Free Ellis Peters - George Felse 06 - Black Is The Colour Of My True Love's Heart by Ellis Peters Page B

loss. I know we must follow this up. But I must protect Follymead, too. It’s what I’m here for.”
    “I still think we need the police,” said Dominic. “For that very purpose. You want to avoid scandal, of course, but it would be a worse scandal if you concealed what turned out to be a criminal matter. To cover Follymead, I’m afraid you’ve got to hand this job over to the proper people.”
    And that was the whole crux of the matter, the thing that was tearing the deputy warden apart. He was terrified of calling in the police, perhaps to find it had all been unnecessary, and even more terrified of bearing the responsibility for not calling them in, should the affair turn out to be serious after all. Above all he was afraid of trying to contact Edward Arundale, and for good reason. Arundale was a man of decision, who would know how to deal with every situation, and he would be highly intolerant of any deputy who couldn’t handle affairs himself in an emergency. Marshall hadn’t been here long, this was his first assignment on his own responsibility; and he wanted, how he wanted, to keep his job.
    “We have so little to go on,” he said in agony.
    “We’re not competent,” said Liri Palmer tersely, “to say whether it’s little or much. That’s the whole point.”
    Dominic looked at Tossa, and found her looking at him, with the clear, trusting, eager look by means of which she communicated her sense of adoption into his family. He knew what she was thinking, and what she wanted him to do and say. It was having lost her own father so early, and suffered such frustrations and vicissitudes with stepfathers since, that had made her attach herself so fervently and gratefully to Dominic’s beautifully permanent, stable and reassuring parents. And especially to George Felse. He wasn’t at all like her adored professor father, but he gave her the same sense of security. She would have taken all her own problems to him, it was natural she should think of him immediately in this crisis. Even if he hadn’t been a policeman, she would have wanted him; but he was, and that was the solution to everything.
    An exchange of glances like that, radiant with confidence, could turn Dominic’s bones to water with gratitude and astonishment. He had brought her home in the common agonies every man feels in bringing together two jealous and valued loves; he wasn’t yet used to the staggering bliss and relief of his total success.
    “If I could make a suggestion,” he said, with all the more care and delicacy because of his own conviction of undeserved grace, “I could get my father to have a look over the ground.” He caught Tossa’s glowing glance, and trembled; he still couldn’t quite believe in the accumulation of his luck. “He’s a detective-inspector in the county C.I.D. I’m sure he’d be willing to come out here, if you’ll let me call him. Then you’d have covered yourself and the college, in case there
is
something in this. And we could ask him to treat it as a quite private matter until he’s satisfied that there’s a case for official investigation. In either case, you’d be protected.”
    Henry Marshall took his head out of his hands, and gaped unbelievingly but gladly at his salvation. Arundale himself couldn’t do better than this.
    “You think he’d come? On those terms?”
    “I’m sure he would. It’s better for them, too, if they have notice of these things in time to judge. If it turns out to be something quite harmless and on the level, so much the better. May I call him?”
    “Please do,” said Henry Marshall thankfully. “Perhaps you could meet him at the lodge, when he arrives? You
do
drive? Take the station wagon down and wait for him. I’ll talk to Professor Penrose, and see to everything here. We shall be most grateful.
Most
grateful!”

----
CHAPTER IV
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    GEORGE FELSE SWORE, but with resignation, listened, and came. Dominic was not in the habit of going off at