keyhole, and as a final obvious precaution craned his neck quickly through the open window.
'I think we're clear,' he murmured conspiratorially, pulling up one of the chairs from under the table until it was directly opposite where she was sitting.
'Clarkie, you're bloody marvellous. . . . Now, you don't need to say anything if you don't want to. You've got 'em all beaten anyway, I tell you—but I just want you to listen to what I've got to say, and listen carefully.'
She watched him intently.
'You're worried about Charlie, aren't you? About what it'd do to him—all the police and the newspapermen and so on, never mind what might be said in court. I know that and I understand it.'
Mrs. Clark's lower lip trembled and Richardson reached out and patted her knee.
'Well, don't you worry about that, Clarkie. I can fix that—I give you my word I can fix that, even without calling up Sir Laurie Deacon. He's your second line—I'm your front line.
Because I can fix it so Charlie never has to go to court. If dummy2
you'll trust me—and if you'll both promise never to talk about what happened last night—then they're willing to tell everyone it was an accident. Charlie needn't come into it at all. You just heard the shot and went and called Constable—
what's his name—Yates.'
She was frowning at him now, but frowning in evident disbelief. But why should she disbelieve him?
'Don't you believe me, Clarkie?'
That frown had deepened at the mention of Yates, the Constable— the village copper. Richardson tried to project himself into her mind to pinpoint the line in it where trust ended and distrust began.
The village copper . . . could it be as simple as that? Could it be that in a world of fallen idols she still believed that some still stood, neither to be bribed nor bullied? That the law really was the law, though the heavens fell?
Or was it even more simply that his word was not enough and she needed to know why he was able to make a mockery of law and truth so easily?
'I'll tell you why you've got to believe me, Clarkie. You see this— business—is a lot more complicated than it seems. It doesn't involve just you and Charlie. It involves Dr. Audley.'
'I don't see as how it can do that, sir.'
So David and Charlie ranked equally, each to be protected from outrage, the need to speak up for the one cancelling the need to keep silent for the other.
dummy2
'Because he isn't here?' The wrong word now would spoil everything.
She nodded cautiously. She was still with him.
'That's just it, Clarkie. He really ought to be here.' This, he judged, had to be the moment: the risk had to be taken now whether he liked it or not. 'You know that some of the work Dr. Audley does is very important—' if she didn't know it she would be pleased nevertheless at the importance of her Mr.
David '—and very secret. So secret that I'm not allowed to tell you about it.'
He paused. 'But when you do that sort of work, Clarkie—
when you do it as well as he does—you make enemies. Like people who don't agree with you, or even people who want your job. You know the sort of people.' He nodded towards the closed door. 'Like the fat one out there —he's been waiting a long time for David—for Dr. Audley—to make a mistake—'
'But he's only gone off on holiday, Mr. Richardson, sir,' Mrs.
Clark protested. 'They haven't been away together, not for a proper holiday anyway, since little Charlotte was born. And they both needed a holiday, 'specially Mr. David. He's been like a bear with a sore head just recently, he has.'
Richardson's heart sank: in her own innocence she was only confirming Oliver St. John Latimer.
'And they'd planned this for a long time, had they?'
'Lord—no, sir! Mr. David only decided just a few days ago.
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And he was that excited—he hadn't been like that since the baby came, sir—he had us running to get everything ready.
He was like a boy with a new bicycle, sir!'
'Excited?' Richardson grabbed at the word like an exhausted swimmer reaching for a lifebelt. 'You mean
'Happy as a sandboy, sir—and so was Mrs. Audley to see him like it. He'd been that grumpy with us both, and then suddenly he was laughing and joking—'
'Because of the holiday?'
'Well, I suppose so, sir. But it was the night of the dinner party he first brightened up.'
'The dinner party,' Richardson grinned at her. He mustn't spoil it now, letting elation outrun discretion—there was much more to come still if he played his cards in the right order. 'You mean it was one of your apple pies that put him in a good mood?'
The dinner party. ... He mustn't probe too quickly into that, or too obviously. She was staring at him now as though she sensed the lightening of his mood, but the slackening of tension was bringing her closer to tears.
He leaned forward and patted her knee again. 'It's okay, Clarkie —I really am on your side—on your side and on
