'Forgive me, but I had to tell you what we feel about her, we who know her, perhaps, as well as anyone. We're very fond of her, Mr Felse. I'm sure you can understand that.'

'I can understand it,' said George. 'I'm beginning to think I know her pretty well myself.' And could be very fond of her, too, his mind added, but he kept that to himself.

'Then you must have realised that she can't have known anything about murder or theft.' He looked up into George's face with the shadowy, emasculated reflection of his wife's confidence, authority and energy. 'I know this isn't professional conduct, but I should be very grateful to you for some rea.s.surance a hint as to how you're thinking of her-'

'I think of her,' said George, goaded, 'as a human creature, not a doll, a whole lot more complicated and dangerous than any of you seem to realise. She isn't anyone's hapless victim, and she isn't a p.a.w.n in anyone's game, and when I pity her I know I'm wasting my time. But if it's any consolation to you, I don't don't think she's a murderess.' think she's a murderess.'

He climbed into the MG, swung it round, hissing, on the ap.r.o.n of rosy gravel, and drove away down the avenue of old lime trees, leaving Blacklock standing with a faint, a.s.suaged smile on his lips and the deep grief still in his eyes; slender and tall and elegant in his ancient and excellent clothes, like a monument to a stratum of society into which he had been drafted just in time to decay with it.

George telephoned Superintendent Duckett from home, over the hasty lunch Bunty had spent so much time and care preparing, and he had now no leisure to enjoy.

'The bike again,' said Duckett hopefully. 'If you can find where they stayed there may be a real chance of finding out if anyone saw the bike around. And if so, then it's looking unhealthy for our friend. But why, for G.o.d's sake, say he spent the week-end with a woman, if he really is the one who was off with the Beck girl? You'd have thought he'd turn out absolutely any tale rather than go so near the truth.'

'He did, originally. It fell down under him. This time he was pushed. And of course,' said George cautiously, 'there's always the chance that it may be true even provably true, if it's that or his neck. He's a good-looking chap, and there could be other women, besides Annet, who'd think so. Even some others he might risk a good deal before he'd name.'

'You've got one in mind?' said Duckett alertly, hearing the note of wary thoughtfulness he knew how to interpret.

'I have, but it's far-fetched. I'd rather plough other ground first, it's more likely to yield.'

He could picture in Technicolor Duckett's face if the receiver should blurt out baldly in his ear: 'Well, he could could have gone off back to Gloucester, and spent the week-end amusing Mrs Blacklock between lectures and discussions. She's noticed him, all right. She speaks up for him, as well she might if she knows where he was but doesn't want to have to say so and a little more freely than you would normally for a good chauffeur you'd had only three months, and who otherwise meant nothing to you. And what would be more likely to shut his mouth, and make him stick out even the threat of a murder charge rather than come out with the real facts? A blazing scandal, her reputation gone and his job, and where would he get another in a hurry? If it was Regina, it all makes sense!' have gone off back to Gloucester, and spent the week-end amusing Mrs Blacklock between lectures and discussions. She's noticed him, all right. She speaks up for him, as well she might if she knows where he was but doesn't want to have to say so and a little more freely than you would normally for a good chauffeur you'd had only three months, and who otherwise meant nothing to you. And what would be more likely to shut his mouth, and make him stick out even the threat of a murder charge rather than come out with the real facts? A blazing scandal, her reputation gone and his job, and where would he get another in a hurry? If it was Regina, it all makes sense!'

No, that was all true enough, but not for publication, and for the moment non-essential in any case. It couldn't catch their murderer for them, even if they proved it, it could only cancel out one more possibility. The elimination of Stockwood could wait its turn.

'I'm making for Birmingham now,' he said, aloud. 'It looks the more profitable end at the moment.'

'Give 'em my love,' said Duckett. 'And keep off them corns.'

George drove to Birmingham, and conferred with his opposite numbers there briefly and amicably. They had worked together on other occasions, and understood each other very well. Hag-ridden and undermanned, the city CID were hardly likely to chill their welcome for someone who came with a handful of suggestions, however dubious; all the more if he was willing to investigate them himself.

The sum of their own discoveries, up to then, was two shop a.s.sistants who had sold clothing to Annet in one of the big stores, and one elderly newsboy from whom she had bought a paper on Friday evening.

'Never reads the d.a.m.ned things himself,' complained the Superintendent bitterly, 'except the racing page. Says he's seen too many of 'em to care. Waving the girl's face in front of the rush hour crowds, and never noticed it himself!'

'She was alone when they saw her?'

'Every time.'

'Well, let's see if we can get anything out of her old cla.s.s-mates.'

The student of literature was out of town for the weekend; he should, of course, have thought of that. But her lodgings were easy enough to find, shared with three other students, and presided over by a competent matron of fifty, who had reared a family of her own, and knew all the pitfalls. It was clear within ten minutes that it would be quite impossible for any irregularities to creep into her well-ordered household, or any of her girls to misbehave herself or entertain a misbehaving visitor within these walls. Contact with Beryl there might have been, but on the whole even that was improbable. The one girl who was spending the week-end in town, over a crucial essay, had never heard Annet mentioned, and never seen her, and from her George gathered that Beryl's time and attention was very largely taken up by men friends rather than women. He wrote that one off, and made for the retired teacher who had enjoyed Annet's liking and confidence.

Miss Roscoe was rosy and grey and garrulous, of uncertain memory, but certain that she had not heard from or seen Annet Beck for over a year.

It took him some time to run the art student to earth, for Myra Gibbons had known no exact address for her, and before he could find her he had to find the secretary of the school. But he had luck, and when at last he located the small old house in a quiet road, and the side-door in the yard which led directly to the converted first-floor flatlet, it was Mary Clarkson in person who opened the door to him.

No, she had not seen Annet Beck during the weekend, because she had herself been home in Comerbourne for a whole week, and left the flat closed up. She knew, of course, about Annet's picture being in the paper, and the appeal for information about her, but she had had no information to give. She was terribly concerned about her, of course, but mostly just plain astonished, because it seemed so incredible.

They wrote to each other very occasionally. When had she last written? Oh, maybe a month ago. And had she mentioned that she would be going home for such a long visit at half-term? Yes, she believed she had, now that he came to suggest it. It was terrible about Annet, wasn't it? But no, she'd never told Mary anything about boys, or not about any special boy. Annet didn't confide that kind of thing. No, nothing at all, never a word to indicate that she was either in love or in trouble. She was quite sure. She'd have been curious enough to read between the lines and try to work it out in detail, if ever there'd been the slightest hint.

It appeared that he had drawn a blank again, and the hours of his single and irreplaceable day were slipping away from him with nothing gained. But when she was letting him out, and he looked round the yard and saw how securely enclosed it was, with no window overlooking it, and no other door sharing it, his thumbs p.r.i.c.ked.

'Where's the actual door of the house?'

'Oh, that's round the corner in the other street. This was the back door originally, but when she had the flat made to let, she made use of this door to serve it, and walled it off from the kitchen and the pa.s.sage. That's what makes it so beautifully private.'

And so it did, so beautifully private that now he could not be mistaken, and he could not and would not go back with nothing to show for it.

'Has Annet ever been here?'

'Oh, yes, two or three times. She stayed with me once, just overnight, but that's a long time ago.'

'She never asked about coming again? Or suggested that she might borrow the flat when you were away?'

'No, not exactly. I mean, she she didn't. But I remember didn't. But I remember I did I did tell her, when she was here, that she could make use of it if ever she wanted to be in Birmingham, even if I wasn't here. I told her to ask Mrs Brookes for the spare key, if she needed it. And I told Mrs Brookes about it, just in case she came. But she never did-' tell her, when she was here, that she could make use of it if ever she wanted to be in Birmingham, even if I wasn't here. I told her to ask Mrs Brookes for the spare key, if she needed it. And I told Mrs Brookes about it, just in case she came. But she never did-'

She let that ending trail away into silence. She stared at George.

'I think,' said George, 'we'd better have a word with Mrs Brooks.' He made for the yard door, and the girl came eagerly after, hard on his heels. 'When did you get back into town?'

'Only this morning. We haven't got any cla.s.ses until Monday, but I'm meeting someone tonight, or I should have stayed over until tomorrow evening. I haven't seen her to talk to yet. Do you really think-?'

'Yes,' said George, and headed round the corner at speed to ring the bell at the coy blue front door. 'Were there no signs of occupation?'

'Not that I noticed. Everything was tidy, and just as I left it. But it would be she was always tidier than I am. And I haven't really looked for anything, why should I? I never even thought of it.'

The door was opened, softly and gradually. A thin, small, elderly woman in black, of infinite gentility, glanced enquiringly over George, and smiled in swift, incurious understanding, rea.s.sured, at sight of the girl beside him.

'Ah, there you are, my dear,' said Mrs Brookes. 'I caught just a glimpse of you this morning when you came in with the shopping, but I thought you'd look in during the day sometime. Your friend was here last week-end I expect she left a message for you, didn't she? I gave her the key, and she promised she'd leave everything nice for you. Such a pretty child, I was so glad to see her again. And no trouble at all,' she said serenely, smiling with vague benevolence at the remembered image of Annet, shy, silent and aloof, clenched about her secret.

'Quiet as a mouse about the place. And she thanked me so sweetly when she brought the key back on Tuesday evening. If only all the young girls nowadays had such pretty manners, I'm sure there wouldn't be any occasion for all this talk about what are the younger generation coming to.'

'She's seventy-one,' said George, reporting over an acrid cup of tea and a Birmingham sausage roll that represented all the meal he was going to have time for. 'A widow, no relations very close, a few friends, but they don't pop in at all hours. She's not very active or strong, her groceries and laundry are delivered, no dog to walk- Astonishing how completely isolated and insulated you can be in a city, if you let it happen. And she's the kind that doesn't mind, not even particularly inquisitive. She doesn't take a newspaper, except on Sundays, because she gets all the news the modern way. Where we made our mistake was bothering about the Press at all, it seems what we should have done was put the girl's photograph on television. She follows that, all right, religiously. As it was, she simply didn't know after all this labour she really didn't know what our girl looked like. Not that she's been able to tell us very much even now, but at least we know now where Annet and her boyfriend spent their nights. And knowing that, it's surely only a matter of time finding out more. Mrs Brookes may not be the nosy type, but there must be somebody in that street who spends her time peering through the net curtains to watch everybody's comings and goings. Somebody will have seen them some other old girl who doesn't see the papers, or didn't want to get mixed up in the business. They still come like that our way, I don't know about Birmingham.'

'They still come like that here, too,' the Superintendent a.s.sured him grimly, and went on with his notes.

'Even some old soul too blind to identify a photograph may have a pretty good eye for general appearances, height, walk, the basic cut of a man. The knocking on doors begins now, all along the street. Thank G.o.d that's your job, not mine.'

'Not mine, either,' said the Superintendent with a tight smile, 'if I know it. A hate of leg-work got me where I am. Check on this for me. The girl came for the key on Thursday evening about seven by which time it was dark reminded Mrs Brookes that her friend had given permission for her to use the flat any week-end. And Mrs Brooks remembered and obliged. Girl said she didn't need anything, she had everything, and old lady left her alone to run her own show. The entrance is private, a motor-bike could lie in the yard there and not be seen. Old lady saw her three or four times during the week-end, coming home with shopping. Not only food, but fancy bags from a dress-shop, very natural in any girl. But always alone. Two or three times they chatted for a few minutes, but that was all. Never saw a man there. Voices don't carry through the walls that I can believe, those are old houses, and solid. No mention of a man, no glimpse of a man, but with her windows facing the opposite way, and her eye on television most of the time, anyhow, that doesn't mean much. Anyhow, she can tell us nothing about a man, and she won't hear of one. Not in connection with this angelic girl. And on Sunday morning Beck was in the local church for morning service, alone, which only reinforces Mrs Brookes's opinion that we're misjudging her cruelly. On Tuesday evening she brought back the key, said thank-you prettily, and left, by what means of transport Mrs Brookes doesn't know. We could,' he said sourly, 'have done with a more inquisitive landlady, that's a fact.'

'There'll be a neighbour with a flattened nose somewhere around. The girls who sold Annet the dress and the nightdress didn't add much, either.'

'She shopped alone. Every time. And in city shops and a supermarket, never in the small local places. If he was with her, he waited outside. Most men do. So that's it. That's the lot. But at least we've moved, and now we can keep moving.'

'That's the lot. And I've got to be on my way,' said George, pushing away his empty cup. 'Mrs Brookes promised me to try and dredge up every word they said to each other, or anything she can remember about the girl. If she does come through with anything, call me, will you? I'll give you a ring as soon as I get in at the office, and give you anything new we've got at that end. Not that I expect anything,' he said honestly, turning up the collar of his coat in the doorway against the thin wind that had sprung up with dusk. 'Yet,' he said further, and went round to the parking ground to pick up the car.

He was later than he'd said he'd be, getting back to the office in Comerbourne. Tom Kenyon had telephoned once already, with nothing to report but a blameless day of chaotic activity among the geographers, and a continuing watch on the Hallowmount, which would be faithfully maintained until he and his helpers were either called off or relieved. He had promised to ring again in half an hour, which meant he might be on the line again at any moment.

But when the telephone rang again, and George leaned across to pick it up, the voice that boomed in his ear belonged to the Superintendent in Birmingham.

'Thought you'd be making it about now,' he said with satisfaction. 'Two bits of news for you, for what they're worth. First, we've found a small boy who lives three doors away from Mrs Brookes's back premises, and plays football in the street there. They will do it. He kicked the ball over the wall into Miss Clarkson's yard on Friday morning, and knowing she was away, opened the door and let himself in to fetch it. He says there was a motor-bike propped on its stand inside there. A BSA three-fifty. That fits?'

'It fits,' said George, aware of a sudden lurch forward, as though he had been astride just such a mount, and accelerating along a closed alley between blank walls. 'He didn't, by any chance, collect registrations?'

'No luck, he didn't. Bright as a b.u.t.ton about what interests him, he's completely dim about the number. But if it was there, somebody else must have seen it, if we look hard enough. Somebody will have seen the rider, too. It's only a matter of slogging, now we know where to look. And the second thing. Mrs Brookes has had an afterthought. Don't ask me what it means, or even if it means anything. Myself, I'd be inclined to suppose she made it up to bolster her own picture of the visiting angel, if she didn't in other ways strike me as being scrupulously honest in her observations, if not exactly acute. She says there was was mention of a man. It didn't occur to her when she was talking to you, because it was so obvious that you were enquiring about someone very different. But she remembered it afterwards, and thought she ought to correct her statement, however irrelevant this information may be.' mention of a man. It didn't occur to her when she was talking to you, because it was so obvious that you were enquiring about someone very different. But she remembered it afterwards, and thought she ought to correct her statement, however irrelevant this information may be.'

'I recognise,' said George, 'the style.'

'Good, now make sense of the matter. So far, I can't. She says when Annet Beck fetched the key on Thursday, she told her that she would probably be having a visitor during the week-end. Said he had to be in Birmingham, so he'd be looking in to see her-'

'He?' said George, ears p.r.i.c.ked, suddenly aware that this was going to be the place where the cul-de-sac ended, and he must brake now, and hard, if he wanted to keep his head unbroken.

'He. The man for whose presence she was apparently preparing Mrs Brookes, just in case he should be seen. The only man in the case. And know who she said he'd be? This'll shake you! Her father Her father!'

CHAPTER IX.

Promptly at five-thirty Tom Kenyon telephoned again.

'Nothng new here. It was a good day out, but nothing whatever happened. I suppose that was exactly what we could expect, with forty-two of us clambering about all over the rocks. If there is anything here to be found, you can stake your life n.o.body came for it to-day. But we didn't find it, either.'

'Were you able to do any looking?' It wouldn't be easy, with a handful of sharp-eyed juniors on the watch for every eccentricity in their elders.

'Some. Not to attract attention, though, and that means we could only look very superficially at the outcrop areas where the kids were swarming. We had a go at the ring of trees, and the old footways down below, until the boys came down to hunt over the tips for crystals among the calcite. But all we collected was pockets full of Jane's rock specimens. She always loads them on to the nearest human pack-mules to carry home for her. Women know what they're doing, having no pockets.'

'They've all come down by this time, I suppose?' said George.

'Ostentatiously. I thought it might be a good idea to leave with as much noise as possible, in case someone somewhere was waiting his turn. But Mallindine and your boy are still up there,' he said rea.s.suringly, 'keeping an eye on things from cover until I go back. I'm on my way now, I'm going to send them down to get tea here at the pub.'

'The others have gone?'

'Yes, into Comerford with their coach, for tea. Jane arranged it. And then home to Comerbourne and disperse. Dead quiet up there now.'

He could feel the quietness of the Hallowmount moving, growing, pouring through the dusk towards the village, flowing round and over Fairford and Wastfield, drowning this isolated telephone box on the edge of the wilds. Down the darkening flanks the streams of silence ran softly and slowly, curling round the scattered buildings of the farm, sweeping greenly over the roof of the Sparrowhawk's Nest. All day waiting like a great beast asleep, the long ridge stretched and stirred now in the first chill of twilight, and the little, quivering, treacherous ground-wind awoke and began curling its tremulous pathways up through the long gra.s.s.

'Can you hold on there until I come out to meet you?'

'Yes, I'll be somewhere on top. I've had tea. I'll send the boys down and wait for you.'

'Good! I'll be along as soon as I've talked to the Superintendent. And had a look in at Fairford, perhaps, if you don't mind hanging on another half-hour or so?'

'I don't mind. Whenever you can make it, I'll be here. Don't pa.s.s up anything you should do first.' He hesitated, unsure how much right he had to ask questions but aching with the effort to contain them. "Did you turn up anything useful at your end?'

'Maybe. Difficult to tell as yet. We've found where they stayed. Not a hotel they borrowed a flat rented by a friend of Annet's. The motor-bike appears again. No one saw the man. But according to the old lady round the corner, the owner of the house, Annet told her she was expecting a visitor. Annet described him to her as her father.'

The indrawn breath at the other end of the line hissed agonisingly, as though the listener had flinched from a stab-wound. 'Her father father?'

'Does that suggest anything?'

It suggested far too much, things Tom had never wanted to hear, and did not want to remember, possibilities he could not bear to contemplate. He choked on exclamations that would unload a share of the burden on to George's shoulders, bit them back and swallowed them unuttered. They lay in his middle like lead.

'It sounds as if we have to revise our ideas, doesn't it?'

'It does,' said Tom, his throat constrained.

'Why say that, unless it was to prepare the way in case she was seen with this man? A man obviously, in that case, respectable enough to pa.s.s for her father. And old enough And old enough.'

'Not a teenager run wild,' said Tom.

'Not even a youngster in his twenties. A father-figure. If only just. One could pa.s.s for Annet's father at around forty, maybe, but hardly earlier. Any ideas?'

The distant voice said hoa.r.s.ely, aware how little conviction it must be carrying: 'No ideas.'

'You be thinking about it,' said George, and rang off without more words.

And what did that mean, on top of all the confusions that had bludgeoned him since noon? What was it young Tom Kenyon knew that George didn't know, concerning some man who might be, but was not, Annet's father? And why, feeling as he felt about Annet, and longing as he must long for an end to this uncertainty that held a potential death for her, why had he gulped back his knowledge from the tip of his tongue in panic, and resisted his solid citizen instinct to plump it into the arms of the police and get rid of the responsibility?

George turned out the lights in the cold office, locked the door after him, and went to make his report in person to Superintendent Duckett. But Annet's father, and Annet's fictional father, and Annet's father's lodger, and the accidental intimacies and involuntary reactions of proximity mingled and danced in his mind all the way.

It was nearly half past six when he reached Fairford. He didn't know why he felt so strongly that he must go there, he had no reason to suppose that anything new had happened there, least of all that Annet would have unsealed her lips and repented of her silence. Nor was he going to try to prise words out of her by revealing any part of what he had found out. That he knew from ample trial to be useless. It was rather that he felt the need to rea.s.sure himself that there was still an Annet, a living intelligence, an ident.i.ty surely not dependent on any other creature for its single and unique life, a girl who could still be saved. Because if she was past saving, the main object of this pursuit was already lost. The old dead man had his rights to justice, but the young living girl was was the more urgent charge now upon George's heart. the more urgent charge now upon George's heart.

He turned in at the overgrown gate, into the darkness of the untrimmed, autumnal trees, the soft rot of leaves like wet sponge under his wheels. He came out of the tunnel of shadow, and sudden lances of light struck at his eyes. The front door stood wide open, all the lights in the bouse were blazing, the curtains undrawn. In the shrubberies down towards the brook someone was threshing about violently. In the garden, somewhere behind the house, someone was bleating frantically like a bereaved ewe, and until George had stopped the engine and scrambled out of the car he could not distinguish either the voice or the words. Then it sprang at him clearly, and he turned and ran for the house.

'Annet! Annet!' bellowed Beck despairingly, crashing through the bushes.

George bounded up the steps and into the hall, and Policewoman Lilian Crowther leaned out of the living-room doorway with the telephone receiver at her ear, and dropped it at sight of him, and gasped: "Thank G.o.d! I was trying to get through to you. She's gone!'

'When?' He caught at the swinging telephone and slammed it back on its rest, seized the girl by the arm and drew her with him into the room. 'Quick! When? How long ago?'