Fallen Into the Pit

remember himself?”

“Not exactly. He thinks he left about half-past nine, maybe a little earlier.”

“One of the others might remember properly,” she said, with a sudden warming smile. “Baxter might, after having his dog nipped for its cheek. Only I’m not sure he wasn’t away first himself. I never thought it would be so difficult to answer these questions, but it is. I didn’t have any special reason to take note, you see.”

“Of course not! Don’t strain your memory, or you’ll begin to imagine things and mix days up altogether. If anything flashes back of itself, well and good, but don’t chivvy it. One of the others may have had things fixed in his mind by some little incident.” He met her eyes squarely, and asked without warning: “What about Wedderbum and Blunden? Any clear recollection of their comings and goings?”

As if he needed to ask! Everyone knew that she had no peace from them, that she was forced to take notice of them because they took fierce notice of her, of every word she shed in their direction, and every glance, skirmishing over them like rival center-forwards in a hockey bully. Her pink-and-white face flamed, but she smiled, not too grudgingly, sensing first only his delicate little poke at her own self-esteem. Only then did the second stab reach her. Chad and Charles, they came into it, too. He saw her smile ebb, and her breath halt for an instant as it went home. Nobody is safe! Take care how you speak of one friend to another friend from now on. Take care particularly of every word you say to George Felse. After all, he is the police. And virtually, you’ve got everybody’s life in your hands. Charles’s life among the rest! Or was it Chad’s she thought of first? Comerford would have said Charles’s, but there was no way of being sure until she was sure herself.

George felt her withdraw herself, not stealthily, only delicately, in a shocked quietness, as decisively as if she had walked backwards from him out of the room, to hold him in her eye every step of the way. Her look, which had been as limpid as crystal, grew opaque and shadowy as a thicket of bracken in its covert brownness. Her voice quietened by a distinct degree, answering discreetly: “Well, they were both here, but I didn’t notice exactly when they came in, I was rather busy. Only when they began to fight, as usual, I couldn’t very well help noticing, could I?”

“Literally fight?” asked George, with a smile he was far from feeling.

“No, of course not, it was only the same as it always is.” Her brow darkened, clouding over at their idiocies. “But they were far too busy with each other to be wasting any time thinking of knocking anyone else on the head,” she added firmly.

“They were there when the dogs began to scrap?” asked George again, doggedly ignoring his dismissal from individual personality.

“Yes, I’m sure of that. Charles was nearest, and he caught hold of the collie by the tail to make him break. They were both here before nine.”

“And did they leave together?”

She said rather grudgingly: “No. They—behaved a little worse than most nights—at least, Chad did. Good Lord, wouldn’t you think after all he’s been through he’d have some sense of proportion? Wouldn’t you, honestly? And yet, just because Charles asked me to go to the carnival dance at Comerbourne with him, and I said I would— Why shouldn’t I go to a dance, if I’m asked?” she demanded of George, forgetting for the moment how much of a policeman he had become, and how little of a friend and neighbor. “Oh, not a word about the actual issue, of course, he just quarreled with Charles and with me and with the whole snug about everything else you can think of. Half of it was in Latin, or something; anyhow, I didn’t even know what he was calling us. He got rather tight, and went off in the sulks, before ten o’clock. I can’t be exact about the time, I didn’t look at the clock, but it seems it must have been nearly half an hour before closing-time when he went.”

“They don’t give you much peace between them, do they?” said George, greatly daring.

Io looked at him for a struggling moment between indignation and laughter, and then collapsed without warning into an amused despair somewhere between the two. “Sometimes I’d like to knock their two silly heads together, and see if I could knock any sense into either of ’em. I don’t want to be bothered with them, I’ve something better to do with my time; but I’d like them both, if only they’d let me. When they act like squabbling children, it isn’t so easy.”

Even in her confidences, now, there was a note of constraint, as if she watched him covertly to see how he took every word. Not only the wicked, apparently, flee when no man pursueth, for reach as he would, he could lay no hand on Io.

“Was he very drunk when he went off? That’s most unusual for him, isn’t it?”

“Well, it’s hard to describe. He was more drunk than I’ve ever seen him, and he’d been drinking in a more businesslike way than usual, but he was perfectly capable. Walked straight as an arrow. It seemed to make him more and more of a schoolmaster, if you know what I mean. By the time he went I couldn’t understand a word he was saying, it was so high-flown.”

“I take it he was heading straight for home?”

“Oh, you must ask him that, I don’t know.” She brightened at having reached something she honestly did not know, and stretched her small, shapely feet out before her with satisfaction. The murmurs from the bar, coming in only very softly, sounded like bees in lime flowers, drowsy and eased at the end of the day.

“I will. And what about Charles? He stayed till ten?” Why shouldn’t he, reflected George, when he had got rid of his rival for once, and scored a minor triumph with the girl? He wouldn’t go home until closing time that night, of all nights.

“Oh, he was the last out of the snug. He wanted to hang around and talk, even at that hour, but I was tired, and fed up with the pair of them.” She made a wry face which somehow only accentuated the softness and sweetness of her mouth, the brown, harassed gentleness of her eyes. “I didn’t behave so well myself. And he went home. But he was quite pleased with himself, was Charles. And Chad—well, I don’t honestly think either of them had any time to think about anyone but himself that night.”

“Probably not,” agreed George, cocking an ear toward the bar, where the clock was just striking, a few minutes ahead of its time. “Is Chad there tonight? I need to talk to him; perhaps I could catch him now.”

Io let him go, watched him go with a grieved, withdrawn face. Chad was certainly there among the regulars stirring in the snug, they had both heard his voice lifted in good-nights just after the clock struck; and certainly he would go home to his rather rigidly retired cottage up the hill, where his mother kept house for him in a chilly, indifferent gentility, by the lane and the fields, on which quiet road one could talk to him very earnestly, and not be observed or interrupted. And of course she was sure that Chad could fill in the details of his better-forgotten