The Detective Omnibus: 'City of Gold and Shadows', 'Flight of a Witch' and 'Funeral of Figaro'

She turned in a swirl of nylon jersey, and flung wide the door to the study, where the subsiding glow of the fire still burned. Her movements, as she receded rapidly along the passage beyond, were silent and violent, a force of nature in action. Only gradually did it emerge that she was rather a miniature whirlwind, perhaps an inch shorter even than Charlotte, but so slender that she escaped looking like a pocket edition. When she came back, with a tray in her hands, they had installed their patient by the fire in a deep chair, and peeled the soggy, wet jacket from him. They were five people in one small room, and hardly a word was said between them until Gus Hambro had a large brandy under his belt, and was visibly returning into circulation. His still dazed eyes followed his astonishing hostess around, measuring, weighing and wondering, in forgetfulness of his own predicament. He said nothing at all, as yet, but very eloquently. Charlotte hung back in a corner of the room, and let them encircle him with their attentions. So far he had not even registered her presence, and she was in no particular hurry to enlighten him.

‘He should have a doctor,’ said Paviour anxiously, standing over him with the empty brandy glass.

‘I don’t want a doctor,’ protested the patient, weakly but decidedly. ‘What could he do for me that you’re not doing? All I’ve got is a headache.’ He looked round him doubtfully, winced abruptly back to his original position, and clapped a surprised hand behind his right ear. ‘What happened?’ he asked blankly.

‘You fell in the river,’ said Paviour patiently. ‘I shouldn’t worry about remembering, if I were you. The main thing is, you’re here, and you’re going to be all right.’

‘Fell in the river?’ repeated Gus like an indignant echo, and stared at the smear of blood staining his muddy fingers. ‘I never did! I was keeping well on the landward side of the path, on the grass. And that’s where I was lying when I came round just now. All I’ve got is a welt on the head here. Somebody jumped me from behind and knocked me out.’ He looked from face to face, questioning and wondering. ‘If I was in the river,’ he said reasonably, ‘what am I doing here now?’

‘This lady,’ said Paviour, stepping aside to allow him to follow the mild gesture that indicated Charlotte, ‘pulled you out. Not only that, she administered artificial respiration and brought you round, and then came here to get help. Why did you suppose we were setting off with a stretcher and torches, at this time of night?’

‘I didn’t know… I never realised…’ He sat forward, staring in outraged recognition at Charlotte. ‘You mean you … it was you who…’ He shut his mouth and swallowed hard, and in the space of about two seconds she saw a whole kaleidoscope of emotions flash in succession through his mind. If she’s here, if she found me, it’s because she followed me! If she followed me, it’s because she doesn’t trust me, and if she doesn’t trust me it’s because she knows something, or has found out something. So far she was sure of her ground. And what followed was neither surprise nor mystery to her. For suddenly Gus Hambro performed a minor miracle, by producing a fiery blush that made itself visible in waves of dubious gratitude and indubitable mortification even through the layers of river mud that still decorated his face. Tales of gallant rescues ought not to go into reverse, and cast the lady as hero and the man as helpless victim. Especially when, whatever other circumstances may hold good, the man has been exerting himself to make an impression on the lady in question. Fate, thought Charlotte, gazing innocently back into his admiring, devoted, humiliated and furious face, has certainly given me the upper hand of you, my boy!

‘The kiss of life, I hope?’ said the young man Lawrence, putting a deliberate finger through the slight tension which was palpably building up within the room.

‘Schafer,’ said Charlotte shortly. ‘The only method I know.’

Gus did not sound at all like a man recently revived from drowning as he said with sharp disquiet: ‘Right, that disposes of how I got out, and I’m duly grateful, believe me. But now will somebody please explain to me how the hell I ever got in?

They were all staring at him in speculative silence when the sound of a car’s engine circled the house, coming to rest in the arc of gravel before the door. After it died, the silence was absolute for a few moments. Then incongruous suburban chimes jangled from the front porch.

‘That must be the police inspector,’ said Paviour. ‘Will you let him in, dear?’

His wife turned without a word, and went to open the door; and presently ushered in Detective Chief Inspector George Felse, mild, grey-haired and ordinary, a tired middle-aged man who would have been inconspicuous and among his peers almost anywhere he cared to materialise.

‘I got a message,’ he said, ‘that you wanted me here.’

He looked round them all as though none of them afforded him any surprise, though two of them did not belong here, and to his certain knowledge had been elsewhere only a short time ago. So short a time, Charlotte realised with a shock, that he could not possibly have returned home in the meantime, since he was a close neighbour of the Bodens, who lived ten miles from Aurae Phiala. The relayed message must have found him somewhere not far from this house. Somewhere by the river, she thought, downstream. Whatever went into the flooded Comer here would fetch up at one of several spots, no doubt well known to the police, where curves and currents tended to land what they had carried down. The chief inspector had just come, case or no case, from setting a close watch on those spots, in expectation—in foreboding, rather—that the flood would bring some unusual freight aground very shortly.

Only then did she fully realise that if she had been five minutes later the watchers keeping a lookout for a stray boy might, tomorrow, have been hauling ashore the sodden body of Gus Hambro.

Washed, warmed, with a shaven patch and an adhesive dressing behind his right ear and a second large brandy nursed gratefully in his hands, Gus told his story; though not, perhaps, quite ingenuously.

‘All I did was come out for a walk before going to bed, and I was about by that place where the bank’s caved in, when somebody jumped me from behind. I never heard a thing until maybe the last two steps he took, I never had time to turn. Something hit me on the back of the head, here, and I went out like a light. I remember dropping. I never felt the ground hit me. But I do know where I was when I fell—in the belt of grass under the bank, and facing straight ahead the way I was walking. And when I came round I was in the same place. I took it for granted I’d just been lying there since I went out, and whoever had jumped me had made off and left me there. When I could make it, I got up and made for the nearest shelter. There was a lighted doorway here, I steered for that. And just outside the garden I ran into this rescue party coming out to find me. Now they tell me,’ he said flatly, ‘that I was in the river, drowning, and Charlotte here pulled me out and brought me round.’ He had used her Christian name without even realising it, so intent was he on pinning down the details of his own remembrance.

‘When I found him,’ said Charlotte, ‘he was lying right across the path.’

‘Across the path?’

‘Across the path,’ she said firmly, ‘with his feet just touching the grass on the landward side, and his head and shoulders in the river. His face was completely under water.’