the return to his ordinary world and the shadow of his familiar routine startled him like a sudden blow. Those few minutes of utter freedom and ease with her were the end of it as well as the beginning. He had to be thankful for a small miracle that wouldn’t drop in his lap a second time. He climbed out slowly, chilled by the fall back into time and place, and stood awkwardly by the door on her side of the car, struggling for something to say that shouldn’t shame him by letting down the whole experience into the trivial and commonplace.
“Thanks awfully for the lift home.”
“Pleasure!” said Kitty, smiling at him. “Thanks for the lift you gave me, too. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather shed my blood with.”
“Are you sure you feel all right?” was all he found to say.
An end of muslin was protruding from Kitty’s sleeve; she pulled it experimentally, and it came away in a twisted string, shedding a scrap of lint on the seat beside her. They both laughed immoderately.
“I feel fine,” said Kitty. “Maybe I had blood pressure before, and now I’m cured.”
An instant’s silence. The soft light from the net-curtained front window lay tenderly on the firm, full curves of her mouth, while her forehead and eyes were in shadow. How soft that mouth was, and yet how decided, with its closely folded lips and deep, resolute corners, how ribald and vulnerable and sad. The core of molten joy in Dominic’s heart burned into exquisite anguish, just watching the slow deepening of her valedictory smile.
“Well, thanks, and good-bye!”
“See you at the next blood-letting,” said Kitty cheerfully, and drove away with a flutter of her fingers to her brow, something between a wave and a salute, leaving him standing gazing after her and holding his breath until the blood pounded thunderously in his ears, and the pain in his middle was as sharp and radical as toothache.
But she saw him again earlier than she had foretold, and in very different circumstances; and the blood in question on that occasion, which was neither his blood nor hers, had already been let in considerable quantities.
CHAPTER II.
THE LATEST OF Alfred Armiger’s long chain of super-pubs, The Jolly Barmaid, opened its doors for business at the end of that September. It stood on a “B” road, half a mile from Comerford and perhaps a mile and a quarter from Comerbourne; not an advantageous position at first sight, but old Armiger knew what he was doing where making money was concerned, and few people seriously doubted that he would make the place pay. Those who knew the beer baron best were already wondering if he had any inside information about the long-discussed by-pass, and whether it wouldn’t, when it eventually materialised, turn out to be unrolling its profitable asphalt just outside the walls of the new hotel. It was seven months now since he’d bought the place and turned loose on it all the resources of his army of builders, designers and decorators, and everyone came along on the night of the gala opening to have a look at the results.
Detective-Sergeant George Felse of the County C.I.D. wandered in off-duty out of pure curiosity. He had often admired the decrepit stone-mullioned house and regretted its steady mouldering into a picturesque and uneconomic slum. Two old ladies had been living in it then, and like so many ancient sisters they had died within days of each other, leaving the place unoccupied for almost a year before their distant heir decided to sell and cut his losses. There was nothing else to be done with a place of such a size and in such a state; the only question had been whether he would ever find a buyer. But he had; he’d found Alfred Armiger, the smartest man on a bargain in three or four counties.
It still made no sense to George, even when he pushed open the new and resplendent Tudor door and walked into a hall all elaborate panelling and black oak beams, carved settles and copper-coloured glass witchballs. He estimated that ten thousand at least must have been sunk in the restoration, and he couldn’t see how Armiger was ever going to get it back, short of shifting the place bodily on to the main road, which was liable to tax even his formidable powers. Even if he could continue to fill it as he’d apparently filled it tonight, which was very doubtful, it would still cost him more to run, with the staff he’d need here, than he’d make out of it.
It was certainly lively enough tonight. In the crowded public bar on the left, lantern-lit and period down to the fire-dogs in the hearth, George recognised most of the Bohemian population of Comerbourne, more especially the young ones. Ragged beards and mohair sweaters gave the place the texture of goats and something of their pungent smell. In the two small lounge-bars on the right the eighteenth century had been allowed a toe-hold, and there were some nice brocade chairs and some comfortable couches, and a fair number of the more sober county posteriors were occupying them. The dining-room seemed to be doing a considerable trade, too, to judge by the numbers of white-coated waiters who were running backwards and forwards for drinks to the saloon bar. Most of them seemed to be strangers to the district, probably newly recruited for this house. He saw only one whom he knew, old Bennie from the White Horse in Comerbourne, no doubt transplanted here for his local knowledge. It would pay to have someone about the place who knew all the celebrities, and all the nuisances, too.
They were a mixed bag in the saloon bar, neither big shots nor Bohemians. The big room had been virtually rebuilt, and Tudorised with a monstrously heavy hand. The ceiling beams were too low and too obtrusive, and hung with far too motley an array of polished copper, much of it shamelessly new. Armiger always knew exactly what he wanted, and if he couldn’t get it in period he’d have it manufactured specially, even if it involved some surprising anachronisms. But at least the customers were genuine enough here, farmers, tradesmen, travellers, local cottagers and workmen, and scattered among them the occasional county elder who still preferred this kind of company.
George inched his way patiently to the bar and ordered a pint of mild, and a blonde with a topknot like the Prince of Wales’s feathers and long pink finger-nails set the pot in front of him and informed him with a condescending smile that tonight everything was on the house, with Mr. Armiger’s compliments. Hence the crowd, he thought, though the evening was yet youngish, and no doubt hundreds more would get wind of the party before closing-time. When drinks were free George stopped at one, indeed if he’d known he would probably have deferred satisfying his curiosity until another night, but he was here now. And the spectacle was undoubtedly interesting. More than half the members of the Borough Council were somewhere in the house, and a good sprinkling of the more widely scattered County Council, too. Armiger crooked his finger and people came running, but how many of them out of any love for him? You wouldn’t need the fingers of both hands to count ‘em, thought George, one would be enough.
He was carrying his pint pot to the most retired corner he could see when a heavy hand thumped him on the shoulder and a voice resonant and confident as brass, but tuned as truly as brass, too, bellowed in his ear: “Well, well, my boy, is this an honour or a warning?”
Speak of the devil, and his bat-wings rustle behind you.
“Don’t worry,” said George, turning to grin over his shoulder at the man who had bought him the beer. “I’m off duty. Thirst brought me in on you. Thanks for this, I wasn’t expecting it. Cheers!”
Armiger had a whiskey in his other hand; he hoisted it to George and downed it in one quick swig. Not a tall man, hardly medium height, but built like a bull, shoulder-heavy, neckless, with a large head perpetually lowered for the charge. He ran head-down at business, at life, at his enthusiasms, at his rivalries, at everyone who got in his
