‘ Too difficult to see all at once and too quick,’ she said. ‘ But I can tell whether it’s you, or Rosalind, or Michael, or Sally doing it, but going so fast it gets muddled. The other ones are much more muddled, though.’
‘What other ones – Katherine and Mark?’ I asked her.
‘Oh, no. I can tell them. It’s the other other ones. The long-way-away ones,’ she said, impatiently.
I decided to take it calmly.
‘I don’t think I know them. Who are they?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘Can’t you hear them? They’re over there, but a long, long way.’ She pointed to the south-west.
I thought that over for a few moments.
‘Are they there now?’ I asked.
‘Yes, but not much,’ she said.
I tried my best to detect anything, and failed.
‘ Suppose you try to copy for me what you’re getting from them?’ I suggested.
She tried. There was something there, and with a quality in it which none of us had. It was not comprehensible and it was very blurred – possibly, I thought, because Petra was trying to relay something she could not understand herself. I could make nothing of it, and called Rosalind in, but she could do no better. Petra was evidently finding it an effort, so after a few minutes we decided to let it rest for the present.
In spite of Petra’s continued propensity to slip at any moment into what, in terms of sound, would be a deafening bellow, we all felt a proprietorial pride in her progress. There was a sense of excitement, too – rather as if we had discovered an unknown who we knew was destined to become a great singer: only it was something more important than that. . . .
‘This,’ Michael said, ‘is going to be very interesting indeed – provided she doesn’t break us all up before she gets control of it.’
At supper, some ten days after the loss of Petra’s pony, Uncle Axel asked me to come and give him a hand with truing-up a wheel, while there was still light enough. Superficially the request was casual, but there was something in his eyes which made me agree without hesitation. I followed him out, and we went over behind the rick where we should neither be seen nor overheard. He put a straw between his teeth, and looked at me seriously.
‘You been careless, Davie boy?’ he asked.
There are plenty of ways of being careless, but only one he’d ask me about with the manner he was using.
‘I don’t think so,’ I told him.
‘One of the others, maybe?’ he suggested.
Again, I did not think so.
‘H’m,’ he grunted. ‘Then why, would you say, has Joe Darley been asking questions about you? Any idea?’
I had no idea why, and told him so. He shook his head.
‘I don’t like it, boy.’
‘Just me – or the others, as well?’ I asked.
‘You – and Rosalind Morton.’
‘Oh,’ I said, uneasily. ‘Still, if it’s only Joe Darley… Could it be he’s heard a rumour about us, and is out to do a bit of scandal-raising?’
‘Might be,’ Uncle Axel agreed, but reservedly. ‘On the other hand, Joe is a fellow that the inspector has used before now when he wants a few inquiries made on the quiet. I don’t like it.’
I did not care for it either. But he had not approached either of us directly, and I did not see where else he was going to get any incriminating information. There was, I pointed out, nothing he could pin on us that brought us within any category of the Scheduled Deviations.
Uncle Axel shook his head. ‘Those lists are inclusive, not exclusive,’ he said. ‘You can’t schedule all the million things that may happen – only the more frequent ones. There have to be test cases for new ones when they crop up. It’s part of the inspector’s job to keep watch and call an inquiry if the information he gets seems to warrant it.’
‘We’ve thought about what might happen,’ I told him. ‘If there should be any questions they’ll not be sure what they’re looking for. All we’ll have to do is act bewildered, just as a norm would be. If Joe or anybody has anything it can’t be more than suspicion, no solid evidence.’
He did not seem reassured.
‘There’s Rachel,’ he suggested. ‘She was pretty much knocked by her sister’s suicide. Do you think she-?’
‘No,’ I said confidently. ‘Quite apart from the fact that she couldn’t do it without involving herself, we should have known if she were hiding anything.’
‘Well, then, there’s young Petra,’ he said.
I stared at him.
‘How did you know about Petra?’ I asked.’ I never told you.’
He nodded in a satisfied way. ‘So she is. I reckoned so.’
‘How did you find out?’ I repeated anxiously, wondering who else might have had a similar idea. ‘Did she tell you?’
‘Oh, no, I kind of came across it.’ He paused, then he added:
‘Indirectly it came from Anne. I told you it was a bad thing to let her marry that fellow. There’s a type of woman who isn’t content until she’s made herself some man’s slave and doormat – put herself completely in his power. That’s the kind she was.’
‘You’re not – you don’t mean she told Alan about herself?’ I protested.
‘ She did,’ he nodded. ‘ She did more than that. She told him about all of you.’
I stared at him incredulously.
‘You can’t be sure of that, Uncle Axel!’
‘I am, Davie boy. Maybe she didn’t intend to. Maybe it was only herself she told him about, being the kind who can’t keep secrets in bed. And maybe he had to beat the names of the rest of you out of her, but he knew all right. He knew.’
‘But even if he did, how did you know he knew?’ I asked, with rising anxiety.
He said, reminiscently:
‘A while ago there used to be a dive down on the waterfront in Rigo. It was run by a fellow called Grouth, and very profitably, too. He had a staff of three girls and two men, and they did as he said – just as he said. If he’d liked to tell what he knew one of the men would have been strung up for mutiny on the high seas, and two of the girls for murder. I don’t know what the others had done, but he had the lot of them cold. It was as neat a set-up for blackmail as you could find. If the men got any tips he had them. He saw to it that the girls were nice to the sailors who used the place, and whatever they got out of the sailors he had, too. I used to see the way he treated them, and the expression on his face when he watched them; kind of gloating because he’d got them, and he knew it, and they knew it. He’d only got to frown, and they danced.’ Uncle Axel paused reflectively. ‘You’d never think you’d come across just that expression on a man’s face again in Waknuk church, of all places, would you? It made me feel a bit queer when I did. But there it was. It was on his face while he studied first Rosalind, then Rachel, then you, then young Petra. He wasn’t interested in anybody else. Just the four of you.’
‘ You could have been mistaken – just an expression .. .’ I said.
‘Not that expression. Oh, no, I knew that expression, it jerked me right back to the dive in Rigo. Besides, if I wasn’t right, how do I come to know about Petra?’
‘What did you do?’
‘ I came home and thought a bit about Grouth, and what a comfortable life he’d been able to lead, and about one or two other things. Then I put a new string on my bow.’
‘So it was you!’ I exclaimed.
‘ It was the only thing to do, Davie. Of course, I knew Anne would reckon it was one of you that had done it. But she couldn’t denounce you without giving herself away and her sister, too. There was a risk there, but I had to take it.’
‘There certainly was a risk – and it nearly didn’t come off,’ I said, and told him about the letter that Anne had left for the inspector.
He shook his head.’ I hadn’t reckoned she’d go as far as that, poor girl,’ he said. ‘All the same, it had to be done – and quickly. Alan wasn’t a fool. He’d see to it that he was covered. Before he actually began on you he’d have had a written deposition somewhere to be opened in the event of his death, and he’d see that you knew about it, too. It’d have been a pretty nasty situation for all of you.’