Ellis Peters - George Felse 04 - A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs Read Online Free PDF Page B

mistake he had made, fumbling between the two planes of his liking for her, and he was thrown out of his stride by the gaffe. To cover himself he took her rather agitatedly in his arms, gingerly in case she objected, but already almost persuaded she wouldn’t. She was laughing; she shook gently with honest amusement against his chest.
    “And you’re not! Go on, say—”
    He did not so much lose his head as throw it away, and without it he was much more adept. He felt gently downward with his lips to her mouth, and kissed her. It wasn’t the first time, he knew what he was doing. But perhaps it was the first of its kind, warm and impulsive and affectionate, and quite untroubled.
    When it was over he held her for some minutes still, not wanting to talk.
    “That wasn’t necessary,” she said in his ear.
    “No, I know it wasn’t.”
    “Aren’t you going to say you’re sorry?”
    “No. I’m glad. I enjoyed it very much, and so did you. But I won’t do it again, because it would spoil it.”
    “You,” she said helplessly, “are an extraordinary boy.”
    “I wouldn’t be, if I were with an ordinary girl.”
    His cheek against hers, the baffling unusualness of the day overwhelming him with the delicious conviction of complete happiness, suddenly he froze. His mind went away from her, somewhere there over her shoulder, down among the dunes. She pushed him away suddenly, and turned to look.
    “Tamsin, do you see what I see? Look, there between the tamarisks.” One man, two, three, slipping along out of the landward hollow, keeping in the tenuous shade of the young hedges, moving towards the church in its deep nest.
    Tamsin shivered and took his arm, turning him about and drawing him landward across the road. “Ugh, it’s getting cold. I’d better get home, Dominic. Come on, we’ve got ten minutes’ walking yet.”
     
    George was still on the hotel terrace, smoking his last pipe and watching the sea.
    “Hallo!” he said, hearing the unmistakable step of his son and heir moving up on him quietly from the garden. “How’d you make out?”
    “Don’t be nosy,” said Dominic austerely, and came and sat down on the arm of the chair.
    “Dad—”
    “Hmmm?”
    “Do you suppose,” asked Dominic very casually, “that there’s much smuggling in these parts nowadays?”
    After a long and cautious silence George said weightily: “Now, look, I’m on holiday. I intend to remain that way. The local excisemen and police are quite capable of running their own show. And it’s no business of mine where Sam gets his brandy.”
    “That’s what I thought,” said Dominic cheerfully. “So, quite unofficially, of course, what d’you make of this?” And he told him exactly what he had seen in the region of St. Nectan’s church, though not the precise circumstances in which he had come to see it.
    “Going towards the church,” said George carefully. “And Tamsin took good care to remove you from the vicinity as soon as she realised what was going on. Yes, quite interesting.”
    “Especially,” said Dominic, “since Simon made such a point of broadcasting in the bar exactly when he intended to open the Treverra vault. And then grinned at Sam, and invited him—”
    “Or dared him?” suggested George.
    “—to be present on the occasion. And the hint and the challenge were taken. On the spot.”
    “Now I wonder just where the safe-deposit was?”
    “I wonder, too. In the vault itself, do you think?”
    “Now mind,” said George warningly, “not a word to anyone else. We’re only in this game by courtesy, if we’re in it at all. It’s the local man’s manor.”
    Dominic rose from the arm of the chair, and stretched and yawned magnificently.
    “What do you take me for?” he said scornfully, and strolled away to bed.

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CHAPTER II
THURSDAY
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    IT’S TO-MORROW, then,” observed Paddy, coming in damp and boisterous from his morning swim, and plumping himself down hungrily at the breakfast