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

‘You may,’ said George, rising, ‘find you’ve over-estimated even his tolerance. How will you get round it then?’

‘I’ll think of something,’ said Lesley.

It was two days before Stephen Paviour was sufficiently recovered to be visited briefly in hospital, and even then George put off what he really had to tell and ask him for two days more, and consulted his doctors before taking the risk of administering a new shock. By Thursday evening his condition was so far satisfactory as to allow the interview.

In all his life of half-fulfilment, of disappointments and deprivations, of loving without being loved, he had perhaps become accustomed to the fact that no one ever came to break good news. It was better to hear the whole story at once than to put it off, since his forebodings were almost always worse than the reality. And with long experience he had acquired a degree of durability against which even this might break itself and leave him unbroken. All the same, George approached the telling very gently and very simply. Flourishes would only have made sympathy intolerable.

Paviour lay and listened without exclamation or protest. There was offence and pain in it for him, but beneath the surface there was no surprise. When it was over he lay and digested it for a minute or two, and strangely he seemed to lie more easily and breathe more deeply, as though a tension and a load had been lifted from him.

‘They both admit this? It’s been going on—how long?’

‘Since before Doctor Morris’s visit. Perhaps two years. Perhaps even more.’

‘I was rejected,’ he said slowly. ‘I had to respect her morbid sensitivity, and cherish her all the same, and I did it. That I could bear. And all the time she was wallowing with that beautiful draught-horse, that piece of border earth. While she fended me off with those elaborate lies, because I was too dull, too civilised, too old to serve her turn.’ He thought for a moment, and there was colour in his grey face, and a spark in his normally haggard and anxious eyes. ‘I’ll tell you,’ he said, ‘exactly what happened, though I see now that it was not what happened at all, since there’s no truth in her. This propensity of hers—to provoke men and then recoil from them—this feigned propensity… She used it on Alan Morris, too. You know he was a ladies’ man? But a gentleman, and experienced enough to be able to deal with her. I was not worried at all.’

It was a bad moment to interrupt, but George had thought of one thing he needed to ask. ‘Do you remember one evening during his visit, when young Lawrence came to dinner? Was there a conversation then about the criminal side of the archaeological interest? About how to market stolen antiques?’

Paviour looked faintly surprised, but the intervention did him good by diverting his own too fixed bitterness.

‘I do remember it. I couldn’t understand then why she should be so interested in such things. I understand now. She was picking his brains. I took it simply as her way of engaging his attention. I’m sure it was she who began the discussion.’

She had, George thought, such a housewifely sense of economy. She never threw away a solitary detail that might some day, suitably perverted, turn out to be useful.

‘I’m sorry, I put you off. Please go on.’

‘The last night of Morris’s stay I had a lecture in the village, one of a series the county education office was putting on. When I came back I found Lesley sitting on the steps of the garden-room, in a hysterical condition. She was wet and cold and crying.’

No doubt, thought George, she can cry at will. God help the jury that has to deal with her!

‘She said, ’went on Paviour in a level, low voice, drawing up the words out of a well of anguish, ‘that she had gone out for a walk with Alan by the river, and he had attacked and tried to rape her. And she had fought him off and pushed him into the Comer. It was credible, you understand, I had experience of the violence of her revulsion. She was very convincing in my case! And I loved her, and let her be. With someone who didn’t understand—yes, there could be a tragedy. I didn’t question it. She said she had got him out, but he was dead. She swims very well, you know, she was born by the river. I coaxed her to take me where he was. He was dead. There was no mistake. I knew—then, of course!—that exposure of such an affair, however accidental it might be, however innocent she might be, would destroy her totally. Her balance was already so precarious, you see. So I hid his body in the hypocaust. We were in process of closing the small dig we’d managed to finance that year, at the corner of the caldarium. It was pitifully small, and we got almost nothing from it. But it did afford a grave. I did it all myself, by night. I’d kept back his typewriter, and all his documents, and a suit of his that fitted me best. There was nothing to be done but take his place, his flight was booked, and it would account for his leaving. We were much the same build, and of course the same age. That goes a long way towards making a passport photograph acceptable, unless the officers have reason to suspect something, and they had none. I had to shave off my beard, but he wore a moustache, that was a help. He was not really very like me in the face, but the same general type, I suppose. And I was wearing his clothes, his hat, his glasses. It worked quite smoothly. We’d talked about his plans, I knew what was needed. And if I’d forgotten anything, I realise now, she would have prompted me. She did prompt me, many times. I took up his air reservation, his hotel reservation in Istanbul. And I worked over his text there, on his typewriter, and made sure that the manuscript he sent to his publishers on Aurae Phiala should put off all enquirers thereafter. It had to. There must never be a full-scale dig here, never.’

‘The purpose was not, in fact, to conceal any valuable find,’ said George. ‘Just a body.’

‘I never knew of any valuable find until now. No… I was hiding poor Morris. It wasn’t a grave he would have rejected, you know.’

‘We’ve found him,’ said George. ‘The pathologists may still be able to tell us how he died. I very much doubt if it was by drowning. I should guess he walked slap into one of their meetings, and found out what they were doing. In the circumstances, I doubt if he’d hold anything against you.’

‘I hope you’re right. I always envied him, but we were good friends. After I’d posted his book—yes, that he would hold against me, wouldn’t he? That must be put right!—I telephoned his friend at Aphrodisias, and apologised for a change of plans, and paid my bill and went to the railway station. I changed to my own clothes in the baths there, and then flew home on my own passport. We’d left the last segment of the hypocaust open on purpose. I put all his other effects underground with him, and covered him in again with my own hands. It was not easy. None of it was easy.’

Very gently and reasonably George asked: ‘Will you, if the issues we have in hand come to trial, testify against your wife? I promise you shall be fully informed of the weight of evidence against her with regard to any charges we prefer.’

‘I’ll testify to the truth, as far as I know it,’ said Paviour, ‘whether it destroys her or no. I realise that I myself