lost hour. She just ran out of petrol! She was always doing it; she’d told him so herself.
The next question was: Where did it happen? He thought that over and decided that it must have been somewhere close to The Jolly Barmaid and well away from Comerbourne. If she had been near the town when she ran dry she would simply have stopped a car on the main road and begged the driver either to let her have some juice or to call in at her garage and leave a message; to be immobilised on the main road near Comerbourne at around eleven o’clock would be innocent enough, just as good as being home by ten past eleven, and there wouldn’t have been any missing hour, or any need for lies. But Kitty had lied, it was one of the main points against her. No, somewhere along here, somewhere unpleasantly close to the inn, she found herself stranded. And here she didn’t want to stop a car and ask for help, she didn’t want to have her garage man come out with petrol for her; she didn’t want to call attention to her presence in any way, or let anyone know that she had been here.
Dominic was imagining her state of mind with so much passion that his own heart-beats quickened and his temples began to throb with panic. Every minute that passed must have driven her a little nearer to hysteria. Supposing Armiger was desperately hurt, and she’d run away and left him? Supposing, even, that he should die? Maybe she’d thought of going back to him, but she simply couldn’t face it. She hadn’t meant to do anything so dreadful, but it had happened and she was to blame. In that state of mind she would have only one instinctive idea, and that would be to hide the fact that she had ever been near the place after she left by the main road at a quarter past ten.
Supposing it happened somewhere here, he thought, walking slowly along the left-hand side of the old road, she’d be in a spot about getting the car as far as possible off the fairway, because it’s rather narrow and winding. If I keep my eyes open I may be able to spot the place, because she’d have to try and run it almost into the hedge, and I wonder if maybe her paint may not show some scratches, too?
He was almost within sight of the Wood’s End cottages when he found one place at least where some vehicle had certainly been run as far as possible on to the bumpy grass verge, its near-side wheel-marks hugging the base of the hedge. There was no mistaking it; the crushing of the thick growth on the ground, the breaking of the overgrown shoots of the hedge, these were slight signs already partially erased by showers and winds and the passing of time, but the breakages were there to be seen if you looked for them, and the wheel-track was still evident. It might be Kitty, it might not, there was no way of knowing unless she chose to tell them.
However, supposing for the sake of the theory that this was where she ran dry, what would she do next? She would have to call on someone for help, and the obvious thing to do was to go to the telephone box at Wood’s End, and from there ring up some private person, someone she could trust absolutely. And the someone came in response to her appeal, and brought her petrol enough to get her home. But what had determined Kitty’s silence was surely the fact that this simple act had now laid her benefactor open to a charge as an accessory after the fact in a murder case. If they convicted her they could charge her helper. Kitty wouldn’t allow that; no word of hers was ever going to involve the friend who had come to her rescue. That was the kind of girl she was.
This long communion with himself had brought Dominic to the telephone box. He stood and looked at it for a moment, and then, without any clear idea of what he hoped to find within, pulled open the door and looked round the dusty interior. Absolutely impersonal, a piece of the mundane machinery of modern living, with the usual graffiti. He was letting the door swing to when he caught an incongruous gleam of gold, and pulled it hastily open again. Clinging in the hinge of the door, shadowy as cobweb but for a few torn gilt threads, a scrap of gauze hung like a crushed butterfly.
He put out a hand to pull it loose, and then checked himself in the act, and did no more than smooth out the delicate scrap tenderly with his fingertips until he could distinguish the minute embroidered flowers of gold on the almost impalpable silk. A corner of an Indian scarf, shot dark blue and red, embroidered with gold thread; the scarf Kitty had worn on the night of Armiger’s death. The one detail for which the police had no satisfactory explanation, the bit that didn’t fit in; but for Dominic it fitted in miraculously.
He mustn’t move it; he must let his father see it just as it was. He shut himself into the box and dialled with a hand trembling with excitement.
“This is Dominic Felse here. Can I speak to my father, please? I know, but this is important, it’s something to do with the case.”
George was up to his neck in paper work, and impatient of interruptions, but too sore from his recent mistakes to take any new risks where Dominic was concerned. He listened without any real expectations, and heard, incredulously: “I’m at the telephone box at Wood’s End, Dad. I’ve found the corner you said was torn from Kitty’s scarf.”
“You’ve what?
Dominic repeated his statement patiently. “It’s caught on a rough place in the hinge of the door, she must have pulled it clear in a hurry and torn the corner clean off. I know, I haven’t moved it. I’m keeping an eye on it until you come.”
“How on earth did you come to walk straight to it?” asked George, humanly aggrieved.
“I used me natural genius. Come along and I’ll tell you.” He couldn’t help the cocky note, but he wasn’t really feeling elated; there was still too far to go, and too much at stake. He debated within himself, while he waited, how much he ought to tell his father, how much he was committed to telling. All that was really evidence was that scrap of silk, but it tended to consolidate his theories into something like facts, and perhaps he ought to confide everything. His accidental acquaintance with Kitty’s idiosyncrasies in connection with cars, for instance, was evidence, too, and so was the shaved place along the hedge. In the end he told George the whole process of thought which had brought him to the telephone box, and was listened to with flattering attention. He added his initials to George’s on the envelope in which George enclosed the shred of gauze, though he had a faint suspicion that that was a sop to his self-love.
“It all makes remarkable sense, as far as it goes,” agreed George, inspecting the hedge. “We can check the car and see if it shows any traces. This chap’s wings were well into the strong growth.”
“I suppose,” said Dominic, very carefully and quietly, “it wouldn’t be possible for me to see Kitty, would it?”
“I’m afraid not, Dom. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t consider it. You’d need a solid reason like being her legal adviser or a member of her family to get in to her, yet, at any rate.”
“Yes, I see. I didn’t think I could, really. But you could see her, couldn’t you? You could ask her all my questions for me, if you would, like where she ran out of petrol, and whom she telephoned. I don’t think she’ll tell you, of course, but she won’t be expecting you to know anything about it, and she may give something away without meaning to. She isn’t very good at telling lies, really,” said Dominic, suppressing the slight constriction in his throat. “She forgets and comes out with a bit of the truth, without thinking. Only if she’s lying for somebody else she’ll be twice as careful.” He scrubbed his toes along the deep grooves the wheels had left in the soft grass under the hedge, and scowled down at his feet. “I suppose you couldn’t give her a message from me, could you? Oh, nothing unconstitutional, I only meant just to give her my regards, and maybe tell her I’m doing what I can for her.”
