Read Online Aiding and Abetting by Muriel Spark - Free Book Online Page A

at raising funds.
    “You want to know about Lucan,” said Ambrose.
    “Yes, we’re looking for him.”
    “People have been looking for him this quarter century. I brought down the press cuttings for you. I’ll have to go shortly but you can stay and look through them.”
    He had lumbered over to an open glass-fronted cabinet and now placed a very thick package on the table before them. In the meantime the young lay brother came in with a tray of milky coffee with dry sweet biscuits. He placed them on the table and withdrew, almost disintegrated, so shadowy was he.
    Exactly above the parlor where Joe and Lacey set about their perusal of the press cuttings was a bedroom, a simple monk’s cell, eight by seven feet with a mullioned window open to the vast northern plain in which St. Columba’s monastery had been put up, not very long ago. There was a tap on the door and without waiting for a reply the tapper, Ambrose, floated silently in. His finger was laid on his lips.
    “Say nothing,” said Ambrose. “Make no sound. Lucan, you have to go.”
    “Why, what’s wrong?”
    “Lower your voice. A couple of people are intensely looking for you. I say intensely. They’re here in the monastery, in the parlor just underneath.” “Here? Oh, my God, have they got a warrant?”
    “They’re not the police, Lucan, they are worse. They are Joe Murray with the daughter of, guess who?-Maria Twickenham. Her name’s Lacey. Yes, Maria’s daughter and the image of her mother. They have apparently nothing to do but hunt you down. Lacey is writing a book about you, of course.”
    “Maria’s daughter. Oh, my God.”
    Ambrose placed his finger once more to his lips. “Silence is your only hope.” He explained that he was keeping the couple occupied with a large file of press cuttings.”
    “About me?”
    “Of course about you. I don’t want them to suspect anything. I gave them my whole collection to look at.” “That will help them, Ambrose.”
    “Meantime, though, you can be on your way.”
    “Where to?”
    “Keep to the east, Lucan, and I’ll direct them southwest somehow. You’ll find a bed-and-breakfast at Kirkwall. They’ll never think of tracing you to that little hole.”
    Some twenty minutes later the lay brother was observed by Lacey escorting a black-robed monk with a bulging holdall to a station wagon. They shook hands and the car departed. Lacey looked back at her copy of the London paper which held a not-very-revealing article about Lucan. She said, suddenly, “You know, this would be a good place for Lucan to hide. Are you getting anything out of these cuttings? I’m not, I seem to have seen them all.”
    “They’re fairly new to me,” said Joe. “I wouldn’t mind another half hour’s go at them, if that’s all right by you, Lacey, dear.”
    “Yes of course it’s all right.” She felt how strongly he was attracted by her, and began to consider to herself that the idea of a love affair between them might not be a bad idea, even if it was only an idea.
    The door opened and in wafted Ambrose. “How are you getting on?” He fingered one of the press-cutting piles. “How strange it must be,” he said, “to be Lucan, if he is still alive. From what I knew of him his thoughts will be entirely on evading capture, all the time; every day, every move, every contact with the world, all his acquaintances-all, all, revolving around that one proposition, that he must avoid capture.” “He must be haunted by what he did,” said Lacey.
    “Not him,” said Joe.
    Ambrose joined in with a conviction that almost betrayed him. “Oh no, he doesn’t think of the murder,” he said. “Wherever he is, whoever he is now, he thinks of nothing but escape.”
    “Do you see him ever?” said Joe.
    “Not for sure. He has pretenders.”
    “Not much of a cause to pretend to,” said Lacey. “Now,” said Ambrose. He seated himself as comfortably as he could at the central table, which was at present covered