Free Ellis Peters - George Felse 03 - Flight Of A Witch by Ellis Peters

well go on,’ he said. ‘What made you ask that?’ Even that fell short of the degree of candour the occasion demanded. He amended it quite simply to: ‘How did you know?’ If he was the lover, he had good reason to know, but no very compelling reason to show that he knew; and if he wasn’t – well, they were all a bit uncanny round here, so he’d said, cheerfully including himself. Maybe Eve was a witch, and had handed on her powers to him for want of a daughter.
    ‘My mother had a telephone call on Thursday evening,’ said Miles with admirable directness. ‘From Mrs Beck.’
    There couldn’t have been much communication between those two ladies during the last few months, no wonder Eve’s thumbs had pricked.
    ‘She made some excuse about asking when the Gramophone Club was starting its winter programme. But then she worked the conversation round to me, and fished to know what I was doing over the week-end. My mother told me, when I came back last night. I didn’t think there was anything in it, actually, until you began asking – related questions. Oh, you didn’t give anything away,’ he said quickly, forestalling all observations on that point. His head came up rather arrogantly, the wide-open eyes dared Tom to stand on privilege now. ‘My mother can connect, you know. But so can others. And I don’t suppose our house was the only one she ’phoned – if it’s like that.’
    We ought to have known, thought Tom. In a small place where everyone knows everyone else’s business, where half the women compare notes as a matter of course, we ought to have known it would leak out. How could she hope to go telephoning around the whole village and half Comerbourne, without starting someone on a hot trail?
    ‘No,’ he said flatly, ‘I’m afraid it wasn’t.’
    ‘She wouldn’t realise,’ said Miles generously. He might not have occult powers, but he had a pair of eyes that could see through Tom Kenyon, apparently, as through a plate-glass window. ‘My mother had good reason to look under the mat – if you see what I mean. But some of ’em don’t need a reason, they do it for love. And my mother doesn’t talk. But plenty of them do.’
    How had they arrived at this reversal? The kid was warning him, kindly, regretfully, like an elder, of the possible unpleasantness to come; warning him as though he knew very well how deeply it could and did concern him, and how much he stood to get hurt. Without a word said on that aspect of the matter, they had become rivals, meeting upon equal terms, and equally sorry for each other.
    It was high time to close this interview, before somebody put a foot wrong and brought the house down over them both. They had to go on confronting each other in class for the best part of a year yet, they couldn’t afford any irretrievable gaffes.
    ‘Too many,’ he agreed wryly. ‘But gossip without any foundation won’t get them far. And I take it that you and I can include each other among the non-talkers, Mallindine.’
    ‘Yes, sir, naturally.’
    ‘Sir’ had come back, prompt on his cue. This boy really wanted watching, he was a little too quick in the uptake, if anything.
    ‘If there’s anything you want to ask me, do it now. But I don’t guarantee to answer.’
    ‘There’s nothing, sir. If—’ He did waver there, the elegantly-held head turned aside for a moment, the eyes came back to Tom’s face doubtfully and hopefully. ‘—if Annet’s all right?’
    ‘Yes, perfectly all right.’ He had nearly said: ‘Of course!’, which would have been a pretence at once unworthy and unwise in dealing with this very sharp and dangerous intelligence. He dropped the attitude in time, but a faint, rueful smile tugged at Miles’s lips for an instant, as if he had seen it hovering and watched it snatched hastily away. The young man was back in charge, and formidably competent.
    ‘Thank you, sir. Then that’s all.’ For me it is, said the straight eyes, challenging and