And he knew it was true. Only a fool could welcome in the invader of his painfully-won privacy, and run to meet the power that humiliated and outraged what he had made of himself at so much cost. And for such an impossible hope! He knew, none better, that he would never reach her. If he regrouped his defences now, while there was time…
But there was no time left. It was already too late.
All right, he said defiantly to his double, sit back and watch. A little patience, a little craft, a nice mixture of blackmail and gratitude, and you’ll be surprised what I can do, when I want something enough. What will you bet me I don’t get her in the end?
And if you do, said the demon, with the finality of ultimate, unquestionable truth, what you get won’t be what you want. It will be only to possess and enjoy, you know that, don’t you? And spoil! Never to unite with her.
CHAPTER THREE
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So from then on he had two people’s interests to serve, Maggie’s and his own; and for the time being they were identical. If ever the two interests should diverge, God only knew what he would do, or which of them he would put first. There was no sense in trying to anticipate the event, and no comfort, either.
Back to the business in hand, then. If X was an injured lover, he belonged somewhere at the threshold of success. Ever since she was twenty years old she had lived in the sun, known exactly where she was going, and needed no claws. The more he thought about it, the more he was left with two formative years, the last two she had spent under Paul Fredericks.
What wouldn’t he have given to be able to question the old man, or even his sister who had worked with him? Perhaps especially his sister, for an elderly woman sees more of what goes on inside ambitious girls of genius than does a doting old man whose protegees they are. But they were both dead long ago. Francis had, however, the lists of names of those who had accompanied Maggie on her three tours with Freddy’s Circus. He began with the last, in the autumn of 1955. The last for an excellent reason, because after it she had been invited to sing Cherubini at Covent Garden, and Freddy had acknowledged that she was ready. That was also reason enough why Francis should consider it first.
And there in the list, if he couldn’t have Esther Fredericks, was the woman who had taken her place on the trip. Bernarda Elliot. Now Bernarda Felse. If Freddy had turned to her in a crisis, she must have a good head on her shoulders, as well as a contralto voice in her throat. And hadn’t Maggie said that she lived—or had then been living—somewhere here in the Midlands? Felse is not a very common name.
He looked in the regional telephone directory. Felse is not a common name at all, he found. There was just one of them in the whole of two border English counties and a large slice of mid-Wales. George Felse, of 19 Prior’s Lane, Comerford. In the circumstances it wouldn’t be much of a trick to find out whether his wife’s name was Bernarda.
It was; though most people, he discovered, seemed to know her as Bunty. And her husband—well, well, who would have thought it?—turned out to be a detective-inspector in the Midshire C.I.D. A far cry from Freddy’s Circus to a modest modernised cottage in the village of Comerford, only a few miles out of the county town, and just in sad process of becoming a town itself. Thirteen years is a long time; George Felse must have been a bobby on the beat when this girl—and Maggie had said she was good—decided he was what she wanted most.
Don’t build on it, Francis, he warned himself grimly, it couldn’t happen to Maggie. A little interlude of a few months—even a year or so—you might get if you’re lucky and clever, but not a lifetime, don’t look for it.
He called the number in the book. The voice that answered was lighter than Maggie’s, and more veiled. ‘Yes, I’m Bernarda Felse. But how did you know?’
A good question, but for some reason a daunting one. He might have to be on his guard with a woman like that, in case he gave away more than he got from her.
‘My name’s Francis Killian. I got your name from Maggie Tressider. You know she’s in hospital in Comerbourne, after an accident? I do private research for anyone who needs it, in connection with books, indexing, that sort of thing. While she’s laid up, Miss Tressider is compiling material for a possible monograph on Doctor Paul Fredericks. She’s using me to do some of the donkey work for her. I believe you knew him well?’
‘I studied under him,’ said the distant voice, with pride, with affection, with gaiety; entirely without regret. ‘He was one of the world’s darlings. But irascible as the devil! No, come to think of it, the devil wouldn’t be, would he? Somebody ought to put Freddy on record, that’s a fact.’
‘It would be a great help if I could talk to you about him. May I come over and see you, some time?’
‘Any afternoon that suits you,’ said Bunty Felse. ‘Today, if you like?’
The moment he set eyes on her he stopped wondering if she had any lingering doubts about her bargain. She was one of the few people he’d ever seen who looked as if they had never regretted anything in their lives. She was about his own age, a slender person of medium height, with a shining cap of glossy hair the colour of ripe conkers, and a few engaging silvery strands coiled in the red here and there. Her eyes, large and brightly hazel, looked straight into his over the coffee-cups and declared her curiosity quite openly, and the effect their candour had upon him was of a compliment.
‘Will she really ever do anything about it?… this book on Freddy?’
‘Ah, that’s another question,’ admitted Francis. ‘Not for me to ask.
‘That,’ said Bunty, reaching for an ashtray from the bookcase, ‘one doesn’t do. I have just about as much claim on Miss Tressider as I have on half the big names in music to-day—I once studied for three years under a man they all knew and valued. So did dozens, maybe hundreds of others, most of them as obscure as I am. No, I contracted out, and you can’t have it both ways, and personally I’ve never even wanted to. Well… hardly ever, and then only for a day or so. I never really knew the girl, in any case. I was married some years before she even came to Freddy. It was only the accident of Esther’s illness that made us acquainted at all.’
‘But you remember her? As she was then?’
