Weston looked at him sidelong. 'I won't break the law. Not even for Henry Digby.'
'I wouldn't dream of asking you to. I just need you to soften someone up for me, that's all.'
'I can do that any time.'
'Just this time, is all I want.
'To what end?'
'The other end of the deal, you mean?” No smile this time.
This was a matter of vengeance. 'I'm going to try and give you Charlie Ratcliffe—on a plate.'
'How?'
'History, Superintendent Weston. They used history against dummy5
us—now we're going to use it against them.'
3
TEN minutes, Weston had said. Half a day, or maybe never, for a guilty man, but for an innocent one only ten minutes.
There was a moral in that somewhere.
Audley watched the empty road ahead and wondered what it was like to be leaned on by Superintendent Weston. Probably it would be like being leaned on by an elephant, a remorseless pressure made all the more irresistible by the certainty that resistance was in vain: either the beast would stop of its own accord or that would be the flattening end of everything.
A movement at the roadside caught his eye. Police Constable Cotton was emerging from the Police House for his evening tour, majestic in his tall helmet, his height emphasised by the cycle-clips which tapered his trousers to drainpipes. A dull ache of guilt stirred in Audley's soul as he watched the constable cycle away. Less than a week ago he had sat at this very spot with Henry Digby, and those few days had been the rest of Digby's life. But nothing would change that now, the death sentence for Digby and the life sentence for Audley; not even vengeance, if he could manage it, would reverse those verdicts.
He locked the car and strolled down towards the Steyning Arms. At the corner there was a new temporary signpost, a dummy5
handsome little poster on gold paper bearing a red hand pointing up the road and a boldly-printed legend in black: Standingham Castle
Civil War Siege 1643, 3 p.m.-5.30 p.m. 17th Century Fair, 11 a.
m.-7 p.m.
Adults 30p; children 15p Sat August 30 & Sun August 31
It wasn't the first of such signs he had noticed, there was a rash of them for miles around. Nor indeed was it the only sign of the approaching hostilities and festivities. Stacks of POLICE—NO PARKING cones were dotted in readiness round the village, balanced by cruder posters directing motorists to roped-off fields which were obviously about to yield their owners unexpected cash crops.
Even outside the Steyning Arms itself the coming siege was evident in a fresh notice:
NO VACANT ROOMS
CAR PARK RESERVED STRICTLY
FOR PATRONS AND GUESTS
ONLY
Audley pushed through the hotel entrance door and advanced towards the reception desk.
The girl sitting in the office behind the desk didn't bother to look up from her nail polishing. 'We're all booked up until dummy5
Monday,' she said to her left hand in a bored little pre-recorded voice.
'I don't want a room. I believe you have a Professor Stephen Nayler staying here,' said Audley.
'Eh?' She stared at him as if he had made a lewd suggestion.
'What number room is Professor Stephen Nayler in?' said Audley conversationally.
'Oh . . . Number 10, up the stairs and turn left—' she answered before she realised what she was saying, then frowned at herself for being so unnecessarily helpful. It was a happy thought that next day several hundred rapacious cavaliers would be descending on her. He hoped they would behave with proper attention to historical authenticity, as they had done at Easingbridge, only more so.
The deep murmur of Weston's voice behind the door of Number 10 was stilled by his knock, but for a moment no one answered. Then another voice, high and familiar, answered.
'Come!'
The room had been a small one with no one in it. With Nayler it had grown smaller and with Weston it had become smaller still. But with the large detective sergeant who had accompanied Weston— a man with a marvellously brutal bog-Irish face which looked as if it had been carved out of soft stone and then unwisely exposed to the elements for a century or two—it must have been claustrophobic for those dummy5
ten long minutes.
And now, as Audley eased the door shut behind him, it was the Black Hole of Calcutta.
'Audley!' Surprise and relief were mingled fifty-fifty in the exclamation. And for sure the elephant was the right animal: Nayler's aura was the shape and consistency of a Shrove Tuesday pancake.
'Good evening, Professor.' Audley reserved his sharpest look for Weston. 'Superintendent Weston—what
