The door opened upon Mrs Beck’s white, paralysed face and scared eyes.
‘Annet – there’s someone here who wishes to speak to you.’
He came into the doorway at her shoulder, a tall, lean man with a long, contemplative face and deceptively placid eyes that didn’t miss either Tom’s instinctively stiffening back or Annet’s blank surprise.
‘I’m sorry to interrupt your work, Miss Beck,’ said Detective-Inspector George Felse gently, ‘but there’s a matter on which I’m obliged to ask you some questions. And I think, in the circumstances, it should be in your parents’ presence.’
CHAPTER IV
« ^ »
From the very first she seemed startled and bewildered, but not afraid; a little uneasy, naturally, for after all, George Felse was the police, and clearly on business, but not at all in trouble with her own conscience.
‘Of course!’ she said, and slid the bar of her typewriter into its locked position, and stood up. ‘Shouldn’t we go into the living-room? It’s more comfortable there.’
‘But Mr Kenyon—’ began Mrs Beck helplessly, and let the words trail vaguely away. An old, cold house, where was the paying guest to sit in peace if they appropriated the living-room?
‘That’s all right,’ said Tom, torn between haste and unwillingness, ‘I’ll get out of the way.’
But he didn’t want to! He had to know what he had let loose upon her, for he was sure this was his work. He should have let well alone. Why had he had to question Mallindine, and then go on to confirm what he well knew might still be lies by dragging in Dominic Felse? They’d compared notes almost before his back was turned; and young Felse had promptly gone home and let slip the whole affair, with all its implications, to his father. How else could you account for this?
But no, that wouldn’t do; as soon as he paused to consider he could see that clearly. If Dominic had informed on Annet, it was because something else had happened during that lost week-end, something that could be linked to a strayed girl and an improbable fairy-story. Something of interest to the police, whose sole interest in a pair of eighteen-year-old runaways would be to restore them to their agitated parents, and let the two families settle it between them as best they could; and even that only if their aid had been sought in the affair. No, there must be something else, something that had frightened Dominic with its implications, and caused him either to blurt out what he knew unintentionally, or driven him to deliver it up as a burden too heavy and a responsibility too great to be borne.
‘It’s just possible,’ said George Felse, eyeing him amiably but distantly from beyond the rampart of his official status, all the overtones of friendship carefully excised from a voice which remained gentle, courteous and low- pitched, ‘that I may need to see you for a few moments, too, Mr Kenyon, if you wouldn’t mind being somewhere available, in case?’
He said he wouldn’t, numbly and reluctantly, and turned to go up to his own room. He didn’t hurry, because he wanted to be called back, not to be excluded. In a way he would have given anything to escape, but since there wasn’t going to be any escape, anyhow, and he had already been dragged into the full intimacy of the family secret, what point was there in putting off the event? And before he had reached the stairs Beck was there, framed in the doorway of the living-room, wispy and grey and frightened, and looking desperately for an ally.
‘What is it? Did I hear you say you want to talk to Annet, Mr Felse?’ His eyes wandered sidelong to Tom, who had looked back. ‘No, no, don’t go, Kenyon, this can’t be anything so grave that you can’t hear it. Please, I should be glad if you’d stay. One of the household, you know. That’s if you have no objection to being present?’
Panic gleamed behind the thick lenses of his glasses; not for anything would he be left alone with Annet and his wife and the threat George Felse represented. His wife would expect him to spread a male protective barrier between his womenfolk and harm; or she would not expect it, but watch his helplessness with a bitter, contemptuous smile, and that would be worse. And Annet would act as though he was not there, knowing she had to fend for herself. No, he couldn’t do without Tom. He laid a trembling hand on his arm, and held him convulsively.
‘It’s rather if Felse has no objection,’ said Tom, watching the CID man’s face doubtfully.
‘No, this is not official – yet. Later I may have to ask you to make a formal statement. That will depend on what you have to tell me.’
He was looking Annet in the eyes, without a smile, but with the deliberate, emphatic gentleness of one breaking heavy matters to a child. He had known her since she was a small girl with pigtails; not intimately, but as an observant man knows the young creatures who grow up round him in his own village, the contemporaries of his own sons and daughters. He’d had to pay similar visits to not a few of their homes in his time, he knew all the pitfalls crumbling under their uncertain feet.
‘I’ll tell you what I can,’ said Annet, brows drawn close in a frown of bewilderment. ‘But I don’t know what you can want to ask me.’
‘So much the better, then,’ he said equably, and followed her into the living-room, and turned a chair to the light for her. She understood that quite open manoeuvre, and smiled faintly, but acquiesced without apparent reluctance. The parents hovered, quivering and silent. Tom closed the door, and sat down unobtrusively apart from them.
‘Now Annet, I want you to tell me, if you will, how you spent last week-end.’
George Felse sat down facing her, quite close, watching her attentively but very gently. If he felt the despairing contraction of the tension within the room he gave no sign, and neither did she. She tilted back her head, shaking away the winged shadow of her hair, as if to show him the muted tranquillity of her face more clearly.
‘I can’t tell you that,’ she said.
‘I think you can, if you will.’ And when she had nothing to say, and her mother only turned her head aside with a helpless, savage sigh, he pursued levelly: ‘Were you here at home, for instance?’
‘They say not,’ said Annet in a small, still voice.
‘Let them tell me that. I’m asking you what you say.’
‘I can only tell you what I told them,’ said Annet, ‘but you won’t believe me.’
