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.So quiet that it was hard to remember that somewhere downstairs some dozen or so resident staff still remained, few of them ever seen by visitors.Celia Whitwood had tucked her harp lovingly into the back of the huge old car she drove, and set off westwards for home with Andrew Callum as a passenger.The Rossignol twins and Peter Crewe had clambered gaily into the station wagon, bound for the London train, and after them the professor, embracing his inevitable notes and leaving behind in his bedroom the same case of recording tapes he had forgotten at Comerbourne station on Friday evening.Even Dickie Meurice was gone with him, edged competently and civilly into the transport by the deputy warden, with his consuming curiosity still unsatisfied.From his front seat, for once in the audience, he had not seen Lucien appear or Audrey disappear.To him it was only a matter of time, of a little patience, and Lucien’s arrest was a pleasurable certainty.Let him go, let him sit and gloat in town, waiting for the flare headlines he was never going to see.He had never been of much importance; now, in this immense calm after the whirlwind, he was of no importance at all.Liri sat in a deep chair in the gallery, her eyes half-closed, exhaustion covering her like a second skin.She saw the growing dusk take away the small possessions of the Cothercotts one by one into shadow, the fan that concealed a dagger, the empty place where the sword-stick had hung, the silver-chased pistols, the miniatures on ivory; and then whole pieces of furniture, the love-seat with its twisted arms, the spinet, the inlaid cabinets, the entire end of the long room.Darkness crept in upon her, and was welcomed.She seemed to have been there alone for so long that it was strange to hear a movement in the room with her.It could have been Felicity’s fictional ghost; but it was only Tossa Barber, sitting just as quietly on a high-backed chair by the library door.“It’s only me.It’s all right,” said Tossa simply, “I’ll go away when they come.”“I don’t mind.I thought everybody’d gone.”“We have to wait for Mr.Felse.We’re driving back with him, if… ” She let that fall.Nobody knew when George would be ready to go home.“Dominic went down to see if he… to find them…” Every sentence flagged into silence.All they were really doing was waiting.It must have been nearly eight o’clock when they heard the first footsteps crossing the terrace, the clash of the window-latch, a heel on the sill, stumbling, uncertain.Two people, the second closely following the first, but never touching him.A hand reached over an oblivious shoulder to the light-switches at the end of the gallery, hesitated, and chose the single lamp that made only a faint pool of radiance in a corner of the twilit room.Nobody said anything; but Dominic caught Tossa’s eye, and Tossa rose softly and slipped past Lucien Galt, who neither saw nor heard her, Dominic took her hand, and drew her away with him, and Lucien and Liri were left together.He saw her, and his eyes came to life in the shocked grey mask of his face.He pushed himself off from the doorway, and walked into her arms without a word, and without a word she opened them to him.He slid to his knees at her feet, and she held him on her heart, along with the chill and the dank smell of the river; and she knew where Audrey had gone.After a while he stopped shivering, and locked his arms tightly round her body, and heaved a huge sigh that convulsed them both; and neither he nor she would ever know whether it was of grief at his loss, or involuntary relief at this vast and terrible simplification of his problems, or both, and in what measure.“I called to her,” he said presently, in a voice drained and weary.“She was on the parapet.I wanted to tell her that we… that you and I… that we didn’t care, that it didn’t matter any more…”“It wouldn’t have been any good,” said Liri.“It did matter to her.”No, it wouldn’t have been any good, even if she had listened to him [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]