* * * *

  George woke in the night and at once knew she was there. He lay without stirring and grinned to himself. What a girl! Once he was asleep an army could walk through the room and he wouldn’t hear. Faithful Albert, too. Man’s best and sleepiest friend. She was awake, he knew. But she wouldn’t have dreamt of waking him until he came surfacing naturally. He could picture what had happened. Coming back late to her Salisbury house she had suddenly wanted company. His company. Impulsive Blanche wanting a change from the spirit world. Henry was no substitute for flesh and blood. Henry might know the mystery of life, tune in to the music of the spheres, but Henry wasn’t George. He, George, was the world, the warm, muddled up, never-know-where-you-will-be-tomorrow world. Personally if the next one wasn’t more or less a replica of this with a few improvements he wanted nothing of it. Just to wake up now, as he had often done in the past, and find that warm, bed-cosied cornucopia of delights beside him was worth a thousand years of sitting on a drifting cloud listening to hymns and the constipated music of harps.

  He reached out and touched her. Her hand closed in his and he heard her sigh. After a moment she released his hand and he let it roam over the familiar contours, and the rich delights of the hills and valleys which were his estate. One day he must get a bigger bed. He and Blanche were made for the wide rolling spaces. Big people, titanic lovers. Lovely, tell your Mum. The only thing to make it absolutely perfect would be ten thousand a year tax-free. As he slowly slipped up her nightdress, Blanche sighed again and her lips found his as he came to her.

  Swinging over the unkempt garden, quartering it for winter mice and voles, the silent white spectre of a barn owl banked gently close to the curtained window and heard the squeak of bed springs. Much later, coming back from a foray over the water meadow, the owl planed by the window and there was silence.

  Out of euphoria George said, “All right?”

  Lazily Blanche said, “You should patent it, love. Make you a fortune. Sometimes it’s all music, sometimes all colour—like tonight. A great fan-shaped flame, purple with pearly lights through it.”

  “Things didn’t go too well with Miss Rainbird?”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re here. Come to George for comfort. Always on offer, and special for you. Not even old Henry can match it.”

  “You leave Henry out of this.”

  “Gladly. Three’d be a crowd. What about her?”

  “She went through phase two almost copybook. She’ll phone me the day after tomorrow when she’s settled down and had another dream. Why didn’t you tell me about the way the brother went?”

  “What, old bottom-pincher?”

  “Yes.”

  “I did.” He moved a leg and rested it diagonally and comfortably across the broad acres of her thighs.

  “No. You said he died of heart failure.”

  “So he did.”

  “So he might, but he got it from falling down the hallway stairs. I could feel it like a great scream as I went by. Didn’t you know about that?”

  “Of course I did—and I told you. One of the gabby old girls said something about it. It was only a rumour. I must have told you.”

  “It doesn’t matter, but you didn’t. You should tell me everything, George. No matter how small. You didn’t tell me.”

  “Well, maybe I didn’t. Sometimes something slips.”

  “The family doctor must have hushed it up. The old boy was probably tight and took a tumble. No scandal like that allowed. That’s one of her big things, though she never mentions it. The Rainbird family. Pride and good name. She’s all right.” Through his body contact with her he felt her suddenly shiver.

  “What’s the matter, love?”

  “It was one of those sessions. I don’t know why Henry does it to me. He knows I don’t care for it much. I don’t like it when I don’t remember anything after.”

  George chuckled. “Well, Henry may not give you anything to remember after. But you can’t say that of me.” He slid his hand over and caressed her left breast. She lay placidly for a long time, taking the slow caress and then, as she felt him stir and move closer to her, she said, “You aren’t beginning again?” George nuzzled the side of her cheek and said, “Why not, love? This time it’ll be a pearly flame streaked with purple, and I hope Henry bites his fingernails in frustration.”

  * * * *

  Although Bush was an ambitious man, he was far from being an optimistic one. The hope of turning up by accident something which would help him in his work on the Trader business never occurred to him. Anything he was going to get would come from research into and the following up of known facts. But if he were not optimistic he could easily feel frustration. And frustration lived with him now. He had worked on his maps and his timings and he had to admit the deduction he had made was far from a firm one. In fact if it had been presented to him by a subordinate he would have ridiculed it scathingly.

  He sat now at his desk watching the lunchtime strollers in the park and the movement of the water fowl on the lake. He wanted no lunch himself. Frustration had killed his appetite, which was never very robust at the best of times.

  On the map of England before him was drawn in a rectangle. Its top left-hand corner lay at a point west of Cardiff in Wales and its top right-hand corner was at Woolwich, east of London. Perpendiculars dropping from these points passed on the west through Tiverton, on the east through Crowborough, and framed between them, on a base line running just south of the Isle of Wight, practically the whole of the South of England— with London included! He looked at it and wrinkled his face in disgust. Somewhere in the area probably, though he had little faith in the assumption, the two kidnapped Members of Parliament had been held. Somewhere in that area could be a country house on some sort of slope or hill, a house possibly built of limestone (which narrowed it without much comfort to areas like the Mendip and Cotswold hills and others— possibly. Limestone had been frequently used for building well outside limestone areas). Somewhere in the area was a house where the water was soft—but it need not be soft naturally. It could be in a hardwater area in a house equipped with a water softener. Somewhere in that area there was a house in which a feather had floated or been shoe-scuffed into a cellar. Knowing something of the fastidious nature of Trader the feather might belong either to some common bird like the domestic fowl or to a much more unusual bird. Or, for all he knew, it might have come out of a feather duster or mattress. Somewhere in the enormous haystack of the area he had outlined was a needle, and in an hour’s time he was due at a top-level conference at Scotland Yard where nobody from the department got a warm welcome—though strict co-operation would be given—to explain the position and to ask that right down to local constabulary level information should be requested . . . demanded . . . for any house which might fit the bill. His heart sank as he thought of the looks, the mouth-corner smiles, the little lift of eyes to heaven as he laid it all out. Somebody would say something about old ladies with parrots, pensioners with canaries and Royal Dukes with acres of lake stocked with ornamental wildfowl, ancestral homes in wild-life parks and pigeon fanciers in back streets. He’d look a fool. There was no escaping that. Anger turned in him at the thought. He was no fool but he was going to look one. He was up against a blank wall. He was tempted to pick up the telephone and call Grandison, who was in Paris at an Interpol conference, and put it to him that the meeting with Scotland Yard should be cancelled. But he knew what Grandison would say, divining the real reason for his request. “If it’s all you’ve got, then it’s all you can give them to work on. If it makes you look a fool, then it does. Only a real fool would do nothing.” And then in that easy voice, some sweetener, sensing all his frustration, like, “Great oaks from little acorns grow.”

  Through the window he watched two office girls walk by, mini-skirted, Amazon-legged in the biting March air, and behind them a youth in jeans and a fringed leather jacket, long hair hanging lank over his shoulders, and at the sight his anger rose unaccountably. A brazen, bloody useless lot. . . shameless and grotesque. And then into his mind came the macabre picture of the mask Trader had worn. Scotland Yard would fall over themselves about that. It was a popular selling line— and bloody Mr. Trader must have known that—which could be purchased at dozens of shops in London and dozens more all over the South of England.

  He got up and walked to the cabinet on the far side of the room and helped himself to a drink. He poured his usual measure and then, almost without knowing he had done so, doubled it.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  GEORGE ON HIS recent visit to Chilbolton canvassing for information about the native reading habits had turned up a little gold mine in human form. She was a Mrs. Gradidge who looked like Methuselah but was actually sixty-nine by her own account. She was a grey-haired, Punch-nosed, garrulous, shrewd number who took the Daily Mirror on weekdays, the News of the World on Sundays, and a weekly called Saturday Titbits. And titbits were the stuff of Mrs. Gradidge’s old age. Not a curtain was drawn closed in daytime, not a village girl a month overdue, not a tremor of scandal or gossip, or a breath of a feud or the whisper of someone behind with television or car instalments was ever missed by her, although she seldom stirred from her thatched cottage where she spent most of the day sitting in her patchwork-covered armchair behind a big bowl of artificial roses in her window. She was a dirty-minded, disgusting old woman and thrived cheerfully and vicariously on the lives of others. She took to George, snickering and working her loose mouth over badly fitting dentures, and told him that she had been a great one for the lads in her time, and opportunity was a fine thing and she could name a few in the village who now wouldn’t give her the time of day but had forgotten that there was a time when they couldn’t get her alone in a barn quick enough. George held down his nausea and played Prince Charming and duly claimed his reward.

  Her husband, long dead—and happily so, George imagined—had been a river-cum-gamekeeper at Reed Court with the Rainbirds. Mrs. Gradidge had worked there on and off as a kitchen maid and then as an occasional help. What she didn’t know, her husband did. In the war of the classes it was as natural for her to listen at a door, or to take a look at a letter lying on a desk, as it was for her husband to edge within earshot of his gentlemen at a shooting party al fresco lunch, or to stand in shabby coat-and-breeches camouflage in some spinney or woodland ride and watch human nature parallel the courting and love-making tactics and patterns of the animals, fish and birds he knew so well.

  From her George learned of Sholto’s ways with the maids, visitors and county matrons. Sholto hadn’t insisted on the droits de seigneur, but he was given them often. And he had drunk with a dedicated steadiness from half-past ten in the morning until he fell asleep at night. (George, burning toast in his kitchen as he thought back about Mrs. Gradidge, was damned certain that he had told Blanche about the old boy falling drunk downstairs. Hadn’t he? Well, he had certainly meant to. Gould have slipped it in the mass of stuff he had told her, anyway. God, what a stinking old witch Mrs. Gradidge was. He only hoped Blanche wouldn’t want him to do any more research that would send him back to her.)

  The richest vein to be mined had concerned Miss Rainbird’s younger sister, Harriet. From Mrs. Gradidge’s talk it hadn’t been difficult for George to piece the story together, filling in the gaps from his own fertile imagination.

  Both the sisters were good-looking, pretty even, but whereas Grace Rainbird had been petite and birdlike her sister had been a tall, rather ungainly woman who—contrasted with Grace’s poise—suffered from an almost pathological shyness and lack of self-confidence. By the time Harriet was in her early thirties (Mrs. Gradidge was fantastic with dates—she could remember days, dates and occasions for years back) it was generally assumed that neither sister would ever marry. Grace, who had a sharp, critical manner, put most men off and the ones she quite liked she guessed or convinced herself were after her money. Harriet’s shyness and lack of self-confidence were insurmountable barriers to any romance. On the few occasions that there was any sign of some determined man—money- or love-prompted—taking any notice of her, then Sholto, knowing and valuing the worth of two capable women to keep the house in order and willing to provide him with ample scope for his drinking and amours, promptly exerted his influence in a cold blast of disapproval to kill any relationship. Sholto was a selfish bully with a rough surface bonhomie.

  But three years before the Second World War Sholto was packed off to hospital with a kidney complaint which kept him there for three weeks. And during those weeks Mother Nature saw her opportunity and played one of her beldam tricks. Grace and Harriet went to a charity dance at a near-by army garrison free of the usual Sholto chaperonage. Grace had a mildly pleasant evening. Harriet was taken in to supper by a slightly tight young Irish tank officer, urged to drink more wine than was her custom, slowly found herself uninhibited and enjoying life, and was seduced in the back of the officer’s car while Grace was dancing a Paul Jones. Harriet kept her secret from Grace, riding high on the heady drug of a new and rare pleasure, and in the next three weeks met her beau in the woods by the river unknown to Grace, but not to old Gradidge who had a sixth sense for anything coupling within two hundred yards of him. The day before Sholto returned the officer was posted with his squadron to the Middle East. Harriet never heard from or saw him again. She said nothing to Grace, but when it was personally clear what was going to happen to her she told Sholto in private who, undoubtedly making sure that Grace was clear of the house, raised hell and promptly packed her off for a long visit to the home of reliable crony of his in Northumberland. Here, in due course, she had a child and mothered it for twenty-four hours and then it was taken from her, never to be seen by her again, nor was she to know where it had gone or with whom.

  It was to be many years before she told Grace her secret. By then the Irish officer had been fatally wounded in a tank engagement outside Tobruk.

  This was the story Mrs. Gradidge told—and which George had dutifully passed on to Blanche. Mrs. Gradidge took a great glee in pointing out that, while quite a few in the village knew perfectly well what had happened up at Reed Court and in Northumberland, neither Sholto nor Miss Grace Rainbird had any inkling that the skeleton in their family cupboard had long been walking abroad.

  And, Mrs. Gradidge hinted, there were other things that could be told if one had a mind to. Not that she would because she didn’t hold with gossip and scandalising. Sometimes, for instance, the two lovers had used the old fishing hut where Gradidge kept reeds for thatching—and they hadn’t been the first by a long street. George, who had had enough, escaped to the Abbot’s Mitre where he had three quick whiskies to take the bad taste from his mouth.

  Now, eating his burnt toast and marmalade and sipping at his coffee and thinking about Harriet and his dirt-digging for Blanche, he felt a strong distaste for the whole business. Something had gone wrong with his stars. Surely this kind of work and existence had been meant for someone else? Someone who could chuckle and snigger with the Mrs. Gradidges of the world and enjoy it. Some damn fool up above had got the card index all mixed up and he’d been mistakenly assigned to this portion here below. If he had had to have an odd sort of life he’d have liked something more romantic and manly. . . . He wouldn’t have minded the Irish tank officer’s part, all except the being killed bit, or being a secret agent, suave, and with a cultivated taste for Continental beauties and collecting old porcelain and netsukes, whatever they were. He saw himself rescuing heroines in distress to be suitably rewarded later; succouring the poor and the weak, fighting tyranny, and confounding villainy.

  He looked down to where Albert lay on the kitchen mat and said sharply, “What the hell are you doing?”

  Albert was chewing up the morning Daily Mail which he had brought in.

  George rescued it and as he shook it limply and damply into shape, he made a decision. He’d got to reorganise his life. He had talent, looks, and intelligence, and integrity of a kind. To hell with all this pussyfooting around. People like Mrs. Gradidge made him sick. And in a small way people like Blanche made him uneasy. He didn’t know whether she was all fake or half fake or just completely and quietly off her nut about this psychic bit. Anyway, he didn’t—not at this moment certainly—go for fooling old ladies and shaking them down for a cheque towards any arse-ended idea like building a Temple of Astrodel. Who did Blanche think she was, the daughter of Solomon? And that stinking Henry. Where had she dreamt up that one? Probably read about him in the Child’s Book of British Railways or something. No—he’d done enough for her. Friends, yes, they could remain, good friends, but he wasn’t having any more of this kind of lark. He’d drive into Salisbury, have a quiet shufti round the Cathedral and think about a new life. What better place? Then lunch at the Red Lion and afterwards he’d go and see Blanche and tell her. Maybe he could persuade her to go for the new life bit . . . maybe.

  He looked down at Albert and said, “Things are going to be bloody different around here from now on.” Albert raised a grizzled eye-brow and wagged his tail.

  * * * *

  While George was having his breakfast and planning a reorganisation of his life, Miss Rainbird was having her breakfast, facing it with a listless appetite and feeling stiff and unrefreshed from a very disturbed night. Harriet had come to her again in her dreams and had been very persistent. It was curious—sometimes she came as a young woman, sometimes as an old woman. Between the two Miss Rainbird became very confused in her sleep. But there was no confusing what Harriet wanted. “Find my boy. Find my boy and take him into the family. He’s a Rainbird!” Often when she said, “He’s a Rainbird!” she got a weird echoing quality in her voice.

  It had been a very bad night with Harriet whining and echoing around like a bad actress in a cheap drama. Find my boy, indeed! Bring him back to Reed Court, for it all to be his when she died . . . Ten to one if she could find him he’d turn out to be something quite unacceptable. And to bring him back would mean that the whole history would be made public in the village and district. Not that she was fool enough to think that there weren’t some people around who had an idea of what had happened. What a fool Harriet had been. Not for falling in love, if that’s what it was, rather than a physical passion. But for acting like some stupid village girl. Using the fishing hut, did anyone ever hear of such indiscretion? And why hadn’t she made sure that . . . well, any half decent man would have taken precautions. What would the son of this man be like? A bad hat without doubt. Now, now . . . that wasn’t fair. And at least, if he could be found, one didn’t have to declare oneself. He could be discreetly looked over and if he were entirely out of the question then one could quietly forget the whole affair. One could make some anonymous gift perhaps, do something that would keep Harriet quiet and satisfied.