apart.
‘Maggie, speak to me… look at me…’
Suddenly he was up from his knees and plunging away from her across the room. She heard the faint single ring as he lifted the telephone.
‘No!’ She opened her eyes and raised herself unsteadily among the cushions of the couch, where he had carried her. ‘No, please don’t! I’m all right…’
He spun on his heel, and for an instant she saw such abject hope, relief and solicitude in his eyes that her head swam again. Then she felt as a convulsion in her own flesh the effort with which he drew down over his face the austere mask of professional detachment he normally showed to the world, and hid his nakedness from her. She thought wretchedly, we’ve destroyed each other. This proud man will never forgive me for frightening him so far off-course into humility and self-betrayal, any more than I can forgive him for penetrating so far into my jungle, and caring too much about what he found. What affair am I of his, outside the terms of the agreement? And what right had I to find my way under his skin and reduce him to this?
‘I was going to call your doctor. I think I should.’
‘No, please hang up. I don’t need anyone. I don’t want anyone.’ She sat up, smoothing her dove-grey skirt. ‘I’m sorry I alarmed you,’ she said. ‘It was only a momentary weakness. I shall be all right now.’
‘I’m afraid I’ve upset you too much. I wish you’d let me call someone.’
‘Please, no, it’s quite unnecessary. Now, if you’ll be kind enough to hand me my bag… It’s there on the piano…’
He brought it, handing it to her with fastidious carefulness not to touch, not to make any claim upon her, now that she was awake and aware. Her pallor was less extreme now, her face was calm, almost cold. The fear was gone and the hope was gone; she was past the moment of impact, it seemed, and beyond there was an emptiness, an area of shock, where as yet nothing hurt and nothing comforted.
‘Don’t worry about me, I shall be quite all right now. I’ll lie down and have a rest, after you leave. Thank you for all the work you’ve put in on my case, you’ve been most efficient, and I’m very grateful.’ She was riffling through the contents of her handbag, her head bent; and in a moment she looked up at him, holding out a sheaf of notes. ‘I hope I’ve reckoned up right. This is only the fee for the actual number of days, of course, including to-day. Please let me have the amount of your expenses, they must have been considerable. Don’t trouble to itemise, I shall be quite satisfied with a round figure. And again, thank you!’ Very courteous, very low, very final, that wild-silk voice of hers, dismissing him; but so gentle that at first he hardly understood, and when he did, he could not believe.
‘You mean you’re dispensing with my services?’ His face was whiter than hers.
‘But surely, you’ve completed your assignment very successfully. I asked you to find out for me what it was I’d done… to feel that I had a death on my hands. And you’ve done it. There’s nothing else I need.’
‘You’re accepting this without examination? I should have thought we needed to go into it in detail, to satisfy you that it’s authentic. I was too brutal, I beg your pardon! I wanted to avoid mentioning names to see if there was any genuine memory of this incident…’
‘You have seen,’ she said, ‘that there is. It needed only to be uncovered. There is no mistake. And I am quite satisfied.’
He stood gazing down at her, and felt time and the world grinding to a stop, and only a blank before him. She continued to sit there, pale, resolutely withdrawn into herself, holding out the sheaf of notes patiently in a hand that trembled a little from weakness; and her eyes had become the heavy, opaque blue of Willow Pattern china. There was nothing he could do. He was not going to plead with her for a small corner somewhere in her life, and he could not force his way where she did not want him to go. He had not even the right to turn on his heel and walk out, and leave her holding the money she felt she owed him. He was a hired employee, commissioned, paid off and dismissed. What could he do but take his fee, and go?
‘I ought to point out,’ he said, in a voice almost as dry as the desert he saw ahead of him without her, ‘that what I’ve reported and what you may have remembered is not enough to prove what actually became of this man Aylwin. You yourself know that there were completely logical reasons for believing, as Dr. Fredericks certainly did, that he had simply walked out. Granted that you have additional knowledge, you still have no proof that Dr. Fredericks’ version is not the correct one. For all the real evidence anyone possesses, Aylwin may be very much alive and perfectly well. If you won’t allow me to follow up the possibilities for you, at least remember that.’
Did he for one moment believe what he had said? Certainly she did not. Perhaps now she knew more than he did. She remained marble-still, the notes extended gravely in her hand.
‘Thank you, you’re very kind. Please believe that I appreciate what you’ve done for me, but there’s no need to follow it up any farther. And now, I’m a little tired…’
He could not keep her waiting any longer. He took the money without a glance, and thrust it into his pocket.
‘May I know… what you intend to do?’
‘I have no plans,’ she said.
‘If there should be anything further to tell you, can I rely on finding you here?’
‘For a while, yes. I don’t know how long.’
‘If you should need me, you know where to reach me.’ She did not offer him her hand, and he did not expect it. He walked to the door without looking back. ‘Good-bye, Miss Tressider!’
‘Good-bye, Mr. Killian!’
The trouble was that he didn’t mean it, and she did. Wherever she looked for help, out of friendship or for hire, never in this world would she turn to Francis Killian again. She had crossed him out of her experience, buried him as deep as the body he’d dug up for her. After the compromising intimacy of what they’d just done to each other, he thought grimly as he walked down the stairs, it was either that or marriage.
He had taken her money, because he had had no right to refuse it, but now that he had it, it was his business what he did with it. He walked into the church opposite the hotel, and cast a sullen eye over all the almsboxes, but the combating of dry-rot and death-watch beetle and the financing of overseas missions in countries arguably more moral and likeable if not more Christian than England did not appeal to him as a job for Maggie’s money. He went
