Free Ellis Peters - George Felse 02 - Death and the Joyful Woman by Ellis Peters Page A

barons may die, but the rest of the world still has to eat. “Get in,” he said resignedly, and took his offspring to a restaurant not far from the school, so that there should be no risk of his being late in the afternoon. “What about Chuck? Can the answer wait?”
    “No answer,” said Dominic. “That’s all right.” The odd thing was that he didn’t feel as if he was lying at all; it was quite simply unthinkable to let the truth be seen or known, or even guessed at, though there was nothing guilty or shameful about it. Privacy as an absolute need was new to him. Ever since starting school at five years old he’d lied occasionally in order to keep something exclusively for himself, like most children, but without ever reasoning about what he was doing, and only very rarely, because his parents, and particularly his mother, had always made it easy for him to confide in them without feeling outraged. This was something different, something so urgent and vital that he would have died rather than have it uncovered. And yet he had to do things which would expose him to the risk of discovery; he had to, because what was his father doing there in the block of flats where Kitty lived? What was he doing there, the morning after old Armiger was killed, the morning after Kitty’d been with him at The Jolly Barmaid? “Your girl-friend was there—” And now this visit. They’d have to see everyone who’d been there, of course, but why Kitty, so soon?
    “You’re on this murder case, aren’t you?” he said, trying to strike the right note of excited curiosity. “Mummy told me this morning old Armiger was dead. What a turn up! I never said anything to the fellows, naturally, but it leaked in around break, with the milk. It’s all over the town now, they’ve had half a dozen people third-degreed by this time, and one or two arrested.”
    “They would,” said George tranquilly. “The number of people who can do this job better than I can, it’s a wonder I ever hold it down at all. Who’s the favourite?”
    A sprat to catch a mackerel was fair enough. Dominic trailed his bait and hoped for a rise. “That chap Clayton. I bet you didn’t know he was under notice, did you?”
    “The devil he is!” said George, wondering if Grocott had collected this bit of information yet, wondering, too, from which school theorist the item of news had come.
    “Then you didn’t know! Old Armiger’s gardener’s son is in our form. There was a blazing row three days ago over hours, Clayton pitched right in and said he wouldn’t stand for being shoved around all hours of the day and night, and Armiger threw it up at him that he’d done time for larceny once and once for receiving a stolen car, and he was bloody lucky to have a job at all—”
    “Language!” said George mechanically, drawing in to the kerb.
    “Sorry; quoting. And then he fired him. Did you know he had a record?”
    “Yes, we knew. A record ten years old. Not enough to hang him.”
    “It isn’t capital murder,” said Dominic.
    “I hope you’re not going to turn into a lawyer in the home,” said George. “I was using a figure of speech.”
    He locked the car, and ushered his son before him into the dining-room of The Flying Horse. They found a table in a corner, and settled purposefully over the menu. Bad timing, thought Dominic, vexed. I shall have to come right out and ask.
    “Are you on to anything yet?” The ardent face, the earnest eyes, these would pass muster with George; it was Dominic himself who suffered, making this enforced use of a travesty of something so real and so important to him. His father
was
wonderful, and he
did
feel a passionate partisan interest in any case his father was handling. But here he was putting on the appropriate face for his own ends, parodying his own adoration, and it caused him an almost physical pain when George grinned affectionately at him, and slapped him down only very gently.
    “Just routine, Dom. We’ve