Touch Not The Cat (22 page)

"Beside him on the road."

"That's definite, is it? It wasn't found in his pocket?"

"No. I remember that. It was found later, when the police went back to search the place."

"Herr Gothard," I asked, "do you ever remember seeing him use it?"

There was a pause while he thought. "No. I cannot say that I do. Why? Is it important?"

"I'm not sure," I said. "Look, Herr Gothard, something has turned up here. . . . If I send you a photograph, would you please show it to the police and ask if anyone in Wackensberg or Bad Tolz remembers seeing such a man? And surely they could find out if he hired a car, and all that sort of thing?"

"Certainly." I heard the sudden interest, and perhaps even enlightenment, quicken his voice.

He had guessed, had Walther, why I had rung him in Germany rather than James in Bristol. "Why is this, Bryony? Does this mean that you have found some evidence yourself which points to someone? How definite is it?"

"I don't know. Something happened yesterday, and it made me wonder. . . . I can't say any more now. But, Herr Gothard-"

"Yes?"

"Please don't say anything about this to anybody but the police, will you? I mean, if anyone else should telephone from England—"

"I understand." And now I was sure that he did. His voice across the wire sounded troubled, even grim. "You can trust me. I shall say nothing until it is time."

"Thank you. I'll send the photograph straight away."

"Please do. I shall do all I can."

"Thank you," I said. "Good-bye."

I cradled the receiver, then came round sharply in my chair at the sound of a step on the flagged path outside.

"Hi, Bryony," said my cousin Emory.

I felt myself go white. He stopped short, and said contritely: "I'm sorry. Did I frighten you? I thought you must have heard me coming."

"Not a sound." I forced a smile. "Well, hullo. It's lovely to see you."

"Is it? You looked as if you were seeing a ghost, one of the nastier sort."

"Oh, dear, did I?" I got to my feet with a gesture of welcome. "Come in, Emory, do."

He bent his head under the lintel and came into the little room, and took my hands and kissed me, just as James had done in the schoolroom at the Court.

"You know, it is a bit like seeing a ghost." I said it apologetically. "I guess I must have stopped being used to you and James. And for heaven's sake, he was wearing that same shirt and tie when he was ringing for you yesterday, I'll swear he was. Don't tell me you wear the same clothes now? That really is taking it a bit far!"

I was talking perhaps a shade too fast, all the time casting back in my mind for what I had been saying on the telephone as he approached the cottage door. How much could he have heard? What might he have made of it? Certainly he seemed quite easy and natural, the old charming Emory I remembered, and none the worse for what the romantic novelists would have called a hint of steel under it all, but which I, who had known him too well since boyhood, had occasionally described as "bloody overweening Twinmanship."

He laughed. "Yes, and you had him taped in two seconds flat, I gather. Not that he was trying to ring the changes with you; it never worked, and neither Twin nor I have ever wasted time on things that don't work. . . . Well, it's lovely to see you again. I wish it could have been a happier homecoming for you."

I ushered him into one of the chairs by the hearth, and sat down myself where I had been before, beside the round table where William Ashley's books were lying. Emory leaned back in the armchair, took out cigarettes and offered them. I shook my head. He lit one for himself, and blew out a cloud of smoke.

"James rang Herr Gothard last night."

"Yes, he said he would." I made it sound as noncommittal as I could. He had of course seen me telephoning as he approached the cottage door. I knew I had used Walther's name towards the end of the conversation. How near had Emory been then? And when I referred to the photograph? If he had heard me, he would think it strange that I didn't tell him straight away that I had called Walther myself.

Stalling for time, I asked him: "Would you like some coffee? Or tea, perhaps?"

"No, thanks." His voice gave nothing away, either of surprise or suspicion. "He would have told you about it himself, but the call came through rather late, so he didn't try to get you till morning. You must have been out?"

"Yes, I had to go out fairly early." I tried a safe tack. "Had Herr Gothard anything special to tell him?"

"Nothing, I'm afraid," said Emory. "That is, he said there hadn't been any progress, and followed it up with all the usual bromides—the police are still on the job, and so on."

"Yes, well, I would think that a hit-and-run accident is about the most difficult thing there is to trace, wouldn't you? And in a tourist area, in the tourist season, just about impossible."

He nodded. A pause, while he drew on his cigarette, inhaling deeply. I found myself beginning to relax. I was sure that he had heard nothing. He looked perfectly normal, calm, and unbent, with just the right hint of trouble showing in his face. My cousin Emory, the
alter ego
of my secret friend, who, whatever James had done, must know all about it, too.

He was saying gently: "You do realize, Bryony, that we may never know?"

My gaze met his, with, I hoped, exactly the same gentle concern and lack of guile. It felt strange to be deceiving my cousin, even though only by omission. What made it strange was, I knew, that he was so like James. . . . "Of course. To tell you the truth, I can't find it in me to agonize much about that." I turned, abruptly, to the real truth. "All that matters is that my father's dead, and, since I can't imagine that anyone would have wanted to kill him deliberately, I don't see that it helps much to run yapping after the fool who caused an accident." I looked straight at him. "Do
you
think it could have been anything but an accident?"

"I? No, of course it couldn't."

"Then you'd agree with me?"

"What about?"

"I mean, do you feel you can't relax or try to forget it until the police in Bavaria find out every last detail of what happened?"

He blew a smoke ring, and leaned his head back to watch it rise. With this new dreadful suspicion sharpening its rat's-teeth on the edges of my mind, I wondered if he couldn't meet my eye. He spoke to the ceiling. "It may sound an awful thing to say, but if it's going to take a long time, and cost a lot of money, no." He met my eyes then. "That may not sound pretty, but I'm paying you the compliment of the truth."

That it was indeed the truth, no more and no less, I knew very well. I waited, saying nothing, keeping a calm steady gaze on him; the old interviewer's trick by which you hope to stampede the victim into saying rather more than he meant. But Emory was not easy to stampede. He smiled at me as he leaned forward to tap ash from his cigarette. "That goes for the inquiry, too. What has happened to us as a family can't be changed by apportioning whatever guilt there is. That's a matter for the police, and they're the ones it will satisfy. It can't do anything for us, except keep a wound open. Both James and I feel that it's better forgotten."

"I'm sure you do." I said it flatly and pleasantly, but I saw his gaze flick towards me. I looked away, and began to arrange William Ashley's books neatly side by side on the table in front of me. "Well, I suppose the police will go on probing away until they do find something, or else have to close the case.

There's no point in our doing anything more. When I'm next in touch with Herr Gothard, or with Mr.

Emerson, I'll tell them so."

There was no telling whether Emory was relieved or not. He merely nodded, and drew on his cigarette. I looked away, afraid that my gaze was too intent and too inquiring. It was shocking how quickly I had been able to adapt myself to suspicion. Only two short days ago it would have been unthinkable. And now . . . It was shocking, too, how easily I had adapted to deception. I smiled, and peeled off smoothly into talk about my homecoming, and Madeira and Bad Tolz, and Emory followed my lead with the same smooth ease. I wondered if there were still things he wanted to know.

For me it was simple; I stayed off the doubtful ground and waited to see if he would tread on it.

He did, but not straight away. He spoke of the Un derhills, and I found myself hoping that he would keep off the subject of his relationship with Cathy; I had had enough of that for the moment, and there were things I was more concerned with. I need not have worried. James would certainly have told Emory of my reactions to the "theft" of the Court treasures, and for the present Emory preferred to let that lie. He did, when he was talking about the Underhills, make a sidelong and innocuous reference to Cathy as "a sweet girl and very easy to be fond of," but when I declined the bait he went on to talk about Jeff Underhill's business, and the family's eventual departure from the Court.

"And what are you going to do, Bryony? James seemed to think you wouldn't stay here—in the cottage, that is."

"How could he?" I said, more sharply than I meant to. "As far as I remember, I didn't tell him what I intended to do."

"And here am I," said Emory, with a smile that was as disarming in him as in his brother, "hammering at you within twenty-four hours about your future. And you know why, don't you? Cousin Bryony, dear sweet Cousin Bryony, have you had time yet to think any further about breaking that thrice-damned trust and letting your poor and dishonest relations have a pound or two to fiddle with before they're due to it?"

I had to laugh. "Well, if you put it like that—"

"I do put it like that. Cards on the table, cousin dear. An Ashley could always be relied on to look after his Ashley self with the greatest possible devotion."

"Which," I said smoothly, "is exactly what I'm doing."

The faintest line between his brows. "And what exactly does that mean?"

"It means no. I will not break the trust."

He flung his cigarette into the hearth. "For God's sweet sake, Bryony—"

"Not even for that. No. Not yet."

"But have you thought—" he began.

"Give me time."

I'm not sure what showed in my voice and face, but he bit back what he was going to say, and sat back in his chair. He gave me a long look. It was a shrewd look, and one I didn't relish under the circumstances. I said, rather quickly: "Emory, will you and James please do me a favour?"

"Such as?" He sounded understandably wary.

"Don't take me up wrong, but would you both just not hound me for a day or two? Just, in fact, keep away from Ashley till I've had time to get my bearings? I'm not saying that I refuse utterly and for ever to break the trust. I don't see that you should have the Court, just as it stands now, tied round your neck like a millstone for ever, but surely there can't be all that urgency about it? Good heavens, you haven't even let me talk to Mr. Emerson! I've got to, surely you can see that? Another week—only a week would give me time to think it all out . . . " I paused, and finished drily: "And surely you can live for a week on what you got for the T'ang horse and the jade Fo-dog seal?"

He looked startled, then he burst out laughing. "No police, Cousin Bryony?"

"No police. But leave it alone, Cousin Emory, or I might surprise you yet. And leave Cathy Underhill out of it, or I
will
surprise you, and that's a promise." I got up. "Now I'm going to make some tea. Will you stay and have some?"

I half expected him to refuse, but I had underestimated him. He leaned back in his chair, still smiling.

"I'd love some. Thank you." He was obviously enjoying the situation. Yes, I thought, as I went through to the kitchen, that was my cousin Emory; not the shadow of regret or guilt for anything he might do. That was the Ashley self-sufficiency—and just where, one might ask, did it part company with the criminal mentality? A look back through the family records might make one wonder; and these were days as wild and violent in many ways as the days of the Norman marauders with their rule of strength, or the days of their "civilized" counterparts the elegant duellists and the Mohocks of the eighteenth century. It threw the memory of James and his guilt-ridden contrition into very sharp relief. I had been right, I thought, I had been right. Whatever wrong had been done to Cathy, or even more to my father, it must have been Emory who had acted. It would not, could not, be James. Surely, the most that James had done had been to hear of it afterwards, and feel himself bound to stand by his twin's actions.

And the silver pen with the initials
J. A.
? There must be an answer even for that. Emory might have borrowed his brother's pen, and left it on the Wackersberg road. It was even possible that James had not missed it, and genuinely thought he might have dropped it in the churchyard.

When I went back into the sitting room with the tray, my cousin was standing by the table, with one of William Ashley's books in his hand.

"What's this?"

"I've been checking through the locked section," I said. "No, not the porn, so you can put it back. It's only Shake speare. I thought it might be interesting to read
Romeo and Juliet
again, alongside William Ashley's attempt to play Romeo."

"Heavens, why?"

"Just a thought. Do you still take three sugars?"

"Yes, please." He turned the volume over and looked at the spine.
"The Tragicall History of
Romeus and Juliet.
Hm. It's a poem, not a play. I thought you said it was Shakespeare? Listen to this:

"This barefoot friar girt with cord his grayish weed,

For he of Francis' order was, a friar, as I rede.

Not as the most was he, a gross unlearned fool,

But doctor of divinity proceeded he in school.

The secrets eke he knew in Nature's work that lurk;

By magic's art most men supposed that he could wonders work.

My God," said Emory, "they made their money easily in those days, didn't they? I could do better myself."

"What on earth? Let me see."

He ignored me. "It can't be a prologue or something, can it? No, I thought as much. It isn't the play at all. . . . Wait a minute, it isn't even 'Romeo.' It's 'Romeus.'
Romeus and Juliet,
and not Shakespeare at all. It's by a chap called Brooke."