The Old Vengeful

' Miss Loftus!' He sounded close to bruleeing himself.

'I was just coming, Mr Aske.' She allowed herself a touch of irritability, but then smiled at the child. 'I would leave them, if I were you, Cathy dear—they'll be all right.' She set the brulee down among its fellows. 'But now we must go, dear—'

she started moving as she spoke.

'What?' squeaked Cathy. 'But, Elizabeth—'

'Must go!' She blotted out the child's voice with her own as she accelerated out of the kitchen. 'Give my love to your mother, and tell her I'll be back soon—' Aske was standing aside for her, but was looking past her at the child, and that wouldn't do ' —come on, Mr Aske, then! Don't just stand there!' She checked her advance momentarily, long enough to shepherd him ahead of her before the child could betray them both, almost pushing him. Yet even as he moved, he did so crab-wise and doubtfully, still looking past her, as though spiked on a dilemma.

'Elizabeth!' she heard Cathy call behind her.

“That poor child!' snapped Elizabeth severely at Aske. 'You didn't give me a chance to explain—she won't know what to think . . . . Do you want me to go back? Have we time for that? Surely we have?' She slowed down perceptibly.

'No.' Aske's doubts resolved themselves. 'We must go—

you're right. I'll get David Audley to phone her.'

The delicate spatter of rain had increased to a drizzle slanting out of a uniformly grey-black sky pressing down on them, out dummy3

of which the dark had come prematurely.

'A damned dirty night,' said Aske. 'And by the look of it there's most of it still to come. Fasten your seat-belt, Miss Loftus. The roads are going to be slippery.'

Elizabeth fastened her belt unwillingly: it was like snapping her freedom away.

Then the engine was alive; and in quick succession the headlights blazed ahead, darkening the half-light, and the windscreen wipers swept the rain away contemptuously.

'Where are we going?' She tried to push back the reality with a matter-of-fact question as the car moved forward.

Fact—matter-of- fact: they had turned themselves inside out with so many theories, these last twenty-four hours, that the fact of his deliberate lie filled her mind like a monstrous plant in a hot-house which had stifled all other growth.

'London,' he answered eventually. 'I told you.'

'But where exactly?'

'One of our places. You don't really need to know, and I'm not at liberty to say, anyway—sorry.' He shook his head apologetically.

She tried to think. 'Paul said we should stay inside the house, and not go anywhere.'

'Yes. But Dr Audley says otherwise, and he outranks Dr Mitchell. He's the boss.' He braked suddenly, and swung the wheel. In the half-gloom Elizabeth missed the signpost and could see only that they had taken a more minor road at a dummy3

junction.

She tried to look over her shoulder. 'I think you've taken the wrong road—'

'This is a short-cut. Don't worry.'

They were never going to meet Audley and Faith coming back from Guildford on this road, thought Elizabeth.

'You must be tired,' said Aske solicitously. 'Why don't you lie back and close your eyes, and leave the navigation to me?

I'll wake you up in good time.'

'Yes. . .' She was aware of the truth of what he had said: under her present mental confusion and disquiet she was bone-weary. So much had happened so quickly, and all of it so strange and so frightening, that it was no wonder she couldn't think straight—that she was starting to imagine things . . . and it was all beyond her understanding in any case. There was nothing she could do ... there never had been anything she could do, from the start she had been helpless, pushed one way, then pulled another—it was her role in life, it seemed. 'Yes . . . perhaps I will.'

'That's right . . . You can let the seat back, if you like—there's a catch down by the side somewhere.'

'Yes.' She fumbled between the seats.

'Don't undo the safety-belts by mistake . . . When we've had our little talk with Dr Audley I'll put you into a nice hotel for the night,' he said soothingly.

A little talk with Dr Audley, she thought to herself almost dummy3

lethargically—she could feel the seat-belt releases, but not the seat-reclining catch, darn it!—but that was one thing she wasn't going to have . . .

'Then you can dream about Lieutenant Chipperfield, and Mr Midshipman Paget, and Chard and Timms, and all the rest of them,' murmured Aske.

Elizabeth's hand found the catch, and closed on it.