But she thought, looking back at that pewter sky and narrow saffron afterglow as the Aston Martin purred into life and shot away at speed: Yes, individuals do! Perversely, wilfully or haplessly, they do vanish. One elderly, raffish archaeologist in Turkey, one uneasy, spoiled adolescent here. But of course they’ll both emerge somewhere. Probably the boy’s halfway home by now, ahead of his party, probably he thumbed a lift the other way along this road as soon as he got intolerably bored. That would amuse him, the thought of the fuss and the delay and the inconvenience to everyone, while he rode home to wherever home is, in the cab of a friendly lorry.
And Doctor Alan Morris? He could be accounted for just as easily, and much more rationally. Total absorption in his passion could submerge him far below the surface of mere time. Somewhere in Anatolia, as yet unheralded, a major news story was surely brewing, to burst on the world presently in a rash of photographs, films, television interviews—some new discovery, one more Roman footprint in the east, stumbled on happily, and of such delirious interest that its discoverer forgot about the passing of the year, his minor responsibilities, and his fretful solicitor.
Over Aurae Phiala the April dusk closed very softly and calmly, like a hand crushing a silvery moth. But her back was turned on the dead city then, and she did not see.
CHAPTER THREE
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The Salmon’s Return’ lay a quarter of a mile up-river, and dated back to the early seventeenth century, a long, low, white-painted house on a terrace cunningly clear of the flood level of the Comer, and with ideal fishing water for some hundreds of yards on either side of it. It was small, and aware of the virtues of remaining small, lurking ambiguously between hotel and pub, and retaining its hold on the local bar custom while it lured in the fanatical fishermen from half the county for weekend indulgences and occasional contests. Its ceilings were low, and its corners many and intimate. And it belonged to a family, and reflected their stubborn conservative tastes, with a minimum of staff providing a maximum of service. The only relatively new thing about it was its romantic and truthful name, which someone in the family had thought up early in the nineteenth century as an improvement on ‘The Leybourne Arms’; for the Leybourne family had been extinct since the fourteenth century, while salmon regularly did return several miles up- river from this house, and were regularly taken for a mile on either side. Downstream, the nearest weir was a tourist sight in the season, flashing with silvery leaps as the salmon climbed to their spawning-grounds.
From the narrow approach lane a gravel drive swung round to the side door of the inn, and then continued, dwindling, to the rear, where there was a brick garage and a half-grassy car park. Gus halted the Aston Martin at the doorway instead of driving straight on to the garage, and was out of the driving-seat like a greyhound out of a trap, to dart round to the passenger side and hand Charlotte out. His meticulous performance slightly surprised her; there had been moments when they seemed to have achieved a more casual contact, and he couldn’t be still trying to impress. However, she allowed him to squire her to the desk, without comment and with a straight face, told him the number of her key, though keys were almost an affectation at ‘The Salmon’s Return’, more for ornament than use, and let him take it down for her and escort her to the foot of the oak staircase, which wound in slightly drunken lurches about a narrow well, the polished treads hollowed by centuries of use.
He stood back then, and let her go, and she mounted the first flight, and the second, planting her fashionable square heels firmly on the beautiful old wood, which was austerely and very properly without covering, and recorded her movements accurately for anyone listening below. She didn’t look back, and she didn’t linger, but her ears were pricked at every step. She felt, rather than heard, how he turned smartly and loped back across the panelled hall towards the door, no doubt to drive the car round into the garage. No doubt! Except that he was in no hurry about starting it up. Its aristocratic note was not loud, but proudly characteristic. Though she had no car of her own just now, Charlotte had been driving, and driving well, for more than four years.
The second landing was carpeted, the wood of the flooring being slightly worn and hollowed. Her steps could no longer be heard below, once she reached the corridor. She did not even go as far as her room—the sound of the door being unlocked, opening and closing again should surely not carry down to the hall. She kicked off her shoes on the carpet, and slid back silently to listen down the well of the staircase; and picking up from this level only minor and ambiguous sounds, she went quickly down again one floor, to where she could lean cautiously over the glossy black banister, and train both eyes and ears upon any activity in the hall below. Visually, her range was limited. The acoustics were excellent.
She had no idea, until then, why she was acting as she was, or what she suspected, or why, indeed, she should suspect anything but a straight pick-up, and one so simply and attractively engineered as to be quite unalarming; a normal minor wolf on the prowl, with a long weekend to while away, and an eye cocked for congenial company, preferably intimate, but in any case gratifying. And yet she held her breath as she leaned out from the cover of the first-floor corridor, and hung cautiously over the oak rail.
Mrs Lane was there just below her; she could see the top of the round, erect, crisply waved head of iron-grey hair, and the bountiful bulges, fore and aft, of the pocket-clipper figure below. Mrs Lane was the miniature goddess who controlled her large, tolerant, good-humoured menfolk, and made this whole organisation work. And at this moment she had a finger threading the maze of the register, and one hand already vaguely gesturing towards the key-board.
‘Well, yes,’ said the comfortable border voice, pondering, ‘I can give you a single room, but only for two nights, I’m afraid. Weekends we’re usually booked up in advance, you see, even in the close season. There’s a club meeting here for a social weekend—I think they like to keep their places warm here for when coarse fishing starts again. Number 12, if two nights is any good to you?’
‘Better than nothing,’ said Gus Hambro’s voice heartily, but with circumspect quietness. ‘I’ll take it, and gratefully. This is a dream of a position you’ve got here, with the path down-river. You ought to keep rooms for archaeologists as well as fishermen.’
‘They’re not so predictable,’ said Mrs Lane practically, ‘and they do so tend to camp, you know. The fishermen are good men for their comforts, and then they do patronise the bar. After all, you need an audience when you talk about fish, and salmon especially. You don’t fish yourself now, Mr Hambro?’
‘I never really had time,’ said the winning baritone voice. ‘You might convert me, at that! Number 12, you said? And I can move my car round into the garage? Fine, I’ll find my way. I’ll sign in when I’ve put her away for the night.’
Charlotte withdrew into cover, and hoped no one on the upper deck had fallen over her discarded shoes. Gus was plunging away out of the door, contented with his dispositions, and Mrs Lane, apparently satisfied of his
She sat on the edge of her bed and thought it out. It need not, after all, be so abstruse, or so deeply suspect. He was young, alert, very much aware of the opposite sex, and with a personal taste which apparently inclined strongly towards her type. When she had revealed that she was staying here, he had simply decided to hook up and join on. But no, that wouldn’t do! She chilled, remembering. She had told him where she was booked, and at that stage he hadn’t reacted at all. Not until she had signed her name in the book, at his request, and his long-sighted
