The Old Vengeful

'That's what I needed to put you finally in the clear.'

'What—what you needed?' She caught a glimpse of a house ahead. 'What?'

'Because they didn't all die. At least one of them lived to tell the tale—and a very curious tale too, so David says.' The car crunched and slithered on the thick gravel as he braked finally. 'And here's Faith waiting to welcome you.'

VI

THE SOUND AT the bedroom door disconcerted Elizabeth twice over: first because she was hardly ten minutes out of her bath, and was wondering what to do with her hair, never mind her face and her clothes; and then because it didn't sound like the sort of business-like knock she would have expected from Faith Audley—it was more like the tentative tap of a scholarship pupil who hadn't finished her essay-on the Eleven Years' Tyranny of Charles I and hoped against hope that Miss Loftus wasn't in, or wouldn't hear if she was.

Only this time it was Miss Loftus who wished she wasn't in, or hadn't heard. But she was, and she had, and once again there was no escape.

'Come in!' She saw the lips of her bedraggled reflection in the dressing-table mirror pronounce the invitation.

dummy3

The door opened slowly . . . too slowly, and not far enough before it stopped opening.

Oh God! thought Elizabeth. Not Paul Mitchell—?

But neither Paul's face nor Faith Audley's ash-blonde head came through the gap—though an ash-blonde head was coming through, but at a level she had not anticipated.

A child—a child's face, like and yet unlike— like for its thinness and pale colouring, but unlike, with the gold-framed spectacles magnifying the eyes and the metal brace disfiguring the mouth which opened to speak.

'Mummy says—I'm sorry to disturb you, she says—but I heard your bath go down the plug at the back—she says, would you like the hair-dryer? And . . . and, she says— we can do your things . . . Clarkie can wash them, and tumble dry them, and iron them, and all that. . . Clarkie—that's Mrs Clarke—and . . . and . . . Mummy says there's this—'

This, and the hair-dryer, and more of the miniature Faith Audley— like and unlike—slid unwillingly into the bedroom.

'It's a caftan.' The child juggled with her burdens the better to display the garment, allowing its material to ooze silkily over the hair-dryer. 'Daddy brought it back from the East somewhere years ago, long before he even met Mummy, and she's never worn it ... Only, she says it'll fit, and she hasn't got anything else that will . . . But she says it's very beautiful.'

Elizabeth guessed that Mummy hadn't quite said all of that, dummy3

or at least not for passing on. But Mummy was certainly right about the caftan.

'Come in, dear.' She remembered belatedly that she ought to be smiling, not staring the poor little thing out of countenance. 'You must be Cathy, of course.'

The child hesitated. 'I'm supposed not to bother you, Miss—

Miss—' her composure began to desert her as she searched for the right name.

'Elizabeth,' said Elizabeth quickly, searching in her own experience for the right approach. She had never taught children of primary school age, and was doubly nervous of one whose IQ went off the scale, if Paul Mitchell's judgement was to be relied on. 'Elizabeth Loftus.'

Cathy stared at her for a moment, wide-eyed, as though the name itself was a revelation. Then she advanced into the bedroom, dumped her burdens on the nearest chair, and presented her hand to Elizabeth gravely.

'How do you do, Miss Loftus.'

Elizabeth recognised the hall-marks. 'How do you do, Miss Audley. But if you will call me 'Elizabeth' then I can call you

'Cathy'—all right?' She smiled again as she took the little hand, but a cold memory came back to her as she did so, of just such another offer which Paul Mitchell had made to her—

an exchange of names designed to lull her into indiscretion when she was most vulnerable.

But the way Cathy Audley was looking at her suggested that dummy3

David Audley's daughter could not be so easily deceived.

She released the hand. 'Is that all right?'

Cathy frowned. 'Daddy says . . . the names we use to each other are important. They all mean something— like, when he wants to be nasty to someone, he always says 'Mister'—or

'Colonel'. But I don't believe I understand the rules yet.'

Elizabeth thought hard. 'You mean, like Treebeard not wanting to give his full name in The Lord of the Rings?' That wasn't at all what Audley had meant, but it was a carefully-fired long shot nevertheless, because this was the sort of child who would have read Tolkien.

The frown cleared, and Elizabeth watched the bridge build itself between them, half ashamed, but also half pleased with herself.

'Well. . . no, I don't think Daddy did mean that, actually—

and he doesn't like Tolkien—it's Mummy who likes Tolkien.

Daddy's favourite is Kipling.'

'And which do you like?' The shame faded and the pleasure increased. If this was the sort of game Paul