Traitor's Purse Page 6

  VI

  ‘I’M AFRAID HUTCH has let us down. It’s abominably late.’

  Lee Aubrey broke a long silence with the remark, which he delivered with an effort, as if he had been thinking of it for a long time. He, Campion, and Amanda were sitting round the fire in the drawing-room with the candles burning low and the uncomfortable silence of the night bearing down upon them. They had been there for perhaps an hour. Campion had returned from Anscombe’s house just as the dinner guests were leaving and had found himself let in for a more or less formal tête-à-tête, his host the one person in the way.

  He was more than anxious to talk to Amanda alone. Every time he set eyes on her she became clearer and dearer to him. Whatever other values were upset, whatever other mistakes he made in this new nightmare world of his, she was real and solid, a living part of that self which he was rediscovering so painfully.

  She was sitting curled up in her chair between the two of them, very much alive but gloriously composed. She looked very young and very intelligent, but not, he thought with sudden satisfaction, clever. A dear girl. The girl, in fact. His sense of possession was tremendous. It was the possessiveness of the child, of the savage, of the dog, unreasonable and unanswerable. He glanced irritably at Aubrey.

  The great man had risen and was leaning against the mantelpiece. He was frowning at first but then once more that little smile of tolerant self-contempt curled his narrow lips. Suddenly he laughed.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we’ve thrashed it all out, haven’t we? Anscombe appears to have fallen down and broken his neck: that’s all it amounts to. I’ll go up and see poor old Miss Anscombe in the morning. Until Hutch condescends to report we can’t do anything else. You look fantastically tired, my dear fellow. Why don’t you go to bed? Amanda and I will give the wretched Hutch another half hour. Don’t you think so?’

  The final question was put directly to Amanda and as he looked at her his expression softened so much that the change was positively theatrical. However, he seemed quite unconscious of betraying himself and it was as if he were not in the habit of considering himself objectively ever.

  Amanda avoided his eyes and might almost, for the light was deceptive, have blushed. Her involuntary behaviour seemed to annoy her, however, for she looked at him squarely.

  ‘Very well,’ she said.

  Campion sat up. In the ordinary way he might well have been startled, for there are few hosts who send their guests to bed so blandly, but now, in his confused state, he was bewildered. Aubrey had spoken with authority, like – yes, that was it – like royalty, or a headmaster; not with rudeness, but as if he had special privileges.

  At first Campion had every intention of refusing baldly and of forcing himself upon them, but Amanda swept the remaining ground from under his feet.

  ‘Good night, Albert,’ she said.

  He went up to his room and sat on his bed with the door open, as if he were a schoolboy in the throes of a first love affair. Until that moment he had not properly assimilated her announcement of earlier in the evening. So many things had happened since then and the dreamlike quality of his new existence had seemed to allow of lightning changes of front and back. Now, again, it returned to him that Amanda was real, and, being real, she was consistent, the one concrete thing in a world of fantasy. She meant what she said. She was not going to marry him. Beside this actual disaster all the other inconsistencies – the mad cat-and-mouse behaviour of the police, the too friendly Pyne who had tricked him into a betrayal and then disappeared on heaven knew what tortuous and subversive mission – faded into fantasy. On the top of his blinding desolation crept a new fear. It was a fear for Amanda. It occurred to him that it was the first completely unselfish thought he had had since the disaster, or, of course, ever in his life for all he knew. It was linked with something he knew about her, some vulnerability he had forgotten, and with something he knew about Aubrey. There was something from which he must protect her. She was a responsibility of his, quite as much a responsibility as that other which was rapidly assuming such enormous proportions. Apparently he was a responsible person. It seemed a pity he had lost half his mind.

  He got off the bed and walked out into the upper hall. He strode up and down there for what seemed an eternity, his footsteps deadened by the heavy carpet. The lights were very bright, with the cold brilliance which seems to be a part of the middle of the night, and when the drawing-room door opened he walked over to the banister without hesitation and looked down.

  ‘Good night, Amanda.’

  Aubrey’s deep delightful voice was soft and packed with meaning. He was leaning against the doorpost with his head bent and a lock of his thick hair drooping boyishly forward. He had taken Amanda’s hand and was swinging it backwards and forwards in the careless inarticulate fashion which Gerald du Maurier used to use so effectively in so many of his scenes. He was not a man who would ever appear handsome, but his whole pose was negligently graceful, which was odd in such a large-boned loosely constructed figure.

  Campion got the impression that Amanda was a trifle flustered and also that the condition was hitherto unknown to her.

  ‘Good night, Lee,’ she said, sounding positively school-girlish in an effort to be matter-of-fact. Then, turning away, she hurried upstairs, to arrive pink and a little breathless before Campion in the upper hall.

  She was astounded to see him and obviously accepted the first explanation which came into her head.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she demanded. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘I want to talk to you.’

  ‘All right. What is it? I say, nothing else awful, surely?’ She appeared to expect disaster and hurried into his room as if she thought to find concrete evidence of it there.

  He followed her and closed the door. Had there been bolts upon it he would have shot them.

  ‘There’s one thing you’ve got to tell me,’ he said. ‘I’ve been trying to find out all the evening.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What day is it?’

  She stared at him. Her light brown eyes were wide with astonishment at first, but as he looked at her the fine brows came down in a straight line above them and the fiery colour spread over her face.

  ‘Did you hang about on the staircase simply to ask me that? You’re behaving rather extraordinarily, aren’t you?’

  He was, of course. He saw that the moment she pointed it out. To the uninstructed his behaviour and the all-important question could have only one explanation; that he was acting like a jealous child. He felt unreasonably angry with her for his own helplessness.

  ‘I want to know the day and the date of today,’ he said doggedly. ‘You’re the only person I dare ask. What is it?’

  ‘It’s the thirteenth, I think.’ She was furious, and the dignity which her control lent her was the coldest thing on earth.

  ‘Friday, I suppose?’

  ‘No. Tuesday. Now I think I’ll go to bed.’

  Tuesday the thirteenth. That meant Thursday the fifteenth. A day. A day to do what?

  Amanda moved over towards the door. He thought she was going out without a word and was helpless to stop her. He was completely unprepared, therefore, for what was evidence of one of the most lovable traits in her make-up. On the threshold she turned and quite suddenly grinned at him.

  ‘I’ve gone all theatrical, Albert,’ she said. ‘What is up?’

  He groaned. ‘God knows,’ he said truthfully.

  Amanda came back into the room and sat down on the edge of the bed.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she demanded. ‘Don’t forget you have had a dust-up. I don’t want to fuss you – I know how you hate it – but you do look a bit green, you know. I’ve noticed it all the evening and haven’t liked to mention it.’

  He cocked an eye at her. That was a piece of his own character slipping into place. He was one of those men with a horror of being fussed, was he? Yes, that was right; he felt he might be like that. She hadn’t liked to fus
s him. She was pretty marvellous. A great surge of desire for comfort from her broke over him. She was alive. She was his only link with reality. It was on his tongue to risk everything and come out with the awful truth when her next remark silenced him.

  ‘I’m sorry I behaved so badly. I’ve got a bit self-centred. I thought you were playing the fool because I was falling in love with Lee.’ She spoke without any affectation and was free from any suggestion of the coyly blunt. Her eyes were as candid as her words.

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘I think so.’ There was a quiet softness in her voice, a gentle satisfaction which he knew he had never heard in it before.

  ‘Why?’

  She hesitated and finally laughed. ‘It’s a thing I couldn’t possibly tell you if you weren’t yourself,’ she said, ‘I mean if I didn’t know you as well as I know myself almost. He’s like you, isn’t he?’

  ‘Is he?’

  ‘I think so, very. Except for the one important thing.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  She looked up at him and there was a sort of rueful shyness in her young face.

  ‘He loves me so. He’s doing his best about it but it’s bubbling out all over him and making him shy and silly, like an undergraduate or a peasant or something. And since he’s a great man – because he is brilliant, you know – well, that makes it pretty irresistible.’ She paused and shook herself. ‘Let’s not discuss it. It’s not a bit in your line and things are getting up speed, aren’t they? I feel disgusted with myself for getting – er – overtaken by this thing, but it’s like that. It does – er – overtake. Tell me about Anscombe.’

  ‘He was murdered.’

  ‘What?’ She sat staring at him. ‘But that’s impossible! Who?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Amanda clasped her knees and her heart-shaped face looked small and worried as she rested her chin on them.

  ‘Of course, I’m not competent to judge anything in this business,’ she said unexpectedly, ‘since I don’t know the full strength.’

  ‘My dear,’ he said with elaborate deference, because he was still tingling from the blow which seemed to have hurt the secret forgotten part of himself even more than his conscious needy present, ‘I only wish I could tell you.’

  ‘Yes, well, you can’t,’ she said briefly. ‘You’re under oath and that’s final. I don’t mind. I know you well enough to work under sealed orders. Otherwise I’d hardly have done the unforgivable thing and got Lee to invite us down here without telling him you were working on something in the town. I’ve got your assurance that it’s desperately important; that’s good enough.’

  Campion was standing with his back to her and did not dare look round.

  ‘Let’s see,’ he said mendaciously, ‘how long have we known Lee?’

  ‘You mean how long have I known him,’ objected Amanda. ‘You’ve known him three days, as you very well know. I came down here from Dell on some work on the new armour for the Seraphim planes. There was a man working at the Institute we had to get hold of. I made friends with Lee then.’

  She was talking gibberish, apart from the all-important dates, as far as Campion was concerned, and he wondered how far he dared press her for information. Fortunately she helped him unconsciously.

  ‘Have you told anyone about the hospital episode this afternoon?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nor have I. And I was thinking, Albert, I don’t suppose Anscombe did. So suppose we stick to our original plan, which is, if you remember, that I took you into Coachingford on Sunday night to catch the London express. That was immediately after you had the wire which was waiting for you when we arrived. Then yesterday I was supposed to fetch you from the same station after your return. At dinner tonight I was very vague about our delay, but it was a sticky gathering anyway and didn’t matter. Still, if it does come up we’ll have to call it tyre trouble. How’s that?’

  ‘Excellent,’ he said dubiously and waited for her to continue.

  ‘How did you get on at Coachingford?’ she enquired at last.

  He shrugged his shoulders and she nodded gloomily.

  ‘Like that?’ she said. ‘Never mind. It’ll come suddenly. I don’t like this Anscombe business, though. That’s horrible. Just when we thought he knew something.’

  He turned on her. ‘What made you think he knew something?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just got that impression.’

  ‘Not – “fifteen”?’

  ‘Fifteen?’ She seemed surprised. ‘Fifteen what?’

  ‘Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest,’ he said and half wondered if he had invented the ringing phrase.

  ‘Yo-ho-ho and some nice sound sleep,’ said Amanda. ‘You can’t do any more tonight, anyway, if the whole world’s at stake. You go to bed.’

  Campion leant heavily on the back of the chair which he had been fingering. His wooden face was haggard and he looked tired and frustrated.

  ‘My God, I wonder if it is,’ he said.

  She gave the question serious consideration.

  ‘It seems a bit presumptuous, but it might be,’ she said.

  Campion felt the beads of sweat break out on the line where his forehead met his hair.

  ‘That’s the kind of damned silly premonition I’ve got,’ he said.

  Amanda smiled at him. ‘If it is, I’d rather it was in your hands than anybody’s,’ she said honestly. ‘You’ve got all the cards, Albert, and fundamentally you’re so …’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘So sort of sufficient at heart. So cold. You’ll get by.’

  After she had gone he sat very still in the silent room and the strong light beat down upon him with chilly clarity. The warmth had gone out of the dream again and he was back in the familiar nightmare. He knew what it was like now. It was like one of those trick films wherein familiar objects are photographed from an unfamiliar angle. The strange shadows thus cast made vast secret shapes, forming a horror where there is none and, worse still, concealing a horror where horror lies.

  Now that Amanda had gone he wondered why he had not confided in her. It was not only because of Lee and because he dreaded her pity as he dreaded insufferable pain. There was another reason. He reached down into the darkness in his mind and drew it out from its skulking place in all its hideousness. It was a fear. If she knew of his mental state, if she knew of that overheard conversation in the hospital, and had it presented to her with the facts as they both knew them about Anscombe’s death, then would she still regard him with that candid trust which was the most precious thing about her? Or would the gleam of a doubt come creeping into her brown eyes before her loyalty doused it? That was the risk he had not dared to take. He was the man involved and he would not entirely trust himself.

  The whistle cut into his thoughts. The low note, which was just sufficiently unlike a bird’s to be uncanny, sounded twice before it brought him to his feet. He switched out the light and stood listening. It sounded again just beneath the window.

  He pulled the heavy curtains aside, unlatched the old-fashioned shutters, and threw up the sash as quickly as he could.

  The whistle began and ended suddenly and there was a long silence. The house cast a deep shadow and the space below the window was black as the pit.

  ‘Is that you, sir?’ The voice was very quiet and almost directly beneath him. ‘Are you ready? I’ve been waiting round the other side. I must have mistook your meaning. We’ll have to get a move-on if we’re to get the job done tonight. Can you come at once?’

  ‘What? Yes, yes, all right, I’ll be with you in a moment.’ Campion drew in his head, closed the windows, and replaced its various shroudings. Then he went downstairs with the soft-footed tread of a professional burglar. In his mind was a single unqualified question-mark, for the voice had been the utterly unmistakable one of Superintendent Hutch.

  VII

  CAMPION CAME OUT of the front doorway noiselessly. He picked his way over the gravel to the sile
nt turf of the lawn and stood waiting. If this was arrest the whole world was as light-headed as he was.

  The Superintendent’s jaunty figure emerged from the black shadows round the house and dropped into step beside him. He did not speak, but, taking Campion’s arm, led him into the narrow line of darkness below the row of close-growing poplars which lined one side of the path. He walked very fast and did not open his mouth until they were a good two hundred yards from the window. Finally he sighed.

  ‘Very nicely done, sir,’ he said with approval. ‘I didn’t know you had come out until I set eyes on you. It’s as well to be careful. We don’t want to give a lot of fancy explanations. Once you start that game, it’s my experience that you have to go on remembering what you’ve said for years afterwards.’

  Campion made no specific comment. He grunted non-committally and pressed on towards the gateway.

  As he had hoped, Hutch continued to talk. He revealed a friendly soul and a justifiable pride in his rise to eminence in the force.

  ‘That’s why I’m doing this little job myself,’ he remarked. ‘It’s not that I haven’t got half a dozen men I could trust to be both efficient and discreet, but I don’t want them to take the risk, don’t you see? When it’s something unorthodox and a little delicate it’s the Chief’s job every time. Don’t you agree?’

  ‘Oh, every time,’ said Campion heartily. He wondered where in God’s name they were going with such determined speed.

  They turned away from Anscombe’s house at the end of the drive and plunged off downhill in the opposite direction. Hutch kept to the shadowed side of the street and his long strides were silent as a ghost’s. Most English country towns are picturesque in the moon’s eye, but this winding hill was like a part of an old fairy story in the cold yellowish light. Tudor shops with overhanging upper storeys and windows like those on a galleon squeezed prim Queen Anne houses which wore shutters and graceful fanlights. There were mounting blocks and lantern posts at every dozen yards, and through carved archways occasional glimpses of cobbled courts and stone gardens. It was probably the most hackneyed picture-postcard subject in the world, but Campion saw it with the eyes of a child and its charm startled him. The crazy roofs were like witches’ hoods huddling together for whispered consultations and the dark windows winked their panes at him from a bygone world.