Ellis Peters - George Felse 12 - City Of Gold and Shadows (6 page)

‘We could hardly miss them,’ said Gus. ‘They were loading up to leave just when we came out.’

‘Including a senior, a boy about seventeen, who was probably subjecting his teacher to a certain amount of needling?’

‘Name of Boden,’ said Gus. ‘We had a modest brush with him ourselves. Incidentally, they’d lost him—the coach set off without him in the end.’

‘Exactly the point,’ said Chief Inspector Felse. ‘He still hasn’t come home.’ He caught the surprised and doubtful glance they exchanged, and went on practically: ‘I know! He’s perfectly competent, well supplied with money always, and it’s no more than a quarter past nine. Probably you’d already gathered that it isn’t the first time he’s played similar tricks, and that he’s a law to himself, and comes and goes as he pleases. The simple fact remains, he’s never yet been known to miss a meal. Suppose you tell me exactly where and how you last saw him.’

They did so, in detail, each supplementing the other’s account and refreshing the other’s memory.

‘Odd as it seems, that’s the latest mention of him I’ve got so far. He drew off and went back towards his party?’

‘Not directly,’ said Charlotte. ‘I suppose we just took it that he would, and weren’t surprised that he made a pretence of being unconcerned and going his own way about it. What he actually did was to stroll away down-river, right along the perimeter. I watched him as far as the corner of the curator’s garden, and saw him turn in alongside the hedge. I didn’t pay any attention afterwards. I just took it for granted he was on his way back to the group.’

‘I’ve talked to his particular friends. None of them saw him again. He never rejoined his party.’

‘Have his parents reported him missing?’ asked Gus.

‘No, not yet. His father happens to be a close neighbour of mine in the village of Comerford, that’s all. Young Collins—he teaches Latin for his sins—reported to the Bodens when the coach got back to Comerbourne, not to complain of the kid, but so that they shouldn’t be worried about his non-arrival. They know their son, and are more or less resigned to his caprices, but they know his consistencies, too. He likes his comforts and he likes his food. When he failed to show up by half past eight they did begin to wonder. I happen to be three doors away, and dropping it in my lap is a discreet step short of making an official report. Easier to back out of, and sometimes produces the same result. This isn’t a case. And if it ever becomes one—God forbid!—it won’t be my case. But the odds are Gerry’s merely run into something more interesting than usual, worth being late for supper.’

‘A girl?’ suggested Gus dubiously.

‘It happens. Though up to now he’s been too much in love with himself,’ said the chief inspector frankly, ‘to show much interest in girls. He’s not a bad kid, really. Just the only one, too spoiled, and too clever.’ He rose, and restored his chair to its place at the neighbouring table. ‘Thanks, anyhow, for pin-pointing the actual place and time. No one seems to have caught a glimpse of him since.’

‘You don’t think,’ said Charlotte, suddenly uneasy, ‘that he could possibly have missed his footing and slipped into the river? It’s running so high, and so fast, even a good swimmer might not be able to get out if he once got caught in the current.’

‘No, I don’t. He
is
a good swimmer—quite good enough, and quite mature enough in that way, to respect flood water. And he wasn’t attended by his admirers at that stage, so he had no inducement to show off by taking risks. No, I feel confident he absented himself deliberately, for some reason of his own.’

‘Then he’ll reappear,’ she said, ‘in his own good time.’

‘In all probability he will. As soon as he begins to think pleasurably of his bed.’ He smiled at her. ‘Thank you, Miss Rossignol, and goodnight. Goodnight, Mr Hambro.’

He turned and left the room, threading his way between the deserted tables to vanish in the warm, wood-scented half-darkness of the hall. In a few moments they heard a car start up and drive away. Down-river, Charlotte thought. Perhaps he wasn’t as completely convinced as he made out that a lost boy, however bright and confident, could not have ended in the Comer. And perhaps he wasn’t going to wait until morning before launching a search.

Gus Hambro was sitting quite still, his brows drawn together in a tight and abstracted frown, and the focus of his eyes fixed far beyond the panelling of the dining-room.

‘Of course he’ll be all right,’ said Charlotte, all the more firmly because she was not totally convinced.

Gus said: ‘Of course!’ in a slightly startled voice, and visibly withdrew his vision and his thoughts from some distant preoccupation in which she had no part. He looked vaguely at her, and quickly and intently at his watch; but at least he had returned to the consciousness that she was present. He even managed a perfunctory smile. ‘He’ll turn up when it suits him. Don’t worry about him. What do you say, shall we see what’s on television?’

Her thumbs pricked then. She let him accompany her into the small lounge where the set was kept in segregation from the vocal and gregarious fishermen, and settle her in a comfortable chair, cheek by jowl with a single elderly lady, who seemed pleased to have company, and disposed to conversation. That suited him very well. Charlotte was counting the seconds until he should extricate himself, and he did it in less time than she had expected, and without even the pretence of sitting down with her.

‘You won’t mind if I leave you to watch this without me? There’s a letter I really ought to get written tonight—I hadn’t realised it was quite so late, and I can get it off by first post if I do it now.’

‘Of course!’ she said. ‘In any case, I shall be going to bed very soon, I am rather tired.’

‘I’ll say goodnight, then, if you’ll excuse me.’

‘Goodnight, Mr Hambro.’

It sounded absurdly false to her, as though they were playing a rather bald comedy for the benefit of the elderly lady, who was dividing her benign attention between them and a quivering travel film. He withdrew quickly and quietly, closing the door carefully after him. Charlotte strained her ears to hear whether he would slip out by the side door and make straight for the garage at the rear of the house for his car, but instead she heard the crisp, light rapping of his heels on the oak staircase. Room 12 was on the first floor. Arguably he must be bound there now, but almost certainly he had no intention of staying there.

‘Oh, dear!’ said Charlotte, groping in the depths of her handbag, ‘I seem to have left my lighter in the dining-room. So sorry to keep disturbing you like this, I must go and get it.’

She closed the door after her no less gently and purposefully than he had done, and snatching off her shoes, ran silently up the two flights of stairs to her own room. It was a risk, for she might well have run headlong into him on the first floor landing, but she had luck, and was round the next turn of the stairs when she checked and froze against the wall, hearing his rapid steps on the oak treads below her. Very light, very hurried steps, but the bare, glossy wood turned them into a muffled drum-roll. Down to the hall again, and across it to the front door. She had made no mistake; he had an errand somewhere that would not wait.

She ran to her own room, plunged frantically into her walking shoes, and dragged on a black coat. She had a small torch in her case, and spared the extra minute to find it and thrust it into her pocket. Even this brief delay meant that he would be out of sight and out of earshot, but did that matter at this stage? She knew, or she was persuaded that she knew, where he was bound. And he had gone out by the front door, presumably to present an appearance of normality if he should be seen by any of the family—a late evening stroll before bed being a simple enough amusement—while she could save the whole circuit of the house by using the back door close to the kitchen. At this moment she did not care at all whether she was observed, or what the observer might think of her. The curiosity which was quick in her had now a personal urgency about it. He had picked her up of intent, had followed her into this inn for some purpose of his own. And now for some purpose of his own he shook her off, and with almost insulting lack of finesse. Charlotte was not a commodity to be picked up and put down at will, and so he would find.

She saw no sequence in what was happening, and no coherence, but she knew it was there to be seen, if only she could achieve the right angle of vision.

Her walking shoes had formidable soles of thick, springy rubber composition, remarkably silent even on the staircase, and gifted with a firm grip even in wet river mud. The right footwear for venturing the riverside path, short of gumboots. She let herself out softly by the family door, and made for the silver glimmer of water in haste. The trees that sheltered the inn fell back from her gradually, and the vast, chill darkness of the sky mellowed by degrees into a soft, lambent un-darkness, moonless but starry, in which shapes existed, though without precision. By early habit she was a countrywoman, she could orientate herself by barely visible bulks and air currents and scents in the night, and she was not afraid to trust her feet in the irregularities of an unknown path. The torch she hardly used at all; only once or twice, shading it within her palm, she let it flash upon the paler gravel of the path, to align her passage alongside the faintly glowing water, and then snapped it out again quickly, to avoid reliance upon its light as much as to conceal her presence here.

She walked steadily, using all her senses to set her course accurately. And it was several minutes before her quick ears picked up, from somewhere well ahead of her, the snap of a broken branch under a trampling foot. A sharp, dry crack. Dead wood, brought down in the flood water and cast ashore perhaps two days ago. She eased her pace then, knowing he was there in front of her. She had no wish to overtake him, only to maintain her distance, and keep track of his movements if she could. He was on his way down-river, by the waterside path that enjoyed right of way through the enclosure at Aurae Phiala. Ten minutes’ walk at most, by this route.

After that, she did not know. All she had to do was follow, and find out.

She knew, by the looming bulk of the bank on her right hand, when she reached the perimeter of the enclosure. To make sure, she risked using her torch, shielded by her body, and saw the single strand of wire, a mere symbol, that separated the path from the city site. Then, distant beyond the broad bowl full of skeleton walls, she saw the headlights of a car pass on the road to Silcaster, sweeping eerily across the filigree of stonework and grass, and vanishing again at the turn of the highway. Twice this random searchlight lit and abandoned the past, all in marvellous silence, for the trick of the ground siphoned off all sound. After every such lightning, darkness closed in more weightily. Then she went cautiously, losing ground but keeping her bearings. The river was dangerous here, still gnawing at the rim of the path. In the night its silence and its matt, pewter gleam were alike deceptive, suggesting languor and sleep, while she knew from her memories of day that it was rushing down its bed with a tigerish fury and force, so concentrated that it generated no ripples and no sibilance. One slip, and it would sweep you away without a murmur or a cry.

She had lost track of the movement ahead of her. It was vital here to pay proper attention to every step, or the river would claim forfeit. A mysterious line of pallor, the nearest thing here to a ripple, outlined the rim of the Comer as it lipped the gravel. She judged that she was somewhere very near to where the bank on her right had subsided, shattering the outer corner of the hypocaust. But so much of her attention was now centred on her own immediate steps that she had no leisure to orientate herself in a wider field. Curiously the darkness seemed to have become more dark. When she lifted her eyes, she was blind. Only when she looked down, fixing upon her own feet, had she at least the illusion of vision. A degree of light emanated from the silently hurtling water, which she felt as a force urging her forward, as though she were in its grip and swept along with it.

She was concentrating with exaggerated passion upon her own blind, sensitive footsteps when her instep caught in some solid, clinging mass, and threw her forward in a clumsy, crippling stumble, from which she recovered strongly, and kept her balance.

The block, whatever it was, lay still before her, lipped by the faintly phosphorescent rim of shallow water. All she saw was a rippling edge of pallor, but she felt the barrier as a solid ridge barricading the path. She fumbled for the torch, and thumbed over the button with a chilly hand, and the cone of light spilled over a man’s body, face-down in the shallow water, glistening under the abrupt brightness in violent projections of black and white.

She turned and lunged into the crumbling bank with the torch until it lodged and held still, focussed upon the motionless bulk below. Then she plunged forward with both hands, took fast hold of the thick tweed jacket, and dragged the inert body out of the river. He was a dead, limp weight, but the smooth mud greasing the path made her task easier. Clear of the encroaching water of the Comer, she collapsed across her salvaged man, and crouching on her knees beside him, turned up to the tight circle of light the wet, white face of Gus Hambro.

She stooped with her ear against his lips, and could detect no sound of breathing, spread her fingers against his chest under the sodden jacket, and felt no faint rise and fall. Yet he could not have been long in the water. She had not been far behind him, and yet had heard no sound to prepare her for this. She felt nothing now but the urgency of her own role, and acted without thought or need for thought. She wound her arms about his knees and dragged him laboriously across the gravel into the safe, thick grass; his right cheek suffered, but he was hardly going to hold that against her if he survived. In the soft turf she turned his face to lie upon that grazed right cheek, and spread his arms above his head. Somewhere in the depths of her mind the fact was recorded, and later recalled, that from the shoulders down his back was dry, and even in front, from the knees down he was merely damp and muddy from the slime of the river bank. His head and his chest were soaked, and streaming water into the grass.

But at the time she had no awareness of any such details, though her senses missed none of them. She was entirely concentrated on the curved grip of her hands on his loins, and the rhythmic swing of her body as she leaned and relaxed, forcing the water out of him and dragging the air into him, and waited, holding her own breath, for the first rasping response out of his misused lungs. At first it was like leaning into a thick, inert sponge, and that seemed to go on for an age. Actually it was only a matter of perhaps fifty seconds before the first convulsive rattle of protest shook his ribs, and then she felt the first thread of breath drawn out long and fine under her coaxing fingers as she sat back from him. She dared not halt upon so tenuous a promise. She went on industriously compressing and releasing, but now she felt the breath of life responding to her touch, following the pressure of her hands in and out, lifting the body under her, until she was only orchestrating the performance, and signalling its progression by the measured touch of her palms and undulation of her body.

She ventured at last to sit back on her heels, let her hands lie in her lap, and listen. And palpably, audibly, he breathed. She heard him catch at air, and cough up the last slime of the river. Then he heaved in a breath that must have gone right down to his toes, and his whole body arched and stiffened, and then relaxed on as prolonged an exhalation. She waited, for a time renewing the light, guiding pressure on his back, afraid to leave all the labour to him. By then he was breathing so strongly and normally that she was able to extend her consciousness to details, every one of which was stunningly unexpected and astonishing, even the flickering yellow eye of the torch still beaming upon the recumbent body. She looked up, and became aware of the vault of faintly luminous sky over them, and the silence. An absolute silence.

She understood then that if she had had leisure to listen at the right moment, she might have heard the faint, suggestive sounds of a third presence. For men do not come out by night with the intention of lying down to drown in eight inches of water at the edge of a riverside path. Not cocky young men with roving eyes and a nice taste in girls. Now, of course, there was nothing to be heard at all, nothing to be seen but the sudden, wheeling pallor of one more set of headlights taking the curve in the Silcaster road, far beyond Aurae Phiala.

She leaned down to check closely upon the steady rise and fall of his chest, and the slight, rhythmic warmth of the air expelled from his lungs. The pulse in his wrist was vehement and strong. Cold, if he lay here too long, might be a greater enemy to him now than anything else. And if one thing was certain, it was that she could not get him from here alone. Probably he needed a doctor, but certainly he needed warmth and shelter and a bed. Twice she turned from him, and again turned back to make a double and treble check. The third time she clambered stiffly to her feet and looked about her, dazed by the darkness outside the closed circle of torchlight, and switched off the beam to acclimatise once again to the starry night. It was like enlarging herself tenfold into a chill but resplendent vastness, like taking seisin of the night. She gave herself a full minute to find her bearings in this mute kingdom, and her senses made the adjustment gratefully. Gus Hambro—ridiculous name, she thought, with wonder, exasperation and affection, for he enjoyed it now by her grace—continued to breathe strongly and regularly in his oblivion. And she knew that she not only could, but must leave him.

Her memories of Aurae Phiala were sharp, but now she could not be sure how accurate. The entrance with its kiosk and museum was away at the far side, and not inhabited by night. But before her, downstream, was the hedge of the garden hemming the curator’s villa. Gerry Boden, the lost boy, had made off in that direction when he was hunted out of the dangerous area. Somewhere along that hedge he had last been seen, and by her. By this time he was certainly in his own home, fed, unchastened, and ready for fresh mischief tomorrow. At this moment she did not believe in tragedies; she had just averted one.

She took the torch, using it freely now because speed was of the first importance, and stealth of none at all, and went on down the slippery path towards the thick box hedge, behind which the invisible red roof hung, representing help and companionship. There was a narrow gate opening on the pathway, as she had expected there would be. Within it, the curator’s garden climbed in three steep terraces, concrete steps lifting the level at each stage. The house loomed undefined, a large bulk between her and the milky sky. She found herself facing a glass-panelled door, with the luminous dot of a bell set in its frame. She pressed the spark, and seemed to feel a warmth in it. There were people on the other side of that door. She was not accustomed to wanting people, but she wanted them now.

She seemed to wait a long time before she heard footsteps within, and then a light sprang up beyond the frosted glass. There was an interval of clashing bolts and keys turning—she had to remind herself that it must be nearly eleven by this time, and that this was an isolated spot—before the door opened. But at least it opened fully and vehemently, offering every hope of a welcome within. Somehow she had expected six inches of semi-darkness, and half a face enquiring suspiciously what her business might be at this hour.

This was not the front door, but a garden way to the river. She saw a white conservatory full of plants, soft light filling it, a few flowers making knots of dazzling colour; and at the door, casting a spidery shadow, a long, meagre but erect man, all angles, like a lesser Don Quixote put together out of scrap iron. A well-shaped grey head leaned to peer at her out of concerned hollow eyes, whose colour she could not determine. By this light they had no colour, only an engraved darkness in his ivory face. He had a small, pointed, elusive beard like the Don, and wispy grey moustaches drooping to join it.

‘I’m so sorry,’ said a high tenor voice, soft and mild in surprise, and apologising even for the surprise, ‘but we don’t normally use this door, and especially at night. I hope I didn’t keep you waiting.’

With distant astonishment at her own efficiency, she heard her voice saying very clearly and reasonably: ‘I do beg your pardon, but I came to you as the nearest house. I’ve just pulled a man out of the river, two hundred yards or so upstream. I’ve been giving him artificial respiration, and I think he’s going to be all right, but we ought to get him into shelter as quickly as we can. Can you help me? Could we bring him here?’

After one stunned instant, for which she could hardly blame him, he reacted with admirable promptitude. The door opened wider than ever. ‘Come inside!’ he said. ‘I’ll call my colleague, and we’ll get the poor chap indoors at once.’

‘I could help you carry him in,’ she said. ‘We ought not to lose any time.’

‘Don’t worry, Lawrence is only a couple of minutes away. He has a scooter, he’ll be here in no time. You sit down by the fire, you’re wet and cold. I’ll be back directly.’ And he thrust her briskly into a small, book-lined room, and himself went on along a passage to the hall and the telephone, leaving the door open between them. She heard him dial, and speak briefly and drily, almost as though similar rescue operations landed on his doorstep every night. It might not be the first occurrence, she realised. People who live beside flood rivers are liable to be recruited from time to time. Certainly he wasted no time in calling up his reserves. After the click of the hand-set as the connection was cut, she heard him dial and speak once more.

When he came back into the doorway of the room where she waited, he had a duffle coat over his arm, and was carrying a folding garden-bed with a rigid aluminium frame and a patterned canvas cover printed with brilliant sunflowers. Incongruously festive for a stretcher, but she saw that it would serve the purpose very well.

‘If you wouldn’t mind coming along to light us on the way back? I’ve got a coach-lantern here in the garden room. I called the police, as well,’ he explained. ‘You may not know, but we had an officer here looking for a missing boy, earlier this evening. I hope you may have found him for them.’

‘No,’ said Charlotte quickly, ‘this isn’t the boy. I do know about that, but this is someone else, a man I know slightly. He’s staying at “The Salmon’s Return”, like me.’

‘Oh… I see! A pity… I called the number the chief inspector gave me, I felt sure… Well, never mind, here’s Lawrence! Let’s get this one in, at any rate.’

The busy sputter of a Vespa came rocking round the bulk of the house, and the young man of the custodian’s box put his head in at the open door, gave Charlotte a brief, blank glance, and asked briskly: ‘Where is he?’

‘By the path, just upstream. Here, take this! I’ll lead. And mind how you go,’ he said, heading rapidly out through the garden, the lantern held out beside him to light the steps for Charlotte. ‘That path’s in a very dangerous state until it dries out properly. What was he doing taking a night walk there? A stupid thing to do!’

His voice was detached and impersonal, but she heard very clearly the implication: And what were
you
doing taking a night walk there? ‘Lucky for him you came along,’ he said, almost as if he had recognised the implication, too, and was making a token apology for it.

‘Listen!’ said the young man named Lawrence suddenly, and checked to strain his ears for the small, recurrent sound that had reached him. ‘Someone else out late, too. This place is getting like Brighton beach.’

They had reached the gate in the box hedge, and froze in the grass for an instant to listen. Slow, irregular footsteps, audible only by reason of the slight sucking of soft mud at the heels of someone’s shoes as he approached along the path.

‘I called the chief inspector,’ said the curator, advancing again to meet the sound. ‘I thought it likely this might be the young fellow he was looking for. But he couldn’t be here yet.’

‘He wouldn’t be coming along here, anyhow. He’ll be driving. Mrs Paviour surely wouldn’t walk this way in the dark, would she?’

‘Lesley’s home, twenty minutes ago, and gone to bed. I hope she’s sleeping through this disturbance.’

They walked towards the unsteady steps, and a figure took shape out of the darkness, weaving as it came and blinking dazedly as the lantern was lifted to illuminate its face. Wet and muddy, but moving doggedly under his own steam, Gus Hambro lurched into the circle of his would-be rescuers, braced his rubbery legs well apart, and stood dazzled, holding his head together with both hands.

‘It’s him!’ said Charlotte, humanly indifferent to grammar at this crisis. ‘He’s walking… he’s all right!’

The young man named Lawrence put her aside kindly but firmly, and took over in her place, drawing Gus’s left arm about his shoulders. ‘Man!’ he said admiringly. ‘Are you the tough one! Here, girl, cop hold of this thing, we don’t need a stretcher for types like this.’

The curator moved to the other side, encircled Gus competently but aloofly, and handed over the lantern. It was Charlotte who led the way back slowly and carefully through the garden. Mounting steps was what Gus found most bewildering at this stage; his feet made manful efforts, but tended to trail, and he was half-carried the last few yards to the door. And yet he had come to himself unaided, clambered to his feet without even the support of a fence to lean on, and made his way some two hundred yards towards the single light of the curator’s open door. A tough one, as Lawrence had observed. Or else his handicap had been rather less than she had reckoned. She was tired by this time, and unsure of her judgement: of stresses, of odds, even of personalities.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Gus, quite distinctly but as if from a great distance. ‘I seem to be causing a lot of trouble.’

‘Not to worry, chum!’ said the Lawrence youth benignly, puffing a little on the steps but indestructibly cool and amiable. ‘See that nice, bright hole in the wall? Aim for that, and you’re home and dry!’

The nice, bright hole in the wall stood wide, as they had left it, gleaming with the reflections of white paint within. They bore steadily down upon it. And suddenly the oblong of light was inhabited. A shadowy silhouette materialised, rather than stepped, into the frame, and stood leaning forward slightly, peering understandably into the dimness outside, and curious about the massed group of figures converging upon the doorway. There was an outside light which no one, so far, had thought to switch on. The girl in the conservatory reached out a hand and flicked the switch, lighting them the last few yards, and floodlighting herself at the same time. Appearing magically out of shadow, suddenly she shone there before them, the focus of light and warmth and refuge. She had not the least idea what was going on, and she was smiling into the night in enquiry and wonder, her brows arched halfway to laughter, her lips parted in a whimsical welcome to whatever might be pending.

There was one brief moment while she stood illuminated thus theatrically, and still not at all comprehending that the group which confronted her had had a close brush with tragedy. She had a heart-shaped face, of striking, creamy smoothness, and broader than its length from brow to chin, like the bright, intelligent countenance of a young cat, innocent, assured and inquisitive. Her eyes were so wide-set and widely-opened that they consumed half her face in a dazzling pool of greenish-blue radiance. Her nose was neat, small and short, and her mouth full-lipped and firmly formed above a tapered but resolute chin. She had a cloud of short hair curving in clinging waves about her head, the colour of barley silk, and under the feathery fringe her forehead bulged childishly, with room in it for a notable brain, the one thing about her that was not suavely curved and ivory-smooth.