Cry of the Hunter - Jack Higgins [9]
The sound jangled faintly in the hidden depths of the house and the echo was from another world. There was utter silence and after a few minutes he tried again. After a while he heard steps approaching the door. There was the sound of bolts being withdrawn and the door opened slightly.
A young woman looked out at him. She was wearing an old camel-hair dressing gown and there was sleep in her eyes. ‘What is it?’ she said.
‘Is Professor Murray at home?’ Fallon asked her. A peculiar expression appeared on her face at once. He hastened to explain. ‘I know it’s early, but I’m just passing through and I promised to look him up. I’m an old student of his.’
For a moment the girl gazed fixedly at him and then she stepped back and opened the door wide. ‘You’d better come in,’ she said.
The door closed leaving the hall in semi-darkness. The air smelt musty and faintly unpleasant and as Fallon stumbled after her, he realized there was no carpet on the floor. She opened a door at the end of the passage and led the way into an old, stone-flagged kitchen. The room was warm and friendly and he took off his hat and unbuttoned his wet coat. ‘This is better,’ he said.
‘Take your coat off,’ the girl told him. She went to a gas cooker in the corner and put a light under the kettle. Where the old-fashioned range had once stood there was now a modern coke-burning stove. She knelt down in front of it and began to clear ashes from the grate.
Fallon said, ‘Is the Professor still in bed.’
She stood up and faced him. ‘He died a few weeks ago,’ she said. There was no change of expression on her face when she added, ‘I’m his daughter – Anne.’
Fallon walked over to the window and stood staring out into the tangled garden and the rain. Behind him the girl busied herself at the cooker. After a while he turned round and said, ‘He was the finest man I ever knew.’
There was ash on her hands from the grate. When she pushed back a loose tendril of her fair hair she smudged her forehead. ‘He thought quite a bit about you, too, Mr. Fallon.’ She turned to the sink and rinsed her hands under the tap.
Fallon sat down in a chair by the table. ‘How did you know who I was?’ he asked.
‘That scar,’ she said. ‘You staggered into my father’s flat in Belfast one night about ten years ago with your face laid open to the bone. He stitched it for you because you couldn’t go to a doctor.’ She turned towards him, a towel in her hand, and examined the scar. ‘He didn’t make a very good job of it, did he?’
‘Good enough,’ Fallon said. ‘It kept me out of the hands of the police.’
She nodded. ‘You and Philip Stuart were students together at Queen’s before the war, weren’t you?’
Fallon started in surprise. ‘You know Phil Stuart?’
She smiled slightly as she put cups on the table. ‘He drops in now and then. He only lives a couple of streets away. He’s the County Inspector here, you know.’
Fallon slumped back in his chair with an audible sigh. ‘No, I didn’t know.’
As she poured tea out she went on, ‘My father used to say he found it rather ironical that Stuart joined the Constabulary and you the other lot. He once told me that in you two he could see the whole history of Ireland.’
Fallon offered her a cigarette and smiled sadly. ‘How right he was.’ He stared into space, back into the past, and said slowly, ‘He was a remarkable man. He used to shelter me when I was on the run and spend the night trying to make me see the error of my ways.’ He straightened up in his chair and laughed lightly. ‘Still, he used to see a lot of Stuart, as well. Poor Phil – if only he’d realized what was going on under his nose.’
Anne Murray sipped her tea and said quietly, ‘What did you want with my father this time?’
Fallon shrugged. ‘For once, nothing – except a chat. I hadn’t seen him for several years,