surely, with what happened to that child? This is all getting a bit sinister and suggestive, isn’t it?’
‘No,’ said George, ‘he didn’t go to Sam. We know that.’
Interesting, though, to think he might have done just that, Sam being the last person on earth to suspect of coveting somebody else’s discovery or taking advantage of somebody else’s request for help. ‘But thanks for the advice, I think you’ve put me on the right lines.’
For with Sam already eliminated, the supply of first-class classical scholars ready to hand in Middlehope, ruling out, possibly, the vicar, who would certainly not have been consulted in the circumstances, was narrowed down to one.
Professor Emeritus Evan Joyce lived in a rambling stone cottage a little way up the valley, with half an acre of garden, a few old fruit trees, about seven thousand books which lined the walls of all the rooms, and a handsome old desk of enormous proportions, situated in a large window and admirable for spreading out several files of notes, translations and authorities, without actually adding a line to the manuscript about the Goliard poets. The visual effect was impressive, the actual business of rambling among these fascinating properties was ravishing, and the fact that every line he pursued was a digression only added to its charm. He had lived with the fully-realised vision of his magnum opus so long that there was absolutely no prospect of his ever producing it in the flesh. There was no need, it already existed, complete and perfect in his mind.
‘Why, yes,’ he said readily, when George put the question to him, ‘he did come to consult me, in confidence. But that was the week before he got killed, on the Saturday evening. He brought a leaf of parchment, as you say, and wanted my views on whether it was of any importance. Somebody’d been monkeying with it, on the face of it it was a simple fake, but I think he knew that, even if he didn’t say so. But the original cleaning had been very cursory, and there was another script below. It looked highly promising. I thought the text could be recovered more or less complete, given a little effort and patience, and I suggested he should leave it with me and give me time to try and work it out.’
‘He didn’t, by any chance?’ asked George wistfully, but without much hope. That leaf of parchment was beginning to beckon like the missing link, the key to everything that had happened and was about to happen.
‘He did not! The suggestion made him jump, all right, but back, not forward. I must have looked a good deal too interested, and too eager, he changed his mind about trusting me. And from what you say, I suppose I’d told him what he wanted to know. I’d made it plain there was something genuinely promising there. He practically snatched it back, and thanked me, and said he’d like to try it himself first. I tried to get him to tell me where he’d found it, but he turned deaf, and I never did get to know. You haven’t found the membrane among his effects, then, I’m afraid? If you have, I wish you’d let me have a few days to work on it.’
For all his gentle person and distracted ways, there was a hungry gleam in his eye at the thought, a spark of real and possibly lawless passion. Unworldly scholars, as well as sharp antique-dealers, may develop unscrupulous lusts after such treasure as mediaeval manuscripts.
‘No such luck, it seems to have vanished. But thanks for filling in one gap. You didn’t think of volunteering the information as soon as the news of his death went round?’
By this time they were sauntering down the garden path to the gate together, and Evan Joyce turned a sharp glance along his shoulder at the question. ‘Why, you don’t think there could be any significance in this, do you? It never occurred to me. Nothing further had happened about it, and I never gave it a thought.’
Which could well be true, and yet was somehow not entirely convincing.
‘No, I suppose you might not,’ agreed George absently, his eyes on the uneven path before them, paved long ago, and bedded down into irregular hollows. Evan Joyce trod it lightly and surely. Small feet he had, encased in surprisingly capacious shoes, old, loose, trodden down, bulging at the big-toe joint, and showing a pattern of faint cracks in their leather uppers. The shoes of an ageing man who liked his comfort, and cared very little about his appearance, and kept old shoes until they warped past the point of comfort. He had been out here putting in fresh bedding plants round some of the rose-beds when George arrived, the soil was dark and damp where he had watered them in. George halted to admire.
‘Some fine roses you’ve still got.’
‘Trimming the dead ones off regularly is the secret,’ said Joyce heartily. ‘I usually have one or two at Christmas.’
‘That’s a beautiful yellow McGredy. I never seem to get them as perfect as that,’ said George guilefully. The bush was well into the bed, beyond the moist band of soil, and Evan Joyce was a small man. And innocent! It was a shame to trick him.
‘Would you like a buttonhole?’ He hopped gaily over his newly bedded border, and planted his left foot firmly in the darkened soil to clip off the rose; and by sheer luck he turned on his right foot to step back to the path, and left a fine, clear imprint behind him. The right size, with the suggestion of the smaller foot inside, the right tread, down at the outer rim of the heel, unevenly weighted, with a distinct crack at the remembered angle across the sole. George stood gazing at it so steadily and with such intent that his companion, who was proffering the rose in silence, could not choose but follow the fixed gaze and contemplate his own left footprint with the same concentration. He was very astute, things did not have to be laboured for him.
‘You seem,’ he said mildly, and with no particular anxiety, ‘to have seen that before?’
‘I ought to apologise,’ admitted George, ‘for getting a rose on false pretences, though it’s every bit as fine as I said it was, and I’ll accept it gladly if you still feel inclined to part with it. But the fact is, yes, I have seen the print of your left foot before, in this same shoe.’
‘Hardly ever wears any others,’ said Evan cheerfully, ‘and never to walk far. One’s feet do take over at my age, and demand their own way. I have a feeling we might as well go back in, and begin again.’
‘You are not only psychic,’ said George gratefully, ‘but remarkably generous. I do hope you’re not a murderer?’
‘With my physique? I should need firearms, and firearms would frighten me to death before I ever got near firing them. Come on, I’ll make some coffee. If my conscience had been clear, in any case, I should have been at church, but Rainbow was haunting me. I grudged him my choir, you know, not to mention the organ. I don’t claim the idea of murder is so far out of court. But I dream, I don’t do. Everybody around here knows that.’ He sounded regretful, and possibly he really was.
Inside again, across the immense desk and over mugs of strong black coffee, they eyed each other with mutual respect, almost affection. Two ageing men, thought George, though he was at least fifteen years behind Evan Joyce, and both with feet that give trouble at times, and have imposed their own pattern on living.
