Ellis Peters - George Felse 08 - The House Of Green Turf Read Free Page B

pin down. Something that passes gradually, if you concentrate on the live world and let it pass.’
    ‘No,’ she said instantly and chillingly. ‘You forget, it’s almost a week now, and I’ve waited and held my breath, and it doesn’t pass. Because it’s real, not a dream at all, not a floating residue left to surface by chance.
It’s there
! In the corner of my eye always, and when I turn to look at it, it’s everywhere but where I’m looking. I don’t know when, I don’t know how, but it’s something I did, and I can’t get away from it.’
    ‘You do realise, don’t you, that even if there is some factual basis for it, it may turn out to be in some incident grotesquely out of proportion to the feeling you have about it?’
    ‘It may,’ she agreed; but he knew by the set of her face that she did not believe in that possibility.
    ‘But even so, if it does exist in your past, however inadequately, then it must be possible to run it to earth.’
    ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to do for days. I’ve been forwards and backwards through my life poking under all the stones I can find. At first I took it for granted it was Tom, you see… that I’d killed him when I crashed the car. But they told me at once that he was safe. Then I thought that there might have been somebody else involved in the accident, but there wasn’t. It isn’t as simple as that, and it isn’t as recent. The knowledge seemed to come from very deep, as if an earthquake had split the ground and thrown up something from miles down. There are no levels any more, everything’s torn up and thrown about, and everything has to settle all over again afterwards, and make a new surface to walk on. The first steps are liable to be pretty shaky. And buried things may break out and meet you in the way.’
    He saw the quickened breathing heaving her breast, and the hectic flush of exertion flicking her cheekbones. ‘I’m tiring you,’ he said.
    ‘No, don’t go! No, you’re helping me. After I’d dredged up every recollection I could, right back to school, I did try, you see, to put it out of my mind. I told myself it was one of those freaks, the shock and the fright and the pain choosing to hit me after the event in this way. Nothing behind it. But I couldn’t satisfy myself, and I’m afraid you won’t be able to satisfy me, either. I’m not running a temperature, I’m not in shock, I haven’t any worries, my career will wait for me the short time it has to wait, and all I have to do is lie around and enjoy myself while I get well. There simply is no reason at all—is there?—why this terrible conviction of guilt should stay with me still. Only one possible reason. That it’s true, that it’s justified.’
    ‘But if there existed any real source for it, you would have found it.’ It did not convince him, and he knew as soon as it was out that it would not convince her.
    ‘No, because I’m the wrong person to do the searching. Oh, I
believe
I want to find it, but how can I be
sure
? Isn’t it possible that there’s at least as much of me trying to stamp it back into the ground, quickly, before I ever get a good look at it? Isn’t that the most likely reason why I always see it out of the corner of my eye?’
    ‘But did you never stop to consider that you have relatives, associates, friends, people who have been intimately involved in your life for years, and none of them accuses you of anything? Do you really believe you’ve committed some mortal fault against another person, without a single one of your acquaintances knowing anything about it? Is there an empty place anywhere in your life where you even
could
have done this hypothetical thing, in absolute isolation from any witness? That would rule out anything but the cruder possibilities, like flat, planned murder, that
has
to be kept secret. And that would involve more complications, like skills I very much doubt if you possess.’ He span out his theme to its