“I’ll give her that message with pleasure,” said George gravely.
He didn’t tell him that Kitty’s car had yielded two faint, minute smears of blood from the edge of the driving- seat, obviously brushed there from the skirt of her dress, or that the fine scratches on the near-side front wing had already been preoccupying their minds for several hours. It seemed ungenerous to keep these things back from him, when he was making so notable a contribution, but there was no choice about it. They’d agreed on their terms of truce; Dominic wasn’t expecting concessions.
George went to see Kitty that afternoon. Raymond Shelley was just leaving her, his face worn and wretched, his bulging briefcase hugged to him defensively as he passed George in the corridor, as though he had Kitty’s life locked in it. It wasn’t easy for them even to talk to each other now, they had become representative of the two sides, and communication was an effort.
“You realise, of course,” said Shelley, “that her defence will be an absolute denial of the charge. Any competent doctor will be able to show that no woman could have been responsible for the attack, on physical grounds alone.”
George said nothing to that. He had tentatively raised the same point, and Duckett had given him a derisive glare, and said: “Are you kidding? What, with a sitting target all laid out for her against a brand-new floor about as hard as ebony? A fairly lusty ten-year-old could have done it.”
“I can’t realise it, even yet,” burst out Shelley, shaking his head helplessly. “Kitty! I’ve known her all her life, she couldn’t wilfully hurt even an insect. It just can’t be true, Felse, it simply can’t. I can’t forgive myself for leaving her alone that night. If I’d realised he had any such thing in his mind I could have stopped it.”
Could he, wondered George, looking after him with sympathy as he flung nervously away. How much influence had he with Armiger, if it came to the point? What was it Leslie had called him?, a cover man. He was the one who was used; he was in his master’s secrets only as far as Armiger chose to admit him for his own ends. No, Shelley would never have been effective in diverting the bull’s rush, but if he’d tried he might have made one more casualty.
Kitty had survived the first anguish, the agonised tears of helplessness and loneliness and shame that had scarified his heart yesterday. Dominic, thank God, knew nothing about that half-hour of collapse, and never would know. Whatever his imagination inflicted upon him, it would not be the reality George had seen and suffered. The first thing to-day’s Kitty did was to apologise for it, simply and directly, without embarrassment. It was past, it wouldn’t happen again.
“I’m sorry I gave you such a bad time. I hadn’t expected it myself, I was shocked. It just shows, you never know how you may react in a crisis. And I always thought I had an equable temperament.”
George said: “My son sent you his regards, and said I was to tell you that he’s doing what he can for you.”
She lifted her head and smiled at him, with a smile which he knew belonged by rights to Dominic. She looked pale and drained, but all her distress had done to her looks was to make her eyes look larger than ever, and the vulnerable curves of her mouth more plaintive and tender. She had on the same neutral-tinted sweater and skirt he had seen her in at her flat, and a book was turned down beside her; she looked like an over-earnest student surprised during the last week before a vital examination.
“Please thank him for me. He’s almost the only one who believes me when I say I didn’t do it. Out of the mouths of babes, , , ” She shut her hands suddenly on the air as if to snatch back the unforgivable indiscretion. “No, don’t tell him I said that. It isn’t even true, and it would hurt him. Just thank him for me, and give him my love.” At that she had taken a careful second look before she ever let her lips shape the single significant syllable, but she didn’t take it back. The soft bow of her mouth folded firmly, and let it stand.
“We found the place where you pulled the car into the hedge when you ran out of petrol,” said George in the same conversational tone. “Why didn’t you tell us about that? You might have known we were sure to find it.”
“He found it,” said Kitty, and smiled again to herself, and that smile, too, was for Dominic. “What a boy!” she said. “Fancy remembering that! But even he could be wrong, you know. Now I’m not talking about that any more, it isn’t a subject I like, and you can’t make me. Come to think of it, there’s absolutely nothing you people can do to me now. Except, perhaps, stop visiting me. I’d much rather see you than nobody. Poor old Ray looks so desperately sad he breaks my heart. And who else is likely to come near me?”
“You have hordes of friends, and you know it,” said George, consenting to follow her disconcerting leaps.
“I had. The most popular deb. of her year, that was Kitty. Do you know how many eligible young men have wanted to marry me, since they knew Leslie was out of the market? Seven actually got as far as asking, and about five more were hovering pretty near the brink. And do you know how many have been to try and see me to-day, to show how much they loved me? One. And that was Leslie, the one who never pretended to.” She laughed, and because Leslie had come it was a genuine, beautiful, even joyful laugh. Only then did George understand. Kitty had got something out of her disaster, after all.
“Did they let him in?”
“Oh, yes, he had a certain claim, you see, my victim’s son, and brought up almost like a brother to me. He was sweet,” said Kitty, looking down into her cupped hands and smiling with a brooding tenderness for which any man would have performed prodigies of love and loyalty. “And terribly upset.” She didn’t care who observed her personal sorrow or her personal rapture here; life had become so precarious as to be simple, there was no time for dissembling or being ashamed. “I believe he even feels responsible for me, simply because it was his father who got killed, as though he could help it. He feels almost as if it was he who got me into it. But I got myself into it, nobody else. You won’t mistake that for a confession, will you? It isn’t.”
“And kept somebody else out of it,” said George.
She turned her head and looked at him, not so abruptly that he could claim he had got a real reaction out of her, but at least so positively that he knew she was paying attention for once.
“The person you telephoned to come and help you out of your mess,” said George. “We know you did, you left a bit of your scarf caught in the door of the telephone box at Wood’s End. Did you think we shouldn’t get wise to that call? You may as well tell us all about that interlude, you know, it’s only a matter of time.”
“I’m in no hurry,” said Kitty, smiling, even teasing him, though the sadness that was in everything she did or said was in this perversity too.
“Who was it, Kitty? Better give us the name than have us give it to you.”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about. Look, I’ve thought of something,” she said. “If I’m convicted, I can’t inherit from my victim, can I? So what happens to the money? I never thought to ask poor old Ray, I was so
