“The right thing,” said Rapier, accepting this literally, “in a case like that, would be to leave everything as it is, call the police, and tell them the whole story.”

  “And how many ever do the right thing, when they get into a jam like that? Try it, some day, and see if you don’t do what I did – run. There wasn’t a thing I could do for him. He was dead. I pulled him to the edge of the river, and threw him as far out as I could, into the current, and I saw it take him downstream over the weir. I threw the sword-stick and the latch in the pool there. And I remembered that he was supposed to start for Birmingham, and his car was out in the yard ready. So I took it. Nobody’d look for him again until Sunday night. But you can’t get money out of banks or turn other assets into cash on a Sunday, I had to wait over until to-day. If it hadn’t been for that, you wouldn’t have caught up with me.”

  “And how,” asked the sergeant mildly, “did you know that we were inquiring into this death, then? You say nobody’d be expecting him back until last night, and nobody’d panic at one extra night, would they? Or did somebody tip you off? Did you hear from somebody that his body’d been found?”

  Lucien took his hands away from his drawn face, and stared him steadily in the eye. “No, how could I? I thought I was still ahead of you until they dropped on me at the airport. After that, I couldn’t help knowing you’d either found him, or found traces that were just as good. You wouldn’t have known about the car being stolen, otherwise. And what you didn’t know before,” he said wearily, “you know now. Have you got it all down?”

  “Yes, Mr. Galt, I’ve got it all down.”

  “Good! I should hate to go through all that again.”

  “I’m sure you would, sir,” agreed Rapier serenely.

  “I don’t want anybody else to be pestered,” said Lucien, leaning back in his corner with a drained sigh, “when nobody but me had anything to do with it. I didn’t have a thing against him, I hardly even knew him. But I killed him.”

  “Yes, Mr. Galt,” agreed Rapier, accommodatingly, watching the stillness of the pure, dark profile against the streaming world outside, “yes, you’ve made that quite clear.”

  CHAPTER X

  « ^ »

  AUDREY ARUNDALE emerged from her privacy to preside at the final gala tea. She wore black, but like many primrose-and-silver blondes, she very frequently did wear black, and there was nothing to remark on in that. She was pale, her eyes a little remote, and shadowed by bluish rings that made them look larger and more lustrous; but there was nothing in her appearance to give rise to comment or curiosity. Her manner was as it had always been, but at one remove more, and the wall of glass that separated her from the rest of the world, even while she touched and conversed and was patently present in the flesh, was so thin and clear that happy people never noticed it.

  She was about again on Follymead’s business, and had a couple of calls to make. On her way to the small drawing-room she looked in at the deputy warden’s office. Henry Marshall looked up from his laden desk as she entered, and came to his feet in quick concern.

  “Mrs. Arundale, I’d no idea… You’re not going in to tea?”

  “Yes, I must. I’m quite all right, I assure you, there’s no need to worry about me. I just wondered if there was anything I could help you with. I’m so sorry to have left everything to you, like this.”

  “You mustn’t trouble about the running of the place at all, that’s what I’m here for.”

  “I know,” she said, “and I know how well you can do it. I hope… I hope they’ll give you the job, Harry.”

  “Thank you!” he said uncomfortably. He hadn’t thought of her bereavement, until then, as his opportunity. “I think we’ve got everything in order. It’s lucky that we had no special fixtures for the next few days. We’re circulating all the people who’ve booked for the course next week-end, and cancelling the arrangements. I thought it would be impossible to go through with it. I have it from the police that no statement will be given to the press until to-morrow, and I very much hope it will only affect the local and regional press at the moment.”

  “But there’ll have to be an inquest, won’t there?” she said, contemplating the complexities of death with eyes of stunned distaste.

  “It’s to open on Wednesday morning, I’m told. But Inspector Felse says it will be only a formal opening, and the police will be asking for an adjournment. At least that will allow time for the public to forget about us a little.”

  “And find some newer sensations,” she said with the blanched ghost of a smile. “Yes… And what about the subscription concert, on Monday evening of next week? So difficult to cancel a thing like that, when all the tickets have been sold, and then it’s hardly fair to the artists…”

  “I think we ought to go through with that. A whole week will have passed, and the public who do use Follymead will know by then what’s happened here, and I think they’ll be reassured to find that the work is to go on. I’m sure the governors will approve.”

  “Good,” said Audrey. “I’m glad you feel that way about it, too. I thought myself we ought to honour the arrangements. It’s certainly what Edward would have wanted us to do. I’m so glad you’re here to look after everything, Harry. I see you don’t need me at all. Now I must go along and have a word with Inspector Felse before tea.”

  He sprang to open the door for her, his anxious eyes searching her face, but there was nothing to be seen but a white calm. “I don’t think you should attempt too much. The social load is taking care of itself, you know, you’ve only to listen to them. And it’ll soon be over now. You weren’t thinking of attending this last concert, were you?”

  “Yes, I feel I must. Edward would have wished it.”

  She went along the corridor from the gallery to the warden’s private office. George Felse was sitting behind the desk with his head propped in his hands, the telephone silent now, the photograph of Audrey in her party dress, Audrey at sixteen, leaning against a trough of Edward’s books. George could look from the girl to the woman, and feel time whirl past over his head, and she, since the picture was hidden from her, would not even be able to guess at the reason for the look of wonder and compunction in his eyes.

  “Mr. Felse, I hope I haven’t done something I shouldn’t have done, but it seemed to be my job. I’ve told Felicity, in confidence, that her uncle is dead; and I’ve telephoned her mother, and told her that I’m sending the child home by the half past five train. Wilson will drive her to the station. If you have no objection? I know you’ll probably need her, later on, but you’ll find Mrs. Cope’s address there in the book, and Felicity will be available whenever necessary.”

  “I’m glad,” said George. “It’s the best thing you could have done. You may be sure we shall spare her as much as we can. It may not even be necessary to bring her into it at all. If we can avoid it, we will.”

  “I know. She told me… she said you’ve been very kind to her. She… we have never understood each other, I know that. I feel guilty towards her.”

  “So does she,” said George quietly, “towards you.”

  “Yes… we can hardly take a step, it seems, without infringing someone else’s liberties. I’ve suggested to Mrs. Cope that she should try sending Felicity abroad for a time, perhaps even to school abroad. A completely new environment, new companions…”

  “It would be the very best thing for her. And I believe she could make good use of it, now.”

  “I believe she could. Thank you, I’m glad you think I’ve done right.”

  She closed the door gently after her, and went towards the hubbub in the drawing-room. And there she dispensed tea, and made conversation, and was everything the hostess of Follymead should be, always with the invisible and impenetrable veil between her and reality.

  “Such a delightful week-end, my dear,” said Miss Southern, balancing a china tea-cup as old and fragile as her own thin, bluish fingers. “So wonderful to get away from this awful modern world and enjoy an island of such peace.”

  “I’m so happy,” said Audrey, “that it’s been a success.”

  “Oh, it has! Everyone’s enjoyed it so much. That charming little girl with the harp… I do think the harp’s such a graceful instrument for a woman, don’t you?”

  “Mrs. Arundale,” shrilled the girl with the butterfly glasses, bounding between the chattering groups with a cucumber sandwich in one hand and a tea-cup in the other, “it’s been fab! I can’t wait for the next one.”

  “I’m so glad you’ve enjoyed it. We must try to fit in another one as soon as we can.”

  “I’m only sorry Arundale’s missed most of it,” said a thin gentleman in a dog-collar. “Do tell him, when he gets back, what an enormous success it’s been.”

  “I’ll tell him,” said Audrey, and her glass smile never wavered.

  Felicity came down the stairs from her room at a quarter to five, carrying a coat over her arm and a suitcase in her hand. She cocked an ear towards the small drawing-room, but on reflection did not go in. Instead, she looked round the recesses of the gallery for a secluded spot, and there in a cushioned corner of one of the built-in seats was Liri Palmer, sitting alone.

  “Hullo!” said Felicity. “I was just thinking of going to look for you, only I was a bit scared, too. Do you mind if I sit with you? I’ve got ten minutes, and then I’ve got to go.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  “My aunt’s sending me home.” Felicity put down her case, and dropped into the cushions. “I think she thinks the children should be kept out of the way of crime and the law, and if there’s going to be unpleasantness, Felicity must be shipped off to more sheltered places. Very correct, very conventional, is my Aunt Audrey.” She looked along her shoulder at the clear, still profile and the glorious, envied hair. “You know my uncle’s dead, don’t you?” Her voice was low, level and determinedly unemotional, but her face was solemn and pale.

  “I found him,” said Liri simply. “How did you find out?”

  “Aunt Audrey told me. She knew I was in it already, up to the neck, so she told me how it turned out. I was grateful to her for that. It’s horrible to know bits… too much, but not enough… And to have to find out the rest maybe from a newspaper. Now at least I know where I am, even if I don’t like it much.”

  “Who does?” said Liri.

  “No… nobody, I suppose. But you haven’t done anything.”

  “And you have?”

  “Yes, that’s what I wanted to tell you. You see, the bits you know are different bits from mine. And I only found out to-day, from Dickie Meurice, that you and Lucien… You were engaged, weren’t you? Or as good as, what’s the difference? I wanted to tell you, I didn’t know that. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have tried to make him interested in me, and none of this would have happened. Not that that makes it much better for you, I suppose, because in any case he was playing you false.” The phrase came strangely but without affectation; whatever was on her mind now, Felicity was not pretending, even to herself. “He was Aunt Audrey’s lover. I suppose you knew that?”

  Liri stared straight before her. “He broke three dates with me, always with a good excuse, always on the telephone. It’s easier to lie to somebody on the telephone. Twice I swallowed it, the third time I was a shade low, so I took myself out to dinner at a little place we sometimes used. He was supposed to be at rehearsal for a recording session, but he wasn’t. He was there with her. They were glowing like studio lights, and talking like bosom friends, as if they had a lifetime’s talking to make up. He was holding her hand, right there on the table. They didn’t see me. They weren’t seeing anyone but each other. I didn’t interrupt them. I waited until the next time he came for me, and then I threw it at him that he’d been standing me up for another woman. He said there was nothing in it, I was making a mistake. But I knew better. We both went mad, and that was the end of it.” She sat up abruptly and shook herself, between anger and amazement. “Why am I telling you this?”

  “I don’t know,” said Felicity humbly, “unless it’s because I’ve grown up suddenly.”

  “Afterwards I thought about it, and I thought, no, that was too big a thing to throw away like that, without even trying to straighten it out between us. So I came here to Follymead, because he had this engagement here. I came to make it up with him if I could. And the first person I saw when I got here – no, the second, actually, you were the first, through the lighted windows right here in this gallery – the second person I saw was this woman who’d been with him in the restaurant. So then I knew why Lucien had taken this engagement… maybe why the whole week-end course had been thought up. And that was the end of it as far as I was concerned. I thought! Actually it turns out things don’t just end when it’s appropriate, they go on whether you want them to or not. Is that what you wanted to know?”

  “It isn’t that I wanted to know. But thank you, all the same. It makes it easier to understand. Me, I didn’t know any of all that, or even about you. All I could see was Lucien. I was in love with him, or I thought I was. I went out after him last Saturday afternoon…” She told that story over again, softening nothing; Liri had a right to know.

  “That was what he said. And I did it. I went straight back to the house, and Uncle Edward and Aunt Audrey were sitting there together, and I said just exactly what Lucien had told me to say, right out loud to both of them. And that’s the part you didn’t know. That’s all. That’s why Uncle Edward went down there to kill him, only he got killed himself, instead. But whichever way it went, somebody died, and I was the cause of it.”

  “You did that?” Liri had turned to study the girl at her side with wide-eyed attention. “Went and chucked his private invitation down on the table between them, ‘where they were sat at meat’?”

  “Well, not exactly that,” said Felicity, puzzled. “They were just finishing coffee, actually.”

  “Don’t mind me, it was just something that came into my head. It happens in one of the ballads, didn’t you know? Just like that.” She stared sombrely at the story that now unrolled before her remorseless and complete. “It’s something I might have done, too, if he’d done a thing like that to me.”

  “Oh, might you? Do you really mean that? But you didn’t,” said Felicity, clouding over again. “I was the one who did it, and I was the one who caused Uncle Edward to get killed.”

  “You and all the rest of us who’ve had any part in this affair. And Mr. Arundale himself, that’s certain. Don’t claim more than belongs to you,” said Liri hardly.

  “That’s what Inspector Felse said,” admitted Felicity, encouraged.

  “Inspector Felse is a pretty deep sort of man.”

  “He is, isn’t he? There; that’s the station wagon for me.” The horn had blared cheerfully in the courtyard. Felicity picked up her coat and her case. “Good-bye! I wish things could turn out better than they look now. I’m sorry!”

  She turned her slender, erect back, and marched away along the rear corridor towards the back stairs. At the warden’s office she hesitated for a moment, and then tapped on the door. It would be only polite, wouldn’t it, to say good-bye to Inspector Felse?

  “Oh, hullo!” said George. “I heard you were off home.”

  “It’s all right, isn’t it, for me to go? Aunt Audrey said she’d tell you.”

  “Yes, it’s all right. If we need you, we shall know where to find you. Take care of yourself, and good luck. Better luck,” he said gently, “than you’ve had so far.”

  “Thank you. You’ve been very kind.” He saw her glance stray involuntarily towards the glass over the hearth. “You did mean what you said, didn’t you? You do really think I’m going to be… pretty?”

  “No,” said George firmly, “you’ve never going to be pretty, and that isn’t what I said.”

  “I was afraid to say the other word,” Felicity admitted simply. “But you did mean it, didn’t you?”

  “I meant it. You’ll see for yourself, before very long.”

  “It’s not that it makes any difference to what’s happened,” she explained punctiliously. “But it’s something to start from – like having capital. You know!” She picked up her case sturdily. “Good-bye, then, and thanks!”

  “Good-bye, Felicity! You’ll be all right?”

  She understood that in its fullest meaning, and she said: “I’ll be all right.”

  The station wagon taking Felicity away to catch her train left the courtyard and circled the house to the front drive just two minutes before Price drove in by the farm road. The tower clock, which was several minutes fast, was just chiming five. In one and a half hours the students would be dispersing, by car, by bus, by the house transport and the local trains, to homes scattered over the whole of the Midlands, and some even farther afield. Let them, at all costs, get off in peace. An extra car suddenly appearing at Follymead was nothing to wonder about at normal times, but better to take no chances now. Price parked carefully in the obscurity under the archway, where they could not be seen from the windows.

  Lucien awoke from a wretched and uneasy doze with the exaggerated alarm of nightmare, and stared round wildly to find the familiar and unwelcome apparition of Follymead enclosing him. He could face what he had to face, but he shied at the idea of added ordeals.