Flight of a Witch

‘No,’ said Eve, her voice anxious and still. ‘Miles doesn’t know. He – whoever he may be – was always a secret, from Miles, from everybody, just like this time. Terribly like this time, now you come to mention it.’

‘But there might be something that he does know, without even realising it. Eve, he must talk to George.’

‘You took the words out of my mouth. Call me if he shows up there. And if he comes back here,’ said Eve with grim resolution, ‘I’ll see to it that he comes round to your place and gets the whole story off his chest like a sensible man – if I have to bring him along by the ear!’

No one, however, had to bring Miles along by the ear. About seven o’clock Bunty looked out as she drew the living-room curtains, and saw them striding briskly and purposefully up the garden path towards the front door, Dominic in the lead. Not merely two young, slender shapes, but three. Somewhere along the way, Bunty thought at first, they’d picked up a third sixth-former who had an uneasy conscience about something he knew and hadn’t confided; but when she ran to let them in, and they came into the light of the hall, she saw that the third was Tom Kenyon.

Of all people in the world she would least have expected them to run to him for advice. He was too perilously near to them, and yet set apart by the invisible barrier that segregates teacher from pupils; too old to be accepted as a contemporary, and too young to have any of the menace or reassurance of a father-figure. They liked him well enough, with reservations, these hard-to-please, deflationary young gentlemen, even if they had christened him Brash ’Arry, jumping to conclusions about the middle initial H on his brief-case; but to go to him in their anxieties was quite another matter.

‘Hallo!’ said Bunty, from long habit reducing even the abnormal to normality. ‘Come in! You’re in time for coffee, if you’d like some.’

‘I’m sorry if we look like an invasion,’ said Tom, with a brief and shadowed smile, ‘but this may be urgent. Is George home yet? We’ve got to see him.’

‘Yes, come along in.’ She threw the door wide and passed them through. Her son went by with a single preoccupied glance of apology for his lateness. Miles, always meticulous, said a dutiful: ‘Good evening, Mrs Felse!’ Tom marshalled them before him with an air of dominant responsibility that made Bunty smile, until she remembered the occasion that had almost certainly brought them here. ‘Visitors for you, darling!’ she said, and closed the door on them and went to reassure Eve.

George had his slippered feet on the low mantelpiece, and his coffee-cup in the hearth by his chair. He looked up at their entrance with tired eyes, not yet past surprise at this procession.

‘Hallo, Kenyon, what is this? Are you having trouble with these two?’

Two reproving frowns deplored this tone. Tom Kenyon didn’t even notice.

‘They came to me after they’d seen the paper tonight. It seems they’d been comparing notes and putting two and two together, and they came to the conclusion they had some information and a theory that they ought to confide to somebody in authority. Your boy naturally wanted to come straight to you, but Miles preferred to try it out on me first, before bothering you.’

That was one way of putting it. He knew very well why, of course. At first startled and disarmed by their telephone call, he had been tempted to believe that he had done even better than he had supposed during this first term, and established himself as the natural confessor to whom his seniors would turn in trouble. But he had too much good sense to let his vanity run away with him for long. A careful glance at the circumstances, and he knew a better reason. Neither of them would have dreamed of coming to him, if he had not betrayed himself so completely to Miles in that one brief interview. If there was one thing of which Miles was quite certain, after that, it was that Brash ’Arry would be guided in this crisis not by pious thoughts of the good of society or his moral duty, but by one simple consideration: what he felt to be in Annet Beck’s best interests. If he listened to their arguments, and then gave it as his opinion that they must go to the police, to the police they would go, satisfied that they were doing the best thing for Annet.

And he needn’t think he had the advantage of them as a result of this consultation, either; what it meant, he told himself ruefully but honestly, was that they had discovered in him weaknesses which could be exploited. And boys can be ruthless; he knew, it wasn’t so long since he’d been one. They might, on the other hand, be capable of astonishing magnanimity, too. There was stuff in Miles that kept surprising him; his address in this crisis, the direct way he approached his confession, without hesitation or emphasis, the way the ‘sir’ vanished from his tongue, and the greater, not less, respect and assurance that replaced it. Maybe there were things this boy wouldn’t use even against a schoolmaster, distresses he wouldn’t exploit, even to ease his own.

‘I didn’t wait to hear all they have to say, but I’ve heard enough. I said we ought to come straight to you, and tell at once. So here we are.’

Had his own motives, after all, been quite as single and disinterested as they had calculated? Anything that might uncover the identity of Annet’s lover he would naturally bring to George at a run, because it might remove the danger that threatened Annet’s life. And remove with it, prodded the demon at the back of his mind, the unseen rival, the tenant of that tenacious heart of hers, leaving the way free for another incumbent. He was afraid to look too closely at this dark reverse of his motive, for fear it should prove to be the main impulse that moved him. My God, but it was complicated!

‘Sit down!’ said George, getting up to pour coffee. ‘All right, Miles, we’re listening. What’s on your mind?’

‘I’ve been taking it for granted, of course,’ said Miles directly, ‘that I’m on the list of suspects, until you check up on our week-end. Because of the last time. I haven’t asked Mr Kenyon if he knows about that—’

‘I do,’ said Tom.

‘—but I know you do, of course. And this is going to sound as if I’m just trying to slide out from under, I realise that, but I can’t help it.’

‘Don’t let that worry you,’ said George. ‘We’ve already checked, you are out from under. We know where you were on Saturday evening, and what you were doing. Just go ahead.’

‘Oh, good, that makes it easier. You see,’ said Miles, raising sombre brown eyes to George’s face in a straight, unwavering stare, ‘I never did plan to go away anywhere, that last time, it wasn’t what it looked like at all. I’ve never said anything before, and I wouldn’t now, except that somebody did plan to go away with her then, and it might – I don’t know, but it might – be the same person who took her away this time. There’s been one murder,’ said Miles with shattering simplicity, ‘and there may well be another. Of Annet herself. If we don’t find him.’

The ‘we’ was significant. He watched George’s face, unblinking. ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’ he said.