Rainbow's End

CHAPTER FOUR

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Colin Barron’s car was out on the semi-circle of meticulously-raked gravel, a green SAAB, very dark and sleek and reticent; and Colin Barron was sitting in the small drawing-room with a whisky glass in his hand and restrained and chivalrous concern on his brow, looking very correct in the role of a would-be beau come to commiserate with his intended on her sudden bereavement. A very complex role indeed, but he was managing rather well. No doubt the discreet flowers in a vase on the coffee table, lilac and purple tinted, had come from him, the delicate hint of mourning combined with the suggestion of a tentative love-gift. He was a very presentable fellow, and no doubt they would make a handsome couple, if it ever came to that, but he wasn’t presuming on his hopes. When George appeared, Colin rose politely, greeted the visitor with an intelligent acceptance of his official status, as opposed to the social contact they had occasionally shared, cast a wistful glance at Barbara to see what she desired, and read her wishes with resigned good-humour.

‘I just dropped in to say what one does say in this sort of crisis. Not that it can do much for anyone, but at least it goes to show one is there in readiness. Barbara knows she has only to call on me.’ He looked at her again, but got no encouragement. ‘She doesn’t feel any need of me now, and I don’t feel any need to stand around to defend her against you, Superintendent. She’s as good as nodding me out of the door. And since she knows I’ll be back for less than a nod, I’m going.’

‘It was nice of you to come, Colin,’ said Barbara, ‘and I do appreciate it. I’m sure I shall need your help, if it comes to selling up, but it’s early days yet to think of that. But thanks, anyhow. I’ll be in touch.’

‘You’ll be fine,’ said the young man rather ruefully. ‘Don’t I know it! But call me on any pretext, any time. I’ll be glad.’

He knew the place well enough by now to be allowed to depart unescorted, and doubtless he would be back just as informally if she neglected to call him. The silence closed in after his going.

‘Do sit down,’ said Barbara, eyeing George somewhat quizzically, and herself set the example. ‘Whatever it is, you’re never unwelcome, you know. I’d offer you a drink, but I have the feeling you wouldn’t take it, and that would be rather sad. So you speak first, and then we’ll see where the clues lead.’

She had plainly been relaxing after a bath when Barron arrived. The glow was still on her, she was without make-up, and swathed in a loose gown of heavy Indian cotton in a sumptuous flower-print in red and greens on black, with a padded yoke and voluminous sleeves. Her hair was a cloud about head and shoulders, coiled and moist from steam. She had a marvellously serene beauty. Maybe this was the first time Barbara had been alone, in the sense of her own person and responsible only to herself, for a long time.

‘I just wondered,’ said George mildly, ‘if you’d like to amend your story about how you spent yesterday evening.’

‘I wouldn’t really like to,’ said Barbara reasonably, and still smiling with that distant composure in which he had so little part, ‘but I can see I’d better.’ And the smile suddenly warmed into genuine intimacy. There was mischief in it, and sympathy. She was positively inviting him to connive at a friendly compromise.

Naturally, Moon’s guess had been right. Miss de la Pole had telephoned her as soon as the police were out of sight. Not taking sides, simply informing a possibly threatened neighbour of the accidental information lodged against her. How marvellous was the working of the conscience of Middlehope! And how simply, almost inadvertently, it had absorbed within itself this blatantly alien body. George respected the instinct that worked within so idiosyncratic a community, but reserved his options. Even Middlehope could be wrong.

‘Then suppose you tell me,’ he said, ‘as if we hadn’t been over this ground before, exactly how you spent yesterday evening.’

‘I did lie to you,’ she said, quite softly and serenely. ‘I told you I was home all the evening, waiting for Arthur. I wasn’t. I was here until he went off to practice, and he’d told me he was staying late, and I was here cooped up on my own, and that’s something I don’t always choose to be. About nine I took my car and went out for a drive. It was a nice, mild night, I knew he wouldn’t be back for some time, and I felt like being out and alone. And frankly, I didn’t care if he got back first. It wouldn’t have troubled him at all, you know. I had functions, and I performed them. He wasn’t worried about what I did on the side. I went quite a long way. It can’t have been far off midnight when I got back. He wasn’t home. I took it then that he wasn’t coming, but he had his keys, anyhow. I went to bed. And the rest is just as I told you.’ She reached for her drink with a hand steady as a rock. ‘And that’s all,’ she said, and looked him firmly in the eye.

‘You mean you were driving round for a matter of perhaps two and a half hours, alone?’ said George mildly.

‘I suppose I must have been.’

‘Nothing else to tell me?’

‘Nothing.’

And whatever he might think of that, it seemed to be agreed that she had driven in at the gates here at about a quarter to midnight, well after the probable time of her husband’s death, though not after the limit of possibility. And from the opposite direction. Driving someone else back out of the danger zone before returning home herself? The timing made it possible that she had guilty knowledge, even that she could have assisted at Rainbow’s demise, or at least connived at it, even if it seemed unlikely that she managed it alone. Rainbow had seemed to value her simply as one of _the most advantageous of his investments, but there were plenty of other men who showed every sign of putting a very different value upon her. Which of them, if any, could she have been running home, or at least to a place of safety, up the valley?

‘And you didn’t call in anywhere for a drink?’

‘No. Nor drop in on any friend. Nor even call for a paper of chips,’ she said with a fleeting smile, ‘though I do remember Charlie had been frying. No, I didn’t stop to speak to a soul, and I doubt if anyone noticed me passing.’ She made no mention, naturally, of Miss de la Pole; she understood the rules of the game by instinct.

‘It won’t do, you know,’ said George simply.

‘It will have to, won’t it?’ she said just as simply, and smiled at him.

He was sure then that there was someone else involved, and Barbara had no intention of letting him – it had to be him! – be drawn into a case. Not only would she deny his existence, she would probably warn him off, whoever he was, from coming near her until this affair blew over. Did that mean there was any guilt involved? Not necessarily. Just that she was well aware there could be suspicion of guilt.

‘All right,’ said George equably.‘ That’s your story. If you ever decide to change it, call me.’

She went out to the forecourt with him. There was a chill wind blowing between the sheltering trees. ‘Do go in,’ said George, remembering she was fresh from the bath. ‘You shouldn’t risk catching cold.’

She gazed at him for a moment with an unreadable face, and then suddenly smiled at him, and turned and went back into the house without a word, and closed the door softly between them.

Rainbow’s solicitors were a Comerbourne firm, a fanfare of four resounding names, not one of which survived in the company. The man George wanted was a Mr Bowes, middle-aged, thin and spry. Yes, he held Rainbow’s will, and yes, he fully understood the significance it might hold for the police investigation. ‘Cui bono’ is still sound sense. Until after the inquest and the release of the body for burial, he remained the sole custodian of Rainbow’s testamentary dispositions, but he made no bones about divulging them to the officer in charge.

‘It’s a very concise affair. There are small legacies to his assistants in both shops. Abbot’s Bale House is left to his wife, with all its contents. But the residual legatee, who gets his businesses, all his holdings in banks and stocks, the lot, is the manageress of his Birmingham shop. A Miss Isobel Lavery.’

It was a shock, and yet it probably should not have been. The partnership with Barbara, on any but the most superficial examination, bore all the marks of a business arrangement, a mutual benefit alliance.

‘And I take it that the residue will amount to a pretty considerable fortune? Judging by his way of living – and I never heard that he gave anyone the impression of being a bad financial risk?’

‘Anything but,’ agreed Mr Bowes frankly. ‘There’ll be not far short of a quarter of a million to come to Miss Lavery.’

Enough to provide an added incentive, supposing a wife who repented of her bargain felt the urge to break free; always supposing, also, of course, that she didn’t know she wasn’t going to get it! But undoubtedly by the same token Miss Lavery represented another possibility to be taken into account. And if she occupied so confidential a place in Rainbow’s life as to come in for the lion’s share of his property, the odds were that she, at least, not having the security of a wife, would need to know very well what was in his will. Businesswomen can usually take care of their own interests. She might, of course, be the exception.

‘Have you met Miss Lavery?’

‘Once or twice, on Mr Rainbow’s business. No doubt you’ll have to see her. You’ll be able to make your own assessment.’ Clearly he had made his, if he wasn’t willing to share it. ‘I haven’t yet been in touch with her, but I believe Mrs Rainbow has. In view of what’s happened, I suppose she may have decided to close the shop. You’d better have her home address, too, just in case.’

As it turned out, however, Miss Isobel Lavery took a sternly business-like view even of death. The shop in Birmingham, a narrow but expensive frontage leading far back through several well-furnished rooms, proved to be open for business as usual. A young girl at a fragile Regency desk came forward to enquire his interest, and opened her eyes wide when he asked for the manageress. She vanished into the mysterious rear regions, and came back a few minutes later to lead him into a small, plain office. The elaborations were kept for the showrooms, though this austere workroom was elegant enough in its own way.

Miss Lavery could have been called many things, handsome, decorative, even sumptuous, but not elegant. She was a tall, full-breasted blonde with an excellent figure, and a great casque of lacquered hair in pale, silvery gold. Light blue eyes artistically shadowed with darker blue gazed coolly and shrewdly out of a clear-featured face that erred only slightly on the side of coldness and hardness. She had, he thought, added a few funereal touches of black jewellery and a knotted georgette scarf to the black dress she habitually wore in the shop. She was not broken-hearted, but she was observing the conventions of bereavement. There was even a handkerchief, large, silken and expensive, and bordered two inches deep with black, grey and silver lace, deployed ready on her desk.

It was easy to see why, though for this setting and this purpose she was manifestly right, she would have been hopelessly wrong as hostess to the eccentric aristocracy of Middlehope, and chatelaine of the country house at Abbot’s Bale. Rainbow had believed in horses for courses.

‘Yes, Mrs Rainbow telephoned me with the news yesterday afternoon,’ she said. Nearly all the Brummie had been ironed out of her voice, but not quite all; she was of the city. ‘It was a terrible shock, as you can imagine. I thought he would not have wanted me to close the shop. He was completely professional. If you invite the public to do business with you, you must remain available, or they have a legitimate complaint. I wanted to do what he would have wished.’

She answered questions readily. No, she had had no communication with Mr Rainbow on the day of his death, or the day previous to it, and she knew of nothing that could possibly shed light on what had happened to him. The last time she had spoken to him, by telephone, was two days earlier, when they had discussed the lots to be bid for at a forthcoming sale, and she had carried out his suggestions and bought the pieces he wanted. There had been no suggestion of anything unusual or disturbing in the conversation or his manner. The last time she had seen him was a week before that, when he had come down and stayed in town overnight, and they had had dinner together.

Ten days might be quite a long abstention. Had Barbara taken it for granted that he had gone into town to join his mistress, the night he died? It made sense, in the light of her reactions.

‘Thank you, Miss Lavery, you’ve been very helpful,’ said George truthfully, when she had poured out her willing confidences, and wondered almost convincingly what was to happen to the business now, and whether Mrs Rainbow would wish things to continue in the old way. ‘I’m sure you’re right to keep the place open and functioning, and wait for instructions. Your position can hardly be threatened in any way.’ That was bait, and in spite of herself she rose to it. He saw the brief, cool flame of triumph in her eyes, before she reached for the handkerchief and hid them behind it. She knew, all right, who owned the business from now on.

‘Just a formality,’ he said, remaining seated when she was sure he was about to rise and go, ‘I’m sure you won’t mind telling me what your own movements were on Thursday night?’

After the almost reverent tone of their interview, she should have been visibly shaken by this sudden descent to earth, but she was not even ruffled. She had expected it, and she knew why. Oh, yes, she knew how much her hold on Rainbow had been worth, and she was prepared now for the resultant enquiry. And though anything she said would have to be checked, he knew then that it would be time wasted. She knew she was in the clear, and nobody and nothing could get between her and that quarter of a million.

‘I understand’ she said, ‘that you have to ask everyone connected with him. I was at home all the evening, after I left the shop at six. I had a little bridge party, we meet on Thursdays at seven when we’re all free, at each flat in turn, and this time it was at my place. I’ll give you all the names, I know you have to check.’ And she did; two of them women, single like herself, the fourth a man in attendance on one of the girls; and George knew that they would check out without blemish, as in the event they did. ‘We broke up about eleven-thirty. We all live fairly close, you see.’

He saw, and more than she was recommending to his sight. He saw a woman quite prepared to stake her body, somewhat resignedly, against future profits, but rather preferring, if truth were told, the small local bridge four, and the cosy coffee-evenings in city flats, without penalty. Now she could be both respectable and rich.

She went out with him to the street, which was a concession that betrayed her unease, not about her own immunity, which was absolute, but about something more subtle and vulnerable, her whole new situation. She thought she was on the verge of bliss, of fulfillment in riches, and yet some hidden part of her was nervous of the change. In anticipation it was unshadowed gain, now on the threshold she was seeing those little bridge parties shrivelling into ashes, the old friends dropping off, the horizon abruptly extended into frightful distances of challenge? Or was this dread he felt in her only that something might yet loom between her and Rainbow’s money?

‘I suppose there’s bound to be some delay about probate, in the circumstances,’ she said almost wincingly, at parting. ‘But there won’t be any serious difficulties, will there? I mean, I have the business to manage in the meantime, I ought to know how I stand as soon as possible.’

‘I’m sure everything will proceed normally,’ said George with resigned tolerance. ‘Whatever dispositions Mr Rainbow made about his property will be observed. Subject, of course, to the obvious innocence of all legatees in the circumstances leading to his death. The inquest shouldn’t be a great obstacle.’ He could feel her subdued tension sending out ripples through the air, and he understood the passion with which the hardworking poor – for what else was she, with inflation at this level? – look forward to almost unimaginable wealth. He didn’t blame her very much. Pretty obviously she had provided with very limited reward what was now to be repaid in full at last.

But when he took his leave of her and returned to the local police yard where he had left his car, he was wondering at every step whether she was going to be glad or sorry when she received and realised in full the blessing and the burden of her inheritance.

‘Inquest opens Monday,’ said George to Sergeant Moon, across a table littered with files. It was evening, and they were preparing to hand back the parish hall and transfer their enquiries to headquarters in Comerbourne. ‘We can take it as far as murder in one go, or ask for an adjournment and keep them guessing. The Chief Constable will back us whatever we do, luckily, he’s local, and knows what will happen if he brings the Yard in. He doesn’t want border warfare on his hands, any more than we do. I’m going to clam up for a week, and hang on to the options. Miss Lavery will be on hot bricks a week longer, but it won’t hurt her.’

‘And she’s clean,’ mused Moon, almost regretfully, for Miss Lavery was not of the valley, and therefore to a certain extent expendable.

‘In her own person, absolutely. She was where she said she was, and there are three witnesses to prove it. Besides, she isn’t the type.’

‘Too moral?’ enquired Moon, interested.

‘Too limited, unless some other person did it for her. There could, I suppose, be some other fellow around who wants Miss Lavery, and whom she, if truth were told, can’t help preferring to Rainbow. But I suspect all her familiars will turn out to play bridge for low stakes, and give little coffee-parties. Still, you never know. There could be a cheerful, extrovert, over-sexed wholesale butcher around, who likes blondes and resents rivals. Keep an open mind, Jack.’

‘My mind is always open,’ said Moon truthfully. ‘Murder, which unquestionably we have on our hands, requires a motive, and in spite of all the modern complications, the main motives for killing are money and sex. Here, let’s face it, we’ve got a third, local solidarity in the face of an indigestible threat. I know it, you know it. I wouldn’t rule it out. Still – Rainbow had money, and plenty of it, and his wife has sex, and plenty of that, too. By the way, I was interested enough to do some checking this afternoon. She is his wife. I did wonder. She’s got her marriage lines, all right. Nineteen when she married him. I reckon that makes a sort of sense. Barbara Cranmer. Father died in ’fifty-seven of long-delayed illness arising from war injuries. Mother ran a flower shop, not very prosperous, not very efficient, and Barbara helped in it. I bet he was buying flowers for Miss Lavery when he clapped eyes on Barbara.’

‘I marvel,’ said George mildly, ‘how you manage to extract life stories in an afternoon. Where is mother now?’

‘Died, two years ago. Barbara’s on her own. Since the marriage mother’s been living in a very nice residential hotel on the south coast. She died of leukemia in a very expensive nursing home. Oh, yes, I’ve been busy. Still, here we still are, stuck with money and sex. And a set of circumstances, of course.’

‘Quite remarkable circumstances, when you come to think about it. Somebody – potentially Rainbow himself – had certainly been poking around privately among the junk up there in the tower. Very recently, possibly the night he was killed. And Rainbow was a knowledgeable chap in his own line, with a nose for buried treasure. So one of his colleagues and rivals assured me, the night he had his house-warming party. Where he goes, this lad said, it’s worthwhile following, and taking a good sniff around. So had he sniffed out something profitable here in Abbot’s Bale? More precisely, up in the church tower? He took precautions, apparently, to have the place on his own that night. Something really sensational? Worth following him for? Worth killing him for, perhaps? If so, what was it? What is it?’

‘I’ll tell you this,’ said Moon promptly, ‘if he thought he was on to something good there, he never said a word to the vicar or to anyone else. He was keeping it strictly to himself, all right. Looks as though somebody else had got a whiff of what was going on, and was keeping an eye on him accordingly. Two of ’em met up there in the tower.’

Two of them had indeed met in the tower, to deadly effect. The forensic boys had isolated three sets of prints, two of which had definitely reached the leads, one of them Rainbow’s. The second was a long, narrow foot, with an even, springy tread that argued a younger man, with unmangled feet, probably accustomed always to well-made, expensive shoes, certainly wearing new and good leather soles when these prints were salvaged from the leads. A third set of prints could be traced as far as that model impression on the lowest stair of the bell-chamber staircase, but was not distinguishable any higher. Cracked old shoes, trodden askew to favour a probable bunion; an older man’s foot. Not Joe Llewelyn’s, either, nowhere near so big and a good many years older.

‘He’s only been dead approximately forty-five hours,’ said Sergeant Moon, sensibly reducing everything to its true proportion.

‘And we have at least moved, and we have a Chief who’ll stay with us, even when he gets nervous. So come on, let’s get this paper-work into shape for Monday, and trust the Coroner to have a pulse, too.’ The coroner’s officer was a second cousin of Sergeant Moon, shared his kinsman’s sensitivity to local feeling, and exercised a powerful influence over his elderly and irascible but timorous chief. ‘Hand me that file,’ sighed George, clearing the table before him, ‘and get Barnes in here. I’m going for an adjournment.’

Bossie Jarvis had a music lesson on Saturday evenings, and his piano teacher lived in Comerford, down the valley. Comerford was a sometime idyllic village, now beset with invading population from the Midland conurbation, with supermarkets and car-parks, and all the ills of modern living, though it retained a superb setting rimmed with rising hills growing grim and purple towards the west. Bossie took a bus from home about seven o’clock, and trudged along with his music-case to Miss Griffith’s house in Church Street, to embroil himself in mortal combat with her very nice grand for half an hour. He enjoyed the battle, but would never have admitted it. He had his eye on the organ, some day, and dreamed of letting loose those earth-shaking stops, and curbing them at will or letting them split the world apart. And his teacher, though unmarried and therefore an Old Maid, was no more than twenty-three, extremely pretty and spirited, and fought him amicably over the keyboard in a fashion which sent him away fulfilled like a lover. If, of course, he had had the slightest notion how a satisfied lover feels, or, for that matter, an unsatisfied one. All Bossie knew was that he went off finally to catch his minibus home, all the company would furnish at that time of night, feeling fat, and fed, and boss.

But this Saturday evening, though events proceeded exactly as usual, Bossie was not entirely present. He played grimly, but with half his mind on other matters. He had spent an hour of the afternoon in earnest council with his allies and fellow-conspirators, and they had debated anxiously how they should behave in this new and unforeseen situation. Rainbow was dead, and they were in possession of certain knowledge which might be of importance to the police enquiry. Yet they could not possibly tell what they knew. They would even have liked to, to be rid of the responsibility, but in the circumstances it was impossible. They were all firmly agreed about that.

‘If it was only us,’ said Ginger, ‘we could tell. But it isn’t, and we can’t. Anyhow, we don’t know all that much. What somebody else tells you isn’t evidence. You’re the only one who really has anything to tell, and we don’t think you should, and you don’t think so, either, and if you agree we’ve got to stay mum, that’s what we’ll do.’

And since that was exactly what they had instinctively done up to now, it was the easiest thing to go on behaving in the same way. In any case, there was nothing else for it. That did not, however, make them any happier about it. Even Bossie felt less assured of his rightness than usual, though he suppressed the heretical thought firmly.

The minibus made a slower journey than the ordinary daily service buses, since the driver went round in a series of short detours to drop a number of regular passengers at isolated farms on the way. It was past nine o’clock when it turned about by the Church at Abbot’s Bale, and set down Bossie, the last of the load. From there he had a ten-minute walk home, by a side-road not much frequented at night, since it led only to two or three scattered homes before climbing out of the valley over a ridge to the south, narrowing considerably as it went. He knew every yard of it, having walked it regularly every day for years, the darkness did not worry him in the least. It was the almost moonless part of the month, and clouded over into the bargain, and once out of the village lights and away from visible windows it was very dark indeed. The hedges were high, the occasional field-drive came abruptly, but the road was wide enough here for two cars to pass.

Somewhere ahead an engine was heard briefly, the sound emerging and retreating with a curve of the road; it occurred to him at the time that it had the same smooth note of the car that had driven past in this direction just as he got off the bus, but cars were not among the things Bossie studied with any diligence, things mechanical being of no interest to him apart from the mechanics of the organ. Somebody from over the ridge going home, probably, or a visitor to one of the farms.

A faint pallor on the left was, of course, the white gate of the Croppings drive. Just round the next curve, on the right, came the narrow turning into the lane to the Lyons’ farm, shrouded between tall hedges and rising very sharply from the road. Bob Lyons had a way of coasting down that slope at speed, and sailing out silently to the indignation of the unwary. Sergeant Moon had often warned him about it.

That was exactly what the car lying in wait there did now, just after Bossie had passed the end of the lane. Only the otherwise profound silence of the night warned him. He had already tuned out his own light footfalls, and infinitely small though the betraying sounds were, they came to him clearly, if at first inexplicably. The slight crunch of gravel on a hard lane surface, under tyres, the whip and slither of untrimmed leaves along a wing, very soft indeed and yet seeming to bear down upon him at frightful speed. He felt the rushing displacement of air, and sensed a heavy projectile hurtling out upon him.

Instinct did well by Bossie. The sudden gleam of lights cast his shadow on the road ahead, and he realised that the car, engine now running, was sweeping into a right turn after him. To leap to the left would have been to remain in its path a couple of seconds longer. Bossie flung his music-case away from him, and leaped to the right, instead, aiming high into the thick verdure of the autumn hedgerow, clear of the road.

He all but made it to safety, his hands spread to grasp even at thorn to haul himself higher out of range. The front wing of the car struck him glancingly on the left hip, and flung him sprawling aside, short of his aim but clear of the wheels. He hit the road with arms spread, which partially saved his face, but even so his head struck with some force, and his cheek slid jarringly along the tarmac. He lay winded and bruised and half-stunned, feeling the grain of the road coarse as boulders, and groping with wincing finger-tips around him, without the power to prise himself up from the ground and run.

Dazedly he wondered what the red glow was, that was very gradually growing brighter and nearer. Then he knew. The car that had hit him had halted some yards ahead, but no one had got out to run and see what damage had been done. What he was watching with sick fascination, was the rear lights backing gently towards him. Not directly towards him, rather away to the left, carefully and slowly, drawing level with him now. All this time he must have been staring straight at the rear number-plate, only there weren’t any numbers, or any letters, either, only a blank. And the rear wheels were sliding softly past his left shoulder, down to his hip, down towards his knee…

He broke clear of his daze in a frantic heave, and tried to raise himself, and nothing would work, nothing at all, and the car was creeping back, half a minute more and it would be clear of him and behind him, and then he knew what was going to happen, and he scrabbled frantically with nerveless hands and ungovernable toes to scuttle away into the grass, and knew he wasn’t moving so much as an inch.

‘Now, look here, God,’ raged Bessie’s submerged Christian innocence, somewhere deep inside him, ‘this isn’t fair, you can’t just stand there! It isn’t bloody good enough!’ He was accustomed to pray as candidly and robustly as he argued with his father, and in a comparable emergency he would probably have sworn at his father, too. It was now or never, wasn’t it?

The lights of an approaching car swept an arc above him, rounding a curve still some hundred yards back, darkened momentarily, and returned in a steady glow, though still with the bulk of a hedge between. Seconds, and they would be here, and the car by Bessie’s side had not yet cleared his body, and had no time now to straighten out behind him. The engine throbbed, the forward leap at speed tore the long twigs of the hedge swishing after it, and the long grass surged and strained forward to follow. The rear lights reappeared large and bright, and soared away, diminishing, until they vanished in red pin-points round the next corner, accelerating all the way.

Bossie let his breath spill out of him like blood, rested his grazed cheek in his arm, and waited trustingly to be salvaged. He was barely half-conscious when the approaching car, travelling with the timeless benignity of the happy and well-disposed, braked sharply and drew up well short of the spot where he lay, and two people came tumbling out, concerned and competent, to pick up the pieces.