Ellis Peters - George Felse 03 - Flight Of A Witch by Ellis Peters Page A

daughters. He’d had to pay similar visits to not a few of their homes in his time, he knew all the pitfalls crumbling under their uncertain feet.
    ‘I’ll tell you what I can,’ said Annet, brows drawn close in a frown of bewilderment. ‘But I don’t know what you can want to ask me.’
    ‘So much the better, then,’ he said equably, and followed her into the living-room, and turned a chair to the light for her. She understood that quite open manoeuvre, and smiled faintly, but acquiesced without apparent reluctance. The parents hovered, quivering and silent. Tom closed the door, and sat down unobtrusively apart from them.
    ‘Now Annet, I want you to tell me, if you will, how you spent last week-end.’
    George Felse sat down facing her, quite close, watching her attentively but very gently. If he felt the despairing contraction of the tension within the room he gave no sign, and neither did she. She tilted back her head, shaking away the winged shadow of her hair, as if to show him the muted tranquillity of her face more clearly.
    ‘I can’t tell you that,’ she said.
    ‘I think you can, if you will.’ And when she had nothing to say, and her mother only turned her head aside with a helpless, savage sigh, he pursued levelly: ‘Were you here at home, for instance?’
    ‘They say not,’ said Annet in a small, still voice.
    ‘Let them tell me that. I’m asking you what you say.’
    ‘I can only tell you what I told them,’ said Annet, ‘but you won’t believe me.’
    ‘Try me,’ he said patiently.
    She looked him unwaveringly in the eyes, and took him at his word. Again, in the same clipped, bare terms she retold that fantastic story of hers.
    ‘Mrs Blacklock gave me practically a whole week off, from Thursday morning, because she was going to the child care conference at Gloucester. She asked me to come in again on Wednesday – yesterday – and clear up any routine correspondence, and then she came home in the evening. So I had five free days. I hadn’t made any plans to do anything special. I meant to go to choir practice on Friday night, as usual. Maybe to the dance on Saturday, but I hadn’t decided, because Myra was going with a party to the theatre in Wolverhampton, so I hadn’t anyone to go with. They must have missed me at choir practice, and at church on Sunday. If I’d intended not to be there, shouldn’t I have let them know?’
    ‘He rang up on Friday night,’ said Mrs Beck, a little huskily. ‘Mr Blacklock, I mean – after choir practice. He was worried because she didn’t turn up, wondered if she wasn’t well. I told him she had a bit of a cold. He was quite alarmed, and I had to put him off, or he’d have been round to see her. I said it was nothing much, but she was in bed early, and asleep, so he couldn’t disturb her, of course. He rang again on Sunday morning, after church, to ask how she was.’
    ‘He only has four altos,’ put in Beck with pathetic eagerness. ‘And she never lets them down. Mr Blacklock knows he can always rely on Annet for his alto solos.’
    Annet’s clenched lips quivered in a brief and wry smile. It was all a part of the well-meaning communal effort to keep Annet busy and amused, everyone knew that. The Blacklocks had been taken into Mrs Beck’s embittered and indignant confidence, after that abortive affair with Miles Mallindine, and with her usual competence Regina had stemmed every gap in the fence of watchful care that surrounded the girl, and poured new commitments into every empty corner of her days. Probably the choir was one of the things she’d enjoyed most. Regina couldn’t sing a note; it was Peter, with his patient, fastidious kindness, who manipulated the casual material at his disposal into a very fair music for a village church. No wonder he rejoiced in Annet’s deep, lustrous, boy’s voice. And as charged by his wife, he always brought or sent her home in the car; that was a part of his responsibility. If Annet ever