CHAPTER XXXV

As soon as the first curve in the drive took her safely out of sight of the house Ray started the kind of broken run which can be kept up for quite a long time-three steps running and two walking. It gets you along very fast indeed, without making you too much out of breath. It wouldn’t do Bill any harm to wait, as she had already reflected, but she didn’t want to miss any of their time together. They were going to have a coffee at the Boar. Mrs. Reed made marvellous coffee-at least Bill said she did. If it had been bilgewater, Ray wouldn’t really have cared, only she wasn’t going to arrive all out of breath and have Bill think she had been in a hurry. He probably only wanted to talk about Lila anyhow.

She came out of the drive and ran right into him. No car this time, just Bill on his own large feet. She really did run into him, because he stepped out suddenly from behind the gatepost and she couldn’t help it. She had a bright colour and she was out of breath. He hadn’t any business to lurk behind gateposts and catch her out when they had agreed to meet at the Boar. If he had stayed put, she could have walked the last hundred yards or so and given a satisfactory performance of the girl who always keeps men waiting. And now all she could do after blundering into him was to give a gasp like a fish and say,

‘Miss Silver kept me.’

It was a lamentable business. Any girl of sixteen could have done better than that. At sixteen she could have done better herself. What undermines you is caring, and at sixteen she didn’t give a damn.

With all this going through her mind in rather a horrid flash, she was aware of Bill gripping her by the arm as if he was holding her off or up and frowning with a good deal of intensity. He gripped, he frowned, and said in a short, angry voice,

‘You can’t come to the Boar!’

‘Why can’t I?’

‘That’s why I walked up instead of waiting for you.’

‘What’s the good of saying “That’s why”, as if you had told me something when you haven’t?’

‘But I have. You can’t come to the Boar. I told you so.’

Ray stamped her foot on a bit of loose gravel. It hurt, but she had only herself to thank for it, which naturally made her feel angrier with Bill. It was extraordinary what a relief it was to be angry. It took away the frightened feeling which she had about him all the time now.

He was still holding her by the arm. But as the sound of a car came to them from the road, he swung her about and walked her quickly in at the gate and out of sight behind a large evergreen bush. She began to say, ‘What on earth-’ when he dropped her arm and interrupted.

‘You’d better not be seen with me-either here, or at the Boar, or anywhere else. If you had any sense you would have thought of that for yourself. You don’t belong in this mess, and the sooner you get out of it the better. There’s an afternoon train at about two-thirty-you had better catch it and clear out.’

‘I like that-when you asked me to come down!’

‘I know I did, and I’ve been kicking myself ever since. I wasn’t thinking about you, I was thinking about Lila.’

All Ray’s flame died down. She said in a quiet, careful voice,

‘Lila is still here, you know. There’s just as much reason for me to be with her as there was, isn’t there?’

‘If they arrest her, you won’t be able to be with her, and you’d better clear out before it happens or you’ll be getting mixed up with it.’

She said, her voice dragging,

‘Don’t be a fool, Bill. Has anything happened?’

‘Not yet, but it’s going to. I don’t know about Lila, but I’m pretty sure I am going to be arrested before the day is out. It’s all over the village that there’s a big man coming down from Scotland Yard, and that Abbott has had it put across him for not getting on with it and arresting us.’

Ray felt as if she had come a long way and got nowhere. If they arrested Bill, there might be an endless way to go-a lonely, endless way. She had to force her voice to make it sound at all.

‘How do you know?’

‘I heard two girls talking. I was in my room, and they were down in the garden. One of them is a niece of Mrs. Reed’s. She said it was ever so dreadful, wasn’t it-and I didn’t look like a murderer, but you couldn’t always tell, could you? And the other said the piece about a Chief Inspector coming down from Scotland Yard, and she knew that was right because Lizzie Holden told her, and she had it from Mrs. Newbury only she promised she wouldn’t say a word, and she wasn’t telling anyone but me, because she knew I was safe-and so forth and so on.’

‘Mrs. Newbury hasn’t any business to talk.’

‘Of course she hasn’t. And of course she does. If there is any way of stopping a leaky tongue, nobody has ever found it yet.’

‘Well, whatever she says, I don’t suppose she knows very much. And anyhow anything she did say would pile up like a snowball before it got half way round the village.’

He nodded gloomily.

‘That isn’t all. There’s been a mob of reporters milling round, wanting to know all about everything-Lila-me-you-what it feels like to be engaged to a girl and come back from America to find she’s going to marry someone else next week-what it feels like to be a suspect-’

‘They didn’t ask you that!’

‘Not quite. But they’d have liked to, and they got precious near it.’

She thought, ‘It’s the reporters who have really got under his skin.’

He went on in an angry voice.

‘If you had shown up at the Boar they’d have been on to you, and you’d have been torn to bits. I kept on saying, “No statement”, in the best diplomatic manner, and Mrs. Reed helped me to give them the slip. I gather she’s one of the people who think perhaps I didn’t do it, or if I did, he was asking for it and only got what was coming to him. He doesn’t seem to have managed to get himself liked very much down here, and they all seem to be sorry for Lila, but-Oh, Ray, it’s a mess! And you had better clear out-you really had.’ He put his two hands on her shoulders and let them rest there heavily.

Standing like that and looking up at him, her face very clear and pale, she said,

‘Oh, no, Bill. You didn’t really think I would, did you?’

‘I don’t want you mixed up in it.’

‘If you are mixed up in it-and Lila-then I am too.’

‘I don’t want you to be.’

‘You can’t help it. I’m here. And I’m going to stay. And they haven’t arrested you yet anyhow. You know what village gossip is-bits and scraps all well boiled up and passed along, with a new bit added every time anyone can think of something fresh to say. And tomorrow there’ll be quite a new story all about somebody else. After all, Bill, you didn’t kill Herbert Whitall, and somebody else did. Just hold on to that. Somebody killed him, and the police are going to find out who it was. Or if they don’t, Miss Silver will.’

The words came tumbling out. The dragging pain had gone. She was ready to fight again. Colour and courage came back. The face turned up to Bill’s was so warm and glowing that if he had not let go of her and stepped back he would have kissed it. And if he were going to kiss Ray now, it would mean too much to both of them. The time was gone when he could give her a friendly hug and brush her cheek with casual lips. It had gone by. It wouldn’t come again. Something ran between them, quick and strong. He stepped back and said,

‘All right-we pin our faith on Miss Silver. But she’ll have to be quick about it. I don’t see the police working overtime to get me out of a hole. It looks as if they were all set in the opposite direction.’

‘Like us,’ said Ray firmly. ‘We’re going down to the Boar to get that coffee.’

‘Oh, no, we’re not.’

She stamped again, but this time it was on soft earth.

‘Do you want me to go down there by myself? I will if you won’t come with me!’

‘The place is full of reporters.’

‘Do you suppose I care? I want that coffee, and I’m going down to the Boar to get it! And if you don’t come with me, I’ll talk to the reporters and say anything that comes into my head-anecdotes of your youth-how you made seventy-five not out in a village cricket match-how you jumped in off the pier at Brighton to save a child-’

‘I never did such a thing in my life!’

She laughed.

‘But I can say you did, and the more you say you didn’t, the more they’ll only think you are being modest. I can think up a lot more things like that, and I will if you don’t take me down to the Boar and give me that coffee.’

‘Ray, don’t be a fool! Don’t you see, if we go down there together-’

She said lightly,

‘Of course I see! They’ll think I’m a girl friend, and they’ll think perhaps it wasn’t so awfully serious about Lila, and that will be all to the good.’

‘Oh, you’re being a smoke-screen? I don’t think I want one.’

Ray began to be afraid she had gone too far. She hadn’t meant to say all that-it just slipped out. She let her voice tremble.

‘Oh, Bill-’

‘Well, I don’t.’

‘Bill, I’m sorry-I didn’t mean it that way.’

‘And now you are trying to get round me.’

‘Of course I am. And I really do want that coffee. Oh, Bill, don’t quarrel-I do hate it so!’

She slipped a hand inside his arm. There was an odd moment of emotion. So little time to quarrel in. Perhaps no time to make it up. He said in a forced, jerky voice,

‘All right, let’s come.’

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