Ellis Peters - George Felse 03 - Flight Of A Witch (15 page)

‘Do you want to talk to Peter? He’s down in the stable-yard with Stockwood, I think, working on one of the cars.’

‘It’s with Stockwood I wanted to have a word, as a matter of fact.’

‘Oh!’ she said, drawing back a step to measure him with blue eyes wide and wary. ‘I thought he’d already satisfied you about his moves. One of your men was here yesterday afternoon to talk to him.’

‘I know. Just a detail I’d like to check with him myself. If you’ve no objection?’

‘I have no objection, of course. But I think I should tell you that I feel every confidence in this young man. I haven’t had him long, that’s true, but I can usually make up my mind fairly soon about people. I see,’ she said with authority, ‘why you must consider him as a possibility. But I’m sure you’ll be wasting your time.’

‘He’s simply one man who at least has been in occasional contact with Annet. You must take my word for it that that’s enough to make this necessary.’

‘And personable,’ said Regina, suddenly running her fingers deep into the orderly waves of her short red hair, and clenching them there for a moment. ‘And young!’

The faint, astonished tang of bitterness the word had for her made her mouth twist. Had she looked too often and too closely at the chauffeur herself? It wouldn’t be the first time that had happened to a busy, self-confident, indulgent woman suddenly shocked into awareness that youth had left her. If so, she had surely never done more than look; she was too certain of herself to sacrifice a part of her personality to an employee, whatever the momentary temptations.

‘How much more do you know about him? He came to you with references, of course?’

‘One,’ she said, ‘from his last employer, a business man down in Richmond. But of course you can see the letter if you want to. Before that he says he was in Canada for a year, driving or doing any job he could get. So far we’ve found him completely satisfactory.’ It was a royal ‘we,’ and George recognised it as such; Peter had no use for a chauffeur, and no interest in this one provided Regina was happy.

‘Oh, I don’t doubt that. And he lives in Braidie’s old quarters?’

‘In the south lodge.’ It was behind the house, and hidden from it by the older plantations Peter had brought to such excellent growth and condition.

‘Alone? Or is he a married man?’

‘He has been married. His wife got a divorce from him – at least, it won’t be absolute for a month or so yet. Over an incident with another woman. You see, he was very frank with me about his circumstances when he applied for the job.’

‘So he does live alone?’ In that minor lodge on a very quiet road, out of sight of the house, where coming and going would be easy. ‘And does for himself?’

‘Yes, very economically and neatly, so I’m told.’ She smiled for an instant, but wryly. ‘Our head gardener has a rather forward daughter who has made it her business to offer her services, but she hasn’t got anywhere so far. He doesn’t seem to have any use for women, by all the signs.’

No, maybe not. But then he wouldn’t, for other women, if he had Annet in his sights.

‘I’ll go round and join them, if I may.’

‘Do, of course. You know your way.’

George walked round the wing of the house and down the slope of grass. The eighteenth century stable block sat four-square about a large courtyard, two-storeyed, many-windowed, like a mansion in itself. There were still three riding-horses on the place, but the cars had nearly elbowed them out of their own yard. Peter Blacklock, in slacks and an old polo-necked sweater, was bending into the bonnet of the E-type Jaguar that was credibly reputed to be Regina’s last birthday present to him. Stockwood, in overalls, was washing down the Bentley. He turned his head at the hollow sound of footsteps under the stable archway, and showed that proud, dark face of his, withdrawn and defensive as a Romany. For a moment he was motionless. Water streamed from his rubber brush down the flanks of the car, and flowed away into the drain.

Peter Blacklock took his head out of the car’s innards, and shook back the lank fair hair from his forehead with a nervous toss of his head.

‘Oh, hallo, Felse!’ Something of consternation, something of resignation, showed in his long, hypersensitive features for an instant, and then was gone as suddenly, leaving only his usual faintly weary but beautifully modulated politeness. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you come. Were you looking for me?’

He leaned into the car and switched off the purring engine, and stood wiping his hands on a tangle of cotton-waste. ‘Am I allowed to ask about Annet? We’ve been – we
are
terribly anxious about her. There’s nothing new?’

‘No, nothing new.’ He didn’t want to talk to anyone about Annet, he didn’t want to show to anyone else even a part of what she had made him experience. ‘We’re still filling in details wherever and however we can – about all the people we can. Do you mind if I ask Stockwood a few questions?’

‘If you must,’ said Peter, frowning. ‘But I thought you’d already done with him. He accounted for himself to one of your fellows yesterday. Something the matter with the liaison, or what?’

‘Nothing the matter with the liaison. Just a double check for safety’s sake. And you might fill in the timing of the week-end for me yourself first, if you will. Mrs Blacklock went off to Gloucester on the Thursday afternoon. Stockwood drove her down and brought back the car, because she was meeting a friend there who could run her about locally. You then gave him the whole long week-end off, I understand. Exactly when did he leave here, and when did he return?’

In the very brief moment of quietness Stockwood leaned and turned off the tap. He laid down the brush and took a step towards them, waiting in readiness, dark colour mounting in his face and blanching again to pallor.

‘He garaged the car about a quarter to five,’ said Peter in a thin, brittle voice, his long face sagging with reluctance and distress. ‘I told him he could consider himself free until the following Wednesday noon, and then come in for the Bentley and fetch my wife home. I told him if he liked he could make use of one of the BSAs for his weekend, and he said yes, he would like to. I don’t know what time he left the lodge, but it was all in darkness before six o’clock. He came back prompt at noon on Wednesday, and drove to Gloucester to bring Reginaback.’

‘You didn’t ask him where he was going?’

‘I didn’t. I don’t. Nor where he’d been, when he came back. He’s my wife’s employee, not mine, but even if he were mine I shouldn’t think that gave me any right to ask him where he spends his free time. Only his working hours are bought and paid for.’ He added gently and wearily: ‘Your business, of course, it may very well be.
You
ask him.’

The young man dried his hands carefully, automatically, confronting them both with a wary face and narrowed eyes. He had left it too late to protest at being interrogated again, and far too late to pretend surprise or indignation. He waited, moistening his lips, a glitter in his eyes that might have been anger, but looked closer kin to desperation.

‘I think,’ said George after a moment of thought, ‘I’d better talk to Stockwood alone. If you don’t mind?’

Blacklock did mind, that was abundantly clear; he felt a degree of responsibility for all the members of his wife’s staff, and was reluctant to abandon any of them to the mercies of the police, however implicit his faith might be, in theory, in British justice. He hesitated for a moment, swung on his heel to pick up his jacket from the stone bench in the middle of the yard.

‘All right! I’ll see you when you’ve finished, Felse. Look in at the house for a moment if I’m not around, will you?’

He went out through the deep archway between the coach-houses with his long, nervous stride, and vanished up the slope of the field towards the hall.

‘Well?’ said George. ‘Where
did
you spend the weekend?’

The young man drew breath carefully between lips curled in detestation and fright. ‘I’ve told you already. I told your bloke who was here yesterday—’

‘You told him you went to a fishing inn up the Teme valley – I know. Not having a home of your own to go to.’

Stockwood’s head jerked back, the gipsy face took fire in a brief blaze of defiance quickly suppressed.

‘You thought the landlord was a friend of yours, and quick on the uptake, and would see you through. Maybe he promised you he would, when you ’phoned him. Maybe he really would, up to a hold-up or a smash-and-grab. But as soon as he smelled murder he packed it in. He’d not getting lumbered with any part of it, boy. And you weren’t at the Angler’s Arms last Saturday night. So where were you?’

The colour had ebbed from Stockwood’s face so alarmingly that it seemed there could not be enough blood in him to keep his heart working. George took him by the arm and sat him down, unresisting, on the stone bench. The lean young face, self-conscious and proud, stood him off steadily; and in a moment the blanched lines of jaw and mouth eased.

‘That’s better. Take it quietly. It’s very simple. You gave us a phoney tale about where you spent your free week-end. Now all I want is the truth, and for your own sake you’d better produce it. You’d have done better,’ he said dryly, ‘to stick to it in the first place, when you came here after the job. Why didn’t you tell Mrs Blacklock you had a prison record? Oh, no, I haven’t told her, either, so far this is just between you and me. But you must have cased the job and the people before you tried it, you should have been able to judge that she’d take you even with a stretch behind you – maybe all the more.’

‘I didn’t know,’ said the young man through tight lips. ‘How could I? I wanted the job, and I was on the level. I didn’t dare to risk what she’d do if she knew.’

‘I’m telling you, she’d have taken you on just the same. She’d pride herself on giving you your chance.’

‘That’s what you fellows always say. And that’s what women like her always say. But when it came to the point how could I be sure? I’ve done the job properly,’ he said, stiffening his neck arrogantly, and stared up into George’s face without blinking. ‘Didn’t take your lot long to get after my record, did it?’

‘It doesn’t, once we’ve got the idea, once we know you’re lying about your movements last week-end. We can connect. It doesn’t follow,’ said George, ‘that we think you necessarily did the Bloome Street job. It’s a long way from helping to hi-jack a load of cigarettes to killing a man. But nobody lies about his movements without having something to hide. So where were you?’

Stockwood’s jaw clamped tight to shut in whatever words he might have been about to blurt out furiously in George’s face. He sat for a moment with his hands clenched and braced on the edge of the stone seat. There was no hope of success with a second lie, and all too clearly he had no new line of defence prepared. After a brief struggle his lips opened stiffly, and said abruptly: ‘With a woman.’

‘Miss Beck?’ said George conversationally.

‘
No, not
Miss Beck!’

‘Rosalind Piper again?’

Or was it ‘still’ rather than ‘again’? But there was as little reason for him to hide a connection with her as there was to continue or resume it. According to the records, she had cost him a year in gaol by involving him in the gang in the first place; and she had cost him his marriage, too, it seemed, since there was a divorce hanging over him. Briefly George wondered what she had looked like. A blonde decoy with a brazen face, or a little innocent creature with big blue eyes? The boy could have been only about twenty-one or twenty-two at the time, and not long married, probably a decent enough young man with good prospects, but the usual, ever-present money difficulties; and a quick share-out from one big haul must have seemed to him an enticing proposition, especially the way the experienced Miss Piper had pictured it for him, with herself as a bonus.

‘No!’ Stockwood spat the negative after her memory, and turned his head obstinately away.

‘I have no interest,’ said George patiently, ‘in your private affairs, as long as you’re breaking no laws. You’d better give her a name. If she bears you out, I can forget it.’ If she bore him out, it would be the truth.

‘
You
might,’ said Stockwood. ‘
She
wouldn’t.’

‘If she didn’t grudge you the week-end, she won’t grudge you an alibi. What harm can there be in asking her to confirm your story? If, of course, it’s true this time.’

‘It’s true!’

‘And if you did nothing the law would be interested in.’

‘No. I didn’t do anything wrong. You won’t be able to prove I did, because I didn’t.’

‘Then don’t be a fool. Tell me who she is, and help yourself and me.’

‘No – I can’t tell you!’

‘You’ll have to in the end. Come on, now, she won’t be inconvenienced, we have no interest in her. But unless you name her you’re putting yourself in a nasty spot, and casting doubt on every word you have told me.’

‘I can’t help it,’ said Stockwood stubbornly, and licked a trickle of sweat from his lips. ‘I can’t tell you.’

‘You can’t because she’s as big a lie as the fishing weekend. She doesn’t exist.’

‘She does exist! Oh, my God!’ He said it in a sudden, soft, hopeless voice to himself, as though, indeed, she was the only creature who did exist for him, and of her reality he was agonisingly unsure. ‘But I can’t tell you who she is.’

‘You won’t.’

‘
All right, I won’t
!’

George walked away from him as far as the hollow shadow under the archway, walked his heat and exasperation out of him for a few minutes in the chill of it, and came back to begin all over again. It went on and on and on through the sparse, barren exchange, two, three, four times over; but at the end of it, it was still no. Quivering with tension, exhausted and afraid, Stockwood looked up at him with apprehensive eyes, waiting for the inevitable, and still denied him.

‘All right,’ said George at last, with a sigh, ‘if that’s how you want it, there are more ways than one of finding her.’

But were there? Had he discovered even one way yet of finding the man who had picked up Annet and taken her to Birmingham? The city might be, must be, more productive.