EDGAR WENT INTO THE MAZE.
At the first turn he was separated from Edna. She went left. Edgar went right. He didn’t know what he was looking for. A clue, he supposed. Had Cody arranged to meet someone by the fountain? Or had they found him there, confronted him, perhaps? Edith or Ernesto. The others had been inside. The maze walls were high. He couldn’t see outside. It was surprisingly quiet, too. He took a step and paused, something on the ground bothering him. When he looked down he saw it was a dead blackbird, its body flattened in the dirt, feathers caked in blood, its eyes blind. He swore in surprise and backed away.
From somewhere in the distance he heard Edna call, ‘Are you all right, dear?’
‘I’m fine!’ Edgar shouted back. But he was shaken. He knelt beside the dead bird. A fox had killed it, perhaps. How could he tell? It was another murder, and just like Earl Cody’s, there was no easy way to solve it. Had there been a fox? He thought uneasily of his sense the night before of something moving in the maze behind the hedge as he and Cody spoke.
Had someone been standing there, listening to them?
He stepped over the dead bird and kept exploring the narrow paths of the maze. He took each turning, not sure anymore if he was near the centre now or on the outskirts.
It was getting hot and there was no shade. He blinked sweat from his eyes and thought he saw something then: snagged on the hedge to his left was a small piece of white cloth. He pulled it out, spread it and discovered it was a handkerchief, monogrammed with the letters ES.
Ernesto Salazar.
He pocketed the handkerchief and kept walking, slowly now. Here he found something unexpected. There was a small hole in the lower part of the hedge, and he got on his hands and knees and peered through it. He saw it led to a secluded little spot in the hedge itself, just big enough for one or two persons to fit in. He crawled through. Inside he was completely hidden from the world. A blanket had been laid down on the ground here. It smelled peculiar. He felt around with his hands and found something pushed into the branches. He pulled it out and realised it was a rubber. It had been used. He threw it away, disgusted, then wiped his hands on the blanket. A picture had begun to emerge in his mind. He’d seen enough. He crawled out and stood, supporting himself on the hedge, as he thought.
Ernesto and Edith had both been absent from the library the previous evening. They had not seemed particularly friendly towards each other, in Edgar’s brief acquaintance with them. But people did not need to like each other to screw each other, as Roddy once told him.
Edgar kept walking. He looked for anything else but couldn’t find it. He heard voices, and realised that he was near the outer wall of the maze.
‘It will be bad for us,’ the first speaker said. It was a man – Mr Jacobs, he thought. The Hong Kong banker.
‘Hold your courage, goddamn it,’ the second speaker said. A woman – Emma Wallace. ‘This will be handled quietly.’
‘Not if the stupid boy did it! There will have to be policemen, a trial. It could end up in the newspapers!’
‘Feebes owns the newspapers, Ezra.’
‘Not all of them,’ the man replied. ‘And he has enemies. They will use it against him.’
‘So?’ the woman said. ‘We don’t owe him. The Feebeses are nothing but new money people. They’re little more than merchants.’
‘Merchants rule the world now, Emma! Our connection can’t be exposed – too much is at risk as it is!’
‘You handle your side of the deal, Ezra. All you have to do is keep the money moving. I will handle the guns.’
‘We could be done for treason!’
‘Really, Ezra, you are making too much of this. Hold your nerve and it will all be cleared away. What was that?’
Edgar froze. He had moved, and when he pressed against the hedge the leaves had very softly rustled.
‘Is there someone there?’ Emma said loudly.
Edgar didn’t dare move.
‘Probably a squirrel,’ Mr Jacobs said.
‘Let’s go back in the house. Say nothing more of this.’
Edgar heard Mr Jacobs mutter something, but it was too soft this time for him to hear. The two moved away.
Edgar waited. When he could hear them no longer he began to try to make his way out of the maze. He kept turning but getting nowhere, and then, turning one more time, found himself stumbling straight into Edna.
‘Did you find anything?’ she said.
‘How do we get out of here!’ Edgar said.
‘Oh, it’s easy,’ she said. ‘I’ll show you.’
‘What did you find?’ Edgar said.
‘Nothing but a dead bird,’ Edna said. ‘I think a fox got to it.’
He followed her, took one right turn and then another and then, somehow, they were out again.
‘It really isn’t very large,’ Edna said.