Free A Time to Kill by Geoffrey Household

asked.
    ‘I don’t know. I don’t believe he was.’
    ‘Why wasn’t he? Oh, pull yourself together and think !’
    That last word seemed to be forced from her by a superhuman effort of throat and tongue, as if it were a muscular compulsion upon both of us.
    ‘Because he couldn’t just vanish,’ I answered. ‘Because he’s a respected citizen of Bournemouth. Ivanovitch must have left him free to clean up his affairs, whether he liked it or not.’
    ‘Why doesn’t Losch go to the police? Does he expect any mercy when he gets to Russia?’
    ‘He might,’ I answered. ‘More than here, at any rate. And Ivanovitch has a way with him.’
    ‘Oh, you!’ she cried. ‘You can’t think badly of anyone who offers you a drink. But Losch?’
    ‘How can I know what he hopes? They may have offered him a laboratory beyond the Urals where he can’t get into trouble. Something of that sort would be their game.’
    ‘Would he be watched?’
    ‘How can I know?’ I repeated hopelessly. ‘Perhaps. But Ivanovitch can’t have men for everything. They may just fetch him when they are ready.’
    ‘Get him first,’ she said. ‘You and Pink.’
    I couldn’t even judge her proposal on its merits. We were so limitlessly apart that nothing either of us said had meaning. I was determined not to compromise the children. I insisted that it was too great a risk.
    ‘There isn’t any risk that is too great,’ she answered frantically.
    I didn’t agree, but her tone stung me at last into constructive thinking. It might well be that Yegor Ivanovitch had left one untidy end in all his quickly improvised planning; after all, it was only a little over twelve hours since Pink had made his disastrous appearance at my car.
    Cecily perceived my change of mood – though I do not remember saying a word – and her eyes were fixed on me more kindly.
    ‘Don’t stay with me,’ she said, ‘and don’t listen to me! But just remember Losch! When you are with Pink, you’ll – oh, you’ll see more clearly. I can’t advise you.’
    I wanted her to go away for the weekend – partly so that she wouldn’t be alone in the house, and partly so that I could communicate with her safely. She wouldn’t hear of it. She couldn’t bear the thought of the children coming home – unlikely though it was – and finding the door locked. She understood that she might be condemning herself to remain without news of any of us beyond, perhaps, a very guarded telephone call. Such patient courage is beyond me.
    I changed out of my London suit, and took with me kit for a couple of nights. I looked longingly at my old army revolver, but I had no ammo for it, and I’d had enough of empty pistols. Then I drove down to the office and told my clerk that I was taking the children away for the weekend and might not be back till Tuesday.
    I found a message on my desk that Dorchester police had telephoned. I called them back, in an intolerable mood of wild hope that they were going to report some suspicious circumstance which might lead straight to my boys, and of dread lest they had found out just enough to force my hand, and no more.
    The reason for the call was plain routine. The inspector wanted to know if the person who had talked to a constable in Bournemouth at 2 a.m. had really been me.
    ‘I didn’t know you collected moths,’ he remarked invitingly.
    He was the same inspector who had been just too late to run me in the previous autumn. Ever since he had regarded me as a first-class subject for nods and winks and knowing conversation.
    I couldn’t pull myself together, and made some stammering reply to the effect that I’d caught butterflies ever since I was a boy. He thought, I am sure, that I was embarrassed at being detected in so infantile a hobby.
    ‘What was it all about?’ I asked him.
    ‘Someone broke into a Dr Losch’s house. Nothing missing, though he did a power of damage in getting out. You ought to know of Losch if you collect