Ellis Peters - George Felse 08 - The House Of Green Turf by Ellis Peters Read Free Book Online Page A

that blotted out the face of X?
    And if the hunt for X was the hunt for the invisible, the non-existent lover, the only one who got past her guard, where was he most likely to be found? Somewhere fairly far back, or she could not have expunged him so completely and for so long. In the world’s eye not, perhaps, a very great figure in her life, or, again, she could not have forgotten him so successfully; yet great enough in retrospect to turn her whole life barren afterwards.
What was it she had done to him
?
    No need to look back as far as childhood or early adolescence, either, because this was a thing that had fixed its claws into her adult being, and pierced deep. Somewhere at the emergence of the woman, say at eighteen or nineteen, when her career suddenly opened before her and she knew she was going to be great, when she was intoxicated and dazzled by music, and men, perhaps, faded into the background just when they should have been growing clear and important. Twelve or thirteen years ago. In twelve years she had had time to suppress a lot of regrets, to forget genuinely a lot of once-important people.
    He performed, almost idly, the small exercise of looking back twelve years in his own life. Where had he been then? More to the point, with whom? He found a narrow boat on a Midland canal, a summer frittered away on an antique business that had folded under him because he didn’t work at it, and a woman who had been the reason for his lack of application; but when it came to recalling the woman, she was only a small, blank, woman-shaped space without face or name. Nothing but an empty shape and a bitter taste, and no guilt except the guilt he felt for the squandering of whatever promise he’d ever had, and that held no mystery.
    And then, abruptly, like a flower bud opening marvellously under the camera, the pale non-recollection put on colour and form and life, the head flushed into the incredible colour of oak foliage in spring, the burning blue eyes pierced him as they had pierced him an hour ago, and the searing realisation of his position broke out like blood at last, and he knew he was lost. Who had he thought he was, writing off women so confidently? Who did she think she was, writing off men?
    For the first time in his life he hadn’t seen it coming, hadn’t side-stepped and dictated the ground on which it should approach him, and the terms on which he would entertain it. Now it was too late to do anything but stop the bleeding by force of will, and somehow claw his way back to the job in hand. Because he had just established to his full satisfaction that no man alive had a dog’s chance of getting within Maggie Tressider’s guard. Want her as he might, want would have to be his master, as it had been many another’s.
    Or would it
? If he played his cards intelligently, hadn’t he certain advantages?
    She trusted him
! She’d said so, and meant it. Who else had her ear as he had? Who else had access to her as he had? The hunt for X could be prolonged until his position was secured, and the uncovering of X could be so handled—assuming he was found, and in whatever circumstances—as to serve the interests of Francis Killian no less than those of Maggie Tressider. Yes, he had unique advantages…
    And unique disadvantages, his own saner self warned him tartly. You’re taking her money to do a job for her, the only trust she has in you is the trust intelligent people place in competent professionals bound to them by contract. Take one step out of line, to-morrow, next week, ever, and she’ll be gone. And you’ll be a bigger heel even than you’ve ever been before. At least until now you’ve kept your business clean.
    I shall still be doing that, he persisted strenuously, fighting off his better judgment. I’m not proposing to cheat her. The job I’ve taken on for her I’ll finish, if it can be done at all. But while it lasts I’ve got her ear, I’ve got a measure of her confidence, and I’ll