The Grass Widow's Tale

CHAPTER III

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A hand reached past her shoulder and slammed the boot shut. And if there had ever been a moment when she could have turned and run, with a hope of eluding pursuit in the trees, it was already over, had passed unrecognised while she stood there incapable of utterance or movement, all her senses stunned with horror.

She had heard nothing, had seen nothing but the slight, contorted body before her; but something had roused him, the cold air as the car door opened, the cautious sound of the latch closing again, maybe even some subconscious instinct of self-preservation that needed no help from the physical senses. For there he was at her back, recoiling now to evade her touch, in case shock gave her the reckless courage to attempt any move against him, edging silently along the side of the car to show to her, and hide from anyone else who might choose this of all moments to come by, the small black gun levelled at her heart. His hand was still steady. And the evidence was there between them, hidden now but unforgettably present, that the gun was loaded, and that he knew how to use it.

“Keep quiet,” he said, in a thread of a voice that had the tension of hysteria. “If you make a sound or a move, I shall kill you.”

She was deathly quiet, and frenziedly still. Numbness clogged all her senses, but somewhere within her burned a core of intelligence frantically alert to all the possibilities, and quick to guard itself from any mistakes.

“My God, my God,” he said in a howling whisper, to himself rather than to her, “why did you?… why did you?”

Yes, why, she thought, her mind lost in this drugged body, groping like a sleepwalker, why did I? Because I felt responsible for you! See what it gets you, feeling responsible! This is involvement gone too far. But there wasn’t any turning back; none for him, and none for her. She said nothing. As yet she had no voice, she couldn’t have screamed for help even if the round black muzzle of the gun hadn’t been trained on her with its one hypnotic eye. Screaming is, in any case, harder than you might suppose. It takes an experience of this kind to teach you how tough a resistance your sensible flesh, mind and spirit put up to believing in danger and death. Such things happen at a dream-distance, to others; never to you. When they do crop up in your way, like some skeleton apparition in a medieval legend, you don’t believe in them. Not until you’ve had time to acclimatise. By which time it is too late to take avoiding action.

But this was reality. She wasn’t at home in bed, dreaming it. There he was, in the soft, diffused light, rigid and quivering, but a hundred per cent awake and alert and dangerous, staring at her with bruised eyes now wide-open and impersonal as fate in a shadowless, porcelain face, over the gun which had become a third—no, a fourth—character in this impossible scene.

She looked down at the closed lid of the boot, and there was a tress of pale hair glimmering over the rim.

“Lock it,” he said. And when she stooped mechanically to turn the key: “No… that hair… push it out of sight, all of it…” The voice was thin, harsh and piercing, like broken glass.

She fumbled at the silvery tendrils, which seemed still to have such innocent, sparkling life in them. She tucked the last strand out of sight, and her fingertips touched the cold, ice-cold face. The chill passed out of the dead flesh into the living without revulsion; all she felt was a dreadful, quickening pity over so much waste. She let down the lid gently, like the lid of a coffin, and turned the key upon the body. Slowly she straightened up and looked round blindly at the man with the gun, the bunch of keys outstretched in her hand.

“Put them on the wing between us,” he said, and drew back a step out of her reach, with infinite care to be silent and restrained even in this movement. He didn’t want to startle her into some panicky reaction that would make the shot necessary.

She laid down the keys where he indicated, releasing them softly, with the same exaggerated caution against any sound. And he reached out his free hand without taking his eyes from her, and gathered them up and pocketed them.

“Let’s have it clear.” His voice was more assured now, and deader, if there are degrees in death. “If you make a single false move, even by mistake, I’ll kill you. What choice have you left me? You see I’ve nothing to lose now.”

Her mind was beginning to work, clearly enough, but like the logical threading of a dream. She saw, and acted in accordance with what she saw. He had indeed nothing to lose. His back was against a wall, and he was proof against fears and scruples; and she was not going to make any false move. She looked back at him, motionless and attentive, and said nothing.

“Get back in the car. I shall be close behind you.”

She turned stiffly, obeying the motion of the hand that held the gun, and slowly circled the back of the car and walked to the passenger door. Slowly, in case he suspected her of an attempt at escape. She might, indeed, have risked it if the car had been drawn up on the other side of the road, but here there was only the narrow path and then the thick hedge, nowhere at all for her to take cover. He followed her step for step, she could feel the muzzle of the gun not six inches from her back. The transit of those four or five yards seemed to last a lifetime; at least it gave her a sudden dazzlingly clear distant view of her own situation. Only a few hours ago she had been laboriously extending her powers to cope with the realisation that half her life had slipped away almost unnoticed, and now she saw the other half bridged in one monstrous leap, and death within touch of her hand.

No car came along. No one walked home by this way. No belated lovers dawdled in the dark. In summer there might have been a hope, there was none now. She was on her own, and there was nothing she could possibly do except obey him. Except, perhaps, leave some sign here to be found?

Her handbag was on her wrist, and there was no chance of opening it without being detected. But her purse was in her left-hand coat pocket, and it contained a perspex window in the flap, with her name and address in it. Good-bye to seven pounds and some loose change, but what did she need with money now? At least it would show where she had been. She drew it out carefully but quickly, the swinging handbag hiding the movements of her hand, and tossed it slightly aside into the overgrown autumnal grass that separated the footpath from the road. It fell with very little sound, but she risked letting her foot slip from the edge of the kerb in a noisy stumble to cover the moment, and spread her right hand against the car to steady herself. The man behind her drew in his breath with a hiss of warning, alarm and pain, and the muzzle of the gun prodded her back and sent an icy chill down the marrow of her spine.

“Be careful!”

But he meant the stumble, not the purse she had thrown away. All his attention was focused on her, he didn’t look aside into the grass. And now it was up to fate. If an honest person found what she had left behind, he would try to return it, and failing to find her at the address given, take it to the police, who would most surely wonder at her absence. If a dishonest person—or even a humanly fallible one—found it… well, so much the worse.

He stepped past her at the appropriate moment, and held the door open for her. As soon as she was inside he slammed the door upon her and darted round to the driver’s door; and as soon as he took his hand from her own door, she reached for it again, wrenched at the handle and flung her weight against it in a sudden passion of realisation that it was now or never. Leap out and run for it, back towards the cross… The car’s bulk would cover her for the first few moments, he would have to take aim afresh and in a hurry, she might get clean away.

The door held fast, the handle moved only part-way, and the thrust of her body was spent vainly. There was a safety catch with which she wasn’t familiar, and she hadn’t seen him set it before he slammed the door. By the time she had found it and was clawing at it frantically, he was in the driving seat beside her, and the car was in motion.

The door catch gave, the safety catch held. He reached a long arm across her and slammed the door to again, and she had lost her only chance, if it had ever been a chance. The impetus of their take-off flung her back in the seat, hard against his shoulder. The trees hissed by on either side at speed. To attempt to jump out now would be as good a way as any of committing suicide.

She sat with her hands clenched together in her lap, confronting the truth fully for the first time, and so closely that she saw nothing else. What difference could it possibly make who found her purse, or whether it was ever found at all, or how many police they turned out to look for her to-morrow? Nobody could get to her in time to be of any use; she was absolutely on her own, and her time must be short.

What could this man do now, except get rid of the witness?

He took the turn into the main street fast and expertly, and at such an angle that her mind, working with frosty clarity somewhere within the shell of shock, registered the certainty that he knew this town very well. Then she remembered the traffic lights. There was no way of evading that crossing in the middle of Comerford; and she knew, if he did not, that on Saturday nights there was usually a police constable keeping an eye unobtrusively on affairs there, at least until all the Espresso bar and motorbike brigade had gone home to bed, which they seldom did until after midnight. Now if the lights should be against them there…

There were still several groups of young people conducting their leisurely and noisy farewells along the pavement when the car drew near to the crossroads. The dance at the Regal wasn’t over yet, and there was P.C. Peter Hillard standing by the window of the jeweller’s shop looking at nothing and watching everything, with his hands linked behind him, and the usual deceptive expression of benign idiocy on his face. Now if the lights were at red, surely she dared… He wouldn’t shoot here, he’d run. Remember the safety gadget on the door this time…

The amber changed to red before them. A convulsion of hope ran through her, she sat forward very slightly, bracing herself, as the car slowed and rolled up to the lights. And suddenly there was the stab in her side, the blunt black barrel reminding her, and the blue-ringed eyes more chilling than the gun.

“Don’t!” he said, his right hand still gently manipulating the wheel. “You might do for me, but I should do for you first.”

He had known exactly what was in her mind. Either he had foreseen it all the time, or else the slight tension of joy had communicated itself to him as clearly as if she had declared her intent aloud. And all she had out of it was one more odd fact about him: he was ambidextrous, he could shoot her as readily with the left hand as the right. Now she had the option of inviting her own death at once, or waiting for a better chance, without much conviction that there would ever be one.

What she actually did emerged not as the consequence of thought at all, but blindly, on an impulse she had no time to assess. The car was still very slowly in motion, about to brake to a halt, and Hillard was looking their way, though from across the street he had no chance of seeing and recognising her. He could, however, read off a registration number without difficulty from there, if there should be a blatant offence…

She turned her head and peered back through the rear window, and in a sharp cry of vengeful delight she crowed: “There’s a police car pulling up behind us! He’s getting out …!”

She might have killed herself one way, but she had as nearly risked doing it in another. The driver’s foot went down on the accelerator so violently that she was jerked back stunningly in her seat, wrenching her neck and setting fireworks scintillating before her eyes. Light and darkness flickered wildly past her, as the car shot across the intersection at high speed. A large Austin, crossing sedately with the lights in its favour, braked hard, a van’s tyres smoked and squealed on the tarmac dry with frost. But they were through, untouched, and boring along the modestly-lit tunnel of Hawkworth Road at an illegal sixty-five. Bunty clung to the edge of the seat, gasping for the breath that had been knocked out of her, and recovered it only to break into weak, involuntary laughter, rather from relief at finding herself still alive than from any sense of achievement.

No more of that sort of thing! If she had stopped to think she would never have taken such a chance. The wonder was that the gun had not gone off in his hand when she sprang the trap; the violence of his reaction showed her how near she had come to that ending. Hair-trigger nerves might be expected in a murderer on the run. And if only he’d kept his head and looked in his mirror, instead of tramping on the accelerator the instant she had sounded the alarm, he might have got through Comerford and away without question.

“Damn you!” moaned the bitter voice beside her, shaky with fury. “Damn you! There wasn’t any damned police car!”

“There soon will be,” she said, “now.”

If Hillard had missed getting their number, someone in the Austin or the van would surely have noted it. Was that anything gained? It might be, if Hillard was quick to act on it. If the fugitive was heading for the M.6 he could hardly avoid going through Hawkworth, and there would be time to alert the police there by telephone, and even to set up a road-block. There was a strong campaign on against dangerous driving, and their exit from Comerford had certainly been spectacular.

If she could work out all that, so could he. He knew the odds now, he was concentrating on getting past Hawkworth in the least possible time, but if her luck held he wouldn’t be quick enough, even at this lawless speed.

At this moment she would have been certain of her own imminent death, if he had dared take a hand from the wheel or divert a thought from his driving to kill her. That was her only security, after what she had just done to him: nothing could happen to her while he was driving at this intensity. Better pray that the police would stop him at Hawkworth. If they did not, only one encouraging consideration remained, that he would surely prefer to remove her as far as possible from home before killing and disposing of her, in order to gain more time to make his own escape. Given a few hours’ grace you can hide a body, even two bodies, competently enough to delay inquiries for weeks, by which time he undoubtedly meant to be far away.

Now she was nothing but a passenger, quiescent from self-interest. He still had the gun ready in his left hand, even as he held the wheel. At the next threat he could use it instantly. She sat tensed and silent, waiting for the first glimmer of the sodium lighting of Hawkworth.

They reached the well-lit approach road, and he didn’t slow down. Now she could see his face by fits and starts as they passed the lamp standards, fixed like marble, in brittle, nervous lines of strain, with sweat glistening on his forehead and lip. And suddenly he was braking, but with a deliberation that promised nothing, and positioning the car well out into the centre of the road. He had seen the barrier before she had. Hillard hadn’t failed her, the police had closed half the road here at the approach to the town. But only half! And he was going through, she felt it in her blood.

From behind the white trestle on the left of the road a young police constable stepped out full into their path, with his hand extended to wave them down. Bunty heard the man beside her gulp in air in a huge sob, and felt his foot go down on the accelerator.

The boy in uniform was standing confidently in the centre of the free way; his confidence in the law he represented drew a warning scream up into her throat, but she choked on it silently and could not utter a sound. She would have closed her eyes, but it was impossible, the young figure held them fixed in fascination. She saw his face leap towards her, saw it dissolve from tolerant serenity into incredulous doubt, and then into terror, as the car drove straight at him.

At the last instant the wheel swung dizzily, and was hurled impetuously back again. The constable leaped backwards, late but alive, as the car swerved round him and surged away. They missed the boy by inches, and the lamp standard on the other side by the thickness of the old car’s well-maintained paint. Bunty uttered a cry, and clawed her way round to kneel on the seat and look back through the rear window; the young policeman was just getting up from the ground, and the police car that had been standing by, not expecting any trouble, was charging off the mark after them, too late to hold them in sight for long, unless it could better the crazy seventy-five they were exceeding through the sleeping town.

She slid down into her seat weakly, and lay limp beside her enemy. His eyes were dividing their attention now about equally between the road ahead and his rear-view mirror. He didn’t ask her anything; she might not have been there. He was nothing but a machine for driving, and what a machine, precise, confident, daemonic. Well, they knew now what they had to contend with. That attempted murder was notice enough. It was more than a case of dangerous driving and jumping the lights now. This pursuit would be serious. To be honest, she was more sure that they would chase him to the ends of the earth for trying to kill a police constable than for murdering an anonymous girl.

As for her, she had lost her chance. Unless that pursuing car, just about holding its distance, managed to stop them short of the motorway, she was as good as dead.

But between them—shouldn’t he share the credit?— they had ensured that the hunt should be up in full cry after them.

He shook off the police car in the country roads between Hawkworth and the M.6. No doubt of it now, he was a local man, or at least he’d lived here long enough to know these roads like the palm of his hand, better than the police driver knew them. They hit the motorway at the quietest entrance, well away from the town, and after that he took the fast lane and drove like an inspired devil. Who was there to enforce the limit? It was an unreal limit, in any case, on a clear, starlit night with visibility equal almost to that in daylight, and little traffic on the road. And whatever this man might or might not be, he was a driver of exceptional gifts. They would take some catching now.

The marvellous road unrolled, broad, generous, splendidly surfaced, unwinding before them in a hypnotic rhythm. Service areas sprang up beside them in a galaxy of lights, and passed, committing them again to the dark. Her tired eyes began to dazzle, and then to ache inconsolably. She closed them, and instantly could see more clearly. The ride was so calm that with closed eyes it was possible to rest, and think, and even understand.

Almost certainly, she was going to die. It was essential to grasp that, and to come to terms with it. She must not expect anything better. If better was to be had, somehow she would fight her way to it; if not, she had to deal with what was possible. Inordinately clearly she saw what was happening to her, and it was no longer a dream, and no longer fantastic.

After all, this sort of thing happens to other women, too, in slightly different circumstances, but to the same ultimate effect. Doctors tell them suddenly, after what should have been a routine examination, that they have been carrying malignant growths round with them unknown, perhaps for months, perhaps for years. Symptoms come late in the day. Or, worse, the doctors don’t tell them, but subscribe to the convention that cancer is unmentionable, and coax them into hospital with soothing pretences that minor treatment is necessary, and only slowly, with infinite anguish, do the victims penetrate to the knowledge that they have been carrying the balance of life and death within them, with all the betting on death. A mistake, to make death the enemy. Death is the ultimate destination of every one of us, and what’s beyond remains to be seen. But fear, doubt, delusion are the real enemies. If you know, you have at least the chance to effect a reconciliation.

She had that chance. If he had killed her at once it might have seemed to be a mercy, but now she knew that it would have been nothing of the kind. There was always the last moment of realisation, the horror of knowing too late, without time to come to terms, without one instant to muster the last dignity. It is not death which is the violation, it is fear.

It was there within her eyelids, death, within touch of her hand, smiling at her. Already it was becoming better-known, almost familiar. It was waiting for everyone, somewhere along the line, often when least expected. What’s the use of claiming immunity? Of yelling at fate: Why me? In effect, why not me? Those who go out innocently to do their regular shopping, and inadvertently step under buses, seemed to her, strangely enough, infinitely more to be pitied.

They were off the motorway, unchallenged, and striking north still for Kendal, Penrith and Carlisle. She knew this road, she had travelled it before, and could recognise landmarks, even in the dark. There had been a long, hallucinatory interlude of half-sleep, drugged with speed and darkness and isolation. Nothing could happen to her, as long as he drove. No succour could relieve her, as long as he drove.

It was somewhere between Penrith and Carlisle that she spoke to him, softly and reasonably as to a backward and capricious child. Her own senses were dazzled with this rush through the night, she heard her voice as a stranger’s, a calm, rational stranger’s, arguing with unreason.

“Murder isn’t a capital crime any more, you know that? They don’t hang you now.”

He didn’t say anything, he merely drove like a machine; she might as well not have been there.

“What you’ve done may not even be considered murder. If there was great provocation on her part, and loss of control on yours, they might reduce the charge. You think you’re forced to kill again, now that I know, but that’s an illusion. Your life isn’t threatened.”

He took no notice at all. Everything in him, every sense, every force, was concentrated on just one purpose, to get to wherever it was he was going, and get rid of his burden. He heard her, though, she was sure of that; he knew exactly what she was saying. He had nothing to say in reply because nothing she had said made any difference to his resolution. And she herself felt exasperatedly how futile it was to tell a young man he could keep his life and spare hers, at the cost of a mere fourteen years or so in prison! No, he wasn’t interested in that prospect. He meant to get clear away, to escape undetected, and there was only one way he could hope to do that. She knew too much to be left alive. None the less, she went on trying. She had to. Acknowledging that you may have to die doesn’t absolve you from putting up the devil of a fight for your life.

“And supposing they do catch up with you? They know which way you were heading, and they won’t give up, you know that. There’s a policeman involved now. Why make it worse for yourself if they do get you? You might get by with a plea of manslaughter for her—you won’t for me!”

Her eyes had grown accustomed to the night by now, she could see clearly the outlines of the sharp profile beside her, and they remained as fixed as stone. It was like talking to a re-animated corpse that could function mechanically, but could never be reached by any human contact.

“It would be simpler to ditch me here. I don’t know where you’re going, I don’t know who you are, I don’t know anything about you. By the time I got to anyone, you could be miles away. And,” she said reasonably, “you wouldn’t have the delay and trouble of disposing of me. That might make all the difference between getting clean away and getting caught. Because you don’t think I’m going to make it quick and easy for you, do you?”

Maybe she had been wrong in thinking he couldn’t be reached, for the knuckles of the capable hands that lay so knowledgeably on the wheel had sharpened into pale points of tension, white as china, and his cheek-bone strained at the stretched silvery skin as if it would break through.

“And there’s hardly room for two in the boot,” she said viciously.

“Shut up!” he gasped in a muted howl of pain and despair. “Shut up, damn you, shut up!”

The last thing she remembered recognising was the smithy at Gretna, journey’s-end for so many runaway couples pursued north by this road. The irony roused her to a faint spurt of laughter. She was so drugged and lightheaded with exhaustion by then that nothing was quite real. Even fear could not keep her awake any longer. Uneasily, stiffly, she slept against her enemy’s shoulder.

She awoke with a violent start, flung forward against the dashboard, fending herself off feverishly with her hands, still half-dazed and jangled between truth and illusion. He had braked violently, and for the moment that was the only reality she could grasp. Then it was like a curious dance, the car swinging first left and then right in a frustrated measure, like a man in a hurry trying to get past a slower walker on a narrow pavement. She heard the man beside her swearing furiously through his teeth as he wove this way and that. And then she saw the hare, bounding along in front of them in the middle of the road, as hares will, frantic with fear but still trusting in his speed to get him out of trouble. The car, driven with patience and precision, tried to edge him aside into the hedge-bank, and always he resisted the suggestion and raced straight ahead.

“Go on, curse you, get out of it!”

She looked at the light and the land outside the windows of her moving prison, and saw that it was almost morning, the air grey and still before dawn, and they were on an upland road between rolling wastes of heath, with the shadowy shapes of hills beyond, like gauzy folds of sky. If he slowed much more, she might almost dare to claw open the door and run… He had pocketed the gun long ago, on the side away from her, and his eyes were on the stupid creature that loped ahead of him, he would be slow to react at this moment. But run where? There were no houses here, and little cover.

And it was too late now in any case. He had dropped back and ambled to give the hare a long enough start to feel safe, to forget the impulse to flight, and return to the heather. And there went the long ears and lolloping hindquarters, off into the bracken under the low hedge, and out of sight. The car shot forward again in a smooth acceleration, and sailed past the spot where the creature had vanished. The needle of the speedometer crept back energetically to seventy. Since the moment when they had driven at the policeman on the edge of Hawkworth, only that hare had kept them for a few minutes within the legal speed limit.

She had no idea where they were, or how long they had now been on the road. In the chill of the dawn her sense of fear seemed to have reached a dead level where her predicament was at once disbelieved-in and accepted. She was finding out a great deal about the human mind under stress, the odd detachment and accuracy of observation of which it is capable even in terror, and the rapidity with which terror itself can become familiar, and cease to impress. You even reach, she thought, the point of contemplating without panic that there really may not be any way out; and you reach it unbelievably quickly.

The car swung sharply to the right, hardly slowing for the turn, and entered a narrow, winding, sunken lane. The air had a cold tang that made Bunty’s nostrils quiver, and the trees along the ridge on their right all leaned towards them in a way there was no mistaking. Somewhere just out of sight before them lay the sea.

The miniature valley, trees leaning over it on either side on the sheltered slopes, opened in a few minutes into a broad circle of gravel before a small cottage, pink-washed over walls of stone below and brick above, with a low-pitched, overhanging roof. It had a bright, polished, cared-for look which meant that someone with money and leisure had taken it over. There was a brand-new garage to the left, tucked under the slope of grass and trees, there were modern windows, obviously installed since the takeover, and decorative shrubs had been deployed artfully among the grass to make the most manageable of gardens. Someone’s pleasure place, there’s no mistaking the signs. And this man knew his way about here; she recognised it from the manner in which he had taken the sharp bend into the lane, and she saw it again in the dexterity with which he swept the car round and stopped it right in front of the cottage, in such a way that on her side there was just room to open the door, and she would be stepping out practically into the porch.

The moment the engine stopped he had the gun in his hand again, ready, and in one swing he was out of the car.

“Get out. And don’t try to run, you wouldn’t get far.”

As she straightened up stiffly after the long ride, the round black eye of the gun stared at her steadily across the roof of the car. She didn’t try to run. Against the ten yards of pale wall on either side she would have been an easy mark. He came round to join her at his leisure, and taking her by the arm, put her before him into the porch, where his own bulk securely hemmed her in. He reached above him under the low roof, and swung aside a corner of the wooden beading. The key had its regular hiding-place, and he was in the secret.

“Go in, please.”

The growing daylight showed her a tiny hall in spectral pastel colours, a staircase on one side, two white doors on the other, the minimum of holiday-cottage furniture, but of an elegant kind. The outer door closed behind them with a solid, final sound, and they were shut in together. She heard the key turned again in the lock, and watched him withdraw it and pocket it. And now at last he was no longer occupied with driving; his hands were free.

“Upstairs! You’ll find the bathroom on the left. I’m sorry there’ll be only cold water until I see to the main switch. Take your time.”

It was fantastic. The automatic politeness of his upbringing still clung to him, glaringly odd in this relationship. He might have been apologising to a guest for the lack of amenities, except that his voice was too dull and drained of feeling to match the words. She looked back from the door of the bathroom, and saw that he had seated himself on the stairs below, and had the gun ready in his hand still. No chances were going to be offered to her, no chances of any kind.

The back view of him was strangely desolate, the head drooping with its lank black hair dishevelled, the shoulders sagging. If she was sick with weariness, what must his exhaustion be? In the end there might be the chance he could not deny her; even he must succumb to sleep sooner or later.

She shot the bolt of the bathroom door after her, and groped for the cord of the light-switch, but nothing happened. Of course, the main switch was off, somewhere down there in the back premises, and there’d be no lights until he turned it on. The window was small, and the light from outside seemed to have dwindled almost into night again, now that she saw it from withindoors. It was barely half past five, after all that nightmare journey.

The cold water was bracing and welcome, and simply to be alone there, with a door and a bolt dividing her from him, was in itself a new lease of life. Evidently this place was used frequently and always kept ready for occupation, for there was soap on the wash-basin, and towels in the small white cupboard. Neat, small guest tablets of soap that fitted admirably into the palm. She considered for a moment, and then rolled the one she had used in her handkerchief, and slipped it into her handbag. There was nothing else she could see that might be useful to her; she took her time, as he had suggested, about looking round for a weapon to use against him. She had hoped there might be a razor, at least of the safety variety, in the cabinet, and therefore blades; but of course, the owner used an electric, there was the socket for it beside the mirror. Nothing there for her. The bolt on the door was a fragile thing, if she refused to come out it wouldn’t preserve her for long. There remained that window, discouragingly small and high though it was.

She carried the stool over to it, climbed up, snapped back the latch and hoisted the sash. Empty air surged away before her face. Craning over the sill to look down, she saw that on the rear side of the house the ground fell away sharply in a tumble of stones, almost a cliff, and instead of being one modest story from safe ground, she found herself peering down fifty feet of broken rock. No hope of climbing out from there.

So in the end she would have to open the door again, and go back to him. She did it very softly and cautiously, easing back the bolt without a sound, for she had left him sitting on the stairs a long time, and sleep might have (NB: typo in printed book (...instead of being one modest story from safe ground,...) she set foot on the landing he was on his feet, too, and turning to mount the remaining steps of the flight.

“Into the next room, please.” He reached past her to open the middle door of the three. “Yes,” he said, following the rapid glance she gave to the curving latch and the key-hole below it, “there’s a lock. I can’t afford any slips now, can I? You didn’t leave me much choice.”

Just over the threshold of the little bedroom, primrose and white, a charming place to house a guest, Bunty halted. With her back turned to him she said softly and deliberately :

“Do you know why I opened the boot?”

She didn’t look round, but she felt, almost she scented, the effusion of his desolation, bewilderment and despair, and the ache of his amputation from the harmless creature he must once have been.

The dull voice behind her said, dragging with weariness:

“What difference does it make?”

“I was looking for a rug,” she said, “to put over you.”

There was one instant of absolute silence, then the door closed as abruptly as a cry, and she heard the key turned hastily, clumsily in the lock. For a long minute she caught the deep, harsh, strained accent of his breathing, close there against the door, so that almost she could see his damp forehead pressed against the cold white panelling, and the veined eyelids heavy as marble over the burned-out grey eyes. Only slowly and with infinite effort did he drag himself away; she heard his steps slur along the carpeted landing, and stumble down the stairs.