She shook her head. ‘I can’t remember anything more. It was the date I noticed—’ She turned and looked full at Orrie. ‘But
The briefest of glances passed between George Felse and Gus Hambro; and Gus, who had been silent during all these last exchanges, said suddenly, briskly and forcibly:
‘I doubt if he does.
She had had no warning, none at all; for once her sixth sense had failed her. She came out of her chair with a thin, angry sound, quivering like a plucked bow-string, torn between panic acceptance and the lightning reassertion of her terrible intelligence; and in the instant while the two clashed, she shrieked at him: ‘You’re lying! You can’t have been near where we put hi…’
The aspirate hissed and died on her lip, and that was all, but it was fierce and clear, and just two words too many. She stood rigid, chilled into ice.
‘He wasn’t on the direct route, no,’ agreed Gus softly, ‘but my route was a good deal less than direct. There’s hardly a yard of flue passable in that hypocaust where I haven’t been. Including the near corner where —“
The deafening silence was shattered suddenly by a great, gusty, vengeful sound, and that was Orrie Benyon laughing. And in a moment, melting, surrendering, genuinely and terrifyingly amused by her own lapse, Lesley Paviour dropped back into her chair and laughed with him, exactly like a sporting loser in a trivial quizz-game.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
« ^
She laughed again, when she was alone with George in his office at C.I.D. headquarters in Comerbourne, with no shorthand writer at hand and no witnesses, and he asked her, with genuine and unindignant curiosity—since indignation was quite irrelevant in any dealings with Lesley—: ‘Do you always contrive to have not merely one fall guy on hand in case of need, but at least two? And doesn’t it sometimes make things risky when you decide to change horses in midstream?’
‘I never plan,’ she said with disarming candour, ‘not consciously. I just do what seems the clever thing at the moment.’
All too often, he reflected, it not only seemed clever, but was. She had matched every twist until the last, the one she hadn’t foreseen even as a possibility. For some built-in instinct certainly acted to provide her with escape hatches and can-carriers well in advance of need. Why, otherwise, had she gone out of her way to let Charlotte not only see but handle the package still waiting to be reclaimed from the bank? And to tell her guilelessly that it was Orrie’s, and not the first time he had put similar small items into safe-keeping? Thus underlining for future reference his involvement and her own naive innocence. She had even scattered a few seeds, according to Charlotte, concerning Bill Lawrence’s solitary and furtive prowlings about the site, in case she should ever need yet another string to her bow. Lesley collected potentially useful people, and used and disposed of them like tissues, without a qualm.
‘I’m not sure,’ he said, ‘it was so clever to write off Orrie. I wonder at what stage you made up your mind to throw him to the lions? You did allow him the chance to drive you back from the hospital last night. Hadn’t you decided then? He’d been waiting on hot coals for a chance to talk to you alone. He wanted you to do your share, didn’t he? You were in the house, it was your turn to do the necessary killing. Even a delicate little woman could press a cushion over the face of a man fast asleep under drugs after an exhausting ordeal. But you never intended sticking your neck out for him. Why didn’t you tell him so? Obviously you didn’t, or he wouldn’t have left his own attempt so late. He waited all night, hoping you’d do the job for him. And I don’t doubt you slept soundly.’
‘Never better,’ she said.
‘Was it more fun letting him sweat? Was it just to make sure he
‘I’m never afraid,’ she said, and smiled. ‘I don’t drive through red lights, but I’m not afraid.’ He believed that, too.
‘And of course,’ he said, ‘it was only going to be your word against his, since your husband was going to die. And if you were winding up the operation and getting out with the proceeds, Orrie was going to be a liability as well as an expense, wasn’t he? But what would you have done if he’d refused to put his neck in the noose, and decided to take a chance on Gus, and sit it out?’
‘I’d have thought of something,’ said Lesley confidently.
‘In the end even you had to make one slip.’
‘I shan’t make another. I knew your thumbs were pricking about me,’ she said without animosity, ‘when you encouraged me to do poor old Stephen out of his alibi for the night. I could hardly do that without pointing out that I hadn’t got one myself, could I? But even now, what are you going to charge me with?’
‘Concealing a death will do to begin with.’
Lesley laughed aloud. ‘You’ll never make even that one stick. Not without Stephen’s evidence, and you’re going to have to go rather a long way to get that, aren’t you?’
‘Just as far,’ said George, ‘as the General. It’s a mistake to be too clever at reading between the lines. Neither Doctor Braby nor Sister Bruce told you any lies, they just didn’t tell you the whole truth. Sister told you repeatedly he wasn’t any worse. She didn’t say he wasn’t any better. He is, very much. Digitalisation is taking effect excellently. He’s out of danger.’
‘But she told me,’ said Lesley, genuinely indignant at such duplicity, ‘that he was dying!’
‘She did nothing of the sort. She told you simply that you could visit any time, even out of visiting hours. What you read into that is your worry. So you can visit, if you’d like to—under escort, of course.’
She made a small, bitter kitten-face, wrinkling her nose. The jolt was shrugged off in a moment; she adapted to this as nimbly as she did to everything. ‘Thanks, but in the circumstances perhaps it wouldn’t be tactful. It certainly wouldn’t be amusing. But even if you do get to talk to him,’ she said, strongly recovering, ‘he won’t say a word against me, you know.’
