He slept soundly but he was awake early and up by seven. The police’s ‘first thing’ was 8.30 and Stephen thought Troth seemed impressed by the sight of him standing at the sink washing up his breakfast dishes. A guilty man wouldn’t be washing up when the police came to search his house for evidence to convict him of murder. From time to time, though not in the presence of Troth and the others, he patted his pockets and nearly giggled when he felt there Harriet Crozier’s purse and notebook and cheque book and credit card.
But after an hour or two he felt so triumphantly certain they hadn’t found anything and weren’t going to find anything — after all, what was there to find? — that when he watched them poking about with his clothes and crawling about the floors it made him start giggling. Troth, picking at a pustule with the fingernail of his little finger, asked him where his wife was and Stephen said he didn’t know, she had left him.
Troth’s wedge face sharpened and his eyes came even closer together. It was all Stephen could do to suppress his amusement. He could see the way Troth’s mind was working, the conclusion he was fast jumping to.
‘I don’t know where she is,’ Stephen said, ‘but my mother-in-law does. You’ve only got to go across the road and ask.’
The look on Troth’s face, guarded disappointment, was such as to make Stephen let out a roar of laughter. It was very satisfying that Troth didn’t seem to despise him any more. He looked as if he were scared of him or at least wary. They finished with the house by half past twelve and more or less put things back where they had found them. Troth said nothing about wanting to see him again or to expect a visit later in the day. He went into the Newmans’ house but he was only there ten minutes.
Rain was still falling lightly. It had been raining all night and all the morning. The house felt defiled as a house is said to feel after burglars have been in it, but Stephen didn’t feel like rearranging everything or getting the vacuum cleaner out again. He went into his study and composed an advertisement for insertion in the Echo, offering his car for sale. He put the advertisement into an envelope and a stamp on the envelope but he didn’t like to go down to the post with it in case Peter phoned. Peter was bound to phone today or tomorrow because on Sunday he had to go back to that hospital porter’s job of his.
What was he, Stephen, going to do about a job for himself? On the other hand, did he have to have one? The little bit his articles for the ‘Voice of Vangmoor’ brought in would be enough to buy his food, and without a wife, a car, without even perhaps a house …? A new life was beginning for him and the prospect of it filled him with excitement. He wrote For Sale, £1,200 on a piece of card, added o.n.o. for ‘or near offer’ and stuck the card in the rear window of his car with Scotch tape. There was just a chance of selling it that way before next week’s Echo came out.
In spite of the rain, it was warm and he longed to be out on the moor. But he went back into the house and had some lunch and thought about the police finding blonde hairs all over his clothes and in his bed and in the car and reluctantly having to admit they were Lyn’s hairs. He thought about Troth calling up some telephone number Mrs Newman would have given him. The idea of Troth expecting the person who answered to say he or she had never heard of Lyn, but in fact being answered by Lyn herself, made Stephen laugh again. He roared with laughter, shaking his head at the stupidity of the police.
In the afternoon the rain let up and when the sun came out everything outside began steaming. Stephen opened the french windows. Who would do the garden now Lyn was gone? A house and garden, he thought, were liabilities, more trouble than they were worth. If the phone didn’t go by seven he would walk or take the car to Loomlade and find Peter at Crane’s shop. He sat by the french windows, eating dry roasted peanuts and drinking tea. The phone rang at half past four. He answered it in his pleasantest voice, giving the number and then, ‘This is Stephen Whalby speaking.’
His caller was Dadda.
Stephen didn’t say any more. He put the receiver down. Of course he didn’t want the phone disconnected before Peter could phone but they could cut it off as soon after that as they liked. It was a nuisance.
He was getting his supper, breaking eggs for an omelette, when the front door bell rang. His first thought was that it was the police back again but when he looked out of the window he saw no police car in the street, no vehicle at all. At once he knew who it must be. Very likely Stella Crane had no phone and for some reason he couldn’t use the one in the shop. Going out into the hall to open the front door to Peter was the happiest moment he had known since the day he had sat in Rip’s Cavern and eaten the biscuit and felt safe. His heart fluttered with excitement. He opened the door, smiling.
The man who stood outside, a middle-aged man who resembled Peter Naulls only in that he too had a beard, Stephen recognized to his disappointment as Professor Irving J. Schuyler.
‘Mr Whalby?’
Stephen nodded.
‘I hope you’ll excuse my taking the liberty of coming here.’ His voice was rich and cultured with a strong transatlantic lilt. ‘You can maybe imagine what I want to talk to you about.’
His immediate thought was of the book he had put into Schuyler’s car. He wasn’t afraid. After all, it was to him the professor had come, not to the police. Mrs Newman was watching from a downstairs window. Stephen moistened his lips. ‘Please come in.’
‘This is very good of you.’ The professor stepped into the hall. He was wearing a tee-shirt and his Dr Scholl sandals. He brought his hands from behind his back where they had been clasped together and Stephen saw that he was carrying what was certainly the book in a large brown envelope. ‘What a really charming village Chesney is. It’s meant a great deal to me visiting with Mr and Mrs Southworth and really getting acquainted with the domain of Alfred Osborn Tace. Vangmoor — a most beautiful wilderness, is it not? So precisely as Tace has described it for us under the apt alias of Bleakland.’
‘Do sit down,’ Stephen said.
Schuyler looked approvingly round the room. The prospect of Big Allen seen in the distance above the garden fence brought a smile to his lips that was almost arch. He raised his hand to it as to an old friend spotted on the other side of the street.
‘Lest you think we American academics lead lives of leisure, Mr Whalby, I should tell you I’ve been taking six months’ sabbatical. A month here, a month at Haworth, a little trip to the Lakes, and then back here to my kindly hosts. It’s been quite a summer.’
Stephen watched the book being slipped out of its envelope. His cheeks felt hot. Schuyler laid the book in his lap and looked at it meditatively. ‘Well, Mr Whalby, maybe I should come to the point and not take up more of your time than is strictly necessary. I don’t know if you’re aware that I interest myself a good deal in Alfred Osborn Tace. I teach him to my students and I’ve written one or two little works on him and his works.’ He lifted up the book and wagged it. ‘Viz,’ he said facetiously, ‘this one. My latest, Muse of Fire. As a matter of fact, I didn’t know I had a copy of it with me in Chesney, but by a piece of luck this one was in my car. We academics have a well-deserved reputation for absent-mindedness, you may say.’