“Listen to me, Dominic,” she said firmly. “You’re quite sure in your own mind, aren’t you, that Kitty didn’t kill Mr. Armiger?”
Where, she was wondering, did Kitty manage to pick up this improbable adorer, and how on earth did they get on to Christian name terms? But Kitty had always been incalculable in her attachments.
“Then have the courage of your convictions. Don’t say a word to Mr. Shelley. He’s a legal man, it would be cruel to pass the buck to him of all people. You can give the gloves to me. I’m not a lawyer. I’m not afraid to back my own judgment.”
Dominic’s long lashes rolled back from large eyes gleaming with bewilderment and hope; he stared at her and was still.
“Law or no law,” she said with determination, “I’m not prepared to help to send Kitty to prison for life, even if she did kill an unscrupulous old man in self-defence. And like you, I’m very far from convinced that she did. I’ll take the responsibility. Let’s consider that it was I who found them.”
“Oh, would you?” he said eagerly. “If only you would, I should be so relieved.”
“You needn’t even know what I do with them. Give them to me and forget them. Forget you ever found them.”
“Oh, I’d be so grateful! I haven’t got them here, because I’ve just come straight from school, you see, and I couldn’t risk carrying them about with me all day. The fellows can be awfully nosy, without meaning any harm, you know, and suppose somebody got hold of those? But I’ve got to come into Comerbourne again for my music lesson tonight, may I bring them to you then?”
“Yes, of course. I have to go to the club for part of the evening, though. Where does your music teacher live?”
He told her, brightening every moment now, his voice steady and mannish again. It was in Hedington Grove, a little cul-de-sac off Brook Street, near the edge of town. “I leave there at nine. I usually catch the twenty past nine bus home to Comerford.”
“You needn’t worry about the bus tonight,” she said good-humouredly. “I shall be finished at the club by then, I’ll pick you up at the corner of your teacher’s road, on Brook Street, and drive you home. I’ll be there at nine. Is that all right?”
“Fine, of course, if it isn’t troubling you too much. You’ve been most awfully kind.” He scrubbed once more at his eyes, quickly and shamefacedly, and smoothed nervous fingers through his hair. “I’m awfully sorry I was such an ass. But honestly I didn’t know what to do.”
“Feel better now?”
“Much better. Thanks awfully!”
“Well, now suppose you trot in there and wash your face. And then run off home and try not to worry. But don’t say a word to anyone else,” she warned, “or we should both be in the soup.”
“I won’t breathe a word to a soul,” he promised fervently.
She shepherded him down the stairs again into the silent hallway, and out into the darkness, and switching off the last lights after them, locked the door. The boy was beginning to feel his feet again now, and to want to assert his precarious masculinity all the more because she had seen it so sadly shaken. He hurried ahead to open doors for her, and accompanied her punctiliously across the forecourt to the parking ground where the big old Riley waited.
“Can I drop you somewhere now? I could take you to the bus stop, if you’re going home?”
“Thanks a lot, it’s awfully kind of you, but I’ve got my bike here. I put it in the stand near the gate.”
All the same, he came right to the car with her, opened the door with a flourish and closed it upon her carefully when she had settled herself on the driving-seat; and he didn’t move away until she had fished her black kid gloves out of the dashboard compartment, pulled them on and started the car. Then he stepped back to give her room to turn, and lifted a hand to her with a self-conscious smile as she drove away.
When she was gone he awoke suddenly to the chill of the wind and ran like a greyhound for his bike. He rode back into the centre of the town as fast as he could go. Some of the shops were already closing, and the dapple of reflected lights in the wet surface of the pavements blurred into a long, hazy ribbon of orange-yellow, the colour of autumn.
CHAPTER XIV.
IT WAS ON Thursday evening that Professor Brandon Lucas, on his way to a weekend art school which did not particularly interest him but at which he had rashly consented to put in an appearance, made a sudden detour in his most capricious manner and called on Jean and Leslie Armiger. The visit could have been regarded as planned, since he had with him the notes and sketches relating to the sign of The Joyful Woman, but he had not admitted his intention even to himself until the miles between him and his boredom were shortening alarmingly, and his reluctance to arrive had become too marked to be ignored. Why get there in time for dinner? His previous experiences at Ellanswood College had led him to write off the food as both dull and insufficient, whereas there was a very decent little hotel in Comerbourne; and if the slight ground mist didn’t provide a plausible excuse for lateness his errand to the Armigers could be pleaded as important, and even turned into a topic of conversation which might save him the trouble of listening to fatuities about art from others.
Being too short-sighted without his glasses to read the lettering on Leslie’s bell, and too self-confident in any case to bother about such details, he startled the silent evening street with a tattoo on Mrs. Harkness’s knocker, and brought out the lady herself; but he was equal even to Mrs. Harkness, and made so profound an impression upon her that Leslie’s status with her went up several notches on the strength of the call.
The professor climbed the stairs unannounced, to find Leslie in his shirt-sleeves washing up at the little landing sink, and the smell of coffee bubbling merrily from the hot plate, and demonstrated his finesse by exclaiming in delight that he’d come just in time, that the cooking at The Flying Horse was splendid, but their coffee hadn’t come up to the rest. And having thus intimated that they need not attempt to feed him, he sat down comfortably and reassured them with equal dexterity that they were not expected to try to entertain him.
“I’m on my way to a weekend course, as a mater of fact. I mustn’t stay long, but I thought I’d look in on you with a progress report. That’s a very interesting job you’ve found me, my boy, very interesting indeed.”
Leslie came in rolling down his sleeves, and produced liqueur glasses and the carefully nursed end of the half- bottle of cognac Barney Wilson had brought back from his summer holiday in France. Jean had conjured up a glass dish he hadn’t known they possessed, and filled it with extravagant chocolate biscuits which Leslie felt certain
