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

enliven it. The confrontation through the glass of the window might never have taken place.

By that hour the police had already segregated certain sections of brick and tile marked with recent scars, a few curved shards of pottery from a jar, and covered from injury a small area of flooring within the flue, with its dust still displaying the faint but positive print of the base of just such a ceramic jar. There had been no gold coins in the detritus. No doubt the last of them had been removed in haste after the murder of Gerry Boden. Only the single one from his purse remained to testify.

On Saturday evenings Bill Lawrence, that ambitious and scholarly young man, had an extra-mural class in Moulden. Which meant that the general invitation to dinner issued at lunch by Lesley raked in only Gus Hambro in addition to the curator’s household. Bill had generous license to come along for coffee afterwards, however late, but his class was timed to finish only at nine-thirty, and since it met in the rear clubroom at ‘The Crown’ it was long odds against the argumentative local savants consenting to go home before closing time, so that his attendance was at best only hypothetical. Moreover, Bill’s own attitude was decidedly ambiguous; nobody had to tell him that his commitments were well known, and invitations issued accordingly. He knew when he was, or was not, wanted.

Not that Bill was missing anything, Gus thought, before the evening was half over. The pretence that everything was normal, that they were a party of congenial people enjoying a social get-together, had become downright oppressive, as if everyone was working a little too hard at it. They had an afternoon of unremitting labour behind them, and perhaps were too tired to make a good job of keeping up appearances. Paviour had grown so brittle that he looked as if the least jolt might send all his joints jangling apart; and though Lesley’s extrovert lightness of heart was beyond suspicion, it was rapidly becoming unbearable in this context. All very well for her in her innocence, but Gus was in a very different case. Worst of all, there was no chance whatever of making any real contact with Charlotte, and it was exasperating to have her sitting there opposite him, so near and so inaccessible, watching him with the black, acute gaze of a sceptical cat, pupils high-lighted in gold; a look that asserted nothing, merely observed and analysed, stopping short of judgement only, he was afraid, out of indifference.

As soon as he decently could, and on the plea that they were all tired—to which Lesley frankly assented, eliding a yawn into an apology—he excused himself and withdrew to make his way home. He was glad to be alone, and made the most of the ten-minute walk to his bed, taking it at leisure.

It was a restless, luminous night, the kind that late April sometimes casts up between frosts, mild, starry, with a laggard and minor moon. The shape of Aurae Phiala came into being gradually as he walked, looming largely on his right hand, a series of levels marked out by a series of verticals, standing bones of masonry rearing from long planes of turf.

She came silently out of the unregarded spaces on his left, and stood in his path, a small, compact figure quite still and composed; not making any demands upon him, except by being there. He knew which one she was, though the two of them were very much of a build.

‘Lesley…’

‘It’s all right,’ she said serenely, still neatly enfolded into her own shadowy silhouette. ‘Nobody’s going to miss me. Believe it or not, I was so tired I went up to bed the moment you left. You surely don’t think I share a room with him, do you? Or with anyone!’

‘You shouldn’t have come out after me,’ he said.

‘No, I don’t suppose I should. What makes you think it was after you?’

‘You do,’ he said brutally, and stood fronting her, for want of any way by. ‘Who else did you think would be making off this way? Don’t pretend you just happened to choose this way for your evening constitutional.’

‘I never pretend anything,’ she said, in the soft, mild voice that seemed to belong so aptly to the dark. ‘And I never just happen to do anything. In any case, it must be quite plain to you that I ran most of the way from the back gate, or I couldn’t have got here before you. I simply felt I wanted to talk to you again. But it wasn’t much use my finding out how much I liked you, if all I’ve done is to make you dislike me.’

‘Is that what I’m doing?’ he said.

‘That’s the way it looks from where I’m standing.’

‘Maybe you can’t see very well from there.’

‘I could come closer,’ she offered.

It was a highly dangerous gift she had, this one of writing both halves of the dialogue. There never seemed to be any possible answer except the one she wanted. Not that he was trying very hard to deviate from the script.

She took two long, slow steps towards him, her arms at her sides, her head tilted back to look up at him. One more step, and the points of her small, high breasts almost touched him. In the darkness her face was serene and pale, and her dilated eyes huge and fixed. He had the impression that she was smiling.

‘Do I look any more friendly from there?’ he asked, keeping very still.

She said: ‘Gus…’ experimentally, as if she were memorising and tasting his name; and she laughed, very softly, at its ridiculous brevity and inappropriateness. ‘Are you waiting for me to explode when touched? Not this time! Something happened to me this morning that never happened before. Try it. Touch me!’

Her face was very close, turned up to him like a white, wide-open flower; and in obedience to the rules of this game he very nearly did take her at her word. But then he changed his mind, and deliberately held still, even when her warmth leaned and touched him. In a voice he had never heard from her before, whispering, almost fawning, and yet still laughing, she said: ‘Gus…’ again, two or three times over, changing the note as though plucking descending strings. ‘It’s you,’ she said, ‘you, you, you’re the one… It was never like that for me—never—not even with him…’

She put out her hands, and flattened them gently against his chest; and then suddenly her arms were round him, and her body was pressed hard against his, clinging from shoulder to knee. He returned her embrace partly out of pure astonishment, but kept his close hold of her after that out of heady delight. Her intensity was electrifying. Her body moved against him, tensing and turning fluid again, finding every vulnerable nerve. She freed a hand to tug at the buttons of his jacket, and wound her arms about him within it, manipulating the muscles of his back with fierce, hard fingertips. Her mouth reached up to him hungrily, and fastened on his as he leaned to her, in a kiss that left them both gasping for breath. Her lips, progressing by little, biting caresses along his cheek, whispered dizzily: ‘Love me, love me, love…’ until he found her mouth again with his and silenced her.

They were so wildly engrossed in each other at that moment that they heard nothing outside themselves, only