Ellis Peters - George Felse 06 - Black Is The Colour Of My True Love's Heart (7 page)

“I still think we need the police,” said Dominic. “For that very purpose. You want to avoid scandal, of course, but it would be a worse scandal if you concealed what turned out to be a criminal matter. To cover Follymead, I’m afraid you’ve got to hand this job over to the proper people.”

And that was the whole crux of the matter, the thing that was tearing the deputy warden apart. He was terrified of calling in the police, perhaps to find it had all been unnecessary, and even more terrified of bearing the responsibility for not calling them in, should the affair turn out to be serious after all. Above all he was afraid of trying to contact Edward Arundale, and for good reason. Arundale was a man of decision, who would know how to deal with every situation, and he would be highly intolerant of any deputy who couldn’t handle affairs himself in an emergency. Marshall hadn’t been here long, this was his first assignment on his own responsibility; and he wanted, how he wanted, to keep his job.

“We have so little to go on,” he said in agony.

“We’re not competent,” said Liri Palmer tersely, “to say whether it’s little or much. That’s the whole point.”

Dominic looked at Tossa, and found her looking at him, with the clear, trusting, eager look by means of which she communicated her sense of adoption into his family. He knew what she was thinking, and what she wanted him to do and say. It was having lost her own father so early, and suffered such frustrations and vicissitudes with stepfathers since, that had made her attach herself so fervently and gratefully to Dominic’s beautifully permanent, stable and reassuring parents. And especially to George Felse. He wasn’t at all like her adored professor father, but he gave her the same sense of security. She would have taken all her own problems to him, it was natural she should think of him immediately in this crisis. Even if he hadn’t been a policeman, she would have wanted him; but he was, and that was the solution to everything.

An exchange of glances like that, radiant with confidence, could turn Dominic’s bones to water with gratitude and astonishment. He had brought her home in the common agonies every man feels in bringing together two jealous and valued loves; he wasn’t yet used to the staggering bliss and relief of his total success.

“If I could make a suggestion,” he said, with all the more care and delicacy because of his own conviction of undeserved grace, “I could get my father to have a look over the ground.” He caught Tossa’s glowing glance, and trembled; he still couldn’t quite believe in the accumulation of his luck. “He’s a detective-inspector in the county C.I.D. I’m sure he’d be willing to come out here, if you’ll let me call him. Then you’d have covered yourself and the college, in case there
is
something in this. And we could ask him to treat it as a quite private matter until he’s satisfied that there’s a case for official investigation. In either case, you’d be protected.”

Henry Marshall took his head out of his hands, and gaped unbelievingly but gladly at his salvation. Arundale himself couldn’t do better than this.

“You think he’d come? On those terms?”

“I’m sure he would. It’s better for them, too, if they have notice of these things in time to judge. If it turns out to be something quite harmless and on the level, so much the better. May I call him?”

“Please do,” said Henry Marshall thankfully. “Perhaps you could meet him at the lodge, when he arrives? You
do
drive? Take the station wagon down and wait for him. I’ll talk to Professor Penrose, and see to everything here. We shall be most grateful.
Most
grateful!”

GEORGE FELSE SWORE, but with resignation, listened, and came. Dominic was not in the habit of going off at half-cock; he had been a policeman’s son too long for that. If the affair turned out to be a mare’s-nest after all, there was no harm done; and if it didn’t, far better to take a close look at the circumstances as soon as possible, rather than after the scent had gone cold.

“Save it,” he said, cutting off the details. “I’m on my way, we’ll have all that when I come.‘’

It took him twenty minutes to drive from Comerford to the Follymead gates; there wasn’t much on the roads at this hour, and the going was good. The college station wagon was parked just behind the lodge, already turned to point back up the drive, with Dominic and Tossa waiting beside it.

“We thought it might be better if you leave the car here at the lodge,” said Dominic. “Just in case there’s somebody who knows it.”

“In that case,” said George reasonably, “the somebody would be even more likely to know me.”

“Yes, but we hope you’ll be able to stay out of the general view. There’s only a handful of us know what’s happened. If anything
has
happened. And that way, if it all turns out to be nonsense, there’s no fuss, and nobody’s made to look a fool. It seemed the best thing. It’s this second-in-command, you see, he’s left holding the baby, and he’s terrified of calling the police, and terrified of not calling them. Whatever he does is probably going to be the wrong thing.”

“So I’m the working compromise. He realised that if there does turn out to be anything in it, it becomes an official matter?”

“If there’s anything in it, the fat’s in the fire, anyhow. Yes, of course he understands that. Even Arundale couldn’t help that.” Dominic climbed into the driving seat of the station wagon, and set it rolling up the long, pale drive, bordered now, by fitful moonlight and scurrying cloud, with phantoms of Cothercott ingenuity even more monstrous than by day. “Is Bunty very mad at me? I’m sorry about it, but honestly, this business… I don’t like the look of it.” He had only recently taken to calling his mother Bunty, and it didn’t come quite naturally yet, but using the old, childish form of address had suddenly become as constricting to him as a strait-jacket. He’d never so much as given it a thought until Tossa entered the house; but it still hadn’t occurred to him to work out the implications.

“Not with you. Maybe with your missing folk-singer, for his bad timing. Cold, Tossa?” She was between them on the broad front seat, and shivering a little in spite of the camel-coloured car coat in which she was huddled.

“No, it’s just tension, don’t mind me.” She relaxed against George’s shoulder, reassured by his presence. There were going to be times when Dominic would feel a little jealous of George, who, after all, was only forty-five, and tall and slim, and not that bad-looking as middle-aged men go. “I’m glad you’re here. I don’t like this much, either. There are too many over-developed personalities around, things
could
happen.”

“Well, let’s hear it.”

Dominic told it, as succinctly as he could, and Tossa added an occasional comment. There was no time for all the background detail now, only for the facts. Nevertheless, glimpses of personalities emerged, and they were seen to be, as Tossa had said, a little distorted, drawn from a world where bizarre and improbable things could happen. The moon came out and silvered the pagoda roof, beyond the heronry where there were no herons, and picked out like a lance-thrust the black entrance of the hermit’s cave, distant in its concrete rocks. Anything was believable here.

“With a house full of about eighty people,” said George, “he thinks he’s going to be able to keep this secret?”

“If it has to be a full-scale investigation, no. But long enough for you to have a look at the set-up and judge, yes, I reckon with luck we might. Because almost everybody was right away from here all afternoon, you see, with these two coach-parties. They left before we saw Lucien Galt go out into the park. And they came back only just on time for tea, and came milling in all together. They’re out of it. They
can’t
know anything.”

“That leaves how many? More than enough.”

“Not really, because the staff were working indoors as usual, and they’re sure to be O.K. Mostly they’d be in pairs or more all the time, what with washing up after lunch, and then preparing for tea and dinner. We were here, of course, you know about us. Then there’s Felicity, that’s the young one I told you about, Arundale’s niece. And Liri Palmer… she was in the grounds, too, we saw her start off towards that phoney ruin, over that way. And we four, and Mr. Marshall, are the only ones who know about what I found by the river, so far. Then there’s Professor Penrose, he knows about Lucien being missing, but he doesn’t know the rest yet. He’d just got them all into the drawing-room for his after-dinner session when we came back to the house.”

“And you think all that lot can be trusted to keep it dark?”

“We can only try. Yes, I think we might.”

“Even the girl? This Felicity?”

“Yes,” said Tossa positively. She cast a quick glance at Dominic, and went on, encouraged: “She has a special reason for keeping quiet. Dominic didn’t tell you quite all about her afternoon. Oh, he told what we know, but not what we
think
we know. You see, she’s an odd child. But no, it
isn’t
odd to be like that, not at her age, it’s not odd at all. She’s awkward and tense and self-conscious, and she’s a sort of poor relation here, and things are pretty much hell for her, even though everybody means well. And this weekend she’s gone right overboard for Lucien Galt, that’s all about it. That’s why she followed him out this afternoon. And when we met her coming back, we felt pretty sure he’d got fed up with having her round his neck, and sent her off with a flea in her ear. So if she seems to be covering up, that’s what she’s covering. And whoever tells more than they need about this afternoon, it won’t be Felicity.”

“I see,” said George, touched by what she had omitted rather than what she had said. “Don’t worry, I’ll leave her her dignity.”

“I know,” said Tossa warmly.

“What about the mere fact that one of the artists has missed two sessions? I suppose he should have appeared in all of them? Aren’t quite a number of people going to wonder about that? Even if they don’t notice
your
absence from the audience.”

“I don’t think we need worry about that. We sit where-ever we happen to, find a place, it’s liable to be different every time, and if you’re not along there now, why shouldn’t you be somewhere at the back? They won’t wonder about us, among so many. But about Galt it is rather different. We left that to the professor. Unless he saw a need, I don’t suppose he’s told them anything at all, just sailed on as if everything was just as it was meant to be. But if he thought they were beginning to do some serious wondering, I bet he could hand them an absolutely first-class lie.”

“He may have to. Keeping it quiet suits me, too. I don’t want seventy excited people tramping all over the place and getting in the way, any more than the county or the warden want their cherished college to get the wrong sort of advertisement. Will they still be in at the lecture now?”

“Should be. We ought to have half an hour yet.”

“We’ll go down to this grotto of yours first, then. Can we slip in by a back door afterwards, and dodge the house-party?”

“Yes, easily, from the back courtyard, where the garages are. There’s a covered passage to the basement stairs, and the warden’s office is quite near the top of the staircase. The front’s all gilt and carpeting and ashlar, but the back stairs is a little spiral affair. Pity,” said Dominic, “about the light. But there’s a huge torch in the glove-pocket here.”

“I want to take a look at the marks to-night, lift a sample, if possible. It’s going to rain before morning.”

“He covered them,” said Tossa, promptly and proudly.

“I should hope so,” said George; but he smiled.

They swept round the dramatic bend in the drive, and the house rose superb and staggering in the bone-white moonlight to take their breath away. The long range of the drawing-room windows blazed with light, flooding the lowest of the terraces; the class was still in session.

Dominic drove round the wing of the house and into the courtyard, and there they locked the station wagon and left it, taking the torch with them. The whiteness of moonlight on the pale, complex shapes of stone here was hard and dry as an articulated skeleton, the windows glared like empty eye-sockets. Dominic led the way down to the footbridge, and in the spectral, half-fledged woodland he switched on the torch. The great, gaunt gate towered in its inadequate fence, a few yards beyond the redwood tree. They came out on the blanched greensward by the grotto. The noise of the river, more deadly than by day, reached for them, a humming, throbbing, low, ferocious roar, a tiger-cat purring, and just as dangerous and beautiful.

Carefully Dominic circled his ring of rhubarb leaves, and lifted them. The little pool of the torch’s light moved in deep absorption all around the area, an eye of warmer pallor in the cold pallor of the moon.

“All right, cover them again,” said George at length. “Where’s this stuff that may be blood?”

The two heavy drops seemed to have shrunk since early evening, but even by this light they were there, clearly visible. They had no colour now, only a darkness without colour; but they had a clear form. Liquid had dripped, not directly, but in flight from a body in motion. One was flattened on open stone, immovable; but the second was on hard ground. George took a pen-knife to it, patiently and carefully, and pared it intact out of the ground, while Tossa held the torch for him. He had brought pill-boxes with him for such small specimens as this.

“To-morrow morning, early, I’ll go over all this open ground. Maybe Mr. Marshall can find me a tarpaulin, or something to drape over this. Now where was this medal and chain you found? Yes… I see.”

Behind them the river roared as softly as any sucking dove, and they felt it there, and were not deceived into believing it harmless. The sound had a curious property, it seemed to be one with the vast outer silence which contained it. At night, in the grounds of Follymead, Pan and panic were conceptions as modern and close as central heating, though what they distilled was a central chill. Dominic folded his arm and his wind-jacket about Tossa, and felt her turn to him confidingly. She wasn’t afraid; she only shook, like him, with awareness of chaos, braced and ready for it.

“All right,” said George, in a soft, surprised and gentle voice. “Let’s get back to the house and talk to Mr. Marshall.”

“We must have tests made, of course,” said George, installed behind the desk in Edward Arundale’s private office at the top of the back stairs, “but I think I ought to say at once that this is almost certainly blood.” The little pill-box with its pear-drop shape of dull brown on fretted gravel lay in his palm; he shut the lid over it and laid it aside. “I needn’t tell you that blood in that quantity could come from the most superficial of injuries. But we’re faced with the fact that Lucien Galt has not reappeared or sent any message. Those who know him say he wouldn’t cheat on a commitment. I regard this as good evidence. They know what to expect of him; they didn’t expect this, and they don’t accept it. He was regarded as in many ways a fiendishly difficult colleague; but he didn’t give short weight once a bargain was struck. We must also face the fact that the Braide in flood ran a yard or so from where these tell-tale marks were found. If there was a struggle there, as appears to be the case, then the loser may only too easily have gone over the weir and down the river. I am putting, of course, the gravest possible case, because we can’t afford to ignore it. We must take into account
all
possibilities.”

Henry Marshall licked his dry lips and swallowed arduously. “Yes, I realise that. I… may I take it that you will assume responsibility for whatever inquiries are necessary? I want, of course, to co-operate as fully as possible.”

“I should prefer to keep this inquiry quiet, as long as that’s possible. I gather you feel the same way. Let me have this office for my own use, and keep the course running. Can you do that? I’ve already talked to Professor Penrose, he’s quite willing to work them as hard as possible, and it looks as if they’re enjoying it. Concentrate on helping him, and keep the course afloat between you, and we ought to be able to get them out of here on Monday evening none the wiser about what’s been occupying us. They’ll have enough to think about.‘’

“I shall be very grateful,” said Henry Marshall, in the understatement of the year. “You understand my position… this is the first time I’ve been left to run a course single-handed. It would be disastrous if we allowed our students to panic and the course to disintegrate. Not only for me. I’m worried about myself, naturally, I don’t pretend I’m not. But I’m honestly worried about Follymead, too. We
are
worth an effort, I give you my word we are.”

He was an honest, decent, troubled young man, not very forceful, not very experienced, but George thought Arundale might have done very much worse.

“I’m sure of that. I want to use discretion, too. But you understand that if there has been a tragedy here, if there has been a crime, that can’t be suppressed. The moment I’m convinced that it’s a police matter, it will become official.”

“I couldn’t, in any case, agree to anything else,” said Marshall simply. “I’m a citizen, as well as an employee afraid for his job. But there’s no harm in hoping it won’t come to that.”

“None at all. I’ve got the list of people who stayed here this afternoon, instead of joining one or other of the sightseeing parties. Tell me if there’s anyone who should be added.” He read off the list. It included four elderly ladies, all local, and therefore all acquainted with the local antiquities, and disposed to vegetate in the Follymead libraries or gardens rather than to clamber over castles; but they had booked in in pairs, and almost certainly had hunted in pairs this afternoon. With luck there would be no need to involve them. A little casual conversation – Tossa might help out here – would eliminate them. “I realise that Mrs. Arundale will have to be told, eventually, about this inquiry. Is there anyone else who stayed here?”