There was no doubt about it, some intense agitation was shaking him, and if he received the slightest encouragement he would let go the tight hold he had on himself and pour out whatever was on his mind. She was used to receiving and respecting the confidences of boys, some of them a great deal tougher propositions than this well-brought-up child. She cast a glance at the clock. Charlcote was looking significantly at it too. His time was his time, he had no intention of seeing anything pathetic in this nuisance of a boy, and he had been careful to block his ears against every word of this unnecessary conversation.
“Will I do?” she asked gently, and catching the eloquent roll of Charlcote’s eyes heavenward in mute but profane appeal, suppressed a grim smile. “If I can help you, you’re welcome to come in and talk to me.”
The sharp jingle of the keys was like an expletive. “It’s all right, Charlcote,” she said, relenting. “You can just leave the outside door and go. I’ll lock up when we come out, you needn’t wait.”
The old man had his coat buttoned and his cap in his hand before he could finish saying smugly: “It’s my duty to lock up in person, miss, but of course if you care to give orders to the contrary, , , “
She wanted to say: “Get out, you silly old fool, before I call your bluff,” but she didn’t; he had ways of manipulating the heating system when he was aggrieved, or mismanaging the tea round, it was never worth while taking him on in a long-term engagement. “Consider it an order by all means,” she said briskly, “and run off home to Mrs. Charlcote at once. I’ll make sure we leave everything in order.” And she took Dominic firmly by the arm and marched him towards the stairs. “Now, come along up to my room, we may as well be comfortable.”
“May I really? You don’t mind?” He let himself be led away gratefully; she felt him trembling a little with relief and hope, though the trouble didn’t leave his face. It was something that couldn’t be so easily removed, but at least it could be investigated and possibly shared. She brought him to her own office and put him into the visitor’s chair, and pulled up a straight chair to the same side of the desk with him, where she could watch his face and he wouldn’t be able to evade her eyes. Not that he seemed to want to; he looked back at her earnestly and unhappily, and when she helped herself to a cigarette to give him time to assemble himself he leaped to take the matches from the stand and light it for her. Very mannish; except that his fingers were shaking so that she had to steady his hand with her own, and if the touch had been just a shadeless impersonal she thought he would have burst into tears there and then.
“Sit down, child,” she said firmly, “and tell me what’s the matter. What is all this about? What is it you want with Mr. Shelley?”
“Well, you see, he’s Miss Norris’s solicitor, and I thought the best thing I could do was come to him. Something’s happened,” said Dominic, the words beginning to tumble over one another on his tongue, “something awful. I’ve just got to tell somebody, I don’t know what to do. They’ve been looking everywhere, did you know?, for the gloves. The police, I mean. They’ve been looking for them ever since it happened. And now, , , “
“Gloves?” said Miss Hamilton blankly. “What gloves?”
“The murderer’s gloves. They say whoever killed Mr. Armiger was wearing gloves, and they must have been badly stained, and they think they must have been hidden or thrown away immediately after the murder. They’ve been looking all over for them, to clinch their case. And I’ve been looking for them, too, because,” he said, raising desperate eyes to her face, “I was absolutely sure they wouldn’t be Miss Norris’s at all, if only I could find them. I was sure she was innocent, I wanted to prove it. And I have found them,” he ended, his voice trailing away into a dry whisper.
“Then that’s all right, surely,” she said in carefully reasonable tones. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? I suppose you’ve turned them over to your father, and now everything will be all right. So what are you worrying about?”
He had put down his school-bag beside him on the floor. His hands, deprived of this anchor, gripped each other tightly on his knees. He looked down at the locked and rigid fingers, and his face worked.
“No, I haven’t turned them in. I haven’t said a word to a soul. I don’t want to, I can’t bear to, and I don’t know what to do. I was so sure they’d be a man’s gloves. But they’re not! They’re a woman’s, , , They’re Kitty’s!”
The knotted hands came apart with a frantic jerk, because he wanted them to hide his face, which was no longer under control. He lost his voice and his head, and began to cry, in shamed little gulps and hiccups he tried in vain to swallow. Miss Hamilton put down her cigarette carefully in the ashtray and took him by the shoulders, shaking him first gently and then peremptorily.
“Now, this is silly. Come along, tell me about it. Where did you find them? How did it happen that you found them, if the police couldn’t?”
“I shouldn’t tell you,” he got out between gulps, “I oughtn’t to tell anyone. It just happened. If I told you, you’d have to tell lies, too.”
“Oh, now, look, I’m trying to help you. If you don’t tell me everything how can I judge the importance of these gloves? You may be quite mistaken about them, they may not be the ones at all. You may be fretting quite needlessly.”
“They are the ones, I know they are. And they’ll say, they’ll say she, , , ” He was trying to master the hiccups that were convulsing him, and to all her patient questions he could make no better answers than a few grotesque, incoherent sounds. It was quite useless to persist, he was half hysterical already. She released him and went into the small cloakroom which adjoined her office, and came back with a glass of water. She presented it to his lips with an authority there was no gainsaying, and he drank docilely, scarlet and tearful, still heaving with convulsions of subsiding frequency and violence. “There’s blood on them,” he gasped between spasms. “What am I going to do?
She stood back and looked at him thoughtfully, while he knuckled angrily at his eyes and muffled his hiccups in a crumpled handkerchief.
“Is that what you were going to ask Mr. Shelley?”
He nodded miserably. “He’s her solicitor, and, and I thought maybe I, I could just give them to him. I thought maybe he’d take the responsibility, because I, I, , , “
“You could destroy them,” said Miss Hamilton deliberately, “if that’s how you feel. Destroy them and forget all about it.”
“No, I couldn’t!. How could I? Don’t you see how I’m placed? My father, , , I feel awful! He trusts me!” He struggled momentarily with an all too evident inclination to relapse into tears again. “But it’s Kitty!”
Sixteen-year-olds miserably in love are a pathetic sight, and his situation, she saw, was indeed pitiable. Whatever his resolution the issue was certain; he’d never be able to bear the burden for long, sooner or later out it would all come tumbling to his father. Meantime, someone had to lift the immediate load from him.
