Black Is the Colour of My True Love's Heart

No, it was crazy. He couldn’t picture her in the role, however objectively he tried. Nevertheless, he found himself asking, with deliberate and crude abruptness: “Have you seen any signs of a special relationship between Lucien Galt and Mrs. Arundale?”

Dominic was too startled to side-step, and too shaken to hide his discomfort. He stood staring in consternation, seeing again the ardent hands touch and clasp, seeing Arundale walk imperviously and majestically on his wife’s left, while she gripped Lucien Galt’s fingers on her right. The question was so unexpected, the incident had begun to seem so irrelevant, that the sudden attack took his breath away. After all, Arundale didn’t enter into the affair they were investigating. He was the one person who was out of it, surely. The only person.

“I… what on earth has that got to do… I mean, nothing, really, nothing of any significance.”

“Come on,” said George quietly, “tell it, and we’ll see.” Tossa was looking from one to the other of them, lost, a small, hurt frown contorting her brows. Whatever Dominic had seen had certainly passed her by.

“Well, I don’t know… It was just that on Friday night, when we left the drawing-room after coffee, and were walking along the gallery, we were behind the Arundales and Lucien Galt. Mrs. Arundale was in the middle. They were talking, just like anybody else, and Lucien’s hand brushed…” Dominic’s voice baulked at that half-willing distortion, and backed away from it. “He touched her hand, and she opened it, and they clasped hands,” he said grudgingly. “Only for a moment, though.”

“But…warmly?”

After a moment of silent debate Dominic admitted: “Yes.” He went on rapidly: “But it needn’t mean much, you know. Just big-headedness on his part, and maybe she felt a bit irresponsible for once… an accidental touch…”

“Did it look accidental?” asked George quite gently.

Reluctantly but honestly again: “No.”

“And they went on making conversation to cover it?” No need to answer that, it was in his mutely anxious face. “Did anyone else see this?”

Almost to herself Tossa said: “I didn’t.”

“Yes, I think… I’m almost sure Liri saw it. She was sitting in a dark alcove in the gallery, quite still. I think she saw.”

Add about fifty per cent to that, and you might have some approximation of the ardour of that episode. Dominic had a very natural and human reluctance to admit to having witnessed a show of affection between two people who thought themselves unobserved. And it was no more than a crumb of a connection, at that, though a very suggestive one.

“All right, don’t worry, as you say, it probably means virtually nothing.”

But Liri had seen it, Liri of all people. Maybe the emerging pattern, after all, argued a man at the heart of it, not a woman. Cherchez l’homme! Women can be jealous, too, and dangerous.

“You’d better run,” said George, “or you’ll be late for your class. If you should want me later, I’ll be in the warden’s office.”

And they ran, Tossa looking back doubtfully at George for a moment with her chin on her shoulder. The lilac tree slapped a stray cone of blossom into her face as she turned, and she flung up her free hand – Dominic had taken possession of the other – and brushed it from her. The twig broke, leaving the spray of falling flowers in her hand. She allowed herself to be towed along the leafy ride still holding it.

“You never told me!”

“You wouldn’t have told me, would you? I never wanted to see it.” He wasn’t happy. “What put it into Dad’s mind, anyhow? I don’t get it.”

“I don’t know. Maybe he thinks Liri…”

“What, just because of that?”

“But it isn’t just because of that. Liri was already mad with him about something, what could it be but another woman?”

“You mean she followed him here because she knew about him and…? I don’t believe it! It wouldn’t be like Liri, anyhow.” He had never realised until now how firm an idea he was forming of Liri Palmer’s character. “If she’d broken with him, she wouldn’t follow him around to watch him perform… not to torment herself, not to hit him again, not for anything.” They had reached the footbridge; their hurrying footsteps clopped woodenly over it, and the flood below sent up a low, hollow echo.

“To get him back, she might,” said Tossa without thinking, and instantly drew back from a statement so revealing. She shook the loose blossoms from her spray of lilac with unnecessary care. “This must be a very early kind, look, dropping already, and it’s only late April. Did you ever see lilac quite such a pure blue?”

Even then she didn’t realise what she had said, it was simply a pleasant, superficial observation, something blessedly remote from the ugly mystery that was bedevilling this week-end. They were skirting the open meadow when the truth hit her. She halted abruptly, pulling back hard on Dominic’s hand; he turned in surprise to find her gazing at him in consternation.

“Dominic … she was there! Don’t you remember? I said then, how blue, really blue, not purple at all…”

She thrust the tattered cone of blossom at him, brandishing it before his astonished eyes.

“Have you seen this kind anywhere else? There’s lilac by the drive, and up by the pagoda, too, but it’s all white or mauve, and it’s only in bud yet. Nothing at all like this. But Felicity had some fallen flowers just like this in her hair yesterday! Don’t you remember, she was combing them out with her fingers?”

“Good lord!” he said blankly. “She had, too! Just like these!”

“I picked them up, afterwards. It was the colour …”

He remembered now with aching clarity how Tossa had turned her hand sadly, and let the small blue crosses float back into the grass.