The Detective Omnibus: "City of Gold and Shadows", "Flight of a Witch" and "Funeral of Figaro"

CHAPTER THREE

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The Salmon’s Return’ lay a quarter of a mile up-river, and dated back to the early seventeenth century, a long, low, white-painted house on a terrace cunningly clear of the flood level of the Comer, and with ideal fishing water for some hundreds of yards on either side of it. It was small, and aware of the virtues of remaining small, lurking ambiguously between hotel and pub, and retaining its hold on the local bar custom while it lured in the fanatical fishermen from half the county for weekend indulgences and occasional contests. Its ceilings were low, and its corners many and intimate. And it belonged to a family, and reflected their stubborn conservative tastes, with a minimum of staff providing a maximum of service. The only relatively new thing about it was its romantic and truthful name, which someone in the family had thought up early in the nineteenth century as an improvement on ‘The Leybourne Arms’; for the Leybourne family had been extinct since the fourteenth century, while salmon regularly did return several miles up-river from this house, and were regularly taken for a mile on either side. Downstream, the nearest weir was a tourist sight in the season, flashing with silvery leaps as the salmon climbed to their spawning-grounds.

From the narrow approach lane a gravel drive swung round to the side door of the inn, and then continued, dwindling, to the rear, where there was a brick garage and a half-grassy car park. Gus halted the Aston Martin at the doorway instead of driving straight on to the garage, and was out of the driving-seat like a greyhound out of a trap, to dart round to the passenger side and hand Charlotte out. His meticulous performance slightly surprised her; there had been moments when they seemed to have achieved a more casual contact, and he couldn’t be still trying to impress. However, she allowed him to squire her to the desk, without comment and with a straight face, told him the number of her key, though keys were almost an affectation at ‘The Salmon’s Return’, more for ornament than use, and let him take it down for her and escort her to the foot of the oak staircase, which wound in slightly drunken lurches about a narrow well, the polished treads hollowed by centuries of use.

He stood back then, and let her go, and she mounted the first flight, and the second, planting her fashionable square heels firmly on the beautiful old wood, which was austerely and very properly without covering, and recorded her movements accurately for anyone listening below. She didn’t look back, and she didn’t linger, but her ears were pricked at every step. She felt, rather than heard, how he turned smartly and loped back across the panelled hall towards the door, no doubt to drive the car round into the garage. No doubt! Except that he was in no hurry about starting it up. Its aristocratic note was not loud, but proudly characteristic. Though she had no car of her own just now, Charlotte had been driving, and driving well, for more than four years.

The second landing was carpeted, the wood of the flooring being slightly worn and hollowed. Her steps could no longer be heard below, once she reached the corridor. She did not even go as far as her room—the sound of the door being unlocked, opening and closing again should surely not carry down to the hall. She kicked off her shoes on the carpet, and slid back silently to listen down the well of the staircase; and picking up from this level only minor and ambiguous sounds, she went quickly down again one floor, to where she could lean cautiously over the glossy black banister, and train both eyes and ears upon any activity in the hall below. Visually, her range was limited. The acoustics were excellent.

She had no idea, until then, why she was acting as she was, or what she suspected, or why, indeed, she should suspect anything but a straight pick-up, and one so simply and attractively engineered as to be quite unalarming; a normal minor wolf on the prowl, with a long weekend to while away, and an eye cocked for congenial company, preferably intimate, but in any case gratifying. And yet she held her breath as she leaned out from the cover of the first-floor corridor, and hung cautiously over the oak rail.

Mrs Lane was there just below her; she could see the top of the round, erect, crisply waved head of iron-grey hair, and the bountiful bulges, fore and aft, of the pocket-clipper figure below. Mrs Lane was the miniature goddess who controlled her large, tolerant, good-humoured menfolk, and made this whole organisation work. And at this moment she had a finger threading the maze of the register, and one hand already vaguely gesturing towards the key-board.

‘Well, yes,’ said the comfortable border voice, pondering, ‘I can give you a single room, but only for two nights, I’m afraid. Weekends we’re usually booked up in advance, you see, even in the close season. There’s a club meeting here for a social weekend—I think they like to keep their places warm here for when coarse fishing starts again. Number 12, if two nights is any good to you?’

‘Better than nothing,’ said Gus Hambro’s voice heartily, but with circumspect quietness. ‘I’ll take it, and gratefully. This is a dream of a position you’ve got here, with the path down-river. You ought to keep rooms for archaeologists as well as fishermen.’

‘They’re not so predictable,’ said Mrs Lane practically, ‘and they do so tend to camp, you know. The fishermen are good men for their comforts, and then they do patronise the bar. After all, you need an audience when you talk about fish, and salmon especially. You don’t fish yourself now, Mr Hambro?’

‘I never really had time,’ said the winning baritone voice. ‘You might convert me, at that! Number 12, you said? And I can move my car round into the garage? Fine, I’ll find my way. I’ll sign in when I’ve put her away for the night.’

Charlotte withdrew into cover, and hoped no one on the upper deck had fallen over her discarded shoes. Gus was plunging away out of the door, contented with his dispositions, and Mrs Lane, apparently satisfied of his bona fides—and Mrs Lane had an inbuilt crystal globe, and took some satisfying—had subsided into her private enclosure and was lost to sight. Charlotte climbed the stairs to her own room, and let herself in silently, with considerable doubts about her own situation.

She sat on the edge of her bed and thought it out. It need not, after all, be so abstruse, or so deeply suspect. He was young, alert, very much aware of the opposite sex, and with a personal taste which apparently inclined strongly towards her type. When she had revealed that she was staying here, he had simply decided to hook up and join on. But no, that wouldn’t do! She chilled, remembering. She had told him where she was booked, and at that stage he hadn’t reacted at all. Not until she had signed her name in the book, at his request, and his long-sighted eyes had read it over her shoulder. Only after that had he said: ‘Let me drive you back, I’m staying there, too’. As he had certainly not been, it seemed; not until now.

But what could her name mean to him? It wasn’t Morris, it wasn’t identifiable, even to a keen archaeologist—not unless he happened to be all too well informed about the experts who had interested themselves in Aurae Phiala, and even in their heirs and heiresses, down to herself.

But why? What could he be after, where could he fit in, if this was true? No, she was imagining things. He had simply hesitated to take the plunge and stake on a worthwhile weekend with her, and it was pure chance that he had made up his mind just after he had learned her name. Logic argued the case for this theory, but instinct rejected it. Unless she was much mistaken in that young man, pure chance played very little part in his proceedings. His manipulation of impudence and deference was too assured for that. Whatever he was about, there was method in his madness.

Well, she thought, it won’t be difficult to judge how right I am, if I pay out a few yards of line for him. If he isn’t just amusing himself, then I can expect total siege. And I shan’t be making the mistake of attributing it to any charms of mine, either. And even if I’m wrong—well, I might find it quite amusing, too.

She had not intended changing for the evening, country inns being the right setting for good tweed suits; but now she took her time about dressing, and chose a very austere frock in a dark russet-orange shade that touched off the marmalade lights in her eyes. Why not use what armoury one has? If he was setting out to find out more about her, she could certainly do with knowing a little more about him, and her chances were at least as good as his.

He was sitting in the bar with a drink and the evening paper when she came down, and though he appeared not to notice her quiet descent until she was at the foot of the stairs, she had seen him shift his weight some seconds before he looked up, ready to spring to his feet and intercept her. The look of admiration and pleasure, she hoped, was at any rate partly genuine.

‘May I get you a drink? What would you like?’ No doubt about it, he meant to corner her for the evening. If he had been simply playing the girl game, she reasoned, he would be getting steadily more intimate, and here he is reverting to deference. Because I’m Uncle Alan’s niece? But she could not believe in him as that kind of reverent fan, whatever his enthusiasm for his subject.

‘Since we’re both alone here,’ said Gus, coming back from the bar with her sherry, ‘will you be kind enough to have dinner with me? It would be a pity to eat good food in silence, don’t you think?’

‘Thank you,’ she said gravely, ‘I’d like that very much.’ Not that she intended accepting any favours from him, but she knew he was booked in for two nights, which gave her time to return his hospitality if she could not manipulate tonight into a Dutch treat.

‘When you get bored with my conversation,’ he said, ‘I promise to shut up. There’s even a telly tucked away somewhere.’

Boredom, thought Charlotte, as she made her way before him across the small panelled dining-room, is one thing I don’t anticipate.

By the time they reached the coffee stage it had become clear that he was doing his best to pump her, though she hoped he had not yet realised how little result he was getting, or how assiduously she was trying, in her turn, to find out more about him. The process would have been entirely pleasant, if the puzzling implication had not lingered in her mind throughout, like a dark shadow without a substance. And his method had its own grace.

She saw fit to admit to her musical background. Why not, since some of her midland concerts would be advertised in the local press, and inevitably come to his notice? ‘I call that one of the supreme bits of luck in life,’ he said warmly,‘ to be able to make your living out of what you love doing.’

‘So do I. One you enjoy, too, surely? Don’t tell me you don’t love your archaeology. But how does one make a living at it? Apart from teaching? Are you attached to one of the universities?’ Her tone was one of friendly and candid interest, but she wasn’t getting many bites, either. We should both make better fish than fishermen, she thought.

‘There aren’t enough places to go round,’ he said ruefully, ‘and I’m not that good. Some of us have to make do with jobs on the fringe.’

‘Such as what? What do you do, exactly?’ No need for her to be as subtle as he was being. She had, as far as he knew, no reason to be curious, and therefore no reason to dissemble her curiosity. It was an unfair advantage, though; it made it harder for him to evade answering.

‘Such as acting as consultant and adviser on antiques generally—or in my case on one period. Valuer—research man—I even restore pieces sometimes.’

‘Freelance? It sounds a little risky. Supposing there weren’t enough clients?’

He smiled, rather engagingly, she admitted. ‘I’m retained by quite a big outfit. And there’s never any lack of clients.’

It was at that point that the stranger entered the dining-room, and stood for a moment looking round him as if in search of an acquaintance. Charlotte had seen him turn in the doorway to speak to Mrs Lane, whose placid smile indicated that she knew and welcomed him. He looked like a local man, at home and unobtrusive in this comfortable country room as he would have been in the border landscape outside. He was tall and thin, a leggy lightweight in a dark-grey suit, with a pleasant, long, cleanshaven face, and short hair greying at the temples and receding slightly from a weathered brown forehead. He was of an age to be able to wear his hair comfortably short and his chin shaven without eccentricity, probably around fifty. Middle age has its compensations.

There were only a few people left in the dining-room by that time, two elderly men earnestly swopping fishing stories over their brandy, a young couple holding hands fondly under the table, and a solitary ancient in a leather-elbowed tweed jacket, reading the evening paper. The newcomer scanned them all, and his glance settled upon Charlotte and her companion. He came threading his way between the tables, and halted beside them.

‘I beg your pardon! Miss Rossignol? And Mr Hambro? I’m sorry to intrude on you at this hour, but if you can give me a few minutes of your time you may be able to help me, and I’ll be very much obliged.’

Charlotte had assented to her name with a startled bow, but without words. Gus Hambro looked up with rounded brows and a good-natured smile, and said vaguely: ‘Anything we can do, of course! But are you sure it’s us you want? We’re just visitors around here.’

The stranger smiled, still rather gravely but with a warmth that Charlotte found reassuring. ‘If you weren’t, you probably wouldn’t come within my—strictly unofficial—brief. We locals don’t frequent Aurae Phiala much, we’ve lived with it all our lives, it doesn’t excite us. I gather from the visitors’ book that you were both there this afternoon, that’s the only reason for this visit. May I sit down?’

‘Oh, please!’ said Charlotte. ‘Do excuse us, you took us so by surprise.’

‘Thank you!’ he said, and drew up a third chair. His voice was low, equable and leisurely; so much so that only afterwards did it dawn upon Charlotte how very few minutes the whole interview had occupied. ‘My name is Felse. Detective Chief Inspector, Midshire C.I.D.—I mention it only by way of presenting credentials. Strictly speaking I’m not occupied on a case at the moment, and this is quite unofficial. If you were at Aurae Phiala this afternoon you probably saw something of a party of schoolboys going round the site with a teacher in charge. A coachload of them from Comerbourne.’

‘We could hardly miss them,’ said Gus. ‘They were loading up to leave just when we came out.’

‘Including a senior, a boy about seventeen, who was probably subjecting his teacher to a certain amount of needling?’

‘Name of Boden,’ said Gus. ‘We had a modest brush with him ourselves. Incidentally, they’d lost him—the coach set off without him in the end.’

‘Exactly the point,’ said Chief Inspector Felse. ‘He still hasn’t come home.’ He caught the surprised and doubtful glance they exchanged, and went on practically: ‘I know! He’s perfectly competent, well supplied with money always, and it’s no more than a quarter past nine. Probably you’d already gathered that it isn’t the first time he’s played similar tricks, and that he’s a law to himself, and comes and goes as he pleases. The simple fact remains, he’s never yet been known to miss a meal. Suppose you tell me exactly where and how you last saw him.’

They did so, in detail, each supplementing the other’s account and refreshing the other’s memory.

‘Odd as it seems, that’s the latest mention of him I’ve got so far. He drew off and went back towards his party?’

‘Not directly,’ said Charlotte. ‘I suppose we just took it that he would, and weren’t surprised that he made a pretence of being unconcerned and going his own way about it. What he actually did was to stroll away down-river, right along the perimeter. I watched him as far as the corner of the curator’s garden, and saw him turn in alongside the hedge. I didn’t pay any attention afterwards. I just took it for granted he was on his way back to the group.’

‘I’ve talked to his particular friends. None of them saw him again. He never rejoined his party.’

‘Have his parents reported him missing?’ asked Gus.

‘No, not yet. His father happens to be a close neighbour of mine in the village of Comerford, that’s all. Young Collins—he teaches Latin for his sins—reported to the Bodens when the coach got back to Comerbourne, not to complain of the kid, but so that they shouldn’t be worried about his non-arrival. They know their son, and are more or less resigned to his caprices, but they know his consistencies, too. He likes his comforts and he likes his food. When he failed to show up by half past eight they did begin to wonder. I happen to be three doors away, and dropping it in my lap is a discreet step short of making an official report. Easier to back out of, and sometimes produces the same result. This isn’t a case. And if it ever becomes one—God forbid!—it won’t be my case. But the odds are Gerry’s merely run into something more interesting than usual, worth being late for supper.’

‘A girl?’ suggested Gus dubiously.

‘It happens. Though up to now he’s been too much in love with himself,’ said the chief inspector frankly, ‘to show much interest in girls. He’s not a bad kid, really. Just the only one, too spoiled, and too clever.’ He rose, and restored his chair to its place at the neighbouring table. ‘Thanks, anyhow, for pin-pointing the actual place and time. No one seems to have caught a glimpse of him since.’

‘You don’t think,’ said Charlotte, suddenly uneasy, ‘that he could possibly have missed his footing and slipped into the river? It’s running so high, and so fast, even a good swimmer might not be able to get out if he once got caught in the current.’

‘No, I don’t. He is a good swimmer—quite good enough, and quite mature enough in that way, to respect flood water. And he wasn’t attended by his admirers at that stage, so he had no inducement to show off by taking risks. No, I feel confident he absented himself deliberately, for some reason of his own.’

‘Then he’ll reappear,’ she said, ‘in his own good time.’

‘In all probability he will. As soon as he begins to think pleasurably of his bed.’ He smiled at her. ‘Thank you, Miss Rossignol, and goodnight. Goodnight, Mr Hambro.’

He turned and left the room, threading his way between the deserted tables to vanish in the warm, wood-scented half-darkness of the hall. In a few moments they heard a car start up and drive away. Down-river, Charlotte thought. Perhaps he wasn’t as completely convinced as he made out that a lost boy, however bright and confident, could not have ended in the Comer. And perhaps he wasn’t going to wait until morning before launching a search.

Gus Hambro was sitting quite still, his brows drawn together in a tight and abstracted frown, and the focus of his eyes fixed far beyond the panelling of the dining-room.

‘Of course he’ll be all right,’ said Charlotte, all the more firmly because she was not totally convinced.

Gus said: ‘Of course!’ in a slightly startled voice, and visibly withdrew his vision and his thoughts from some distant preoccupation in which she had no part. He looked vaguely at her, and quickly and intently at his watch; but at least he had returned to the consciousness that she was present. He even managed a perfunctory smile. ‘He’ll turn up when it suits him. Don’t worry about him. What do you say, shall we see what’s on television?’

Her thumbs pricked then. She let him accompany her into the small lounge where the set was kept in segregation from the vocal and gregarious fishermen, and settle her in a comfortable chair, cheek by jowl with a single elderly lady, who seemed pleased to have company, and disposed to conversation. That suited him very well. Charlotte was counting the seconds until he should extricate himself, and he did it in less time than she had expected, and without even the pretence of sitting down with her.

‘You won’t mind if I leave you to watch this without me? There’s a letter I really ought to get written tonight—I hadn’t realised it was quite so late, and I can get it off by first post if I do it now.’

‘Of course!’ she said. ‘In any case, I shall be going to bed very soon, I am rather tired.’

‘I’ll say goodnight, then, if you’ll excuse me.’

‘Goodnight, Mr Hambro.’

It sounded absurdly false to her, as though they were playing a rather bald comedy for the benefit of the elderly lady, who was dividing her benign attention between them and a quivering travel film. He withdrew quickly and quietly, closing the door carefully after him. Charlotte strained her ears to hear whether he would slip out by the side door and make straight for the garage at the rear of the house for his car, but instead she heard the crisp, light rapping of his heels on the oak staircase. Room 12 was on the first floor. Arguably he must be bound there now, but almost certainly he had no intention of staying there.

‘Oh, dear!’ said Charlotte, groping in the depths of her handbag, ‘I seem to have left my lighter in the dining-room. So sorry to keep disturbing you like this, I must go and get it.’

She closed the door after her no less gently and purposefully than he had done, and snatching off her shoes, ran silently up the two flights of stairs to her own room. It was a risk, for she might well have run headlong into him on the first floor landing, but she had luck, and was round the next turn of the stairs when she checked and froze against the wall, hearing his rapid steps on the oak treads below her. Very light, very hurried steps, but the bare, glossy wood turned them into a muffled drum-roll. Down to the hall again, and across it to the front door. She had made no mistake; he had an errand somewhere that would not wait.

She ran to her own room, plunged frantically into her walking shoes, and dragged on a black coat. She had a small torch in her case, and spared the extra minute to find it and thrust it into her pocket. Even this brief delay meant that he would be out of sight and out of earshot, but did that matter at this stage? She knew, or she was persuaded that she knew, where he was bound. And he had gone out by the front door, presumably to present an appearance of normality if he should be seen by any of the family—a late evening stroll before bed being a simple enough amusement—while she could save the whole circuit of the house by using the back door close to the kitchen. At this moment she did not care at all whether she was observed, or what the observer might think of her. The curiosity which was quick in her had now a personal urgency about it. He had picked her up of intent, had followed her into this inn for some purpose of his own. And now for some purpose of his own he shook her off, and with almost insulting lack of finesse. Charlotte was not a commodity to be picked up and put down at will, and so he would find.

She saw no sequence in what was happening, and no coherence, but she knew it was there to be seen, if only she could achieve the right angle of vision.

Her walking shoes had formidable soles of thick, springy rubber composition, remarkably silent even on the staircase, and gifted with a firm grip even in wet river mud. The right footwear for venturing the riverside path, short of gumboots. She let herself out softly by the family door, and made for the silver glimmer of water in haste. The trees that sheltered the inn fell back from her gradually, and the vast, chill darkness of the sky mellowed by degrees into a soft, lambent un-darkness, moonless but starry, in which shapes existed, though without precision. By early habit she was a countrywoman, she could orientate herself by barely visible bulks and air currents and scents in the night, and she was not afraid to trust her feet in the irregularities of an unknown path. The torch she hardly used at all; only once or twice, shading it within her palm, she let it flash upon the paler gravel of the path, to align her passage alongside the faintly glowing water, and then snapped it out again quickly, to avoid reliance upon its light as much as to conceal her presence here.

She walked steadily, using all her senses to set her course accurately. And it was several minutes before her quick ears picked up, from somewhere well ahead of her, the snap of a broken branch under a trampling foot. A sharp, dry crack. Dead wood, brought down in the flood water and cast ashore perhaps two days ago. She eased her pace then, knowing he was there in front of her. She had no wish to overtake him, only to maintain her distance, and keep track of his movements if she could. He was on his way down-river, by the waterside path that enjoyed right of way through the enclosure at Aurae Phiala. Ten minutes’ walk at most, by this route.

After that, she did not know. All she had to do was follow, and find out.

She knew, by the looming bulk of the bank on her right hand, when she reached the perimeter of the enclosure. To make sure, she risked using her torch, shielded by her body, and saw the single strand of wire, a mere symbol, that separated the path from the city site. Then, distant beyond the broad bowl full of skeleton walls, she saw the headlights of a car pass on the road to Silcaster, sweeping eerily across the filigree of stonework and grass, and vanishing again at the turn of the highway. Twice this random searchlight lit and abandoned the past, all in marvellous silence, for the trick of the ground siphoned off all sound. After every such lightning, darkness closed in more weightily. Then she went cautiously, losing ground but keeping her bearings. The river was dangerous here, still gnawing at the rim of the path. In the night its silence and its matt, pewter gleam were alike deceptive, suggesting languor and sleep, while she knew from her memories of day that it was rushing down its bed with a tigerish fury and force, so concentrated that it generated no ripples and no sibilance. One slip, and it would sweep you away without a murmur or a cry.

She had lost track of the movement ahead of her. It was vital here to pay proper attention to every step, or the river would claim forfeit. A mysterious line of pallor, the nearest thing here to a ripple, outlined the rim of the Comer as it lipped the gravel. She judged that she was somewhere very near to where the bank on her right had subsided, shattering the outer corner of the hypocaust. But so much of her attention was now centred on her own immediate steps that she had no leisure to orientate herself in a wider field. Curiously the darkness seemed to have become more dark. When she lifted her eyes, she was blind. Only when she looked down, fixing upon her own feet, had she at least the illusion of vision. A degree of light emanated from the silently hurtling water, which she felt as a force urging her forward, as though she were in its grip and swept along with it.

She was concentrating with exaggerated passion upon her own blind, sensitive footsteps when her instep caught in some solid, clinging mass, and threw her forward in a clumsy, crippling stumble, from which she recovered strongly, and kept her balance.

The block, whatever it was, lay still before her, lipped by the faintly phosphorescent rim of shallow water. All she saw was a rippling edge of pallor, but she felt the barrier as a solid ridge barricading the path. She fumbled for the torch, and thumbed over the button with a chilly hand, and the cone of light spilled over a man’s body, face-down in the shallow water, glistening under the abrupt brightness in violent projections of black and white.

She turned and lunged into the crumbling bank with the torch until it lodged and held still, focussed upon the motionless bulk below. Then she plunged forward with both hands, took fast hold of the thick tweed jacket, and dragged the inert body out of the river. He was a dead, limp weight, but the smooth mud greasing the path made her task easier. Clear of the encroaching water of the Comer, she collapsed across her salvaged man, and crouching on her knees beside him, turned up to the tight circle of light the wet, white face of Gus Hambro.