normal, otherwise it’s all wasted. If I’m lucky, and find something out in time to nip out again before night, I will, and I’ll go straight home and tell them. I’m not looking for trouble, all I want is a chance to go over the ground without anyone else knowing, and then it’s up to the police. Now I’m going. And you’d better push off, too.’
And in the end, unhappily and reluctantly, they did as they were instructed. They were so used to thinking of him as the brains of the outfit that they feared to make any alteration to his planning, in case they wrecked the show. Ginger looked back from the bend in the lane. The loose pale in the tall manorial fence was back in position, there was no rustling or movement among the bushes of the shrubbery within. Bossie had vanished, with his pocket torch, borrowed from Philip Mason under fearful oaths of secrecy, his collection of left- over sandwiches, one apple, and a pork pie from Cough’s, in case he really had to stay out all night. Ginger shook his head forebodingly, and all the way home on the bus he said never a word, and even Spuggy Price caught the habit of silence, and stared glumly out of the window.
CHAPTER EIGHT
« ^ »
No,’ sighed George, in response to Bunty’s unasked questions. ‘Not a step further forward than we were this morning. Several more reports of dented wings, none of ’em relevant. Rainbow played golf with his foursome, sure enough, and locked a briefcase firmly away while he did it, but as far as we can discover, no one even remotely connected with him was playing at the same time, even if they could have got at his case, which they couldn’t without grave risk, because the traffic in and out was brisk, and you don’t play tricks with lockers unless you’re fairly sure of being undisturbed. At the gallery on Saturday he was among the local artists, who aren’t really his cup of tea, and at the Music Hall show all the trade was present, and he might have let something drop to somebody, but if so, none of those we’ve interviewed got a whiff of it.’
‘So it’s as open as ever,’ said Bunty, dishing up in the kitchen. ‘It’s what we could have expected. He wasn’t a man who generated passions about him. Something quite cold, like greed, knocked Rainbow off. Greed trips over itself sooner or later, or trips over something else quite harmless and incidental. Like Bossie, for instance?’
‘As a matter of fact,’ owned George, relaxing into a tired man’s enjoyment of his dinner, after a long day of having no time to be hungry, ‘I was thinking of going up and having another session with Bossie, now he’s home and easy, and his exploits are out in the open. He’s had time now to let things relax, and let’s hope they’ve relaxed into focus, not out. There just may be something more he can tell us.’
‘That reminds me,’ said Bunty abstractedly. ‘Thespis is back in town! You remember Toby Malcolm’s travelling theatre? They’ve got a three-day stand from tomorrow, in the Grammar School grounds. They were just getting that odd contraption of theirs fitted up when I came by before tea.’
‘Really?’ Mention of this one glowing success always cheered George, who had seen a lot of failures in his time. ‘I might just drop in and have a natter with Toby on the way. He cuts a lot of ice with Bossie. Senior and junior partners in crime once upon a time – it has to count for something when the big boy turns legitimate.’
In the grounds of Comerbourne’s oldest and most illustrious school, still obstinately referred to as the Grammar School though it was well advanced in the process of going comprehensive, there was ample room for Toby’s three wagons that put together into a rather ramshackle sort of enclosure, and when George arrived there in the dusk the assembly was already complete. October is too late for outdoor theatre in the evenings, and the season of little festivals is over. Presumably schools would have to provide the bulk of support for the rest of the viable travelling year, until Thespis holed up for the winter in some small, friendly town, where at least a few shows could hope for support around Christmas. The seven people, four young men and three girls, who ran the enterprise were shuttling between their odd little theatre and their living van with mute, daemonic purpose, doing mysterious things, and carrying about with them items of costume and equipment even more mysterious. They looked rapt and happy, as people do who are doing, at no matter what material cost to themselves, exactly what they want to do.
Toby came out from the door of the auditorium, which incorporated a ticket-office more restricted than any sentry-box, and saw George crossing from the car-park. He came to meet him at a joyful trot, a coil of cable in one hand and a cassette deck in the other, his thick brown hair bouncing over one blue eye, and a broad, benevolent smile spreading from ear to ear.
‘Mr Felse – hullo! Are you after a play-bill? I’m sure Mrs Felse would show one for us, I nearly gave her one this afternoon. But I was stuck like the Colossus of Rhodes at the time, trying to link the third van on. D’you like our set-up? Come and have a look round inside, it’s quite safe now. Bounces a bit, but it won’t when we’ve got an audience in.’
‘Thanks, but I’ll wait until we come to the show. Actually I’m thinking of running up to see the Jarvises at Abbot’s Bale, and I wondered if you’d be free by this time to come with me.’
‘No, really?’ Toby beamed satisfaction. ‘You must be reading my mind. I’ve already promised to go up and stay overnight, now we’ve got this outfit all set up. I should have been on my way in about ten minutes more. But what with the price of petrol, and all that, I’d just as soon leave the old bike behind, and be driven up there in style. D’you mean it?’
‘Of course I mean it. But what about getting back in the morning, if you’re staying over?’
‘Oh, not to worry about that! I’m sure Sam will drive me down, and drop off Bossie in Mottisham on the way, give the school bus a miss for once. Hang on a couple of minutes, and I’ll get rid of this stuff.’ And Toby turned and galloped enthusiastically to the company’s living van and leaped into it like a faun, to reappear in a few moments, hauling on his wind-jacket as he ran.
‘I always try to see Sam and Jenny whenever I can. Anyhow, it’s home really – apart from that old heap over there, which is home, too, in its way. I’m hawking tickets, by the way, you won’t escape. With luck Jenny might plant a few for us up the valley.’
‘You get me a real lead out of Bossie,’ promised George, as he started the car and drove out from the school gates, ‘and I’ll buy tickets for every night. You playing in person?’
‘Yep! Edgar in
He would be a charming, slightly ominous Edgar, with infinite potentialities. Very suitable casting, George considered.
‘That was our Perpetua you saw trotting across with her arms full of curtains – the one in the tattered jeans. Face like a perverted elf, but she can speak verse like nobody’s business. But what did you mean about getting you a lead out of Bossie? He’s not in any trouble with the law, is he?’ His voice, though light, was also slightly anxious. You never knew what an eccentric genius like Bossie might turn his hand to.
‘Certainly not with the law. You probably haven’t been following the local press, and in any case it was only a five-line paragraph. Bossie got knocked down by a car – no, don’t worry, he’s fine, nothing but bruises.’
