Part 25 (2/2)

I nodded. It wasn't reasonable not to want to go to all that.

'Tell me the truth,' he said abruptly. 'The unvarnished honest truth. What is wrong?'

'I'm a discontented idiot, that's all,' I said lightly.

'Mr Roke.' He sat up slightly in the chair. 'I have a good reason for asking these questions. Please give me truthful answers. What is wrong with your life in Australia?'

There was a pause, while I thought and he waited. When at last I answered, I was aware that whatever his good reason was it would do no harm to speak plainly.

'I do a job which I ought to find satisfying, and it leaves me bored and empty.'

'A diet of milk and honey, when you have teeth,' he observed.

I laughed. 'A taste for salt, perhaps.'

'What would you have been had your parents not died and left you with three children to bring up?'

'A lawyer, I think, though possibly...' I hesitated.

'Possibly what?'

'Well... it sounds a bit odd, especially after the last few days... a policeman.'

'Ah,' he said softly, 'that figures.' He leant his head back again and smiled.

'Marriage might help you feel more settled,' he suggested.

'More ties,' I said, 'Another family to provide for. The rut for ever.'

'So that's how you look at it. How about Elinor?'

'She's a nice girl.'

'But not for keeps?'

I shook my head.

'You went to a great deal of trouble to save her life,' he pointed out.

'It was only because of me that she got into danger at all.'

'You couldn't know that she would be so strongly attracted to you and find you so... er... irresistible that she would drive out to take another look at you. When you went back to Humber's to extricate her, you had already finished the investigation, tidily, quietly and undiscovered. Isn't that right?'

'I suppose so. Yes.'

'Did you enjoy it?'

'Enjoy it?' I repeated, surprised.

'Oh, I don't mean the fracas at the end, or the hours of honest toil you had to put in,' he smiled briefly, 'But the... shall we say, the chase?'

'Am I, in fact, a hunter by nature?'

'Are you?'

'Yes.'

There was a silence. My unadorned affirmative hung in the air, bald and revealing.

'Were you afraid at all?' His voice was matter of fact.

'Yes.'

'To the point of incapacity?'

I shook my head.

'You knew Adams and Humber would kill you if they found you out. What effect did living in perpetual danger have on you?' His voice was so clinical that I answered with similar detachment.

'It made me careful.'

'Is that all?'

'Well, if you mean was I in a constant state of nervous tension, then no, I wasn't.'

'I see.' Another of his small pauses. Then he said, 'What did you find hardest to do?'

I blinked, grinned, and lied. 'Wearing those loathsome pointed shoes.'

He nodded as if I had told him a satisfying truth. I probably had. The pointed shoes had hurt my pride, not my toes.

And pride had got the better of me properly when I visited Elinor in her college and hadn't been strong enough to play an oaf in her company. All that stuff about Marcus Aurelius was sheer showing off, and the consequences had been appalling. It didn't bear thinking of, let alone confessing.

Beckett said idly, 'Would you ever consider doing something similar again?'

'I should think so. Yes. But not like that.'

'How do you mean?'

'Well... I didn't know enough, for one thing. For example, it was just luck that Humber always left his office unlocked, because I couldn't have got in if he hadn't. I don't know how to open doors without keys. I would have found a camera useful... I could have taken films of the blue ledger in Humber's office, and so on, but my knowledge of photography is almost nil. I'd have got the exposures wrong. Then I had never fought anyone in my life before. If I'd known anything at all about unarmed combat I probably wouldn't have killed Adams or been so much battered myself. Apart from all that there was nowhere where I could send you or Edward a message and be sure you would receive it quickly. Communications, in fact, were pretty hopeless.'

'Yes. I see. All the same, you did finish the job in spite of those disadvantages.'

'It was luck. You couldn't count on being lucky twice.'

'I suppose not.' He smiled. 'What do you plan to do with your twenty thousand pounds?'

<script>