Mr Rothermere’s “Shrapnel, actually” was almost, but not quite, too quiet to be heard.
Chapter Sixteen
Julia Harton’s return to Flaxborough was awaited that Sunday evening by two people in particular whom the Norfolk police had considered proper to advise of it. One was her husband. The other was Inspector Purbright.
The arrangement, made with the approval of Mr Clay, whose manner and calling impressed the Norfolk officers as being hallmarks of civic respectability, was that his daughter should accompany him directly to the Headmaster’s Lodging where every facility would be provided for an official interrogation.
David Harton sounded on the telephone to be greatly relieved, as indeed he was, for Bobby-May had arrived just before four o’clock, insistent upon practising return volleys against the north gable of the Harton home and seemed to find utterly unintelligible his argument that a sudden call by the police, with or without his wife, would expose them to great embarrassment.
Harton went into the garden to tell her the news.
Even after nearly two hours of leaping, scurrying, swinging and intercepting, Bobby-May was as cool, and drew breath as calmly, as a mannequin.
“Oh. So Awful Julia is on the way home, is she?” Bobby-May held her racquet in the manner of a frying-pan, a tennis ball, egg-like, balanced almost motionless in the centre of the strings.
“Her home. Not here, fortunately.”
Suddenly, she sent the ball sailing upward and caught it effortlessly in three extended fingers of her left hand. “I said you were fussing over nothing.”
“That inspector could still drop in. Or one of his myrmidons. Bobo, you really will have to go.”
She shrugged lightly, then thrust a hand behind his back. He felt the tennis ball being rolled up and down the line of his spine. “I’ll have to shower first,” said Bobby-May. “Have to. I don’t want to pong in church.”
“God, all right, but be as quick as you can, there’s a darling.”
She looked at him with sulky speculation. “Aren’t you going to rub me down?”
“I do have some phone calls to make. Then I’ll see. But for God’s sake let’s get the decks cleared, shall we?”
As they walked together into the house, Bobby-May was frowning, head down. “Do you know...” she began, then relapsed into silence. She dragged her racquet along the wallpaper in the hall, leaving a long indented line.
“Do I know what?” Harton, for the moment less apprehensive of awkward encounters, slipped a hand into the waistband of her tennis briefs and partially untucked the yellow, cotton T-shirt. The skin beneath was cool and absolutely dry.
“Nothing,” she said, suddenly. “Nothing, nothing, nothing.” The long, white legs were racing away from him, halfway up the staircase already. At the first turn she halted and set down her racquet and ball. Then, quite casually, she crossed arms, bent forward, and peeled the T-shirt over her head.
Harton remained at the foot of the stairs, gazing up, bewildered. A movement distracted him; the ball had rolled off the top step and was descending, one stair at a time at first, then in ever bigger bounds until it sailed past him towards the front door.
He looked again at Bobby-May. She stood erect, legs close together and was making experimental movements with hips and shoulders whilst peering down, with chin tucked in tightly, to observe their effect on her naked breasts. “Digger,” she remarked conversationally after a while, “used to call them my headlamps.” She gave a couple of little hops on her heels. The breasts bounced and quivered. “He was horribly common.”
She grinned, as if at a highly satisfactory memory, then swung about and quickly climbed the rest of the stairs.
Harton seemed inclined to follow her, but after standing irresolute for a moment he walked instead through the kitchen to a small office-like room, the door of which he shut behind him. He sat by the telephone and dialled a number.
“Charles? David Harton. Yes. Look, you asked me to keep you in the picture developmentwise. I thought you’d like to know they’ve traced my wife. Yes, it is sooner than expected. She rang them, apparently—yes, the police. Saw something in the paper. Not to worry, though, Charles. I think everything’s tied up. We’ll just have to play it as it comes, won’t we? Oh, and Charles—I’ve a shrewd notion that friend Rothermere might try and be a bit awkward. Stroppy, you know? A slight attack of ethics, by the look of it... Odd? But how right you are, Charles. Decidedly odd bird. Not that he can do anything now. Not without jumping right in the shit himself. Right, then, Charles, I’ll be in touch if need be. Sorry, ye old what? Ye old hostelry—oh, I get you. Yes, great, great. Chow, Charles.” He put down the phone. “Sarcastic bleeder.”
Before he had time to leave the office, there was an incoming call. It was from Inspector Purbright, who thought that Mr Harton would like to know that his wife had arrived in Flaxborough and seemed to be well. She was at present conferring with her solicitor at the home of her father, where she had expressed the desire to stay for the time being.
“You say she’s well, inspector. She is all right, isn’t she?” Relief and anxiety contested for control of Harton’s voice.
“Perfectly, sir. Don’t worry, we’ll look after her.”
“Tell her not to worry about a thing. I’m coming over right away.”
“I don’t think that would be a very good idea, sir, if you don’t mind. Not just now.”
“But why? Look, you can’t forbid a woman to talk to her own husband, whatever you think she might have done.”
“It is not I who am forbidding anything, Mr Harton. Your wife says she does not wish to see you. She is very firm on the point.”
“Oh,” said Harton, very quietly. “I see.” And again, softly and with much sadness, “I see.”
Gently, he replaced the telephone, paused, stood, strode purposefully from the room, rubbing his hands.
“Darl!” he called, from halfway up the stairs. “It’s all right. Awful Julia and her policemen won’t be coming after all.”
He entered the bathroom and threw half the contents of the airing cupboard on the floor in his search for a large and suitably bright-coloured towel.
“Ready for the bunny!” he called.
The energetic splashing ceased and the sound of a rain of water droplets on plastic curtaining gradually died. There appeared in the doorway a wetly gleaming, bright pink Bobby-May, eyes averted, one hand cupped protectively round a breast, the other splayed over her groin, a starfish stranded across a weedy crevice.
He held the towel up like a cloak. She turned and waited submissively to be enwrapped. He put his arms about her and tightened them. Her warmth passed through the thick, rough cotton almost instantly. So, surprisingly, did the delineation of quite subtle details of her body—little wrist bones, a gentle corrugation of muscle above and below the cleft of the navel, the rubberiness of ribs, the unsuspected angularity of kneecaps, and that curious discrepancy in hardness that Harton had noticed before between one nipple and the other.