To Love and Be Wise (16 page)

'My wife, of course.'

'She was here with you?'

'No, of course not. She was in the house.'

'And you were here alone?'

'I was.'

'Thank you and good-morning,' Grant said walking out of the hut and shutting the door crisply behind him.

The morning smelt very fresh and sweet. The sour smell of vomited milk and rough-dried dish-cloths that had hung about the house was nothing to the smell of soured humanity that filled the place where Silas Weekley worked. As he walked back to the house he remembered that it was from this joyless and distorted mind that the current English 'masterpieces' came. The thought did nothing to reassure him. He avoided the joyless house, where the agitated clattering of pans (an appropriate orchestration, he couldn't help thinking) conveyed the preoccupation of its mistress, and walked round the side of it to the front gate, accompanied by Freddy.

'Hullo, Freddy,' he said, sorry for the bored brat.

'Hullo,' Freddy said without enthusiasm.

'Isn't there a more exciting game than flinging stones at a door?'

'No,' said Freddy.

'Couldn't you find one if you looked about you?'

'No,' said Freddy, with cold finality.

Grant stood for a moment contemplating him.

'There will never be any doubt about
your
paternity, Frederick,' he said, and walked away up the lane to the spot where he had left his car.

It was down this lane that Leslie Searle had walked on Wednesday night, calling farewells to the group in the village street. He had walked past the Weekley cottage to where a stile led into the first of the fields that lay between the village and the river bend.

At least that is what one took for granted that he did.

He could have walked along the back lane and come to the village street again. But there would have been little point, surely, in that. He was never seen again in the village. He had walked into the darkness of the lane and disappeared.

A little crazy, Tullis had said of Silas Weekley. But Silas Weekley didn't strike Grant as being crazy. A sadist, perhaps. A megalomaniac almost certainly. A man sick of a twisted vanity. But actually crazy no.

Or would an alienist think differently?

One of the most famous alienists in the country had once said to him that to write a book was to give oneself away. (Someone else had said the same thing more wittily and more succinctly, but he could not think at the moment who it was.) There was unconscious betrayal in every line, said the alienist. What, wondered Grant, would the alienist's verdict be after reading one of Silas Weekley's malignant effusions? That it was the outpouring of a petty mind, a mere fermentation of vanity? Or that it was a confession of madness?

He thought for a moment of going back to the Swan and ringing up Wickham police station from there, but the Swan would be busy just now and the telephone a far from confidential affair. He decided to go back to Wickham and have lunch there, so that he could see Inspector Rodgers at his leisure and pick up any messages that might be waiting for him from Headquarters.

In Wickham he found the higher orders at the police station preparing to retire into the peace of the weekend, and the lower ranks preparing for the weekly liveliness of Saturday night. Rodgers had little to say—he was never a talkative man—and nothing to report. The disappearance of Searle was the talk of Wickham, he said, now that the morning papers had made it general news; but no one had come in to suggest that they had seen him.

'Not even a "nut" to confess to the murder,' he said dryly.

'Well, that is a nice change,' Grant said.

'He'll be along, he'll be along,' Rodgers said resignedly, and invited Grant home to lunch.

But Grant preferred to eat at the White Hart.

He was sitting in the dining-room of the White Hart eating the unpretentious but ample lunch that they provided, when the radio music in the kitchen ceased, and presently, oddly urbane among the castanet racket, came the voice of the announcer.

'Before the news, here is a police message. Would anyone who gave a lift to a young man on Wednesday night on the road between Wickham and Crome, in Orfordshire, or anywhere in that vicinity, please communicate with Scotland Yard——'

'Telephone Whitehall One Two One Two,' chanted the kitchen staff happily.

And then there was a rush of high-pitched conversation as the staff fell to on this latest tit-bit of news.

Grant ate the very good roly-poly without relish and went out again into the sunlight. The streets, which had been teeming with Saturday shoppers when he came in to lunch, were deserted, the shops shut. He drove out of town wishing once more that he was going fishing. How had he ever chosen a profession where he could not count on a Saturday afternoon holiday? Half the world was free to sit back and enjoy itself this sunny afternoon, but he had to spend it pottering about asking questions that led nowhere.

He drove back to Salcott in a state of mental dyspepsia, being only slightly cheered by Dora Siggins. He picked up Dora in the long straight of dull hedged lane that ran for a mile or more parallel to the river just outside the town. In the distance he had taken the plodding figure to be a youth carrying a kit of tools, but as he came nearer and slowed in answer to the raised thumb, he found that it was a girl in dungarees carrying a shopping bag. She grinned cheekily at him and said:

'Saved my life, you have! I missed the bus because I was buying slippers for the dance tonight.'

'Oh,' said Grant, looking at the parcel that had evidently refused to go into the overflowing bag. 'Glass ones?'

'Not me,' she said, banging the door shut behind her and wriggling comfortably into the seat. 'None of that home-by-midnight stuff about me. 'Sides, it wasn't a glass slipper at all, you know. It was fur. French, or something. We learned that at school.'

Grant wondered privately if modern youth had been left any illusions at all. What would a world without fantasy be like? Or did the charming illusion that he was all-important fill for the modern child the place of earlier and more impersonal fantasies? The thought improved his temper considerably.

At least they were quick of wit, these modern children. The cinema, he supposed. It was always the one-and-tuppennys—the regulars—who got the point while the front balcony were still groping. His passenger had got his reference to dance slippers without a second for consideration.

She was a gay child, even after a week's work and missing the bus on a Saturday half-holiday, and poured out her history without any encouragement. Her name was Dora Siggins and she worked at a laundry, but she had a boy friend in a garage at Salcott, and they were going to get married as soon as the boy friend got a rise, which would be at Christmas, if all went as they expected.

When, long afterwards, Grant sent Dora Siggins a box of chocolates as an anonymous tribute to the help she had been to him, he hoped heartily that it would lead to no misunderstanding with the boy friend who was so sure of his rise at Christmas.

'You a commercial?' she asked presently, having exhausted her personal story.

'No,' said Grant. 'I'm a policeman.'

'Go on!' she said, and then, struck by the possibility that he might be telling the truth, took a more careful look at the interior of the car. 'Coo!' she said at length. 'Blamed if you aren't, at that!'

'What convinced you?' Grant said curiously.

'Spit and polish,' she said. 'Only the fire service and the police have the spare time to keep a car shiny this way. I thought the police were forbidden to give lifts?'

'You're thinking of the Post Office, aren't you. Here is Salcott on the horizon. Where do you live?'

'The cottage with the wild cherry tree. My, I can't tell you how glad I am I didn't have to walk those four miles. You got the car out on the fly?'

'No,' Grant said, and asked why she should think that.

'Oh, the plain clothes and all. Thought maybe you were out for the day on your little own. There's one thing you ought to have that the American police have.'

'What is that?' Grant asked bringing the car to a halt opposite the cottage with the cherry tree.

'Sirens to go yelling along the roads with.'

'God forbid,' Grant said.

'I've always wanted to go tearing along the streets behind a siren, seeing people scattering every way.'

'Don't forget your shoes,' Grant said, unsympathetically, indicating the parcel she was leaving on the seat.

'Oh, gee, no; thanks! Thanks a million for everything. I'll never say a word against the police as long as I live.'

She ran up the cottage path, paused to wave to him, and disappeared.

Grant moved on into the village to resume his questioning.

WHEN GRANT walked into the Mill House at a quarter to seven he felt that he had riddled Salcott St Mary through a small-meshed sieve, and what he had left in the sieve was exactly nothing. He had had a very fine cross-section of life in England, and he was by that much the richer. But towards solving the problem that had been entrusted to him he had advanced not one foot.

Marta greeted him with her best contralto coo and drew him in to peace and refreshment. The living-room of the Mill House stood over the water, and in the daytime its furnishings swam in the wavering light; a green sub-aqueous light. But this evening Marta had drawn the curtains over the last of the sunset, and shut out the river light; she had prepared a refuge of warmth and reassurance, and Grant, tired and perplexed, was grateful to her.

'I am so glad that it is not Walter who has disappeared,' she said, wafting him to a chair with one of her favourite gestures and beginning to pour sherry.

'Glad?' Grant said, remembering Marta's expressed opinion of Walter.

'If it was Walter who had disappeared, I should be a suspect, instead of a sleeping partner.'

Grant thought that Marta as sleeping partner must have much in common with sleeping dogs.

'As it is I can sit at the side of the law and see the wheels go round. Are you being brilliant, my dear?'

'I'm flummoxed,' Grant said brutally, but Marta took it in her stride.

'You feel that way only because you are tired and hungry; and probably suffering from dyspepsia, anyhow, after having to eat at the White Hart for two days. I'm going to leave you with the sherry decanter and go down and get the wine. Cellar-cooled Moselle. The kitchen is under this room, and the cellar is under the kitchen, and the wine comes up as cold as running water. Oh dear, I promised myself I wasn't going to think of running water any more today. I drew the curtains to shut out the river; I'm not so stuck on the river as I used to be. Perhaps we'll both feel better after the Moselle. When I've brought the wine up from the cellar I'm going to cook you an omelet as only I can cook one, and then we'll settle down. So relax for a little and get back your appetite. If the sherry isn't dry enough for you there's some Tio Pepe in the cupboard; but me, I think it is over-rated stuff.'

She went away, and Grant blessed her that she had not plagued him with the questions that must have been crowding her mind. She was a woman who not only appreciated good food and good drink but was possessed of that innate good sense that is half-way to kindness. He had never seen her to better advantage than in this unexpected country home of hers.

He lay back in the lamplight, his feet to the whickering logs, and relaxed. It was warm and very quiet. There was no river song: the Rushmere was a silent stream. No sound at all except the small noises of the fire. On the couch opposite him lay a newspaper, and behind it stood a book-case, but he was too tired to fetch either paper or book. At his elbow was a shelf of reference books. Idly he read the titles till he came to the London telephone book. The sight of those familiar volumes sent his mind flying down a new channel. They had said this evening, when he talked to the Yard, that so far Searle's cousin had not bothered to get in touch with them. They were not surprised by that, of course; the news had broken only that morning, and the artist cousin might live anywhere from the Scilly Isles to a farm in Cumberland; she might never read newspapers anyway; she might, if it came to that, be entirely indifferent to any fate that might overtake her cousin. After all, Searle had said quite frankly that they did not care for each other.

But Grant still wanted to talk to someone who knew Searle's background; or at least a little of that background. Now, relaxed and at leisure for the first time in two days, he put out his hand for the S volume, and, on the chance that she lived in London and that she and Searle were the children of two brothers, turned up the Searles. There was a Miss Searle who lived in Holly Pavement, he noticed. Holly Pavement was in Hampstead and was a well-known artist's colony. On an impulse he picked up the telephone and asked for the London number.

'One hour's delay. Call you back,' said the triumphant voice at the other end.

'Priority,' Grant said. And gave his credentials.

'Oh,' said the voice, disappointed but game. 'Oh, well, I'll see what I can do.'

'On the contrary,' Grant said, '
I'll
see what you can do,' and hung up.

He put the telephone book back in its place, and pulled out
Who's Who in the Theatre
to amuse himself with while he waited. Some of it made him feel very old. Actors and actresses he had never heard of already had long lists of successes to their credit. The ones he knew had pages of achievement stretching back into the already-quaint past. He began to look up the people he knew, as one does in the index of an autobiography. Toby Tullis, son of Sydney Tullis and his wife Martha (Speke). It was surprising to think that a national institution like Toby Tullis had ever been subjected to the processes of conception and brought into this world by the normal method. He observed that Toby's early days as an actor were decently shrouded under: 'Was at one time an actor.' His one-time colleagues, Grant knew, would deny with heat that he had ever been even approximately an actor. On the other hand, Grant thought, remembering this morning, his whole life was an 'act'. He had created a part for himself and had played it ever since.