“Oh, no!” said Kitty in a gasping sigh that seemed to contain disappointment and consternation and rage inextricably mingled, and something else, too, a kind of desperation for which no effort of his imagination could account. “Oh, God, no! I hoped he’d never really done what he threatened, or if he had done it I hoped he’d taken it back. I mean about Leslie! He always swore he hadn’t and wouldn’t, but then even if he had he wouldn’t have been able to admit it, you see. And now, Oh, damn him!” she said helplessly. “Why? There was no possible reason, the thing never arose. He knew I didn’t need it, he knew I shouldn’t want it. Why?”
“He had to leave it to someone,” said George reasonably, “and he had a free choice what he did with his own, like everyone else. There’s no need for you to feel responsible for someone else’s deprivation, you know, it was none of your doing.”
“No,” she said dully, and let the monosyllable hang on the air as though she had meant to add something, and then could find no suitable words for what she wanted to say. She got up again resignedly to see him out, punctilious in accompanying him to the door, but all the time with that lost look in her eyes. When the door had closed between them he made three purposeful paces away from it towards the stairs, and two long, silent ones back again. She hadn’t moved from the other side of the door, she was leaning against the wall there, trying to think, trying to get hold of herself. He heard her say aloud, helplessly: “Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God!” in childish reproach, as though she was appealing to an unreasonable deity to see her point of view.
What had he done to her? What was it he’d done? Granted she didn’t want the money, granted she thought it ought to have gone to Leslie, she needn’t have received the news as though it embodied some peculiarly insidious attack upon her. He couldn’t say he hadn’t provoked any interesting reasons, the trouble was he didn’t know how to make sense of them now he’d got them.
He went down the carpeted stairs displeased with himself, almost ashamed, not even trying to make the odd pieces of jigsaw puzzle fit together, since they were so few and so random that no two of them touched as yet; and there, leaning negligently on the Morris, when he reached it, was Dominic.
He was a little out of breath, having run all the way to the car while George was coming down the last flight of stairs; but George was too preoccupied with other things to notice that. The bright inquisitive smile looked all right, the “Hallo, Dad!” sounded all right, and George didn’t look closely.
“Hallo!” he said. “What are you doing here?”
It was the third time Dominic had skipped his school lunch and made do with a snack in the town, in order to have time to walk slowly up and down Church Lane in the hope of catching a glimpse of Kitty. The telephone directory had supplied her address, once she herself had told him her name. He hadn’t yet quite recovered from the shock of strolling past the open door of the block and seeing the unmistakable shape of his father slowly descending the last turn of the stairs; and if it hadn’t been for the sudden inspiration the sight of the car had given him, he would have been running still.
“I’ve been on an errand for Chuck,” he said, mastering his breathing with care. Chuck was the least offensive of the several names by which his house-master was known to the upper school.
“Here?” said George, divining an improbability even where he had no reason to feel suspicious.
“To the rector,” said Dominic firmly, jerking his head towards the corner of the churchyard wall. Blessedly the rector was a governor of the school and chaplain to its cadet corps. “I saw the car and hung around on the offchance. As it’s getting round to half past twelve I thought with a lot of luck you might buy me a lunch.”
On reflection George thought he might. Beer barons may die, but the rest of the world still has to eat. “Get in,” he said resignedly, and took his offspring to a restaurant not far from the school, so that there should be no risk of his being late in the afternoon. “What about Chuck? Can the answer wait?”
“No answer,” said Dominic. “That’s all right.” The odd thing was that he didn’t feel as if he was lying at all; it was quite simply unthinkable to let the truth be seen or known, or even guessed at, though there was nothing guilty or shameful about it. Privacy as an absolute need was new to him. Ever since starting school at five years old he’d lied occasionally in order to keep something exclusively for himself, like most children, but without ever reasoning about what he was doing, and only very rarely, because his parents, and particularly his mother, had always made it easy for him to confide in them without feeling outraged. This was something different, something so urgent and vital that he would have died rather than have it uncovered. And yet he had to do things which would expose him to the risk of discovery; he had to, because what was his father doing there in the block of flats where Kitty lived? What was he doing there, the morning after old Armiger was killed, the morning after Kitty’d been with him at The Jolly Barmaid? “Your girl-friend was there, , , ” And now this visit. They’d have to see everyone who’d been there, of course, but why Kitty, so soon?
“You’re on this murder case, aren’t you?” he said, trying to strike the right note of excited curiosity. “Mummy told me this morning old Armiger was dead. What a turn up! I never said anything to the fellows, naturally, but it leaked in around break, with the milk. It’s all over the town now, they’ve had half a dozen people third-degreed by this time, and one or two arrested.”
“They would,” said George tranquilly. “The number of people who can do this job better than I can, it’s a wonder I ever hold it down at all. Who’s the favourite?”
A sprat to catch a mackerel was fair enough. Dominic trailed his bait and hoped for a rise. “That chap Clayton. I bet you didn’t know he was under notice, did you?”
“The devil he is!” said George, wondering if Grocott had collected this bit of information yet, wondering, too, from which school theorist the item of news had come.
“Then you didn’t know! Old Armiger’s gardener’s son is in our form. There was a blazing row three days ago over hours, Clayton pitched right in and said he wouldn’t stand for being shoved around all hours of the day and night, and Armiger threw it up at him that he’d done time for larceny once and once for receiving a stolen car, and he was bloody lucky to have a job at all, , , “
“Language!” said George mechanically, drawing in to the kerb.
“Sorry; quoting. And then he fired him. Did you know he had a record?”
“Yes, we knew. A record ten years old. Not enough to hang him.”
“It isn’t capital murder,” said Dominic.
“I hope you’re not going to turn into a lawyer in the home,” said George. “I was using a figure of speech.”
He locked the car, and ushered his son before him into the dining-room of The Flying Horse. They found a table in a corner, and settled purposefully over the menu. Bad timing, thought Dominic, vexed. I shall have to come right out and ask.
