[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Stretching, he touched a joint, where the bone homed into the cup of another mass, as naked and as clean.He searched in his blind but acute memory, and brought up vividly the image of a human hip joint, intricate and marvellous.He was a hundred per cent alive again, and he had to get out of here alive now if it killed him, because he had to know.There was one minor city, not unlike this one in its history, where they found two human skeletons in the hypocaust, some poor souls who had taken refuge in the empty heating system when the place was attacked, and almost certainly suffocated when most of the town was fired over their heads.The same could have happened here.He forgot how nearly dead he was, and how completely and precisely buried, and quickened to sympathy and pity for this poor soul who had died after his burial, so many centuries ago.Very softly he drew his finger-tips down the mass of the femur, stroked over the rounded marble of a knee-joint, and then reached out tentatively where the foot should be.For a leather sandal might have remained embalmed perfectly all this time, as durable almost as the ivory of the wearer’s bones.Quite close to his right knee, under the wall of the flue, his knuckles struck against the erected hardness, and the sound was music to him.A solid, thick sole.He felt from heel to toe, and then round to where the straps should be, and the still-articulated bones of instep and toes within.Gently, not to do damage.Also out of some reverence a great deal older than Christian ethics, the universal tenderness towards the dead.The leather sole was sewn to a leather upper.Clearly his raw finger-tips relayed to him, with agony, what they found.No straps, no voids between.A very hard, dehydrated shape moulded inwards from the sole, seamed over a smooth vamp, finished at the heel with a hand-stitched band.Above, where the two wings joined over the instep, the small, metallic roundels of eyelets, and the taut cross-threading of laces.The bow he touched parted at the impact, and slid, still formed, after his withdrawing fingers.Not a fourth-century Roman sandal on this skeleton foot, but a conventional, hand-sewn, custom-made, twentieth-century English shoe.* * *CHAPTER ELEVEN« ^ »It was approaching half past seven that evening when George Felse made his appearance at the curator’s house, completely shattering Lesley’s arrangements for dinner, and throwing the entire household into confusion.He delayed saying what he had to say until Bill Lawrence was summoned from the lodge to join them; and he made no pretence of maintaining a social relationship with any of them while they waited.The atmosphere of strain that built up in the silence might well have been intentional; or he might, Charlotte acknowledged, simply have shut them out of his consciousness while he considered more important things, and the fever might have been their own contribution, a kind of infection infiltrating from person to person, guilty and innocent alike, if there were here any guilty creatures, or any totally innocent.George sat contained and civil and pseudo-simple outside their circle, and waited patiently until it was completed by the arrival of a dishevelled and uncertain Bill.‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to keep you waiting, but I wasn’t even properly dressed…’‘That’s all right,’ said George.‘I regret having to fetch you over here, but this concerns you as being connected with this site, and I can’t afford to go over the ground twice.Sit down! You all know, of course, that Mr Hambro left here last night at very short notice.You know that he left a note stating definite intentions, though in very general terms.I am here to tell you that because of certain discoveries Mr Hambro is now listed as a missing person, and we have reason to suspect that the account given of his departure, whether by himself or others, is so far totally deceptive.No, don’t say anything yet, let me outline what we do know.He is stated to have left here late in the evening, having received a telephone call asking him to give an opinion on an antique offered for sale on the other side of England.He is understood to have packed all his belongings, loaded his car, left a note to explain his departure and apologise for its suddenness, and driven away at some time prior to half past eleven, when you, Mr Lawrence, arrived home and found his note.Now let me tell you what we also know.His car was driven into a quarry pool on the further side of Silcaster, probably during the night.It is now in process of being recovered, and has already been examined.Mr Hambro was not in it, either dead or alive, nor is there any trace of the suitcase he removed from here last night.We have, so far, no further word of him after he left here.We are treating this as a disappearance with suspicion of foul play.’The murmurs of protest and horror that went round were muted and died quickly.To exclaim too much is to draw attention upon yourself in such circumstances; not to exclaim at all is as bad, it may look as if you have been aware of the whereabouts of the car all along, and may know, at this moment, where to find the man.Only Charlotte sat quite silent, containing as best she could, like pain suppressed in company, the chill and heaviness of her heart.If she had neither recognised nor even cared to recognise, until now, the extent to which Gus Hambro had wound himself into her thoughts and feelings since he regained his life at her hands, and how simply and with what conviction she had begun to regard him as hers, recognition was forced upon her now.Paviour already looked so sick and old that fresh shocks could hardly make any impression upon his pallor or the sunken, harried desperation of his eyes.Bill sat with his thin, elegantly-shaped, rather grubby hands conscientiously clasped round his knees, carefully posed but not easy.The fingers maintained their careful disposition by a tension as fixed and white-jointed as if they had been clenched in hysteria.Only Lesley, her mouth and eyes wide in consternation, cried out in uninhibited protest: ‘Oh, no! But that’s monstrous, it makes no sense.Why should anyone want to do him harm? What has he ever done…’She broke off there, and very slowly and softly, with infinite care, drew back into a shell of her own, and veiled her eyes.She did not look at her husband; with marked abstention she did not look at anyone directly, even at George Felse,‘I shall be obliged,’ said George impersonally, ‘if you will all give me statements on the events of yesterday evening, especially where and how you last saw Mr Hambro.I should appreciate it very much, Mr Paviour, if we might make use of the study.And if the rest of you would kindly wait in here?’Paviour came jerkily to his feet.‘I am quite willing to be the first, Chief Inspector.’ Too willing, too eager, in far too big a hurry, in spite of the fastidious shrinking of all his being from the ordeal to which he was so anxious to expose himself.George was interested
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]