The Superintendent’s voice died away but the words hung terrifyingly in the quiet room. For a long time I could not even believe that I had heard them, or that they meant what I thought. I sat up in bed, looking at him woodenly and feeling that the world had come abruptly to an end.
‘Well?’ he inquired at last.
I just sat and shook my head at him, too appalled at first even to protest. He was watching my face eagerly and my silence seemed to puzzle him.
‘Go on,’ he insisted. ‘Admit it. It’s true, isn’t it?’
‘No.’ I got the word out at last and, having done so, did not seem able to stop saying it. ‘No, no, no.’ I knew I was shouting and could not keep quiet. His expression changed immediately and his voice rose with authority.
‘Look out, that’s not the way. That’s not the way. Pull yourself together.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I muttered, ‘but you were too wrong.’
His chin shot up and his eyes were narrow. ‘What exactly do you mean by that? Take your time. Explain yourself. I’m here to listen.’
I did my best but things seemed to be happening to me. For one thing, I suddenly became so tired that I could hardly speak at all. I heard myself ploughing on hopelessly.
‘It’s not only rubbish, it’s wicked rubbish,’ I was saying wearily. ‘You could ruin his career with your silly mistakes. You’ve got it utterly wrong.’
At that point I realized I was making it sound as though it wasn’t Andy because it was me, but I was too exhausted to explain. My head fell forward and I straightened up with an effort and made myself look at him.
He was eyeing me very curiously and I could see him hesitating in the middle of the room. He looked ridiculous, like a captive balloon swaying there on the balls of his feet. It went through my mind that he was trying to choose between two entirely different courses of action and at last he came to a decision and pointed a long finger at me.
‘This has upset you a thousand times more than the death of your husband. Why?’
I remember making a gesture of helplessness as my eyes widened and my vision began to blur.
‘Well,’ I said brokenly, ‘it’s come on top of it.’
The point got home to him. I felt the impact of his comprehension as clearly as if it had been a physical contact. He stepped back, made a startled cluck of a sound and immediately, like a conjuring trick, his personality changed back to the avuncular gnome again.
‘Now I’ll tell you what,’ he said. ‘We’ll both have a spot of steak-and-kidney pudding. You haven’t had any dinner, that’s what’s wrong with you. I haven’t either. We shall be getting ourselves upset. Let’s have a bite and talk later.’
The extraordinary thing was that he actually had some steak-and-kidney pudding, in fact he had a whole meal, enough for a family, packed up in an old-fashioned open basket covered with a cloth. It was down with the police car, being kept hot on the radiator, and he had it brought up into our dining-room. I put on my dressing-gown again and had some with him, and Detective Root waited on us, with Mrs Veal hovering and whispering in the passage outside. Izzy was brought in and he had some as well.
Uncle Fred South explained this latter-day miracle with a nonchalance which, I was to learn, was all part of his legendary personality. His wife did not like him to miss his meals, he said, and now that he was so high up in the police hierarchy that he could afford to be unconventional he got her to send his dinner out to him whenever he had to stay late at the office. He mentioned cheerfully that at the moment his office was downstairs. He smiled at me confidingly.
‘She likes doing it,’ he said.
It was a peculiar pudding of a hard old-fashioned kind and it had dried fruit and heaven knows what else in it, besides meat, but I think it saved my life. The pause snapped the tension and my feet touched ground again. It also gave me time to think. I could see that our only hope, Andy’s and mine, was for me to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and to be double quick about it, but my fear was that even so it wasn’t going to be good enough. In my efforts to save the appearances of my ‘ordinary’ marriage I had made some colossal blunders, and by making them I had involved one of the few people I had to care about in the world. I decided to let the Superintendent talk first and we had our meal almost in silence.
He was eating some very strong green cheese, which he had pressed me to share but had seemed relieved when I refused, when he looked up suddenly and asked me if I knew Izzy was deaf. I said I did not think so.
‘He is. A little.’ The round man nodded at me. He was glowing again, the meaningful twinkle which I had grown to fear reappearing in his eyes. ‘It’s not much, probably only a bit of wax. We’ll take him down to Mr Cooper the vet and get his ears syringed sometime.’ As usual, he made me feel that there was some hidden significance behind this statement which he expected me to follow and share, and his next remark was equally bewildering. ‘Have you ever been to the zoo, Mrs Lane?’
‘The – the zoo?’
‘That’s right. In London. They’ve got a beehive there in a glass case. You can stand and see everything in it, the bees all moving and working and eating and talking and quarrelling.’ He paused again, and again the alarming twinkle invited me to understand and be as entertained as he was. When I continued to look at him blankly, he laughed. ‘I always go and look at it,’ he said. ‘It reminds me of home. Just like Tinworth.’
At last I saw what he was talking about and it was like suddenly understanding a new and frighteningly economical language. I saw that he was telling me that I had not a hope of hiding anything from him, and that the gossipy interest of Tinworth in everything and everybody had ensured that every move I had made and every word I had spoken had gone back to him with the speed of light. I was in a glass case, that’s what he was saying. I also thought I understood what he meant about Izzy. The dog had not barked when I had thought we were alone with Detective Root.
‘How long have you and your people been in the house?’ I demanded.
His twinkle grew approving as if I were a pupil who was coming along nicely.
‘Hours and hours,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You gave us a lot of work with that piece of blotting-paper from your husband’s desk. It’s not complete yet. What do you think we are – jigsaw puzzle experts? What was on it?’
I looked down. ‘Part of a letter Victor had written to some woman, arranging to meet her yesterday.’
He was not in the least surprised. ‘Did it say where?’
‘No.’
‘Did you read it with a looking-glass?”
‘No, I can read that kind of writing.’
‘Can you? That’s useful. Done a bit of printing – at school, I suppose. When did you tear it up?’
‘This afternoon, when I came in.’
‘Ah.’ I’d told him something he didn’t know at last. ‘When you knew he was dead, eh? That’s why it was upstairs. What were you saving it for? Divorce evidence?’
‘I don’t know much about divorce evidence,’ I said. ‘I was going to show it to him as soon as he came in.’
‘In that case why did you move it?’
‘Because I didn’t know when he was coming in. I didn’t want it to get tidied up or inked over, but I wasn’t going to sit by it.’
He grunted, not too pleased. ‘It’s a good story.’
‘It’s not a story, it’s true.’
‘All right,’ he said testily, ‘I’m not questioning you.’
‘But you are.’
‘Now look’ – he pointed his table knife at me – ‘I am doing no such thing and don’t you forget it. You and I are having a quiet preliminary chat. Once I want to start questioning you I’ve got to caution you, and once I caution you I’ve got to charge you, and once I charge you I’ve got to bring you up before a magistrate pretty toute suite. That’s the law of the land. You don’t want that, do you?’
‘No.’
‘And you want to find out who shot your husband, don’t you?’
‘Of course.’
‘Well then, don’t be so silly. Let’s go on chatting away about it and see where we get to. Did you enjoy your bike ride yesterday afternoon?’
I leant forward impulsively. ‘I’ve been thinking about that. The gardener saw me go and Williams saw me come back, but I shall never be able to prove where I went.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I only went to the river.’
He settled back in his chair with a cigarette, loosening his belt very discreetly, convinced, I am certain, that he was unobserved.
‘Tell us about it,’ he suggested. ‘We’ve got all night.’
There was very little to tell, but I made it as circumstantial as I could. It did not sound very convincing even to me, and when I came to the end I said so.
‘I hardly expect you to believe this,’ I finished lamely.
The knowing gleam returned to his eyes. ‘I don’t believe you could invent anything worse as an alibi,’ he admitted cheerfully. ‘So you just went peacefully to sleep under a willow, did you? And very nice too.’
‘I didn’t see any willows that I remember,’ I said uncertainly.
‘No,’ he agreed, ‘you wouldn’t There aren’t any there. Funny thing, it’s the one stretch of bank where they won’t grow. Well, that doesn’t get us anywhere, does it? Suppose we get back to the Headmaster, Mrs Lane. When did you see him last?’
‘On Wednesday night.’
He looked up at that but did not ask the obvious question about Thursday morning. Instead he said casually, ‘I don’t suppose you can remember what his last actual words to you were?’
I remembered them very well, but I hesitated. As well as being distasteful in the extreme, the prospect looked horribly dangerous. He was waiting, however, and I took the plunge. I remember feeling that my only hope was to shut off every part of my mind except the actual bit I should need to recollect, and go on steadily regardless of everything except the exact truth.
‘We had been talking about the holidays,’ I began. ‘Victor said, “My dear child, I cannot put it any more plainly to you. I will discuss the matter later. Now I am very tired and there is still a great deal of school business to be done. If you will excuse me I will go to bed. Good night.”’
I raised my eyes to find Uncle Fred South regarding me fishily. His mouth had fallen open a little.
‘Quarrelling?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘I see.’ It was quite clear that he did nothing of the kind. ‘Did he always talk to you like that?’
I felt myself growing red again. ‘He talked to everybody like that.’
‘I know he did. But … were you alone?’
‘Yes, we were in here.’
‘I see,’ he said again, still in the same unconvinced way. ‘Was there anything special about the holiday?’
There was nothing to do but to tell him and to make it as factual as the bicycle ride. I found myself talking very fast to get it over.
‘Yes, there was. At least, I thought so. I had not seen much of Victor during the term, although we both lived here. The school took up all his time. I asked him about the vacation several times but he never had a moment to discuss it. On Wednesday, when the school was actually closing, the matter seemed to me to be rather urgent, so I waited for him when he came up from his late-night session in his study and I asked him again. He told me he thought he should have to go on his usual climbing expedition after all, and asked me if I couldn’t go to stay with friends.’
I stopped, but Uncle Fred South was quietly firm.
‘Go on,’ he said. ‘I knew him, you know. I’ve known him for years, much longer than you have. Just tell me what happened.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I told him I did not want to do that, and that we had been married for six months and seemed to be still virtual strangers. I said I thought we ought to go away together. He said I was talking like a novelette and that he was very tired and would see me in the morning. I attempted to insist, because I wanted the thing settled, and he then said what I’ve just told you. That’s all.’
‘But he didn’t see you in the morning?’
‘No. When I came down at the usual time he had already breakfasted, and when I’d had mine he was with Mr Rorke in his study. I went down the town to get away from it all and when I came back he had gone. I never saw him again.’
The Superintendent stubbed out his cigarette. His eyes had lost their twinkle but not their knowingness.
‘And when you went down the town you met your old sweetheart and told him all your troubles and how you were neglected, and that your husband was unfaithful as well …’
‘No.’ I was too earnest even to be angry with him. ‘No, I didn’t even know then that Victor had even been faintly interested in any woman.’
He sat back, throwing up his hands. ‘Oh, come, Mrs Lane,’ he said, ‘think again.’
I stuck to my guns. ‘I did not,’ I insisted. ‘I can understand now that the whole of this beastly town must think me demented for not knowing as much as everybody else did about Victor, but they’ve all known him longer than I have, and besides, there is one great difference between us.’
‘What’s that?’
‘They wanted to know something unpleasant about him. I didn’t, naturally. I’d married him.’
He regarded me with a new respect. ‘You’re not quite the gentle little mug – hrmmph! party you look, are you? When did you find out?’
‘Mrs Raye told me, or conveyed it, rather, when she drove me home from the High Street after I’d said good-bye to Andy. Later on I saw the blotting-paper.’
‘Oho!’ said Uncle Fred South with sudden triumph. ‘Oho! That explains quite a bit.’
‘What? The blotting-paper?’
‘No, no. Mrs Raye spilled the beans, did she? She didn’t mention that, my lady didn’t. Well, well, so she’s got a conscience after all. Perhaps I’d better give you this lot.’
He felt in his coat pocket and pulled out a collection of envelopes.
‘These kept coming for you all the evening,’ he explained blandly. ‘We had to take ’em in at the lodge or you’d have come downstairs and found us at work. We notified the exchange to divert all telephone calls to the station for the same reason. You read these and you’ll find out something about this beastly town, as you call it, that you didn’t know before.’
‘What’s that?’ I inquired warily.
‘That it’s only uncharitable in word,’ he said with unexpected seriousness. ‘It’s all right when it comes to deeds, sound as a bell.’
I did not answer him. I had opened the first of the letters and its contents had caught me unawares.
Dear Mrs Lane,
I thought I must just write to you and let you know that we are here. If there’s absolutely anything that Percival or I can do, from walking the dog to running you to London, do please let us know.
Ever yours sincerely,
Betty Roundell
There were so many of them, all in the same strain, from Hester Raye’s ‘Dear Elizabeth, Don’t be frightened. It will be ALL RIGHT. Love from Hester to dear Miss Seckker’s three pages in a fine gothic hand:
My dear Mrs Lane,
My brother has had to go to London to visit poor Mr Rorke, who has been taken to hospital, or he would be at your side. I have been to the lodge gates myself but have not yet been able to gain admittance. Pray believe me, my dear girl, when I say that I am thinking of you all the time and sending you my heartfelt sympathy. I hope that you will come here as soon as it is permitted. We have three cats but they are good and your little dog will be more than welcome.…
I looked up at the Superintendent, who was watching my shaking hands.
‘You’ve had these steamed open,’ I accused him.
His eyes were at their small widest and the twinkle was bland with meaning. He nodded shamelessly and said, ‘I never,’
‘They’re very kind,’ I murmured huskily.
‘More than kind, downright interfering,’ he observed. ‘You know why we’ve had to sit up all night? The Chief, Colonel Raye, has sent to London for his own solicitor to represent you. He’s a terrible big bug, name of Sir Montague Grenville. The Colonel didn’t think you ought to be in the hands of a local man. Thought it might not be fair. He’ll be down first thing in the morning and then I don’t suppose I’ll be able to say howd’you-do to you without him sitting there listening. That’s why I had to get such a move on. Still, if Mrs Raye felt guilty about what she hinted to you, that explains that. Very human, people are, especially women.’
I had no time to comment on this extraordinary and in some ways outrageous statement, for just then a detective I had never seen before came into the room and there was a muttered conference. Uncle Fred South put on a pair of spectacles and eyed me over the top of them.
‘I’ve got a transcript here of the items from the blotting-paper. I see the one you mean.’ He nodded a dismissal to the detective, who went out, leaving us alone again. It was quiet in the room and, despite the fire, cold. Uncle Fred South had undergone one of his changes. Now that he was off guard for a minute or so I could see him as he was without the mannerisms, a single-minded, kindly but utterly inexorable machine for finding out the wrongdoer and bringing him to justice. He was not satisfied with me. I could smell it rather than see it. I knew I had shaken and puzzled him, but as yet he was unconvinced.
‘You see, Mrs Lane,’ he said suddenly, just as if he had been following my thought and was answering it, ‘someone shot your husband between one o’clock and four o’clock yesterday afternoon. Someone holding Mr Lane’s own gun forced him back through the door of the kitchen, across the floor towards the cupboard door, which was probably standing open. Whether your husband stepped in there with some idea of shutting the door on himself as a protection, or whether he just went blindly where he could to get away from the gun, we do not know, but at any rate the rotten floor gave way under him and more than likely he stepped back involuntarily, turning his head towards this new danger. At that moment someone fired. The bullet entered the back of the neck and ploughed its way up into the skull, the body plunged down into the water, and someone threw the gun in after him.’
He made it all so horribly vivid that I shrank back into the chair. I had an instinct to cover my eyes but I controlled it and kept staring at him.
‘I didn’t,’ I said.
‘I never suggested that you did,’ he reminded me gently. ‘I don’t even think you were there. But I want you to realize one thing. The deed has been done. Someone shot him in cold blood while he was running away. There was no fight, so there’s no question of self-defence. Understand?’
‘Yes, I understand, but to suggest that Andy –’
‘Wait.’ He held up a hand to stop me. ‘Wait. Don’t say anything until I’ve finished. Just give your mind to what I’m telling you. There’s the killing, that’s the first thing. Then there’s your behaviour. You’ve told lies to everybody about your husband’s whereabouts. You’ve attempted to destroy evidence. You’ve packed your bags. And on the night after your husband died you sat up beautifying yourself for the first time since your marriage. Also, you were one of the few people who could have got possession of your husband’s gun.’
‘Anybody in the whole school could have got possession of that gun if Victor left it where it was when I saw it last term,’ I protested.
He shook his head at me. ‘I told you to wait till the end. Now I want you to think of Dr Andrew Durtham’s behaviour. He comes to a town where the girl he loves is unhappily married to another man. He knows she is there, mind. He takes a locum’s job there, deliberately. He meets her “accidentally” in the street and they take a long drive together round and round the town, talking their heads off. The very same day he drives out to the golf club, where he is made an honorary member. He lunches there with the doctor who has sponsored him. One of the other members who is lunching there also is your husband. In the bar afterwards the two men are introduced and stay chatting for a few minutes. The deceased was in good spirits. Dr Durtham was noticed to be downcast,’
‘Victor lunched at the club?’ I burst out, but again he silenced me.
‘Quiet. After a while the deceased says good-bye and drives off in his car, only a few hundred yards as we know now, to his own cottage, where he secretes the vehicle. Meanwhile Dr Durtham, who is noticeably preoccupied, refuses a round of golf but goes off alone, ostensibly to walk round the course, which he has never seen before. He is out till nearly half past five, returns to the clubhouse, picks up his car, and drives back to Tinworth, where he makes arrangements to leave the town, the job, and everything immediately. In the morning he buys a bowl of blue flowers alleged to mean “success” and delivers them at the school lodge, where he calls to see a last patient. Now what have you got to say?’
‘Andy didn’t shoot Victor.’
‘How do you know?’
‘There was no reason why he should. Andy came here to tell me what he thought of me for jilting him, not to make love to me.’
‘I’ve only got your word for that.’
‘Have you? Haven’t you asked Andy?’
‘It’s the story you arranged between you, is it?’
‘Oh, nonsense!’ I was suddenly and recklessly angry with him. ‘This is absurd. I don’t know why Andy went to the golf course, but I don’t see where else a stranger to Tinworth would go on a half-day, do you? How would he find the cottage anyway, and if he did, why would he kill Victor? He certainly isn’t in love with me any more.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure.’ The words were pouring out of my mouth and I was saying things I did not know I knew. ‘Andy came down here to get me out of his system. When he saw me I’d changed and he probably wondered what he’d been making all the fuss about. This must have upset him and so I suppose he thought he’d clear out and get away from it all. I expect he thought I must be in love with Victor or I’d never put up with him.’
‘And were you, Mrs Lane?’
‘No,’ I said slowly, and the words were a revelation to me too, ‘no, I was just out of love with love. I was trying to make do without it.’
He cocked a bright eye at me. ‘And then you suddenly saw the light and …’
‘No. Superintendent, you’re behaving as though Andy and I and Victor were alone in the world. What about all the other people? To begin with, what about the girl?’
Uncle Fred South was leaning over the table, his clown’s face grave and the twinkle absent from his circular eyes.
‘The girl?’ he began. ‘You’re still harping on that message on the blotter, are you? That’s not very conclusive evidence, you know. How d’you know it referred to this month even?’
‘But he expected someone,’ I insisted. ‘In fact, since he had lunch at the club-house it must have been she who brought the picnic box, not realizing he would have eaten, you see.’
‘The picnic box!’ He bounced half out of his chair at that. ‘I knew there was something funny about that great parcel of food in the car. You did that! You moved it! What other evidence have you been monkeying about with, eh? You and your crazy face-saving which doesn’t fool anybody. Out with it!’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I thought Mrs Petty would have told you about that – she seems to have mentioned everything else.’
He stiffened like a dog at a rat-hole. ‘Amy Petty? Was she in that?’
I told him exactly what had happened over the box and he took me back again and again until the entire incident had been reconstructed in the most minute detail.
‘Huh!’ he said at last. ‘So Amy destroyed the extra cup and plate, did she? And why did you suppose she did that?’
‘To save scandal. We didn’t dream he’d been murdered.’
A crow of laughter with no mirth in it whatever escaped him and his round eyes were wary for a change.
‘How long have you known Amy? Six months, eh? I’ve known her thirty years. She married a lad I loved like a son and I always reckon he died to get away from her. Caught pneumonia and died just to get a bit of peace.’ He was genuinely moved, I saw to my astonishment. Forgetting himself entirely, he leant across the table and wagged a finger at me. ‘I said to him on his death-bed, “George,” I said, “make the effort, old son, Hang on, hang on.” He smiled at me and said, “What’s the use, Pop? I’m tired of her and her darned family.” Then he died. That’s Amy.’
He smiled at me with surprising bitterness, remembered who I was and where we were, and pulled himself up abruptly.
‘I ought not to have said all that,’ he said seriously. That’s what’s wrong with knowing a town inside out. The people become too real to you. But Amy’s a Jackson and to a Jackson no one matters twopenn’orth of cold coffee but another Jackson. Amy was saving scandal all right.’
A great light broke over me and at last I saw what ought to have been obvious to me from the very beginning, but which had been completely mysterious because I did not want to know of its existence.
‘Maureen,’ I said aloud. ‘Maureen. The scandal last winter was about Victor and Maureen?’
Uncle Fred South nodded casually. That this might be news to me did not seem to occur to him.
‘The family was just banding together to make him marry her,’ he went on, ‘when along he comes with a brand-new wife who was much more his style, much prettier, much more polite, and without a family behind her. They were always a bit slow, the Jacksons, slow off the mark. They can’t help it. It’s the country in them.’ He grinned. ‘They’d have got rid of him, banded together, and forced him to quit the town if it hadn’t been for Maureen. She was angry, but she couldn’t do without him seemingly. Well, well, we’ll see if Maureen bought that picnic box. Maisie Bowers is a sharp kid. She’ll remember if she served her.’
I was crouching over the table with my head between my clenched hands. Many things which before had been mysterious were now devastatingly clear. But not the main problem. This development seemed to make that more dark than ever. Amy Petty had forced me to make the discovery of Victor’s death. As I looked back that seemed so very obvious that I was amazed I had not spotted it at the time. I remembered her pallid smile of triumph when Jim had gone to find the torch, and understood it at last.
‘But in that case why did she come round here with someone asking for Victor?’ I said aloud. ‘If Maureen shot him, why …?’
‘She didn’t shoot him.’ Uncle Fred South spoke as flatly as if had had inside information from some heavenly headquarters.
‘Well then, if a Jackson shot …?’
‘No Jackson ever shot anybody.’ Again he made the statement sound irrefutable fact. ‘They’ll band together and beggar a man and drive him to suicide or out of his mind. They’ll have their revenge on him if they consider he’s crossed them and they’ll never let up if they take it to the third or fourth generation, but they’d never shoot anybody, or poison them or bang them on the head like you or I might.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because they’re very just, upright people and the backbone of this here nation,’ he said primly. ‘Did you say Maureen wasn’t alone when she came round here in the night? Who was with her? Was it Amy?’
‘It could have been she.’ As soon as he made the suggestion I felt sure he was right. ‘Whoever it was stayed in the shadow and I assumed it was a man. Maureen was very upset. I thought she was giggling.’
He moved his head up and down very decidedly once or twice.
‘It was Amy,’ he said. ‘That’s about it. Maureen would go to Amy and they’d discuss what to do. Finally Maureen would get her way and they’d come round to make sure.’
‘Sure of what?’ I demanded, completely foxed by him and his lightning reconstructions.
‘Sure he wasn’t down the well,’ said Uncle Fred South calmly, ‘the well with the broken trap door. That’s what Maureen found when she went in to meet him yesterday afternoon with her picnic box. That wasn’t Tinworth’s idea of a lunch, young lady, that was tea, or a cocktail snack to be washed down from a flask. Depend upon it, that’s what happened. Perhaps she waited around for a bit and then got to exploring, but when she saw the broken trap, well, it’s my bet she wasn’t in the place two seconds after that.’
‘But he might have been in there alive.’
‘Not a hope. Maureen would know that, and she’d be off like a streak so that no one tried to connect her with any trouble. Once she was safe, then she’d start thinking. Amy is the one she would tell. Yes, come to think of it, Amy is obvious.’
‘How can you possibly know all this?’ I demanded ‘You’re jumping to conclusions, just like you were about me and Andy.’
He acknowledged the thrust with a bow of his close-cropped head and for a second the twinkle returned to his eyes.
‘I know the Jacksons like my wife knows the ingredients she puts in her cooking,’ he said. ‘Show her anything that comes out of the oven and she’ll tell you every item that’s in it, and what was done to them before they were put in there. Perhaps I don’t know you and the doctor quite so well, but I’m learning. What sort of footing are you two on? Tell me that and I could tell you things about yourselves that neither of you know.’
‘But I’ve told you,’ I began helplessly.
He beamed at me with unexpected friendliness. ‘You’ve been very frank, more than Amy has, the vixen. I’ve a good mind to go and get that madam out of her bed. Fancy her thinking she could put one over on me after all these years!’ He got up and stretched himself. ‘Would you be afraid to stay here alone tonight?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve got Izzy and it’s almost morning.’
He seemed still undecided. ‘The old woman had to go home but she’ll be back very early. I’d leave one of my boys with you but I need ’em all.’
‘It’s perfectly all right,’ I said firmly. ‘I’d like to be alone.’
He pounced on that. ‘There’s no point in you prowling round the house looking for more evidence to destroy. We’ve been over it with a toothcomb. What we’ve missed doesn’t exist.’
‘I don’t want to look for anything. I’ve told you the truth. All I want to do is to go to bed.’
He appeared to come to a sudden decision. ‘All right. All right. Hurry upstairs and pop under the blanket. You can lock your door if you like. Take the dog. He’s a nice little chap, likes me.’
He bent to scratch Izzy’s ears and laughed when the little animal flattened them and shied away from him. I gathered the dog up in my arms and stumbled upstairs, too tired to be anything but thankful to get away. My room was very tidy and I knew at once that it had been searched. All my suitcases had been opened. I was sure of it because they were fastened so neatly, the straps pulled so tight.
I got into bed, put Izzy on the end of it, and lay down. Then I turned off the light.
Downstairs there was considerable movement. The police, who had arrived as silent as ghosts, were leaving like the boys at end of term. Although I was at the top of the house I could hear their boots on the parquet and twice the door slammed. My window was wide open and I heard them leave one after the other. I heard the Superintendent’s voice in the courtyard and another which I was pretty certain was Detective Root’s. Outside the sky was brightening rapidly and from far away over the fields the unearthly cry which is cockcrow echoed in the quiet air. I heard the police cars drive off and the sound of their engines fading away down Tortham Road. Then everything was silent.
I was too exhausted even to sleep and I was horribly afraid. While I had been listening to the Superintendent talking about the Jacksons I had fooled myself into thinking that I had convinced him, and that everything was going to be all right, but the moment I was alone the full frightfulness of the situation returned and I remembered his summing up word for word, as if I were hearing it over again. Someone had killed Victor in cold blood. I had lied again and again concerning his whereabouts. Andy had been wandering about in the vicinity of the murder at the time when it had been committed.
I lay there letting the thoughts turn over and over in my mind until the whole story became distorted and out of touch with reality. It was the crime itself which became so utterly monstrous. I thought of a dozen unlikely explanations for it. Once, even, I wondered if Andy could conceivably have got into some extraordinary set of circumstances in which he had somehow fired the shot. Yet in that unreal, half-light world of terror I knew that was absurd. It was far easier to imagine that in a fit of amnesia I had done it myself. The problem remained.
Meanwhile the sky grew slowly brighter and the early morning sounds began to multiply in the world outside. I don’t know how long it was before I first heard the car. The noise was very faint at first, a far-off petrol engine, not very new, pounding towards me through the dawn. It got louder and louder and I could hear it roaring up the road.
The squeal of brakes as it stopped took me by surprise, it sounded so close. Then a door slammed loudly and in the clear silent air I heard feet on the gravel in the drive. They came closer and closer until with a sharp, swift tattoo they found the stones of the courtyard. Someone was striding quickly and noisily into the school with as much assurance as if it belonged to him. Izzy sat up, his ears pricked, but he did not bark and I wriggled up on the pillows, my heart thudding so noisily I could hardly hear anything else. Under my window the footsteps paused and there was a moment of complete quiet until, quite suddenly, there came a tremendous banging at the front door, sharp, hard knocking as though from a man in a rage.
Izzy began to bark at last and I leapt out on to the floor just as the the very last voice in the world which I had expected came up to me, loud and unmistakable.
‘Liz!’ Andy was shouting at the top of his voice. ‘Liz, where are you? What are you doing in this darned morgue alone? Liz!’
I put my head out of the window. My eyes were smarting but I was half laughing too, I was so glad to hear him.
‘Andy, be quiet. You’ll wake the neighbourhood. Here I am.’
‘Well then, for heaven’s sake,’ he exclaimed, turning a relieved face up to me in the faint light, ‘come down and let me in. What do they want to do, turn you into a raving lunatic?’
‘I’m all right,’ I assured him. ‘Wait a minute.’
I raced down the stairs through the silent house, with Izzy flip-flopping behind me, got the door open, drew Andy in and took him up to the dining-room. It was warm in there and the cloth was still on the table, although the remains of the meal had been cleared. I opened a window to air the place and I recall that my hands were so unsteady I could hardly find the catch.
Andy was silent, which was unusual in him, and when he helped me with the window I was aware of the suppressed anxiety that possessed him.
‘It was madness to leave you up here alone,’ he said. ‘I can’t understand them.’
I’m all right now I know you are,’ I admitted frankly. ‘I thought they’d arrested you.’
‘Arrested me?’ His dark hair appeared to bristle as he turned towards me, lean and rakish, his skin drawn tight with weariness. ‘Did they tell you that?’
‘Not exactly. They conveyed it.’
He grunted. ‘They think they’re being clever, don’t they? I’ve been invited to talk, that’s all so far. But they can’t pin anything on me. How can they? I’d only met the man for five minutes.’
I was not convinced. ‘You don’t understand,’ I began, ‘they’ve got it all worked out. They think I rode out to the golf course on a bicycle, gave you Victor’s gun, and –’
He was standing close beside me and at that moment, without any preamble whatever, he turned and put his arms round me and kissed me very hard. I don’t remember any surprise, only an intense relief. It was as if a load I did not know I was carrying had slid off my shoulders forever. I kissed him back and put my hands behind his head to hold him to me.
We stood quiet for a long time. At last he said earnestly, ‘I love you, Liz. I’m crazy about you. I must be or I shouldn’t be here now. It’s gone on for a long time, too, or I shouldn’t have come to Tinworth in the first place. You love me just as desperately, you know that, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said, still in the same strange liberated mood. ‘I realized it tonight when I was talking to the Superintendent.’
He sighed. ‘I was pretty clear about myself Thursday, when we were in the car,’ he admitted gloomily. ‘However mad it seemed at the time, we ought to have just kept on driving. I haven’t been very intelligent.’
I stepped back from him and walked down the room because I could not bear to be close to him any longer, and as soon as he was out of reach I felt I could not bear that either. I sat down at the table and he stood staring at me wistfully.
‘What are you thinking?’ he inquired at last.
I opened my mouth to reply, changed my mind, and shrugged my shoulders. I could not bring myself to say it, but there was a dead body between us. We’d got to find out about Victor. He was watching me closely, and presently he grinned at me wryly with rather heartbreaking fondness.
‘You’re not so much conventional as civilized, aren’t you, Liz?’ he said, and settled himself on the arm of the chair by the fireplace.
I put my elbows on the table and rested my head in my hands while the nightmare settled over me again.
‘I didn’t know those blue flowers meant “success”, did you?’ I demanded inconsequentially.
‘No, and I’m not at all sure of it now,’ he observed promptly. ‘I challenged that when they produced it. It was only some tale of a char’s. The copper didn’t seem too sold on it himself. That was one of the things which made me feel that they had very little evidence against anybody. A perfectly idiotic story.’ He glanced at me with abrupt directness. They told me you had done the shooting.’
‘Did you believe it?’
He appeared utterly scandalized. That was the best thing about Andy, he was the sanest thing on earth.
‘Hardly,’ he said stiffly. ‘I assured them they could cross that idea off their list to start with. I said that the last time I’d seen you you were determined to keep your marriage going if it suffocated you. That’s what made me so depressed.’
‘Did you say that in so many words?’
He nodded and grimaced at me. ‘That wasn’t very clever. After that they started worrying about my movements. I’d met Victor Lane at the club bar.’
‘But only for five minutes,’ I put in hastily.
He slid down into the chair and leaned back, his hands behind his wiry black head.
‘Long enough to take a dislike to him,’ he said distinctly. ‘I was prejudiced, no doubt, but I did hate his guts. He wasn’t our sort at all, Liz. That sort of sneery smart conceit always means a shallow chap. Oh well, that’s over. Anyway, after I’d met him and loathed him I didn’t feel like being sociable, so I went off for a walk. I got into a lane I found beside the course and after a while I sat down on the bank and tried to sort out what I’d better do. It was obvious that I couldn’t avoid you if I stayed in the town, but on the other hand I thought it might prejudice me with the profession if I threw up the job and cleared out. I thought I might get a reputation for instability at the outset of my career. So all that had to be weighed up. There was quite a lot to be considered one way and another, and it took me the whole afternoon before I came to a decision.’
I watched him helplessly. ‘You thought you’d go.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed briskly, ‘yes. It seemed the lesser of two evils. I knew I’d make love to you if ever I saw you again so I walked back to the club, picked up the car, and drove into town to fix up about leaving. Not much of an alibi, as it happens, because I’ve got no witnesses and I seem to have been only a quarter of a mile from the cottage all the time.’
‘Did you hear the shot?’
He frowned. ‘They asked me that. The trouble is I don’t know. I was so preoccupied. As I was walking along just before I sat down I did think I heard something in the distance, but I’d only just left the clubhouse then and Lane went off only a few minutes before I did. If that was the shot, he must have been potted almost as soon as he stepped in the cottage, which doesn’t seem feasible.’
I sat staring at him in undisguised dismay. ‘Didn’t you see anybody at all? Didn’t anyone pass you?’ As an alibi it was worse than mine.
‘No one of any use,’ he said. ‘One car went by, but it was blinding. I don’t think the driver could have noticed me. I fancy it was a Morris Eight, but I didn’t notice the colour or the number. They’re going to broadcast for the driver, but I can’t imagine there’s any hope of him turning up or being any use if he does. The only other living soul who passed down the road while I was there is now in hospital, unconscious, and is not expected to recover. He’s one of the masters here, by the way.’
‘Mr Rorke?’
‘That’s the man.’ He seemed surprised. ‘You’ve heard about him, have you? He came down the lane while I was sitting there and he eyed me, but we didn’t speak. I’d never seen him before and he was in a fine old state. I thought he was a tramp. When I described him, the police recognized him at once. He’d been to the club and they’d slung him out.’
‘I saw him start from the school,’ I remarked. ‘He’d been trying to sober up under a shower, that’s why he was so wet. What was he doing in the lane?’
Andy shrugged his shoulders. ‘The police say he was taking a short cut to the London Road. A lorry driver has reported giving him a lift as far as the northern suburbs. After that the poor beast seems to have had an argument with a double-decker bus, so he won’t be able to help much. Not that it matters.’
I sat up at that ‘But it does matter,’ I objected. ‘I don’t think you understand. Uncle Fred South –’
‘Who’s that? Old turnip-face, the Superintendent?’
‘Call him what you like,’ I insisted, ‘but he’s no fool. You imagine he’s let you out to come up here because he hadn’t any evidence to hold you. Well, my bet is that he did it on purpose. He’s slippery, he’s –’
‘My dear girl, he wasn’t there,’ he interjected. ‘For the final three hours or so I was interviewed by a mere Inspector and a brace of helmetless bobbies. The Inspector read a report which came in to him and let it out quite casually that you were up here alone. When I insisted that in that case I was coming up myself he tried to object. I called his bluff by pointing out that he must charge me if he was going to hold me, and after a bit he gave way. I wasn’t followed here, Liz. The road was perfectly clear.’
I was not satisfied. ‘It’s the gun,’ I said, ‘that’s what they’re worrying about. It’s because they can’t connect you with Victor’s gun that they haven’t arrested you. They think I must have given it to you somehow.’
He thought that one over and I saw I’d got the point home.
‘I knew where it was kept, you see,’ I added. ‘They found my fingerprints on the drawer, I expect.’
‘But that’s ridiculous,’ he protested. ‘What does that prove? I knew where the gun was kept for that matter.’
‘You did?’
‘Of course I did. In the top middle drawer of his desk. Everybody knew it. It was one of the first things I ever heard about Victor Lane when I first came to the town. “A colourful personality,” so I was told. “Kept a loaded revolver in the top middle drawer of his desk. So dashing and original.” I thought it sounded dangerous. Well, it’s proved so, hasn’t it?’
‘But, Andy,’ I exclaimed, horror-stricken, ‘you didn’t tell the police this, did you?’
‘No,’ he admitted seriously. ‘Being cautious by nature, I forbore. But I assure you it was common knowledge. Provincial people like whispering things like that. It makes home sound like the movies. When did you look in the drawer? Yesterday?’
‘Yes,’ I said slowly, trying to remember about a thing which was as remote as if it had happened ten years before. ‘I went into the study once the day before, when I first got in from the ride with you, but I didn’t go up to the desk. I was looking for Victor, but the only person there was Bickky Seckker.’
‘Who’s that?’
I told him and he listened with interest. ‘What was he doing there alone?’
‘He wasn’t near the desk,’ I assured him, smiling at the idea of the gentle Mr Seckker being in any way concerned with the theft of a revolver. ‘He was at the fireplace on the other side of the room, burning something, I think.’
Andy was puzzled. ‘Destroying the documents, as in a spy play?’ he inquired politely.
‘No, only burning a sheet of paper. I think he said he’d been trying to light his pipe with it.’
‘Extraordinary.’ Andy spoke without excitement. ‘An odd place, though. No place for you and me, Liz. To fit in with Tinworth we’d have to have been born here. We’ll have to get out of it, and out of the country, just as soon as we can. I love you. I love you, darling, more than anything in the world.’
I leant across the table, my hand outstretched. ‘It’s good to hear you say it, my dear.’
As Andy stumbled to his feet to come towards me the door behind me opened. I felt the draught on my neck and turned just in time to see a familiar clown’s face looming in out of the shadow of the staircase. Uncle Fred South stepped lightly into the room and closed the door behind him.
‘Perhaps I ought to have knocked,’ he said, and his country voice was broader and slyer than ever.
Andy turned on him savagely, his face dark with blood and his eyes furious.
‘Do you always walk into people’s houses unannounced, Superintendent? The ordinary laws of the country don’t affect the police down here, I suppose?’
Uncle was unabashed. ‘I haven’t walked in because I ain’t been out, Doctor,’ he said pleasantly, favouring me with an alarming battery of confidential twinkles. ‘I changed my mind. I thought I wouldn’t leave Mrs Lane in this great set of buildings all alone, so I went to the study, which we’ve made our headquarters, and sat there writing my report. Then, I don’t know how it was, I must have fallen asleep in the chair.’ He smiled at me, his face glowing with good temper. ‘I reckon it was that pudding that did it,’ he said.
He did not expect to be believed, but it was impossible to be angry with him. He was so cheerful about it all.
‘I came up for some of my equipment,’ he went on placidly. ‘I always carry it about with me because I don’t like to see a constable scribbling in the corner whilst I’m conducting an interview. It doesn’t seem friendly. This equipment is not official. I bought it meself. Out of the proceeds of the last Police Concert, as a matter of fact. I left it up here by mistake.’
Andy and I stood staring at him, mystified but with growing apprehension. As we watched he dived under the white-draped table and came up with a box which looked like a portable radio set. A flex which had been attached to the candle lamp which we used at the evening meal hung limply from its side. The Superintendent put it gently on the table.
‘Well, I never did!’ he said calmly. ‘My little old tape recorder’s been on all the time.’
There was a long and dreadful pause. We all three stood looking at the little machine, its turntables moving silently on the open top.
Andy sprang towards it and just as quickly a broad body inserted itself between him and the moving tape.
‘Wait a minute, son,’ said Uncle Fred South. He edged himself round until he stood facing us, but still shielding the wicked little machine. ‘Now look here, you two,’ he began, his round-eyed glance flickering from one to the other of us in shrewd appraisal, ‘I’m more than twice as old as either of you and that gives me the right to speak, policeman or not. What I want to tell you is this. I’m not against you and I’m not for you. In this business I’ve got just about as much heart as this table I’m sitting on, but I’m just as sound as it and just as useful as it too.’ He was speaking with tremendous sincerity and managed to be strangely impressive. I know we both stepped back. ‘If you’ve killed a man between you I’ll turn you in,’ he went on. ‘I shan’t hang you, because that ain’t my business, but I’ll hand you over to the law and the lawyers and I’ll read about you in the papers and never give you another thought. But if you’re innocent I’ll get you out of this here business so fast you won’t know you’ve ever been in it, and we shan’t have a pack of London legal-eagles upsetting all our summer holidays and keeping us all standing about until Christmas.’
He paused and, after giving me a steady, not unfriendly stare, concentrated on Andy, whose dark face was unrevealing.
‘Now, I told this young woman in this very room not so long ago that if I once knew the footing you two were on I’d tell you things about yourselves you didn’t even know,’ he announced. ‘That is why I fitted up this here little arrangement and set it going as soon as I heard your car come up the Tortham Road. I’d sent word to my Inspector to let you go, and I figured out that you’d come straight up here if you heard that Mrs Lane had been left in the school alone. There’s nothing against you in that. In your position I’d have done the same. Now I could have had a fellow listening and taking everything down in shorthand, and that would have been in order. But I didn’t do that because there’s a great deal of difference between the spoken word and what’s been taken down by a chap with a pencil, and I didn’t just want to catch you out. I wanted the truth, and by gee I’m going to get it. Will you sit quiet while I play this through to the three of us? That’s the honest way. If there’s a bit I don’t understand, then we’ll take it back and listen again.’
There was silence for awhile. My mouth was dry and I felt sick with fear, not because I was guilty but because I couldn’t remember anything we’d said and because he was going to find out that Andy and I were in love after all. I glanced at Andy, but he was watching the Superintendent, an odd, defiant expression on his face. Without looking at me he thrust an arm round my shoulders so that we stood together.
‘All right,’ he said.
The old man sighed. ‘That’s more like it,’ he said. ‘Sit down. It’ll make you shy, you know. Still, we can’t help that. Now listen.’
The dreadful performance began. I had not dreamed that ordinary conversation went so slowly. It was terrible. Every word seemed to have twice its normal meaning, and the pauses to go on forever. Andy’s voice I knew. It sounded exactly as it always did, very much alive and deeper in tone than most men’s. But who the breathy young woman with the squeak in her voice was I could not believe until I heard her saying the things I’d said. Andy and I sat side by side at the table and stared down at our hands clenched on the cloth. But Uncle Fred South just watched the machine, his eyes half closed and his shining knobbly face quite expressionless.
It went on and on. The whole picture was there but it was magnified. We sounded as if we were overacting, and when I heard Andy admitting once again that he had known where Victor kept his gun my heart turned slowly over and I could scarcely breathe. I stole a glance at the Superintendent after that, but he had not moved.
Yet the really damaging passage took me by surprise. It seemed to spring out of its context and to obliterate every other line. It was Andy’s voice, calm and matter-of-fact yet full of determination.
‘We’ll have to get out of it, and out of the country, just as soon as we can. I love you. darling, more than anything in the world,’
I did not hear my reply. I was looking hopelessly at Uncle Fred South and he was sitting up, a wide broad smile which yet had something grim in it spreading over his face. The recording went on; the Superintendent’s own voice and the sound of Andy’s protest as he heard it were all faithfully reproduced. We did not move.
At last the Superintendent leaned forward and switched off the recorder and there was a long silence.
I spoke first. I could not bear the suspense any longer, and the grim smile on the shrewd yet comical face of the old man seemed to fill the world
‘Well?’ I said huskily ‘Now you know the – the footing we’re on, what can you tell us about ourselves that we don’t know?’
He rose to his feet and sniffed. Something had happened to him. His whole attitude towards us had changed. He looked tired and somehow more ordinary and when his eyes met mine there was no knowing twinkle in them. Andy sat stiffly at the table, his dark face sullen and quiet.
‘Have you found out anything you did not know, Superintendent?’
Uncle Fred South cocked an eye at him. ‘Yes,’ he said distinctly, ‘I’ve got my man, and I’d have had him before and we’d all have had a night’s rest if this young woman had thought to open her mouth earlier.’
I stared. The ground was opening beneath my feet.
‘It’s not true –’ I was beginning when he turned on me.
‘Now pay attention,’ he said. ‘The police don’t give witnesses explanations. Silent and mysterious, that’s the line the police take in an inquiry, and then it’s all a nice surprise for everybody when the evidence comes out in court. But because you’ve been very helpful, and because it won’t make a mite of difference anyway in this particular case, I’ll tell you. I’ll be as good as my word. I’ll tell you something you didn’t know about yourselves. You didn’t know you could tell who killed Victor Lane. Does that surprise you?
I put my hand in Andy’s and looked at the Superintendent.
‘How did I tell you?’
He shook his head at me wearily. ‘You told your young man, you didn’t tell me,’ he said calmly. ‘You told me who burned the sheet of paper in the fireplace in the study. That was the important thing.’
My universe performed a dizzy somersault.
‘Mr Seckker!’ I exclaimed incredulously. ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘I don’t ask you to.’ He sat down again and leant across the table. ‘I could lose my pension gossiping like this,’ he murmured, lowering his voice to elude, no doubt, the long ears of Tinworth strained to hear. ‘That bit of paper was the first thing we found. It was charred but intact and we got a nice pic from it very quickly. It turned out to be a little document that this whole town has heard about, on and off, for the past year or more. It was the Pitcher boy’s examination paper.’
We looked at him blankly and he laughed. ‘You two seem to be the only people in this place who don’t know what goes on,’ he said. ‘You’re “foreigners”, that’s your trouble. The Pitcher boy is a nice little boy who comes from a very strait-laced home. He had the misfortune to turn in a very silly bit of work for his end-of-term exam last winter and –’
‘Oh!’ I exclaimed as Mrs Veal’s story came back to me. ‘And Mr Rorke wrote something on it.’
‘That’s it, that’s it.’ The knowing gleam had returned to the round eyes and Uncle Fred South was himself again, encouraging me as a promising pupil. ‘Mr Rorke was a bit elated, shall we say, at the time when he corrected it and he wrote a few terse Anglo-Saxon words at the bottom of the sheet and sent it back to the boy. The boy sent it to his pa, who had no more sense than to send it to the Headmaster, and the Headmaster …’ He broke off and his twinkle vanished and he looked at me with unusual kindliness. ‘Mr Lane’s dead, isn’t he, poor fellow?’ he said. ‘So we musn’t judge him. But he could be hard, and, saving your presence, Mrs Lane, he could be dirty in business and no mistake. He held that bit of paper over the man Rorke. He’d only got to show it, you see, and the man would never get another job in a good school.’
Andy drew a long breath. He looked utterly astounded.
‘But did everybody know this?’ he demanded.
‘Oh yes, Doctor.’ Uncle Fred South appeared equally surprised that anyone should query that point. ‘Rorke made no secret of it to his few friends, and in Tinworth if you’ve told one you’ve told all. Lane said he’d destroy the paper if Rorke went on the water wagon. Rorke did. It must have cost him something, but he had strength, that man. Then at the end of this term he went to Mr Lane and asked him for his release and a reference and for the paper to be destroyed. Lane refused but said he’d think it over. That was on the Wednesday. Rorke came down the town and told one or two people about it. I’d heard it myself before the night was out.’ He cleared his throat and leaned back in his chair. ‘We don’t have a lot to talk about, Doctor, so we talk about each other. That’s human nature.’
‘But’ – Andy thrust his long hands through his wiry black hair – ‘if you knew all this why didn’t you suspect Rorke in the first place?’
‘We did. I made sure of it.’ The Superintendent’s eyes were round as shillings. ‘Naturally, as soon as I heard that Rorke was the last person to see Lane alive I made sure of it. But as soon as I got into the study, what did I find? Why, the document destroyed. If the body had been there beside it, well, it would have been simple. But it wasn’t there. Lane was known to have been at the golf club for lunch. When he left Rorke he was alive. We worked it out that he’d destroyed the document in front of Rorke when they were both there together, so we didn’t expect the young man to go after him and kill him once he’d got what he wanted. It wouldn’t have been reasonable, would it?’
He was silent for a moment. ‘Now, of course, I can see it all,’ he went on. ‘Lane refused Rorke and went off to the golf course. Rorke took the Headmaster’s gun and followed him.’ He nodded at Andy. ‘You were quite right when you said someone must have waited for Mr Lane in the cottage and shot him as soon as he appeared. That’s what Rorke did. Then he hitchhiked to London and – well, poor fellow, it’s saved us a lot of trouble. He can’t last. His back’s broken.’
‘Bickky Seckker,’ I began slowly and the Superintendent caught me up.
‘Bickky Seckker hasn’t been questioned. No one saw any point in asking him anything. But I bet I know what he did. I’ve known him for years. It’s just what he would do. I bet he was up in his classroom waiting to see what happened at Rorke’s interview with Lane. I’ll be bound he saw the Headmaster drive off and Rorke come reeling out just after him, and I bet he went down to the study to see if things had been settled. He found the exam paper hadn’t been destroyed, and it so shocked him that he took matters into his own hands, burned it there and then, and was caught redhanded when Mrs Lane appeared. That’s about it.’
‘But how would he know where it was?’ I demanded, fascinated by this pyrotechnic display in the art of deduction. ‘If Rorke didn’t know, how would Bickky?’
Uncle Fred South laughed outright. ‘Bickky has been in this school for more years than I’ve been in Tinworth,’ he said. ‘Depend on it, there ain’t much he doesn’t know.’
He moved towards the door, a plump and even joyous figure on his light feet.
‘Doctor,’ he said, holding out his hand to Andy, ‘you made a very intelligent remark on that there machine of mine. You said that you young people ought to get out of Tinworth right away, and afterwards out of the country. Good luck to you. But later on, in a year or so maybe more, come back and see us all.’ He grinned. ‘You’ll find you’ll know a lot more about us then, and we’re remarkably nice people once you get to know us. A little bit inquisitive perhaps, but, think of the time it saves. Good night to you both. If there’s anything I can ever do for you, you know where to find me.’
When the door had closed behind him, Andy turned to me.