Aiding and Abetting by Muriel Spark Read Free Book Online

well.”
    In the dining room, where he took them, Alfred didn’t invite them to sit down. He stood twirling the atlas globe: his small daughter did her homework in here. “My wife,” he said, “knew Lucan better than me.”
    ” ‘Knew’?”
    “Well, she probably still does know him. Remember, though, Lucky Lucan plays baccarat and we both play bridge predominantly. There’s a difference.” “Suppose,” said one of the plainclothes men, “that I told you a car that he was using was seen parked in this street at eleven or thereabouts last night?” “I don’t know about that. My wife is in South Africa just now. Perhaps she would know more about Lord Lucan.” “When did you last see Lord Lucan?”
    “I can’t remember.”
    “Roughly speaking?” said one of the men. “I can’t remember. I see so many people. I think I saw him a month ago at the races.”
    “And this is the first time you’ve heard about the murder and the attack on Lady Lucan in Lower Belgrave Street last night?” The man’s eyes were wandering over the polished sideboard, the silver, as if he really wasn’t expecting a straight answer.
    “But I don’t follow murders. I have quite enough to do, as you can imagine. I sell milk.”
    “Sell milk?”
    “Yes, I run a milk concern.”
    “Oh, yes.” The other policeman had come to the rescue.
    “Twickenham’s Dairy Products.”
    “That’s right,” said Alfred.
    “But isn’t it upsetting for you to hear about a murder in the house of someone you know? We are looking for Lucan. He’s disappeared. How does that affect you?” “It’s devastating. But he plays baccarat and poker, and my wife and I don’t. We always played bridge.” “Thank you, sir, for your cooperation.”
    “Don’t mention it.”
    Alfred felt strongly that his house and office phones were already being tapped. Next morning he stopped at the Army and Navy Stores, where he put through a call. “Have you heard the news?” he said to the man who answered the phone. “Well, he’s on his way to Caithness. Yes, you know where. Right. I’m calling from a box. If he passes by you . . . Of course, do just that. Oh, poor Lucky!”
    At four in the afternoon Alfred went to pick up his daughter from day school.
    “I wonder,” said the father, “if anyone asks you did I have a visitor last night, could you tell them to mind their own business. Just that. Mind their own business.” “Quite right, Daddy,” said the child.
    “No one has the right to ask.”
    “I know.”
    The child was used to her father’s friends appearances. There was a maintenance and alimony case extending from the far-away mother, and the daughter was quite convinced that her parents had every right and reason to keep their private life private. Her best friends at school, five of them, were in roughly the same position. “Why did I do it?” Alfred asked himself in his more mature years. “Why did I cover up his whereabouts? Why? And so many of us did it. Why? The police knew very well we were doing so. There was something about Lucan. I wonder if that’s really him they’ve seen, wherever it is. And why, if so, do his friends feel they must protect him, with all that blood, let’s face it, on his hands?”
    Blood on his hands. Blood all over his clothes that night of the murder. He did not go straight to Caithness after all, but to some other people in the country, and then to some others, and finally to Caithness, while someone else parked the car he had borrowed in Newhaven.
    Maria Twickenham had been beautiful in a way which is not accountable, not to be reckoned by separate features. She was tall and gawky, long-legged, knock-kneed; her nose, too long, went very slightly awry; her mouth, a lovely shape, was definitely too wide; her grayish eyes were nicely spaced but dull and too small; her complexion, perfectly smooth, was, however, drab. How all these factors combined to make her into a striking beauty was inexplicable.
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