Fellow Passenger Read Online Free Page B

nunnery; but it wouldn’t do. I had to behave responsibly. So I offered to tell him where my clothes were on condition that he sent someone to fetch them and allowed me to put them on.
     
    I think the case might have been dealt with quite informally if I had admitted an overwhelming passion for atomic scientists. It might not even have been necessary to specify the sex. It was obvious, however, where suspicion would fall, and I could not possibly allow a government metallurgist to be so badgered with questions that she would mistake uranium for platinum, and plutonium for a bit of grandmother’s bedstead.
     
    ‘My name,’ I said, ‘is Claudio Howard-Wolferstan. My family were at one time lords of this manor of Moreton Intrinseca, and I am here to recover certain family property.’
     
    ‘And exactly how did you propose to recover it?’ asked Peter, with a nasty lift of his voice at the end of the sentence.
     
    ‘By the only means open to me,’ I replied.
     
    ‘What were you doing in Dr Ridgeway’s bedroom?’ Horace asked.
     
    I had seen just enough of him - while he hesitated at her door - to recognize him, but he was worse than I imagined. I could not conceive how I, dark, eager, and of bronzed complexion, could be mistaken for a pale, sandy streak of futility. However, to the touch we might have felt alike, for we were both clean-shaven, narrow-faced and smooth-haired.
     
    I said I had not been in any blasted doctor’s bedroom.
     
    ‘Dr Cornelia Ridgeway,’ he explained, stressing the Christian name.
     
    ‘Will you permit me to conduct this enquiry in my own way?’ Peter thundered at him.
     
    ‘Look here, I was in that confounded wing entirely by accident!’ I protested. ‘I dropped off the roof on to a balcony, and you’ll find my bedroom slipper under it. I went through that room into the passage, was nearly seen and popped into another where I hid behind the curtains. Unfortunately I disturbed some old lady in making my escape, and she yelled for help.’
     
    Horace was not very bright. He started off to say something and then saw that he was going to give his own movements away. I don’t believe he cared a damn about darling Dr Cornelia. He had a long way to go before reaching the mental acuteness of my aged and sympathetic captor. The old boy, who had been basking in quiet approval as if some experiment of his had revealed perverse and entertaining behaviour of the proton, met my eyes with a mischievous expression of innocence which he evidently meant me to appreciate. He had no more need of glasses than I.
     
    My clothes, with some difficulty, were found, and I put them on. When Peter handed me over to the police, dressing-gown, pyjamas and towel were stowed away in my pack. I looked a respectable holiday-maker, but I was at once recognized as the man who had been staying at the local hotel a fortnight earlier and asking too many and too suspicious questions.
     
    In the morning I was driven to Saxminster, and came up before the local beaks. The bench was at first favourably impressed. I was, after all, a citizen of known antecedents with a club and friends to whom reference might be made, and a bank balance - though it was mighty small, and I could not claim any source of income. But nobody could remember that there had ever been any Howard-Wolferstans at the manor, and my statement to Peter was treated as bluff or a mere impertinence. I thought it best to give no more details.
     
    The justices remanded me for further enquiries, and were very ready to grant me bail. They had quite an argument with the police about it. But then Peter called up reinforcements - a very military-looking gentleman who had not opened his mouth in public and was continually having violent, whispered conversations with the superintendent of police. The superintendent passed on a whisper to the magistrates’ clerk. The clerk whispered to the justices. They announced gravely - though looking impatient - that