Trial by Fire by Frances Fyfield Read Free Book Online

still does. Says he fell over a bramble bush while trying to mend a fence in his garden. Antony does not mend fences, not that kind anyway. He may cook, but he doesn't mend fences.'
    Ì see. No word of how the meeting went with the lady?'
    `That's just it. I don't know. He refuses to elaborate. That isn't typical Antony. He relates every wretched shameful thing he's ever done since childhood. His honesty's pathological, exhausting at times. He makes his pupils enjoy mild catharsis on paper, and he enjoys it in words. But not over this, and I don't know why.' She crumbled the last of the cake, dispirited.
    `He probably behaved as badly as anyone would when there's no kind way to say the things he was having to say,' said Helen. 'Spoke all the wrong words in the wrong way.
    Maybe honesty was his downfall, he should have lied a lot, and instead they ended up screaming, he for his skin, she for her dignity. No one would notice in The Crown, after all.'
    Ì see all that. But scratches? Antony's quite capable of violence, you know. Only when cornered. I know that,' Christine added hastily, 'from the confessional of his early youth, not from anything he's ever done to me. He's wiry, with all the aggression of a bullied boy.
    That's what worries me. If this rejected matron scratched him, what did he do in return?'
    Ì hope he didn't scratch back.'

    Christine shrugged. 'I hope so, too.'
    Helen looked at her friend, alarmed by a sudden premonition, a hateful vision of that corpse in the wood, encounters at The Crown, the disjointed memories of the Featherstones, all recounted as amusingly as possible by Geoffrey the evening before, all merging into the landscape of tragedy. She stripped her face bare of thought, dismantled and dispelled the premonition as it rose like an ugly monument in her mind, smiled, and spoke firmly. 'Nothing you can do now, whatever he did then.
    Wait and see. But ten days? That's nothing. I tell you, in the realms of male silence, especially if they feel guilty, really nothing. He'll tell you when he's ready, surely.'
    Sophisticated platitudes for a mature companion, not doubting her tentative analysis of a nasty event, too honest for that, simply suggesting that all sounds of alarm could be postponed, perhaps for ever.
    Allowing time for a good lunch, a peaceful afternoon, and with luck a peaceful lifetime, but not entirely omitting the doubt. Ointment for a troublesome graze, not suggesting a cure. The balm discharged Christine from the house in a state bordering on optimism, leaving Helen pacing the pastel carpets, full of worry without name. Putting a lid on it was as futile as attempting to suppress a jack-in-the-box with a wicked spring and cruel face, unsuitable for children.
    Of course she would tell her Geoffrey, her own Detective Chief Superintendent Bailey, of course she would. Or maybe not. She would tell, feeling foolish for once in the telling, no more than an aside: Darling, do you know what else has been going on in The Crown. . . ? Nothing at all to add to the scenario that gripped him in the current search to find a face for this body, a signature for this murderer, preferably appended to a confession. She would tell him, nevertheless, as she told him everything.
    Almost everything, she reminded herself; no one tells it all. She might have learned to speak truth automatically and had not yet discovered the day when there would be a serious conflict of loyalties, a question of betrayal. So far there had been no conflict, but without conscious thought of Christine Summerfield or of the Branston way of life, which he seemed to enjoy and she to suspect for its very tranquillity, she feared the imminence of decisions.
    One thought led to another. No potato peeling today; Geoffrey out on inquiries, plenty of freedom for thinking. Silly disconnected thoughts involving plenty of nonsense, seen as such. Practical considerations above all, such as what to do with a restless afternoon. I could go to