The Grass Widow's Tale

CHAPTER IX

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They stared at each other across the table, across those absurd trivialities for which murder had been done, and the small, vicious personal treasons that make love unlovely; and each of them was furiously reckoning the risk to the other, and beginning to erect barricades.

“They’d be on the alert to-day,” said Bunty, “for any police news from yesterday. There’ll be nothing about murder, but they won’t miss the significance of a car that went through a red light, and then nearly ran down a constable, because it was in such a guilty hurry to get away from Comerbourne.”

“No,” he agreed grimly, “they surely won’t. The police up here were alerted, so there’ll be something to give them the tip down there, even if it isn’t exactly public yet. They’ll know which way the police hunt has come. Within limits, they’ll know where to look for me…”

“For us,” she said instantly.

“For me! Oh, Bunty… Oh, God, I ought to have sent you home!”

“You did try. Don’t think of it, it isn’t your fault that I wouldn’t go. I wouldn’t go even now,” she said stubbornly.

“Then let’s take all this stuff and get out of here, while the going’s good. I want to get you to the police. I’ve never wanted the police so much,” he said, and laughed rather breathlessly, tying the pink tape hurriedly round the parcel of notes. “Put your coat on,” he said. “Never mind anything else, we’ll bring them back here. I’ll bring them back here. You’ll stay where you’re safe.”

Yes, she thought, just get yourself and me into police hands, and I might even sit back and leave the rest to them, and to you.

“But we still have to avoid notice. The car…”

“It doesn’t matter now,” he said with decision. “If the police are on the look-out for me, so much the better, I’ll gladly pull in and hand over to them. The others won’t know details like our registration… or will they?” he wondered blankly, pulled up short at the thought of their complete isolation all day from the bulletins of the B.B.C. “Oh, lord, why doesn’t Reggie put a proper radio in here? They bring the transistor, of course, damn the thing! We haven’t a clue what they’ve been putting out all day, but I'll bet the gang have had a constant radio watch operating. You can pick up the police broadcasts, too, if you hunt round the wave bands. Many a time I’ve listened in to their two-way conversations about stolen cars. Ours is just the sort of item they’d be batting back and forth all day long.”

“Those people may not be all that efficient,” said Bunty scornfully, shrugging into her coat. She stooped to unplug the electric fire. “Don’t forget the main switch, you know where it is, I don’t. Look what a bad blunder they made, killing her…”

He said: “Yes…” in so low and bitter a voice that she was suddenly visited by a private revelation of the love he had felt for that wretched girl upstairs, and the hooks it still had in his deepest sensitivities.

“Here, you have this!” He thrust the parcel of money upon her. “I’d rather… You found it. And you wouldn’t believe,” he said, “what a bad moment it gives you to have several thousand pounds of someone else’s money in your hands, when you’re broke every month-end without fail.”

“It sticks to my fingers, too,” she said, shaken by the knowledge that she was uttering no more than the truth. “Poor Pippa! ” she added, and the connection was clear enough. “But we’re luckier. It’s better than fifteen thousand pounds to us, it’s evidence for you.”

The room looked as they had found it. When he threw the main switch there would be nothing but the tins and the broken china in the bin to show they had ever been here. Luke looked round him alertly, approved what he saw, and thrust the gun carefully into his right coat pocket, barrel foremost, a dormant devil. There remained, of course, out of sight but not out of mind, that pale blonde girl upstairs, impenetrably asleep in the pale blond room.

Outside the windows the world already looked dark; in reality it was no more than dusk. When they put out the lights within, the light without would revive and blossom almost into day.

Luke leaned into the broom cupboard, “Ready? I should get out to the front door, it’ll seem dark at first. I’ll bring a torch, there’s one they keep in the store here.”

She didn’t move. She knew the geography of this house now rather better than that of her own. And she was going nowhere without him. Her honour was involved. What you pick up of your own will you can’t in decency lay down. You must carry it as long as there’s need, until it can stand alone, and walk alone, and not be challenged by anyone.

The light went out, and the window bloomed gradually into greenish, bluish pallor, lambent and enchanted, casting a faint gleam upon shapes inside the room. She waited with the flat packet under her arm, clutched tightly against her heart; and in a moment light, assured steps brought him to her side. A hand felt delicately in the gloom after her free hand, and found and clasped it.

And in that moment they heard it, the engine of the car that was winding its way cautiously along the sunken lane towards the house. A slow, sly, casing note, moving in methodically and without haste by the only approach, sure of closing the box on whatever was within. They heard it stop, somewhere round the curve of the grassland, beyond the trees. They stretched taller in the brief silence, waiting for it to start up again; and faithfully it throbbed into life and came on, with the deliberation of fate itself. Nearer now, but still with swelling ground between. But for the twilight silence it might have passed for traffic somewhere on the road, innocent and absorbed, not touching them.

Bunty thought hopefully, the police coming back. And as though she had spoken aloud, he said in a whisper: “No!” And after a moment of listening with held breath: “Not the same car.”

He drew her out into the hall, and loosed her hand gently, and she heard him climbing the stairs in long, ranging, silent steps, three at a time. She groped her way after him, and found him in the large front bedroom, crouched at the window. Her eyes were already adjusting to the half-light, she could see clearly.

She saw the car creep very gently round the curve of the drive, shy in the shelter of the trees. She saw it halt to breathe, to observe the house in darkness, and then to accelerate and slide onward, reassured, into the gateway. Reassured? Or galvanised into more open action by fear that the place was indeed empty, that the birds were flown? It came on without concealment now, but quietly, hissed on to the edge of the gravel, rolled round before the door.

The doors of the car opened before it was still. Silently and purposefully two men slid out of it, one on either side, and then the motor cut out as suavely as a held sigh, and the driver slithered just as noiselessly from behind the wheel. Three figures, mute, shapeless and anonymous, deployed across the width of the gravel court, and looked up contemplatively under shading hat-brims at the blind frontage of the house. And two of the figures, quite suddenly and smoothly and naturally, as though these were the inevitable fruit you would expect to see ripening there, had guns in their hands.

Luke drew back from the window, caught Bunty in his arm, and swept her away through the doorway to the landing, closing the door of the bedroom silently behind them. Silence was everything now. Neither of them risked a word, even in a whisper. Thank God they’d switched off all lights before the car came within sight of the house. But they were both remembering what the police sergeant had said in the morning. He and his companion had seen a light in one of the windows here “from up the coast road a piece.” So might these men have seen one, a quarter of an hour ago. Bunty and Luke hadn’t thought to be cautious about showing lights. Mrs. Chartley had reported her presence to the police, so why disguise it? And now it was too late to worry. Simply get out of here by the only remaining way, and pray that the searchers were merely following up one possibility, and would come to the conclusion that the house was empty, and go away to hunt somewhere else.

But the guns, flowering miraculously in hands that had seemed to conjure them out of empty air, hadn’t looked at all tentative, or in the very slightest doubt of their premises.

Neither of them stumbled on the stairs, even in that quietly frantic rush they made; neither of them fouled any of the gay, impermanent fixings of the hall. They could hear the faint, deliberate crunch of gravel under cautious feet as the invaders cased the windows; but the darkness inside was sufficient to swallow all movement, and the glass in the panel of the front door was pebbled and opaque without light to bring it to life. Luke felt his way through the living-room door, and closed it gingerly after them just as a hand eased up the latch of the front door, with the faintest of metallic sounds, and tested it and found it locked. After that they had more freedom to move, more insulation between themselves and their enemies, and they could concentrate on saving time, which was the most vital factor of all. They had to be well down the slate staircase to the inlet before the hunters found their way round the corner of the house to the rear terrace and the faint, lambent plane of the seascape beyond.

The boat was the only card they had left. Why, oh, why had she listened to her tidy, housekeeper’s mind, and sent him to lock it away in the boat-house again? If it had still been riding at the jetty it would have saved them minutes now.

Out through the kitchen, out past the store, and Luke spared a moment to turn the key of the back door behind them. It slowed their retreat, but it completed the picture of an empty cottage, if only they could be far enough down the path to be out of earshot. There was no moon yet, but a faint starlight that brushed the flags of the tiny terrace, and gleamed on the level places in the pathway down the cliff. Thank God for the twists and turns in that erratic descent, that would take them out of sight within seconds. Sound would be a more dangerous betrayer.

Luke plunged to the edge of the terrace and led the way down in the dusk. He was on a path he knew, and could make good speed on the descent, but out of that complex of rocks the smallest rattle of a stone displaced would start a volley of rising echoes; and those characters out on the gravel weren’t going to waste much time getting into the house. A shot will open a lock, if there’s no other means at hand.

Luke put all thoughts out of his head for the moment, and concentrated on keeping his footing at a crazy speed, and bracing his left arm steadily to give Bunty a safety barrier from falling as she leaped and slid and bounded after him, and a grab handle whenever her foot stepped askew on the slates. The way was narrow as well as steep, his body would prevent her from crashing down towards the sea, even if she lost her footing. Whenever they reached one of the more level stretches he took her hand, but on the patches of broken shingle, laid with loose slate slabs for steps, she pressed close at his back and held by his shoulder. And at every step he quivered to the touch of her fingers with delight and agony, and wished her away, miles away in safety out of this mess in which he had involved her. But even then wishing her away was almost more than he could manage.

They were half-way down when he heard the back door of the cottage crash open above them, and at the same time the sound of running feet on the paved path that led round the house to the seaward side. One man had come round; two, probably, had gone through. Round the other end of the house it was impossible to go, it was built out to the edge of the drop. You could climb below safely enough if you had a fairish head for it, but not in the dark. Luke gripped the key of the boat-house in his pocket, his knuckles pressed for comfort against the gun. A finger of light from a torch fumbled down into the crevices of the rocks. They were sheltered from it by the tortuous turns, and close to the jetty now, but the pursuers could not fail to see the path, and the roof of the boat-house a sheen of grey in the sudden beam. With a light they could cover that descent only too quickly.

He was so intent on the movements of the men above that the movement below took him by surprise, bringing him up shocked and short like a blow to the heart.

A fourth man rose out of the shadows and bulked in their path darkly, blocking the way. The large, square-shouldered shape, neckless and muscular, closed the passage between the rocks solidly. A flat grey voice like the flat grey slates said: “Hold it right there, mate! Stay put, and get your hands up!”

Luke, arrested in mid-flight on steps steeper than average, pulled up with a suddenness that jarred him from heels to head, and cost Bunty her balance. Her foot slipped on a shifting stone, an unstable slate tilted forward as she stepped on it, and she was down on hands and knees, clinging to the rock, the displaced slab hard and heavy against her side. Some of the stones that supported its forward edge had rolled out of position and made it treacherous. She shoved her shoulder under it and heaved it back to its proper level to free herself of its weight, and the moment of confusion and alarm dissolved in understanding at that instant, and she knew they were not going to get away. They’d underestimated their opponents. The lay-out had been surveyed from the seaward side before ever the car drove up to the house. And this way, too, was closed to them.

She scrambled to her feet again, covered by Luke’s body. She heard the hard voice below say impatiently: “You heard me, chum. Let’s see your hands.”

Luke fired from the pocket of his coat on the last word. He hadn’t known he was going to do it, he hadn’t even realised that his thumb had already shoved off the safety catch. Still less consciously had he calculated the angle of the drop before him, and tilted the thing well down in his pocket, to startle and cripple, perhaps, but not to kill. At this distance even he couldn’t miss, the whole crevice between the rocks seemed to be full of the bulky body, with the lambent native silver of the sea outlining it clearly. He and Bunty had the dark and solid rock behind them; but even so, he reached for her with his left hand as he fired with the right, and drew her close to his back, covered from sight by his body.

The report was sharp and loud between the rocks, and followed closely by a gasping grunt and a curious, waspish whine. The dark shape before him buckled suddenly sideways, clutching at its knee, and went down in a toppling fall on to the stones, sliding downhill a yard with scrambling feet before it found a stable resting-place. What astonished Luke most was that the other gun didn’t go off, but he had no time to speculate on the reason. Without a word he launched himself forward down the path, swung Bunty before him past the grovelling, groaning, cursing man on the ground, and charged after her.

The threshing shape heaved suddenly, as if the rock had risen under him; an arm came up and reached for him. He hurdled the body blindly, felt the fingers claw at his ankle and miss their hold. Then he came down by ill luck on shifting stones that rolled away from under his foot and flung him on his back, knocking the breath out of him, and half the sense with it. The hand that had missed his ankle scrabbled after him hungrily, and found a grip on his hair. A solid weight rolled over on top of him, holding him down; the hand shifted to his mouth. Not to his throat, his mouth! That was it, that was why no shot, either, he realised, struggling to free his arms from the weight that pinned them. They wanted no sound carrying for miles up-coast and down over the sounding-board of this placid sea. This back-gate guard had been told to threaten, not to fire. In that case Luke had good reason to be glad of his own single shot; someone, somewhere, might have heard. Bunty, he thought desperately, wrenching one arm clear and jabbing upwards viciously under a thick jaw, scream, now, while you’ve got the chance, and keep on screaming. They might cut and run yet. But what was the use, she wasn’t a screamer. Not a sound from her!

An arm swung at his head, and he rolled aside from the blow and felt something hard graze his temple and clang like metal on the rock. Whalebone fingers ground deep into his cheeks, clamping his lips against his teeth. He fought for breath, and heard his opponent pumping in sobbing gasps of air and spending them in incoherent, monotonous curses, hissing with pain between the words that were hardly words. When the weight on top of him shifted for another attempt at clubbing him with the gun, he heaved up one knee and tried to throw his incubus from him, but it was too heavy to be lifted or unbalanced so easily. And from somewhere above, a crazy accompaniment to this disordered scene, came the busy, absorbed sound of feet descending endlessly towards them, like the Goons padding along some impossibly long radio corridor to open the door to one more visitor to Bedlam.

It was Bunty, however, who reached them first, Bunty with a sizable stone in her two hands, and some furious atavism stirring in her that made fear of secondary importance. It was not a particularly well-chosen stone, but she had had to grope for it in the dark. Nor was she very deft at using it; perhaps she was right, and they both of them had some built-in prohibition against killing that handicapped them badly in a situation like this. But she did her best. The stone thudded against the back of a classically Alpine skull, low towards where the neck should have been if there had been any neck, and rolled down hunched shoulders to bounce away down the slope. The throttling hand slackened, the weight slumped with a grunt over Luke’s threshing body. Bunty, taking what she could find, reached over the wide shoulders to seize the lapels of the man’s raincoat, and drag it back with all her strength to pinion his upper arms. Luke heaved himself clear with a convulsion that sent them all three slipping and staggering downhill; and Bunty caught at his hand and helped to pull him to his feet.

They were at the edge of the jetty, hand in hand, the injured man dragging himself along after them half-stunned and moaning, when the three men from above overtook and fell upon them. Luke, swinging to fight them off a shade too late, went down heavily beneath two of them, and stayed down. Bunty, turning at the edge of the water, watched the small, murderous black eye of a revolver advance at leisure until it touched her breast.

“All righ’t, sweetheart,” said the small, murderous, black-avised man behind the gun, in just the mild, metallic, indifferent voice the gun might have used, “upstairs again, and see and be a lady on the way. Your boy-friend here can’t afford no slips on your part. He’s got enough troubles as it is. Walk!”

Bunty walked, at an even and sedate pace, leading that procession up the cliff-path and back to the house, with the gun not a yard from her back, and a torch pricking her consciousness occasionally to remind her that every step was watched. She walked with the same erect stride she always had, stretching her long legs to the steeper steps without slackening speed. There was nothing she could do, except make it clear that she had no tricks to play. Luke was only a few yards behind her, and the enemy, though reduced to three against two, had now four guns at their disposal, and none ranged against them. There was no sense in provoking death.

Far behind them among the rocks, the wounded man hoisted himself painfully from stair to stair, dragging one leg and leaving a long smear of blood behind him. When the prisoners were safely in the house and under guard, perhaps one of his fellows would help him to finish the journey. Now it seemed that he was of no importance. His thin, quiet cursing followed them up to the terrace, and behind it like a backcloth rolled the soft, absorbed night-singing of a calm sea.

How queer, thought Bunty involuntarily, I still don’t know where we are. Somewhere on the east coast of Scotland. North of Muirdrum, I remember the policeman there thought he’d recognised Luke’s car passing through. Luke mentioned going into Forfar. Her mind sketched in, with lightheaded clarity, a map of the Angus coastline. Somewhere between Arbroath and Montrose? Up the coast there must be Lunan Bay, and farther north are the Bullars of Buchan, where Doctor Johnson insisted on sailing into the rock cauldron in a small boat. You can only do it when it’s calm. Calm! Like to-night. You could do it to-night.

Luke came up the path after her between two guns. The key of the boat-house had been taken from him along with the gun from the same pocket. All their evidence lost. He was bruised, sore and sick with chagrin; but most of all he raged that he had not sent Bunty home or taken her to the safety of the nearest police station in the morning, while there’d been time, time they’d frittered away in supposing that they had only the police to contend with. Now they knew better, and now was too late.

But at every step he felt that there was something wrong, that something about Bunty was not as he had expected it to be, and his battered and confused mind could not run the discrepancy to earth. Not until they were hustled and prodded through the back door into the kitchen, and there penned in a corner until someone found the fuse-box. The wounded man, out in the darkness, laboriously groaned and fumbled his way up towards the terrace, and no one seemed to care. If you’re incapacitated, you’re finished with. Throw the broken one away and get a new one. The modern trend even with human beings, it seemed. Luke shivered, but even in the middle of this horror there was a grain of comfort that glowed securely, so clear was the division between himself and these people with whom, for a while, he had been confusing himself.

It was worth finding out, even if it was the last thing he did.

“Draw the curtains,” ordered the irresponsibly cheerful voice from inside the broom-cupboard. “Don’t want to embarrass the visitors, do we? Neighbours are nosy enough without encouraging ’em.” A curious, high-pitched giggle echoed brassily out of the enclosed space.

“They’re drawn,” said the small, dark, deadly one. “Get on with it.”

“All right, the current’s on.”

The third man flipped down the light-switch, the round fluorescent fixture blinked its daylight eye once, and then glowed steadily. And there they were, all five of them, two prisoners and three captors. No, six altogether, the lame man was just fumbling his way through the doorway, holding by the latch with all his weight. They hauled him inside not out of any concern for him, but so that they could close the door and keep the light within.

It was then that Luke realised at last what had been wrong with Bunty. How could she have used both hands to heave up that rock and crack this wretch on the head with it? She’d been carrying something when they set out. She wasn’t carrying anything now, except the handbag that swung from her wrist. She had both hands in the pockets of her light grey coat, and was looking round at them all measuringly and warily, her face stonily calm. She met even his eyes, and her expression didn’t change, was significantly careful not to change.

Somewhere, at some moment which he could not locate in his frantic recapitulation, Bunty had disposed of the better part of fifteen thousand pounds. The package of banknotes and Pippa Gallier’s passport and air ticket had vanished without trace.