If she hadn’t said that, if she hadn’t suddenly touched his hot cheek so lightly and fleetingly with her fingertips, he might have been able to protest yet once again, perhaps even to persuade her. But her touch snatched the breath from his throat and the articulation from his tongue, and he couldn’t say a word, he had to stand and watch, suffocating, mute and paralysed, as she turned to leave him; and when she looked back just once to say quickly: “Don’t worry, I won’t say a word about you,” he almost burst into tears of frustration and rage because he lacked the power to shout at her that it wasn’t about himself he was worrying, that he didn’t care about himself, that only she mattered, and she was making a terrible mistake, that he couldn’t bear it, that he loved her.
She was gone. The darkening doorway swallowed her, and it was in any case too late. He sat down again, huddled in the far corner of the seat, and wrestled with himself painfully until his mind cleared again, and presented to him the most appalling implication of the whole incident, producing it with cruel aplomb, like a magician palming an ace out of the pack. He had robbed her even of the defence of ignorance! He, and no one else. If she’d gone rushing in there as she’d wanted to, and poured out her story as she had to him, they’d have seen the glaring hole in it at once, just as surely as he had. They’d have questioned her about the weapon, about the injuries, and she wouldn’t have known what they were talking about, and her manner and her bewilderment would have rung true past any mistaking. And worse, she’d never tell them about his treachery, and explain how she got her information, because that would get him into trouble. One slip to warn them that she knew how that death had come about, and they’d be absolutely sure she was responsible for it. The details had never been published, only a handful of people knew them, and one other, the murderer. He’d as good as convicted her.
His manhood, so recently and intoxicatingly achieved, was crumpling badly, slipping out of his hold. He ought to get up and march in there after her and tell them honestly about his lapse, but he hadn’t the courage, the very thought of it made him feel sick. It wasn’t just for himself he was such a coward, it was his father’s job, his whole career. C.I.D. officers ought not to discuss their cases in front of their families. They’d been the exceptional family, proud of their solidarity, disdaining to doubt their absolute mutual loyalty, over-riding conventional restrictions because they were so sure of one another. All this had made perfect sense while that solidarity remained unbreached, but now he’d broken it, and how did it look now? His father was compromised. He would have to own up, it was the only way he could even try to repair the harm he’d done to Kitty; but he’d have to do it in private, to his father alone. Maybe there’d be some grain of evidence that would extricate Kitty, and make it unnecessary for confession to go any farther. Supposing George felt he had to resign, supposing, ,
He longed for George to come and take him home, so that he could get the first awful plunge over. But when at last a step rang on the flags of the hallway and he jerked round in hope and dread to see who emerged, it was only Leslie Armiger, stepping lightly, buoyant with relief. He walked like a new man, for the old gloves he’d discarded after painting the garden shed where he kept his materials had yielded a great many interesting substances, creosote, bituminous dressing, several kinds of paint and lacquer, but not a trace of blood. As soon as he’d seen them he’d laughed with relief; he could have kicked himself for the imaginative agonies of anticipation he’d inflicted on himself, all on account of these ancient and blameless relics. His position now was actually neither better nor worse than it had been before this tea-cup storm blew up, but there was no doubt that the recoil had raised his credit all round. Especially with himself; this feeling of liberation was more than worth the scare.
Detective-Sergeant Felse had been called away from the interrogation to interview someone in his own room, but Leslie didn’t know who it was, or whether the caller had anything to do with his father’s death. He didn’t know, and he didn’t care. He was on his way home to Jean, still free and almost vindicated, and never again would he scare as easily as that.
It was ten minutes more before George came out to speak to his son, and then it was only to say tersely that after all he wouldn’t be able to leave for some time yet, possibly several hours, and Dom had better get on home by bus. He wasn’t going to have an opportunity to unburden himself here, that was obvious; his father was gone again almost before he could open his stiff lips to get out a word.
Miserably he took his dismissal and went home; there was nothing else to be done. He countered Bunty’s queries with monosyllables, sat wretchedly over his tea without appetite, and refuged in his corner with textbooks he couldn’t even see for the anxiety that hung over his eyes as palpable as fog. Bunty suspected a cold coming on, but he repelled her attempts to take his temperature so ill-humouredly that she revised her diagnosis. Something on his mind, she reflected with certainty, and it isn’t me he wants, so it must be his father. Now what, I wonder, have those two been doing to each other?
It was twenty to ten before George came home. He looked tired and frayed and in no mood to be approached, but there was no help for it. Bunty fed him and allowed him to be quiet, though she knew by old signs that there was something on his mind, too, that would have to come out before long. It was without prompting that he leaned back wearily at last, and said in a voice entirely devoid of any pleasure or satisfaction: “Well, it’s all over bar the shouting. We’ve just made an arrest in the Armiger case. We’ve charged Kitty Morris.”
Bunty’s exclamation was drowned by the shriek of Dominic’s chair. He was on his feet, trembling.
“No!” he said faintly, and then, with the flat quietness of desperation: “Please, Dad, I’ve got to talk to you. It’s about that. It’s important.” He looked imploringly at his mother, and his lips were quivering. “Mummy, do you mind awfully, , , “
“That’s all right, darling,” said Bunty, loading her tray methodically as though nothing out of the way was happening. “I’m going to wash up. You go ahead.”
She made things sound so normal and calm, as she almost always did, that he longed to ask her to stay, but it couldn’t be done that way, he had to have it out with George. She cleared the table, flicked Dominic’s ear very lightly with the folded tablecloth as she went to put it away, and bore off the tray into the kitchen, closing the door firmly after her. They were left looking rather helplessly at each other, neither of them any longer able to doubt that this was a family crisis of the first magnitude. George flinched from it as much as Dominic did; he was tired and out of temper, and he knew it, and this luckless child was inviting trouble even their combined goodwill might not be able to avert.
What was the use of thinking how best to do it, when all that mattered was that it should be done?
“You know I was outside there this evening when Kitty Norris came to ask for you,” said Dominic in the drained tones of despair. “I talked to her before you did. She told me all that tale about pushing Armiger down the stairs because he, he insulted her. But she told me she killed him. She didn’t! You’ve got to believe me. All she did was go away and leave him there stunned. She said, , , “
“I don’t know why it should be necessary for us to discuss it at all,” said George, laboriously patient with him but desperately unwilling to go on hammering at an affair of which he’d already had about all he could take, “but if I’m supposed to humour you, I will. If she went away and left him there stunned, how did she know it was the champagne magnum that battered his head in? If she wasn’t the one who killed him, if she was gone from the scene and somebody else came in and finished him off, how did she know how it was done? All that was ever made public was that he died of head injuries. So you tell me how she knew, how she could know and still be innocent?”
So they had tricked it out of her, questioned and cross-questioned and slipped in catch remarks until she gave herself away. Dominic hated them all, even his father, but not so much as he hated himself for making such an appalling miscalculation. He should have known she’d still insist on going through with her confession, because
