He didn’t believe it for a moment; he hung still, clutching precariously at the still green but dilapidated branches of the wrecked tree, and staring at her narrowly and doubtfully. She laughed on a hard, high note, moving steadily nearer, breast to breast with him, forcing him backwards. He looked over her shoulder, and he saw the floating, languid whiteness, articulated, apparently alive, drifting at the end of its dark sleeve. He uttered a small, strangled sound, and gave back before her gingerly, clawing his way towards the soggy, yielding ground under the trees.
“Yes,” she said hardly, “that’s a hand you’re looking at. With fingers.” Saturated grass sagged under her foot as she stepped from the tree. Water seeped into her shoe, and she never even noticed, beyond shifting her stance brusquely to safer ground. “What’s the matter with you? Can’t you understand? Are you afraid of a dead man? He’s there. I
Between the thrusting alders and the penning branches of the derelict tree, the pale, flaccid hand gestured and beckoned on a sudden surge of water, and flicked its fingers at them derisively, demonstrating beyond doubt its quenched but unquestionable humanity.
“Stay here with him,” she said peremporarily, and thrust past towards the drier ground, fending off alders with a wide sweep of her arm. He saw her face closely as she passed him, intent and fierce, incandescent with excitement. “I’m going up to the house to tell Inspector Felse.”
He caught at her arm, but half-heartedly, almost confused into obeying her without protest. “Stay here, nothing! I’m coming with you.”
“Don’t be a fool!” Liri spat at him over her shoulder, tearing her sleeve out of his hand. “Stay here and keep an eye open, and mark the place for us. We don’t want to have to hunt for him again, there’s a quarter of a mile of this wild part. And suppose the river dislodges him? At least you can tell us. And if anyone else comes near, get them away from here. I won’t be long.”
She was away before he could stop her, weaving like a greyhound between the clinging sallows, stooping under branches, running like an athletic boy. And so positive and compelling was her authority that for some minutes he stayed where she had stationed him, his gaze fixed uneasily on that small, idling whiteness in the surge of brown. He could not forget the burning blue of her eyes, so intense as to sear out all expression, and the taut lines of her face, drawn so fine that the bones showed through in fiery pallor. He had never understood her, and he never would. Something unsuspected within him, something almost old-maidish in its respect for the proper forms, was scandalised by her composure. Hadn’t she just found her black-haired true-love drowned in the Braide? Wasn’t that his hand playing horribly with the dimpled currents there, snared in the branches of the tree? Only an hour ago she had been singing, with shattering effect, about another lost love slain by the braes of another river:
“O, Yarrow braes, may never, never rain
Nor dew thy tender blossoms cover.
For there was basely slain my love.
My love, as he had not been a lover.”
Suddenly he wanted to understand her, he wanted to know, his normal inquisitiveness came to life again and shook off her influence. He always had to probe into everything that came his way, in case there might be something in it for Dickie. He cast one rather reluctant but still avid glance at the elusive thing he was supposed to be watching. It idled on the current like a skater, swayed in a slight, rhythmic movement.
Dickie Meurice could move very rapidly indeed when he chose. He made better time than Liri herself over the obstacle-strewn course to the stone bridge. By the time he reached it, and paused on the edge of the open parkland on the other side, Liri was well up the slope towards the house, and running strongly. He kept to the edge of the trees instead of following her by the direct route, until she came to the steps that led up to the south terrace. She didn’t climb the steps. He saw that, and hugged himself. She was up to something, or she would have taken the direct and open way in. Instead, she was circling the wing of the house to enter by the courtyard, as she had left it. Dickie let her slip from sight, and then abandoned his shadowy shelter, and set off at his fastest run across the open ground, and in at the front doors. By the time she had threaded the passage into the house from the rear, he would be hanging over the rail of the back stairs, ready for her.
The gong for dinner had not yet sounded, but everyone was gathering into the public rooms in readiness for it; he could hear the babel of voices from the gallery and the libraries, high and merry, as he slid through the quiet corridors and leaned over the well of the back stairs. Any sounds from below would come up to him clearly here; he would know when she arrived, and whatever her intentions, she would have to cross that quiet lobby below him.
The staircase was old, solid and tightly wound, and made a wonderful funnel for rising sounds, especially as the lower corridor was of stone. He made his way down perhaps a third of the flight, to a point where he would still be well out of sight of anyone approaching from below, and have time to make his escape into the labyrinth of public rooms before she reached this upper landing. Follymead might have been designed for monstrous games of hide- and-seek. He leaned cautiously over the oak rail, and peered down the coiled, enclosed space, as into the whorls of a shell.
He could see beneath him the stone flags of what had once been the central lobby of the service floor and was now a cool, indoor spot for summer days with a fantasy of plant-stands, tapestry-draped walls, a few white-painted wrought-iron seats, and two pay-telephones discreetly tucked into the corner under the stairs, and walled round, but not roofed, with reeded wood shells just six feet high, painted ivory-white. They provided adequate insulation on their own level, and an excellent sounding-board to carry conversation up the well of the staircase. No one involved in the re-designing of Follymead as a college had thought of that; none of them had envisaged a future clientele, addicted to listening in on other people’s telephone conversations. Their mistake, thought Dickie Meurice, speculating pleasurably on one possibility.
The crisp, chill sound of Liri’s footsteps, walking briskly, came along the stone passage ahead of her, and rang hollowly up the stairs. Low heels, but narrow and sharp, tipped with metal. Kitten heels, they called them; appropriate enough for that young tigress. Their rhythm didn’t slacken or turn aside towards the staircase. He saw her foreshortened figure cross below him, the dark brown head so erect and beautifully balanced, the impetuous outline of brow and nose, the great braid of hair lashing like a tail for the tigress. Straight towards the telephones! He heard the soft clash of the swing door closing, reed to reed, snug as the seam of a dress.
He dropped one turn lower, sliding down the rail of the stairs eagerly. Almost above her head now, and though she was out of his sight he could hear and time every turn of the dial. Two revolutions, one long, one short. For the operator, so what she wanted was not a local call; but he had never supposed that it would be. And blessedly, that meant she must ask for her number. Things could not have been going more smoothly his way.
“I’d like to call a London number, please. Valence 3581. This is Belwardine 640.”
Every word clear and unmistakable so far. Coins rattled into the slot, below him. They waited for what seemed a longer time than the two minutes it actually was, and in the interval the gong sounded for dinner. That was the
