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

affect the convenience of everyone in residence here, and therefore could be stated in everyone’s presence. And he hoped it wouldn’t inhibit the activities of anybody here. Anybody, of course, with an easy conscience.

‘I don’t promise anything,’ said Lesley serenely, ‘about anybody’s conscience except mine. But I don’t anticipate any real onslaught from you, somehow. Come along in!’

They were all there, opportunely including Bill Lawrence. Paviour greeted the visitor with immaculate politeness, but a certain air of acid disapproval which might well have stemmed from nothing more than nervousness. ‘I thought,’ he said, in withdrawn enquiry, ‘that we had answered all the relevant questions already. Your men have had access wherever they wished. Is there anything more we can do?’

‘No questioning is entailed tonight,’ said George. ‘I called to tell you that we find it necessary to remain on your grounds for a day or two. It might—it’s for you to decide—be preferable to close Aurae Phiala to the public for some days. No doubt you’ll consult Lord Silcaster about that. We’re prepared to cordon off our section if you see fit to continue admitting the public. I’m sorry to put you to any inconvenience, but it can’t be helped. What we intend is to take up the area of ground you now have roped off, or a part of it—the broken corner of the hypocaust.’

Paviour shot up out of his chair, for once jerked erect to his full gangling height, which was impressive. He looked more than ever like Don Quixote confronting the most formidable of spectral windmills; and his tenor voice blazed from a reed to a trumpet in his indignation.

‘You can’t do such a thing! You’ve no right! Can you imagine the harm you might do? Uninformed digging is disastrous. Lord Silcaster will never tolerate it.’

‘Lord Silcaster has already given his permission. On the grounds set before him.’

‘I can’t believe it! Grounds? What grounds? I quite understand that where there’s some reasonable connection, some prospect of information to be gained… But surely here, tragic though the circumstances may be, there’s no question of a crime? This poor boy fell into the river—’

‘I’m afraid your information is not quite complete,’ George said equably. ‘Gerry Boden did not simply fall into the river and drown. He was knocked on the head, just as Mr Hambro was last night, and put into the river.’

Paviour stood rigid, frozen into silence like the rest.

‘Put into the river,’ said George, studying the circle of shocked faces, ‘somewhere on these premises. He showed particular interest in that subsidence, it’s reasonable to assume that his object was to return to it at a time when there would be no one around to interfere with him. I can also tell you, roughly, at any rate, the time when he entered the water. It was somewhere around ten o’clock. And you won’t need reminding what happened here at very much the same time last night.’

No, they needed no reminding. Charlotte had been the first to make the connection; her eyes lit with a spark of alert intelligence which was meant as a communication, and as briefly acknowledged by a warning flicker of George’s glance in her direction. She said nothing. Paviour was the last to understand. His habitual greyness faded into a bleached and waxen pallor.

‘We were concerned last night,’ said George, ‘with the question of what Mr Hambro could possibly have blundered into, to make it essential that he should not survive to talk about it. Now we needn’t wonder about that any longer.’

When he left the house, he went down to the riverside, and spent some time considering the extent of the job they were about to tackle, the resources they were going to need, and the best way of setting about it. He came back to his car, parked inconspicuously on the grass by the privet hedge, shortly before half past ten. From the darkness where the thicker growth of box began, a shadowy figure slipped out to join him, and he saw the oval of a girl’s face as a paler gleam above her dark coat.

‘Miss Rossignol! What are you doing here?’

‘I had to speak to you,’ she said in a hurried whisper. ‘It’s all right, they won’t miss me. I think they were glad to have a little time to themselves. I said I’d like to walk a little way with Bill Lawrence when he left. I had a sudden thought, when you mentioned the timing. One I don’t much like, and can’t quite believe in, but it’s there.’

‘What is it? What’s on your mind?’

‘I was pretty close behind Gus Hambro last night. I know you realised I was following him. And it was a quiet night, no noise from wind or leaves. Look, I’m no expert at that sort of thing. I was as quiet as I could be, but all the same, I can’t help wondering if at some stage he realised I was on his heels. There is something curious about him, you know. The way he shook me off, as soon as you left us, and hurried off down the river like that. And even his being there at the inn. He pretended to me that he was already booked in there, but he wasn’t—I heard him ask for the room afterwards. When he knew who I was.’

‘You think that’s significant?’ George asked, and drew her a step deeper into the darkness of the hedge.

‘I think it ought not to be,’ she said earnestly. ‘But yes, I think it is. So it adds up to something ambivalent about him, so much so that I have to wonder. Was he genuinely attacked, because he blundered into murder? That’s what the timing suggests, but that’s not the only thing it could suggest. The other is that he heard me following, and staged the attack on himself, with the help of some accomplice unknown—for it couldn’t have been done alone, could it?—to put himself in the clear, and immobilise me long enough for the other person to get away, and the body to be well downstream. Maybe someone bold enough to improvise like that would even take the risk of getting himself really knocked out and dropped in the water, knowing I couldn’t fail to find him in a few minutes.’

‘And knowing you,’ George added. She sensed that he was smiling, and was a little disconcerted. ‘Enough to estimate your capabilities, at any rate. In the circumstances you outline, I agree I’d rather take a chance on you than on most people.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘but I think you’re laughing at me.’

‘I assure you I’m not. But I’d still be a bit wary of taking a risk like that. Even on you.’

‘It would be a pretty desperate choice, though, wouldn’t it? It isn’t a thought I like, myself,’ she admitted. ‘But I know he isn’t what he seems to be. He isn’t here by accident, and your news about an unofficial hunt being launched for the boy sent him off in a hurry to this place.’

‘As it well might,’ said George, interpreting, ‘if the boy was already dead, and concealed somewhere here, and Hambro had guilty knowledge of it. The news that the police were interested made it imperative to get the body away at once—and the river was the obvious ally. Is that what you think happened?’