Ellis Peters - George Felse 13 - Rainbow's End by Ellis Peters Page B

see I’d better.’ And the smile suddenly warmed into genuine intimacy. There was mischief in it, and sympathy. She was positively inviting him to connive at a friendly compromise.
    Naturally, Moon’s guess had been right. Miss de la Pole had telephoned her as soon as the police were out of sight. Not taking sides, simply informing a possibly threatened neighbour of the accidental information lodged against her. How marvellous was the working of the conscience of Middlehope! And how simply, almost inadvertently, it had absorbed within itself this blatantly alien body. George respected the instinct that worked within so idiosyncratic a community, but reserved his options. Even Middlehope could be wrong.
    ‘Then suppose you tell me,’ he said, ‘as if we hadn’t been over this ground before, exactly how you spent yesterday evening.’
    ‘I did lie to you,’ she said, quite softly and serenely. ‘I told you I was home all the evening, waiting for Arthur. I wasn’t. I was here until he went off to practice, and he’d told me he was staying late, and I was here cooped up on my own, and that’s something I don’t always choose to be. About nine I took my car and went out for a drive. It was a nice, mild night, I knew he wouldn’t be back for some time, and I felt like being out and alone. And frankly, I didn’t care if he got back first. It wouldn’t have troubled him at all, you know. I had functions, and I performed them. He wasn’t worried about what I did on the side. I went quite a long way. It can’t have been far off midnight when I got back. He wasn’t home. I took it then that he wasn’t coming, but he had his keys, anyhow. I went to bed. And the rest is just as I told you.’ She reached for her drink with a hand steady as a rock. ‘And that’s all,’ she said, and looked him firmly in the eye.
    ‘You mean you were driving round for a matter of perhaps two and a half hours, alone?’ said George mildly.
    ‘I suppose I must have been.’
    ‘Nothing else to tell me?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    And whatever he might think of that, it seemed to be agreed that she had driven in at the gates here at about a quarter to midnight, well after the probable time of her husband’s death, though not after the limit of possibility. And from the opposite direction. Driving someone else back out of the danger zone before returning home herself? The timing made it possible that she had guilty knowledge, even that she could have assisted at Rainbow’s demise, or at least connived at it, even if it seemed unlikely that she managed it alone. Rainbow had seemed to value her simply as one of t he most advantageous of his investments, but there were plenty of other men who showed every sign of putting a very different value upon her. Which of them, if any, could she have been running home, or at least to a place of safety, up the valley?
    ‘And you didn’t call in anywhere for a drink?’
    ‘No. Nor drop in on any friend. Nor even call for a paper of chips,’ she said with a fleeting smile, ‘though I do remember Charlie had been frying. No, I didn’t stop to speak to a soul, and I doubt if anyone noticed me passing.’ She made no mention, naturally, of Miss de la Pole; she understood the rules of the game by instinct.
    ‘It won’t do, you know,’ said George simply.
    ‘It will have to, won’t it?’ she said just as simply, and smiled at him.
    He was sure then that there was someone else involved, and Barbara had no intention of letting him – it had to be him! – be drawn into a case. Not only would she deny his existence, she would probably warn him off, whoever he was, from coming near her until this affair blew over. Did that mean there was any guilt involved? Not necessarily. Just that she was well aware there could be suspicion of guilt.
    ‘All right,’ said George equably.‘ That’s your story. If you ever decide to change it, call me.’
    She went out to the forecourt with him. There was a chill