Ellis Peters - George Felse 06 - Black Is The Colour Of My True Love's Heart (17 page)

Castle Studios

E. McLeod, A.R.P.S.

Auchterarne 356.

Yes, of course. Nineteen-forty-two or thereabouts, this must have been, and Pleydells had been exiled into Scotland, like so many British institutions disseminated into the wilds to avoid bombing.

The second of the three pictures was of Audrey in tennis clothes, laughing, with her racket in her hands. The same imprint was on the back, the girl was approximately the same age. Probably all these Scottish pictures were taken within a few months. And the third…

The third was of Audrey in a white, virginal party-dress, impeccably suitable for a school festival, with small puff sleeves and the Pleydells version of a décolletage, pretty liberal for its time and circumstances. The same indefinable aura of bliss hung about her; it might have been merely youth and health, but it seemed to George to be more than that, a sort of radiant fulfilment rare enough at sixteen. Mr. McLeod had done well by her. A good photographer, not concerned with glossing the lines of a face and showing up in immaculate definition every detail of a costume, the focus faded at her sleeves and the neck of her dress, leaving the face brilliant and surely almost untouched as the centre of attention. So successfully that George had returned the picture to its fellows and was retying the pink tape before he realised what he had seen depending from the silver chain round her neck.

He uncovered it again in a hurry, and stared disbelievingly. The fading definition blurred the design, but that was probably what had nudged his memory. This had been taken twenty-four years ago; the armoured saint in the nutshell helmet had been sharper and newer then, the hazing of his outlines only brought him nearer to what he was to-day. The spread eagle on his shield was faint but recognisable. Saints have their hall-marks, exclusive for all time. Saint Wenceslas had his copyright in this princely armour and heraldry, and once noted, could not be mistaken for any other sanctity in the calendar. So Dominic had said, and the books bore him out.

There couldn’t be two of these things circulating among these few people. This was the same medal Lucien had worn. It was from Audrey he had got it!

There had been altogether too much and too conflicting evidence about that small disc of worn silver. Audrey swore that she had known Lucien only six weeks, Liri, on the other hand, testified that he had worn this medal round his neck ever since she had known him, which was a matter of two years. Lucien had said, according to Liri, that he had got it from his father. And now this picture said clearly that the thing had belonged to Audrey, and Audrey must have given it to him. So how many of them were lying?

Or, wondered George, the premonitory quiver of intuition chilling his flesh,
or were none of them lying
?

He had to hunt out a road atlas and gazetteer to find out where this Auchterarne place was. Stirlingshire. He’d never yet had any communication with the Stirling police, but they’d be the quickest way to what he wanted to know. Probably the school had been evacuated to one of those Gothic mansions that decorate the Scottish countryside, to remind one that while England is for ever England, Scotland is in many ways Europe. With upland wastes around it on all sides, and every kind of embattled refugee group deployed there, from Scandinavian timber-men to Polish pioneers. Maybe army, he thought, as he lifted the telephone and asked for a line to the police at Stirling; there were a lot of wild and mixed army units waiting their time up there. But more likely air force. That was where the young, the cultivated, the engaging, were, in those strange and wonderful days when life had an enormous simplicity and purpose, and everybody knew where he was going, even if the way there proved uncommonly short.

“I’m sorry,” said the operator, after a few minutes of waiting, “there’ll be a slight delay, but I’ll get you through as soon as I can. Can I call you back?”

“Please do. I’ll be right on hand.”

He heard the students emerge from their session, and the gong pealed for lunch. Marshall had taken to sending him in a tray as soon as the party were all accounted for and busy. Not long to go now; this evening they would disperse, he hoped with only pleasant memories of this extraordinary week-end at Follymead, and then the survivors could look round without secrecy, and see what could be salvaged.

George propped up before him the photograph of Audrey in her party-dress, and sat waiting, eye to eye with all that youth and innocence and happiness. He wondered if she’d ever looked like that for Edward Arundale.

Ten minutes later the telephone shrilled, and he reached for it eagerly, expecting his Scottish connection. But the voice that grated amiably in his ears was that of Superintendent Duckett, in high feather.

“George? We made it in time, after all. You can relax. They picked up Lucien Galt at London Airport half an hour ago.”

“Nothing to it,” Duckett was elaborating happily a minute later. “Came in by taxi and checked in as if nothing had happened. Best thing he could do, of course, only he didn’t do it quickly enough. Yesterday morning he could have flown out like a V. I. P. and no questions asked.”

“Why in the world didn’t he?” George wondered. “Inexperience?”

“Money. It takes a little time to knock together about three thousand pounds in notes.”

“That’s what he had on him?”

“In his case. As much as he could turn into cash in the time, obviously. He had a ticket for Buenos Aires. They’re holding him at the airport for us, and I’ve started Price and Rapier off to fetch him back. On the car charge, of course – taking away without owner’s permission. And even for a holding charge that must be the understatement of the year.”

“How did he react when they invited him to step aside and talk things over?” asked George. He’d seen that moment walk up behind so many men and tap them on the shoulder, and he had a pretty clear picture of this young man he’d never yet seen, proud to arrogance, impetuous, used to respect and adulation, even if he thought he despised it.

“Quietly. From what I hear, he looked round smartly for a way out, and might have tried to make a break for it if he could, but he sized things up at once, and went along without any fuss. He hadn’t a chance, and I fancy he’d hate to make an unsuccessful scene. Now the question is, how do we handle him. It’s your case, George, you know the people and the set-up there, you’re up with all the new developments, if there are any since you fished up that queer affair the boys are working on. You suggest, I’ll consider.”

So now it was up to George, and he had to make up his mind a shade too early, before he really had anything but a hunch to go on. It was a gamble, and he was no gambler, and yet all his instincts told him to trust the conviction in his blood.

“All right, I’ll tell you what I’d like done. Have him brought straight back here to me, to Follymead. I’ll be waiting for him, and I’ll be responsible for him.”

Duckett digested that in hard silence for a moment, and then said: “Right, I’ll do that.” Duckett was an admirable chief even in his acts, George found himself thinking, but better still in his abstentions. Not everybody could leave a subordinate alone to do a thing his own way. “How do you want the boys to handle him meantime? Press him, let him alone, what?”

“Don’t discourage him, don’t press him. Just let him stew, and if he wants to talk, caution him, but then let him talk. It might be very interesting.”

“You think he
will
talk, don’t you?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me.”

“Just a minute, George… hang on, here’s Phillips in from the lab…”

“Yes?”

“There’s a positive reaction on the blade of that sword-stick affair. It seems to be A, the same as your specimens from the ground.”

“Good, thanks! No prints, of course?”

“Not a ghost of one. What did you expect, after being in the water all that time? In any case that knob’s so finely chased it breaks up all the lines,” said Duckett philosophically, “and nobody’s going to hold a sword by the blade… not while he’s using it.”

The second time the telephone rang George pounced on it like a hunting leopard, assured that it must be Stirling this time. But it was Scott, reporting from London at last.

“Well, about time,” said George, round a mouthful of chicken sandwich. “What’s been keeping you?”

“Mobile people, mostly,” said Scott crisply, the light tenor voice buoyant and detached. “I struck unlucky at that children’s home of yours. The old house-parents – Stewart and his wife – they retired just about a month ago. There’s a couple named Smith in possession now, brand new. Naturally they know some of the past kids as names, but no other way. The only people about the place who know young Galt know him only from his visits since he left. Nobody there knows a thing about this medal of his.”

“Did you follow up the Stewarts? They must have retired somewhere around London. Londoners don’t go far away.”

“I did. They’ve got a little house in Esher, all very nice and accessible. But they’ve got time on their hands, too, for the first time in years, and they’ve gone off to Italy for an early holiday. Can’t say I blame ’em. They’ll be back next week, but next week doesn’t help us now. Well, that took a fair amount of time without much result, I grant you. So I took off for that garage and service station where the kid started work. Purley and Sons, Highbury. Quite a nice chap, Purley, old-fashioned paternal style. Good little business, and still personal. Garages can be, even in London.”

“And they remember him?”

“They remember him. Give him quite a good name as a worker. Didn’t mind how mucky he got, and loved cars nearly as much as guitars. And you know he was only a kid when he started with them? Well, this is the one pearl I’ve got for you with all this diving, George. Purley took a real interest in the kids he employed, and was a stickler for the regulations. And you know the birth certificate juveniles have to produce when they start work?”

“Of course, what about it?”

“Just that in his case it wasn’t a birth certificate. It was an adoption certificate.”

So he had known, of course, he had known all along. It is, in any case, the modern policy to ensure that they know, and so avoid future shocks. He had always known; and this was the one fact he had always refrained from mentioning, if not suppressed. He talked freely to interviewers about his upbringing in public care, he went back to his old home regularly as a visitor. No sore places there.

But never, never did he tell anyone, even Liri Palmer, that John James and Esther Galt were only his adoptive parents. That was a spot he was careful never to touch.

For fear of pain?

A quarter of an hour later the telephone rang for the third time, and this time it really was Stirling. By that time the inquiries he had to make there seemed almost unnecessary, but he set them in motion, all the same. It would take a little time to get hold of details from so far back, names, dates of death, and so on, but the services kept everlasting records. He would get what he wanted, though perhaps not in time to affect or simplify the issue.

And now there was nothing left to be done, except sit back and wait for Lucien Galt to come back to Follymead under escort.

In the back of the police car, purling steadily along the Ml at seventy, Lucien Galt sat closed into himself like a locked house, but like a locked house with someone peering through the curtains, and possibly a gun braced across the sill of a just-open window. He had said hardly anything since the large, civil men closed in on him at the airport, and wafted him smoothly aside into a private room. If he had seen the slightest hope of giving them the slip, then or afterwards, he would have risked it, but they didn’t take any chances, and they didn’t give him any. No use looking back now and cursing the mistakes he had made. He had a situation to deal with here. Nothing else mattered now.

He was horribly tired, that was the worst thing about it. He needed to think clearly and carefully, and he was in no condition to do it, but he had to try. This perfectly decent and pleasant person beside him, and the other one, driving, they were human, they had treated him throughout with slightly constrained civility and consideration. It was an extraordinary feeling, being wound about with chains of forbearance and watchfulness, like a mental case, like a psychopath under observation. But it did mean that they would listen to him and report on him with all the detachment of which they were capable.

“I’d like to tell you how it happened,” he said abruptly, breaking the silence which had been largely of his own making. At first he hadn’t known what to do, or how to conduct himself, and though he had despised the normal bluster and pretence with which the guilty cover up their guilt, it had seemed to him that a profession of non-understanding was the only course left to him, and after that, silence, and such dignity as he could find a way of keeping. I know nothing, I understand nothing, I am a citizen of substance and some importance, (
am I
?) but I am certainly not going to make a fuss in this public place. Since you apparently have a duty to do, by all means let’s go back and sort out this misunderstanding in private. All very well, but it made this blunt and exhausted opening now seem very crude. He shrank from the sound of it, and yet he was aware that it made a credible beginning. The guilty first protest (at least he had done that only once, and briefly), then sit back and think, and begin to worry, and break into a sweat of anxiety, and finally come to the conclusion that a half-admission may get them something. What he had said must have that ring to this solid, quiet person beside him, who looked like a merchant skipper on leave, brown-faced and far-sighted, and at ease anywhere.

The eyes had shortened their focus upon him, along a broad tweed shoulder. The good-natured teak face gave nothing away. “How you drove the car away, you mean?” asked Detective-Sergeant Rapier placidly.

“All right, I did drive the car away, if you want me to say so.”

“I don’t want you to say anything you don’t want to say. We’re not asking you for any statements.”

“I know that. I’m offering you one. If you want to take it down, you can. But even if you don’t want to, you can listen. I’m tired of running, anyhow, I want it straightened out.”