This was another rabbit from the hat and this one did astound me.

‘With …? Are you saying he shot himself?’

He smiled broadly. It was the first time I had seen him do that, but I was to find out that he did it all the time. He smiled if he was condoling with the bereaved, or giving evidence in court. It was said to have cost him a career in the Metropolitan C.I.D. and to be the reason why he was still a provincial.

‘I’m not saying anything.’

‘But he can’t have!’ I protested.

‘Why not?’

‘Because he wouldn’t. He wasn’t that sort of person.’

‘No,’ he agreed, and made a gesture with his hands as if he was throwing away some little trifle he had picked up and now decided was useless. ‘No, and he wasn’t an acrobat either, so he didn’t shoot himself through the back of the head whilst falling down a well. That’s right.’

‘Then someone else shot him?’

He nodded, holding me with those bright dancing eyes.

‘Who?’ I demanded. ‘Do you know?’

He nodded again, still with the same expression. For the first time I began to feel afraid of him. There was something sinister in that knowing twinkle with its undercurrent of irrepressible gaiety. Almost I expected him to invite me to guess who. By that time I had begun to notice that he was forcing me to do all the talking. Detective Root had said something about him. What was it? ‘You think he’s your father and mother and then – crash! he’s bitten your head off.’

I grew very still. Perhaps he did suspect me and was trying to make me give myself away. My lips were very dry and I licked them.

He noted the fact openly, with another nod of satisfaction.

‘What can I tell you?’ I murmured at last.

‘Nothing.’ He got up and moved about the room, still keeping his eyes on me. It was an odd performance and I could not think what it was in aid of until I realized that he was simply seeking the position in which he could best see my face. ‘Nothing,’ he repeated. ‘Nothing now. I’m going to leave you to sleep. That old woman can stay the night and she can make you some hot grog. All this tea, very lowering. Doesn’t get you anywhere. I shall leave my poor little boy with the great thick boots and the great thick head here too. He can chase away visitors and you can sleep. Good night.’

I was amazed and utterly relieved. ‘Good night,’ I said breathlessly.

He walked to the door, paused with his hand on the knob as if he’d suddenly recollected something, and walked back into the room to the exact spot on the carpet which he had just left.

‘We pulled him in,’ he remarked, still beaming. ‘I thought you’d like to know. He was very gentlemanly about it. Came at once without any bother. Hopped on the train with the sergeant and they were down here by supper-time.’

I hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about and I gaped at him like an idiot.

‘Who?’

‘The young feller we want.’ The country voice shook with suppressed exuberance and his gaze never once left my face. ‘The young man you slipped your husband’s gun to. The lad you curled your hair for. The doctor fellow who couldn’t bear to see you so unhappy. I hear he sent you some flowers this morning to tell you it was safely done … little blue flowers meaning “success”. Pretty idea, really. I like that. But I’m not condoning it, mind. He’s been a very bad boy and he’ll have to pay for it. There’s no getting round that.’