Ellis Peters - George Felse 06 - Black Is The Colour Of My True Love's Heart (8 page)

“Yes,” said Marshall. “Mr. Meurice should have gone with my coach this afternoon. He cried off at the last moment. I may be wrong, but I got the impression that he changed his mind because he found that Miss Palmer was staying.”

“It wouldn’t be such an unheard-of thing to do,” agreed George. “No one else?”

“Not that I can think off.”

“Then as time’s getting on, I wonder if you’d get Felicity Cope in to me first. I won’t frighten her. I believe she knows already about Mr. Galt’s disappearance.”

“She knows,” said Marshall, pondering darkly how much, indeed, Felicity did know. “You won’t frighten her. She’s a very precocious young woman.” It sounded like a warning; it also sounded, paradoxically, as if he felt sorry for her. George made a mental note to beware of that attitude; it might, he reflected, be the most demoralising thing in the world to feel that everyone was sorry for you.

“I know I’m difficult,” said Felicity, in a very precise and slightly superior tone. “I
have
difficulties. I don’t know how much you remember about being my age?” She gave him a sidewise look, and was arrested by the nicely-shaped growth of the grey hair at his temples; it gave him a very distinguished look. He had nice eyes, too, deep-set and quiet; it would be hard to excite him. It must be so restful, she thought, clutching at distant, desirable things to suppress her memories of anguish, to be with people who’ve known nearly everything, and can’t get feverish any more.

“More than you’d think,” said George earnestly. He was on the same side of the desk with her, almost within touch; he knew quite a lot about making contact. “And I have a son – that’s going through it again, you know, only with one experience to build on. Not a daughter, I wasn’t that lucky. My wife couldn’t have any more children. We badly wanted a girl.”

“Really?” said Felicity, side-tracked. “Uncle Edward is terribly unhappy, too, about Aunt Audrey not having any children. He’s extremely fond of her, but it’s always been an awful disappointment to him.” She tightened suddenly, he saw her face blanch. Her eyes, momentarily naked and vulnerable, veiled themselves. No one can be more opaque than a girl of fifteen, when she feels the need to defend herself. Why did she? From what?

“You know Lucien Galt’s gone missing,” said George practically. “It looks as if you were the last person to see him, here at Follymead. He didn’t say anything to you, did he, about running out? After all, something could have happened to call him away.”

“No,” said Felicity, with a fixed, false smile. “He didn’t say anything about leaving. Nothing at all like that.”

“What did you talk about on your walk?”

“Oh, about the course, and the songs we had in the morning session. Just things like that.”

“Miss Barber and my son were a little disturbed about you… did you know? They had a feeling you were unhappy… upset… when they met you this afternoon. They’d have felt better if you’d agreed to go with them.
Was
there anything the matter? You know, it’s a kindness to confide in people. We
do
worry about one another, that’s what makes us human. Tossa’s had her difficulties, too, you mustn’t be surprised if she has a feeling for other people’s crises.” Careful, now! She had shied a little at the word he had chosen; her eyes, blankly grey, fended off his too great interest distrustfully. “I’m not being clairvoyant,” he said patiently. “You told me a moment ago you have difficulties. You wouldn’t have mentioned them if they hadn’t been on your mind.”

She looked down into her lap, clasping and unclasping her hands in a nervous pressure. The small, thin, beautifully-boned face was subtle and still, but it was a braced and wary stillness.

“I made my mistake,” she said, in a dry and careful voice, “being born into a clever and distinguished family. It
is
a mistake, when you turn out to be the plain, dull, nondescript one. Uncle Edward – everybody knows how brilliant he is. And my mother – she’s his sister, you know, – she has an arts degree, and she paints, and sings, and plays, she can do everything. It’s only because of her ill health, and because she happened to make a rather unfortunate marriage, that she didn’t become a scholar and celebrity like him. Aunt Audrey isn’t an intellectual, like them, of course, she doesn’t come from such an intellectual family. Her people were tradesmen who’d just got into the money. She went to a terribly select boarding school, and all that – Pleydells, I expect you’ve heard of it? – but she didn’t get any great distinctions, they took her away before her final exams. I’ve never understood why. Maybe they weren’t interested in academic success, all they wanted was the cachet. But she was everything else, you see. It’s enough to be so beautiful, don’t you think so? She’s beautiful, and she knows how to do everything beautifully, even if she doesn’t do it so terribly well. Me, I’m well-read, and I’m not stupid, but that’s all I’ve got, and in our family it just isn’t enough. Even things I can really do well, I find myself doing so badly… It’s… a personal thing. I try too hard, and over-reach myself. It isn’t easy, being the one without any gifts at all. I can’t see any future ahead of me, except playing second fiddle all my life to someone. I
know
I have moods! Wouldn’t you have moods?”

Most of which was her mother speaking; and the faithful repetition of the threnody of complaint only went to show the helpless and vulnerable affection she had for her mother. She hadn’t yet turned to doubt any of that, or pick it to pieces as some young people can and do, and find all the flaws in it. There was a lot of undeserved loyalty wrapped up in this rather pathetic package.

She caught his eye, and her pale cheek warmed a little. She liked the thick, strongly marked eyebrows that yet stood so tranquilly apart, with none of the menace of those brows that almost meet over the bridge of the nose. She minded his penetrating glance less than she had expected, and yet she was afraid of it.

“I suppose I’m a psychiatric case, really,” she said rather loftily, “only nobody’s done anything about it, so far.”

“On the contrary, I think you’re a completely normal adolescent who has suffered from rather too much adult companionship,” said George candidly, and smiled at her astonished, even affronted stare. “Abnormalities
are
the norm, when you’re struggling out of one stage and into another. Let’s face it, Felicity, you’re not grown-up yet, you’re only growing up. I haven’t forgotten how damned uncomfortable it is. I’ve seen it happen to others. You’re not doing too badly. Just don’t take any of your elders too seriously. Above all, don’t take any of them as the gospel. Not even the psychiatrists, some of them need psychiatrists too. Is that what was troubling you, this afternoon?”

He had brought her back to the matter in hand none the less firmly for the gentleness of his manner; but she didn’t hold it against him, she knew she had to face it. The long, fair lashes lay on her cheeks. Her face was set, and she wasn’t going to show him her eyes.

“It makes it worse that I have been so much with grownups. I still am. They expect me to act like an adult, and yet they don’t treat me as one. They get the work out of me, and then expect me to be in bed by ten. I did try to confide. I… I didn’t choose very well. He hadn’t got time to listen to me. I thought… he’s only twenty-three, and women are so much more mature… I thought we could be contemporaries but he… I saw it wasn’t any good,” said Felicity with dignity, “so I went away and left him. But you’ll understand, I didn’t want to talk to anyone after that.”

“I do understand. You left him… where?”

“Just under the redwood tree,” she said firmly, “where the paths cross.”

“You took the path to the bridge? And left him standing there?”

“Yes,” she said, with the flat finality of a slab of stone being laid over a grave.

“Let me be quite certain… he was then at the crossroads, and outside the fence that rails off the riverside enclosure with the grotto?”

“Yes,” she said, with the same intonation.

“You didn’t look round to see where he went from there?”

“I didn’t look round at all. I’d been dismissed, I went,” said Felicity, with completely adult bitterness.

“And that was the last you saw of him? You don’t know where he went from there?”

“I do now,” said Felicity. “I didn’t then. That was the last I saw of him.”

She looked up. Her eyes were enormous in fear and grief, greedy for reassurance. Of this terror and this hope there was no doubt whatever. “Mr. Felse, do you think something happened to him? You don’t… you don’t think he’s…?”

“I don’t think anything yet,” said George. “I hope he’s simply suffered a crisis of his own, and run away from whatever was on
his
mind. Don’t think he’s exempt at twenty-three. Maybe he was so full of his own problems he couldn’t spare any consideration for yours. If we can find him, be sure we will. Now you go to bed, and leave it to us. If you’ve told me all you know, there’s nothing more you can do.”

“I’ve told you all I know.” She got as far as the door, and looked back. Her face was mute and stiff, but her eyes were full of haunted shadows. “Good night, Mr. Felse!”

“Good night, Felicity!”

And all that, thought George, watching her go, sounds like truth, and nothing but truth. But he still had an uneasy feeling that truth, with Felicity, was an iceberg, with eight-ninths of its bulk under water.

“I’d better tell you at once,” said Dickie Meurice, settling himself at his ease and spreading an elbow on Edward Arundale’s desk, “that of course I’ve realised what this is all about, even if there’s been no official admission that anything’s wrong. Old Penrose has given the impression that everything’s proceeding according to plan, and he had no intention of using Lucien Galt in to-night’s lectures. Without even saying so, which is pretty good going, but then, he’s a deep old bird. But I know too well what Lucifer costs. If they bought him at all, they wanted him on-stage the whole week-end. And I know
him
too well to miss the moment when he absents himself from among us. He went off, voluntarily or otherwise, between lunch and tea. And
you’re
here to cover the management, in case it turns out he didn’t disappear voluntarily. Solicitor? Or private trouble-shooter?”

“County C.I.D.,” said George without expression but not without relish, and saw with satisfaction the instant recoil, quickly mastered but not quickly enough.

Dickie Meurice tapped his cigarette on the arm of his chair, and stared, and thought so hard that his blond countenance paled. He said carefully, lightly: “You don’t mean you’ve found him? You’ve got a genuine police case? This is official?”

“Not yet. If everybody co-operates it may not have to be. No,
we
don’t know yet where Lucien Galt is. Do
you
, Mr. Meurice?”

“Why should
I
know?” The smile a little strained now, the voice demonstrating involuntarily its disastrous tendency to shrillness.

“You had, it seems, about the same chance of being the last to see him, this afternoon, as any of the others who passed up the sight-seeing trips and stayed at Follymead. Were you?”

“Look,” said Meurice, persuasively, leaning forward with the look of shining candour that meant he was at his most devious, “if this is on the level, if it’s a police job, of course I’ll co-operate.” He had made up his mind rapidly enough where his interests lay, and that they were already involved; tweak that string occasionally, and he’d cooperate, maybe even a bit too much. “Tell me what you expect of me, ask me whatever you want to know, and I’m with you.”

“I expect you to keep this strictly to yourself until, or unless, publicity becomes inevitable. Only a handful of people know about it, and it’s better for all concerned that it should remain that way. Better for Follymead, better for all these people attending the course, better for the artists involved, and better for me. Publicity may be very good business in your profession, of course, but only the right kind of publicity. And as you happen to be one of those who stayed at home to-day… Though of course, you may be able to account for every minute of your time, and provide confirmation of your account…”

The artless, concerned smile became even more winning and anxious to help. So he couldn’t account for his time; and he would play ball, though perhaps not strictly by the rules.

“I don’t need that kind of publicity, I can’t use it. I’ll keep it quiet, don’t worry. What can I tell you?”

““You were going on one of these coach-trips, I gather, originally. What made you change your mind?”

“I thought I could use my time better here. There’s no chance to talk seriously to anyone at this sort of affair, with seventy or eighty people milling around in a communal spree. And there was someone I wanted to talk to. And she didn’t go, so I didn’t go.”

“Liri Palmer?”

“That’s right. I thought there might be a good opportunity of cultivating her company while the place was virtually empty.” He was being very frank, very open; an honest man would have looked less eager, and sounded a good deal less forthcoming. “I like Liri. She’s wasting herself on a heel like Lucien Galt, whether she loves or hates him. I wanted to tell her so, and get some sense into her. I don’t know whether they’ve told you what’s in the background between those two, or what happened last night?” He didn’t wait to be answered, he told it anyhow; no one could do it better. Maybe he wanted it on record officially that someone, and not himself, had threatened Lucien Galt’s life; if, that is, you cared to take that impromptu revision of a song as a serious threat. He liked Liri Palmer – or did he? – but he liked Dickie Meurice a lot better.

“I see you don’t exactly love Galt, yourself,” observed George.

“That’s no secret. Why should it be? He’s treated Liri badly, and the rest of his profession didn’t christen him Lucifer for nothing. But I didn’t set eyes on him all this afternoon,” he said firmly. “The last time I saw him was at lunch.”

“But you did see Liri?”

“Yes, I hung around in the gallery until she went out, and gave her five minutes start. Just after two o’clock, that would be. She made for that artificial ruin on the hillock across the park, and I came along shortly afterwards and found her there. I tried to get her to write off Galt and spend her attention on something better worth it – me!” A gleam of apparently genuine self-mockery shone in his eyes for an instant; it was the nearest he had come to being likeable, but in all probability he was merely experimenting to find out what attitudes would recommend him to George.