up on several different test pieces at the same moment.
“I always knew I’d be good as a filibuster,” remarked the professor complacently, finding himself shoulder to shoulder with Liri Palmer on their way out. “Nobody’s ever
She gave him a clear look, and said unexpectedly: “You’re a wicked old man. I like you.” She looked, as always, in full possession of herself, her secrets and her thoughts, but the signs of strain were there, once you knew what to look for; her air of withdrawal, the austerity of the set of her lips, the sombreness of the steel-blue eyes that were not interested in illusory hopes. He liked her, too; he liked her very much, but there was nothing he could do for her, except talk fast enough to divert attention from her when she was not singing, and listen to her with gratitude when she was.
“Only one more day,” he said, “and we can send them all home.”
She said: “Yes,” with a brief and shadowy smile, and went away from him with her lithe, long walk, down the back stairs and along the stone corridor, and out into the evening light just beginning to turn misty and green. Once through the courtyard it was only a dozen yards into the fringes of the ornamental shrubbery, and thence into the trees. She looked round once to be sure that she was alone, and then dug her hands deep into the pockets of her jersey jacket, and set off rapidly towards the river. It was easier to keep close to the bank on the farther side, where the trees were thinner, and the paths followed the course of the Braide with reasonable faithfulness. She crossed the footbridge, and went striding along the leafy ride, past the young redwood, past the huge, scrolled iron gate behind which she knew there must be a policeman on guard, though he had not showed himself at noon, and did not show himself now. No use searching within that enclosure, in any case; they would have done that already, very thoroughly. There could be no further trace of him to be found there.
She had begun her hunt, therefore, in the brief interludes between to-day’s sessions, where the enclosure ended, and in two such forays she had reached a point somewhat below the stone bridge. There were no more weirs now between her and the massive wall of the Follymead boundary, less than a quarter of a mile away.
Liri knew nothing at all about the behaviour of drowned bodies, and nothing about the currents of the Braide, and the places where anyone lost in these reaches of it would be likely to cast up. She could see that there was a strong and violent flow of water, and that it would carry anything committed to it with speed and force; but the only way she knew of searching it was by walking downstream from the point of entry, and watching for any sign in the water, along the banks, among the swamped alders, and the lodged debris of the flood. She did it, as she did everything, with all her might.
The police, of course, must also be looking for Lucien, but she had seen no sign of them in these reaches. Let them search in their way, with all the aids their specialist knowledge gave them; she would search in hers, with no aids at all but her ignorance, which would not allow her to miss a single yard of undercut bank or a single clump of sallows.
Here, so close to the boundary, the artificiality of Follymead relaxed into something like a natural woodland. Where the view from the windows ended nature was allowed in again, still somewhat subdued, and the river surged away from the planed curves of its man-made vistas in an unkempt flood. Here for a while it rolled through open meadow and in a straight, uncluttered bed; she looked at the brown, smooth water, quiet and fast, saw the shallow, whirling eddies swoop past her, and felt sure that nothing would ground here. Ahead of her trees and bushes closed in again, leaning together over the water. These tangles of willow and undergrowth must have gone untended for a long time. She left the path and clung to the bank, and clambering through bushes, shouldering her way through sliding, whistling, orange-coloured sallows, she found herself suddenly marooned on a soft and yielding headland, with water before her and water on either hand. On her right the main flow coursed along sullenly, little checked by the lush growth; but the flood-water had spilled over among the trees and drowned the low-lying ground as far as she could see ahead through the twilight of the woodland. Before her and on her left it swirled in frustrated pools, and lay still, dappled with grasses. When she moved a foot, the water which had gathered slowly about her shoe eased away again into the spongy turf. She could go no farther, as close to the river as this. She would have to turn back and skirt the sodden ground at a greater distance.
But before she retreated she made a careful survey of the flooded area as far as she could see. Lodged in the stream on her right, ripping the water into a dozen angry spurts of sound and fury, a fallen tree, or perhaps only a branch from a larger tree, lay anchored with its tattered trunk wedged fast in the soft ground, and its splayed branches clutching and clawing ineffectively at the fast current that slipped hissing through its fingers. She peered into the seething fistful of water, half dirty brownish foam, and among the hundred fleeting, shifting pallors she thought she saw one pallor that remained constant, only nodding and swaying a little while the Braide boiled past it and swirled away downstream.
She had thought she had seen something so often by then that she felt nothing, except the compulsion to know. She set foot testingly on the torn bole, and shoved hard, and it remained immovable, deep sunk in the mud and wedged into place with all the driftwood it had arrested. She straddled a stubborn cross-branch, and felt her way out on the rough bark, holding by the alder wands that sprang through the wreckage and held it secure. Two, three yards gained, and the support under her grew slender, and gave a little beneath her weight, but still held fast. The water was rushing under her feet now, she looked down into it with fascination, finding something in it of music, in the melting of eddy into eddy, and current into current, the flow endlessly unfolding, able to plait into itself every thread that came drifting down the stream. Only the small, lax pallor hung idle and unchanging in the heart of change, and shook the pattern of unity to pieces round it.
Another yard, and she would be nearly over it. The branch bowed under her, the water touched her shoes, arched icily over one toe in a hiss of protest, and poured back into the flood. She dared not go any farther. But this was far enough. She stooped carefully, holding by the thin, swaying extremity of a branch, and looked steadily and long at the trapped thing in the water.
She must have heard, though in her preoccupation she had not identified, the small sounds that did not belong to the rhythm of the river. Nevertheless, she was startled when she turned to draw back from her precarious outpost, and found herself staring at Dickie Meurice.
He was a yard out on the tree-trunk after her, clinging and reluctant, but grinning, too, pleased at having crept up on her so closely without being detected. He must have been following her right from the house. He must have frozen into stillness, somewhere there in the arch of the courtyard, when she had paused to look back from the rim of the trees. It didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered. Let him come, let him see something, at least, if not all, enough to assure him he hadn’t come out for nothing.
“Oh, you!” she said, her voice flat and neutral. “I might have known.”
“You might have known! Who else would be so considerate? I thought you might need help… if you found anything.”
“You’re so right,” she said, moving back upon him without haste, knowing he could not pass her, sure even that if she abandoned him here he wouldn’t dare to venture out where she had been. For one thing, he was heavier than she was, he’d be ankle-deep in the Braide. For another, he was more careful of himself than she was, not having her stake at risk. “I do need help. I need somebody to stay here with it, while I go and raise the alarm.”
