Read Online Ellis Peters - George Felse 03 - Flight Of A Witch by Ellis Peters - Free Book Online Page A

sun was well up, and he was going to be late for breakfast; they’d be wondering, next, what had happened to him! He turned back then, and scrambled up the slope towards the ring of trees.
    Miles Mallindine had a Vespa. And however many young men had danced with and coveted Annet, there was no blinking the fact that Miles had already got himself firmly connected with her comings and goings once, and could hardly expect to evade notice when something similar happened for the second time. Others might be possibles, but he was an odds-on favourite.
    But he’d been camping somewhere near Llyn Ogwen and climbing on Tryfan with Dominic Felse. Or had he? All the long week-end? With a Vespa he could cover that journey quite easily in a couple of hours. And would young Felse lie for him? Neither of them struck him as a probable liar, and yet he was fairly sure that for each other, where necessary, they would take the plunge without turning a hair.
    If you want to know, he told himself with irritation, lunging down the westward side of the Hallowmount, there’s only one straightforward thing to do, and that’s ask. Not other nosy people who
may
have seen something, not his friend who’ll feel obliged to put up a front for him, but Miles himself. At least give him the chance to convince you, if there’s nothing in it, and to get it off his chest if there is.
    As if that was going to be easy!
    It took him all morning to make up his mind to it; but in his free period at the end of the morning school he sent for Miles Mallindine.
     
    ‘You wanted to see me, sir?’
    The boy had come in, in response to his invitation, jauntily and easily, brows raised a little; unable to guess why he was wanted, you’d have said, but long past the days of instinctively supposing any summons to the staff-room to be a portent of trouble.
    ‘Yes, come in and close the door. I won’t keep you many minutes.’ They had the room to themselves for as long as they needed it, but the thing was to keep it brief and simple; and tell him nothing that wasn’t absolutely essential. ‘You own a Vespa, don’t you?’
    ‘Yes, sir,’ said Miles, agile brows jumping again.
    ‘Did you go up to Capel Curig on it this week-end?’
    ‘Yes. It’s a bit of a load, with two up and the tent and kit, but we’ve got it to numbers now.’ He was filling in the gaps, kindly and graciously, to avoid leaving the bald, enquiring: ‘Yes’ lonely upon the air between them. But he was wondering what all this was about, and testing out all possible connections in his all too lively mind.
    ‘Spend the whole time up there? When did you leave? And when did you get back yesterday?’
    ‘Oh, left about half past five on Thursday, I think, sir. I called round to pick up Dom first, and we did the packing at our place. We’d been in about half an hour when you looked in at home last night – just long enough for a wash and supper.’
    He didn’t ask point blank: ‘Why?’ but the slight tilt of his head, the attentive regard of his remarkably direct and disconcerting eyes, put the same question more diplomatically; and a small spark deep within the eyes supplemented without heat: ‘And what the hell’s it got to do with you, anyhow?’ ‘
Sir
!’ added the very brief, engaging and impudent smile he had inherited from his mother.
    Tom was tempted to soften this apparently pointless and unjustifiable interrogation with a crumb of explanation, or at least apology; but the boy was too bright by far. To try to disarm him with something like: ‘I’m sorry if this makes no sense to you, but
if
it makes no sense you’ve got nothing to worry about!’ – no, it wouldn’t do, he’d begin tying up the ends before the words were well out. No use saying pompously: ‘I have my reasons for asking.’ He knew that already, he was only in the dark at present as to what they could be, and at the first clue he’d be off on the trail. The fewer words the better. The more abrupt the