like another game?’
‘Yes… all right. And Ken… even if I did have the chance, I’d still prefer you.’
He gave her a delighted grin, then linking his arm through hers, went with her towards a vacant court.
2
By the end of the week, Alice had begun her correspondence course and a hint had been dropped by Kit to the old couple that she had seen Alice with a handsome young man. The old people were delighted, agreeing with Kit to say nothing that might embarrass Alice.
During the week, Iris, still unsure of her suspicions about her mother, had kept a dose watch but had seen nothing further to confirm her first impression that Kit was drinking again.
It was soon after Iris’s seventeenth birthday, a few months after her father had been killed, that she had discovered her mother had become an alcoholic. She had returned from college one hot summer evening to find Kit sitting motionless, her face ashen, her eyes glazed, an empty whisky bottle on the table. This had been an experience that Iris was never to forget. Kit had been unable to speak: unable to move. Terrified, Iris had telephoned for Dr. Sterling who had attended the Loring family ever since they had set up home in Pittsville. He had helped Iris get her mother to bed, then he had taken the frightened girl downstairs and had talked to her.
She would always remember Dr. Sterling’s quiet, kind talk in which he had persuaded her that her mother should go into a sanatorium. Kit had remained there for two months.
Iris got a job as cashier at a movie house at Downside. When Kit was cured, she bought the rooming-house with the money her husband had left her. For months Iris watched her mother. Kit seemed cured, but now just when Iris was beginning to relax, her suspicions were again alerted. She continued to watch, but so far, after the first alarm, she hadn’t further proof that Kit was backsliding.
One evening, a week after the first hint had been dropped about Alice’s boy-friend, Kit came into Calvin’s room. She received a shock.
Looking at himself in the mirror was a tall, heavily-built man wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a fawn belted overcoat. He had black sideboards and a black moustache. The sight of this stranger made Kit’s heart skip a beat and she paused in the doorway, asking, ‘What are you doing here?’
The man turned and grinned at her and she recognised Calvin.
‘This is Johnny Acres – Alice’s boy-friend,’ he said. ‘Not bad?’ He took off the halt and tossed it on the bed, then he stripped off the crepe sideboards and the moustache.
As she watched him take off the overcoat and hang it up, he said, ‘In the half light no one would recognise me. Now the problem is how the major and Miss Pearson can get a glimpse of Mr. Acres.’
A little unsteadily, Kit went to the armchair and sat in it.
‘Mr. Acres must have a car,’ Calvin said. He opened the closet and took out the bottle of whisky. ‘Hello! There’s not much here.’ He looked sharply at her. ‘Have you been drinking my Scotch?’
‘Is that all that of a crime?’ she asked sullenly.
‘Can’t you buy your own whisky?’ he said irritably. He poured himself the last of the whisky and dropped the empty bottle into the trash basket. She watched him furtively. ‘As I was saying, Acres has to have a car. This is where we have to spend to gain. I have three hundred dollars. I’ll need at least another three hundred. Have you got it?’
She hesitated, then nodded.
‘I can get it.’
‘Then tomorrow evening we’ll go to Downside. We’ll go to a movie. There’ll be no secret about it. It’s time the old people knew there is more than one romance in the house. Have you told your daughter yet?’
Kit’s face stiffened.
‘No.’
‘Well, you’d better.’
She didn’t say anything.
‘While you’re at the movie, I’ll go along, dressed as Johnny Acres, and buy a second-hand car. I’ll park it behind the bank until we want it.’
She said tonelessly, ‘You’re sure all this is going to be safe?’
His fleshy face hardened.’
