‘I’ve been here nearly a year now,’ said Bill Lawrence. ‘I know the set-up well enough to keep out of trouble. Actually I’ve known the place, and the Paviours, longer than that, I used to come over occasionally during the vacations, when I was at Silcaster university, and help out as assistant. I had to get a holiday job of some kind, and this was right in my line. I’d started planning my book then. So I know the score. No, he’s never actually talked to me about Mrs Paviour, but it’s easy to see he’s worried every time another man comes near her. Especially a young man. It isn’t altogether surprising, is it?’
‘And Mrs Paviour
The young man’s long, slightly supercilious face had paled and stiffened into watchfulness. ‘She warned me, when I came here officially for this year, that it would be better to keep relations on a very formal basis.’
‘She gave you to understand, in fact, that her husband was liable to an almost pathological jealousy, and for the sake of everybody’s peace of mind you’d better keep away from her?’
‘Something like that—yes.’
‘And she acted accordingly?’
‘Always. It was possible to get along quite well—one developed the knack, and then enjoyed what companionship was permissible.’
That had a marvellously stilted sound, and contrasted strongly with the strained intensity of his face.
‘And did she act accordingly with—for example—Mr Hambro?’
Dark red spots burned on the sharp cheekbones. Paviour wasn’t the only one who could feel jealousy, and there wouldn’t be much room here for elderly magnanimity. Bill clamped his jaw tight shut over anger, swallowed hard, and said at last: ‘I’m not in a position to comment on Mrs Paviour’s actions. You’ve had the opportunity of talking to her in person.’
‘Very true. Mrs Paviour was admirably frank. All right, you can rejoin the others. No, one moment!’ Bill turned and looked back enquiringly and apprehensively from the doorway. ‘You say you used to visit here before you came to work here regularly. Did you, by any chance, pay a visit while Doctor Alan Morris was staying here? That was a year ago last October, the beginning of the month.’
‘Yes, as a matter of fact, I was invited over to meet him one evening,’ said Bill, bewildered but relieved by this turn in the conversation. ‘I angled for an invitation when I knew he was coming, and Mr Paviour asked me over for dinner. That’s the only time I ever got to talk to a really first-class man on my subject. I was disappointed in his book, though,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘I got the impression it was rather a dashed-off job. That’s the trouble with these commissioned series.’
‘Ah, well, you’ll be able to offer a more thorough study,’ said George with only the mildest irony. ‘By the way, you walked to the village and back last night, I believe. So you didn’t use the Vespa yesterday? I notice you didn’t use it to hop over here tonight.’
‘It didn’t seem worth getting it out. I’d cleaned and put it away the night before last. It hasn’t been out since. Why?’
‘How was it for petrol, when you left it?’
‘I filled up the day I cleaned it, and it hasn’t been anywhere but across here since.’ He was frowning now in doubt and uneasiness. ‘Why, what about it? What has the Vespa got to do with anything?’
‘We borrowed it an hour or so ago, without asking your permission, I’m afraid. You shall have it back as soon as we’ve been over it. The tank’s practically empty, Mr Lawrence. And by the still damp mud samples we’re getting from it, it’s certainly had a longish run since the rain set in.’
‘But I don’t understand!’ His face had fallen into gaping consternation, for once defenceless and young, without a pose to cover its alarm. ‘I haven’t had it out, I swear. I haven’t touched it. What do you mean?’
‘If somebody drove Mr Hambro’s car as far as the quarry beyond Silcaster, then—always supposing that somebody belonged here, and had to be seen to be here as usual by morning—he’d need a way of getting back, wouldn’t he? Preferably without having to use public transport and rub shoulders with other people. With a little ingenuity a Vespa could be manoeuvred aboard an Aston Martin, don’t you think? By the time we’ve been over your machine properly we may know for certain where it’s been overnight. With a lot of luck,’ he said, watching the young face blanch and the frightened eyes narrow in calculation, ‘we may even know who was riding it.’
He was in the act of crossing to the drawing-room to tell the silent company within that he was leaving them in peace—insofar as there would be any peace for them—for the rest of that night, when there was a loud knock at the side door, along the passage by the garden-room, and without waiting for anyone to open to him, Orrie Benyon leaned in, vast in donkey-jacket and gum-boots.
‘Is Mr Paviour there?’ He made George his messenger as readily as any other. ‘Ask him to come for a minute, eh? I won’t traipse this muck inside for the missus.’
His knock had brought them all out: Paviour, Lesley, Charlotte and Bill Lawrence from the drawing-room, instant in alarm because their lives had become a series of alarms, and instant in relief and reassurance when they saw a normal phenomenon of the Aurae Phiala earth leaning in upon them; and Reynolds and Price from the rear premises and the outer twilight respectively, quick to materialise wherever there was action in prospect. Orrie looked round them all with fleeting wonder at their number, and returned to his errand.
‘I’ve just been up as far as the top weir. That path’s under water in three places, and the Comer’s still rising. She’s over to the grass, close by that dig of yours, and fetched down a lot more o’ the bank. You’re going to have to concrete in all that section and make it safe, after this lot, or we’ll be liable for anything that happens to the folks using the path. You’d better come and have a look.’
There was a compulsion about him, whether it arose from his native proprietary rights in this soil or simply from his size and total preoccupation, that drew them all out after him into the semi-darkness of the evening. After the recent heavy rain the sky had cleared magically, and expanded in clear, lambent light after the sunset, so that it was bright for the hour, and after a minute in the open air it seemed still day to them. The morning would be calm, sunny and mild. Only the river, their close neighbour on the right hand as soon as they let themselves out of the garden, denied that the world was bland and friendly. The brown, thrusting force of the water lipping the land had a hypnotic attraction. Charlotte, slipping and recovering in the wet turf in her smooth court shoes, felt herself drawn to it by the very energy of its onward drive, as though all motion must incline and merge into this most vehement of motions. The pale green, glowing innocence of the sky over it was a contradiction and a mockery.
This path was terribly familiar to her, and walking upstream here was like walking back, against her will, to the moment when Gus Hambro had lain at her feet with his face in the river, quietly drowning. Now she did not even
