by Lorna Gray
I asked, “Why didn’t you go to the police?”
“Because …” He stopped. Then he shot me an odd little frowning glance. “Because,” he repeated carefully, “pretty soon it became clear that the police were on the hunt, too. I would have handed myself in, but seeing all those men and dogs, I didn’t get the impression that they were likely to be inclined to believe me – my fingerprints are all over the scene, the house, his things…and you can be sure that those two villains left no trace of themselves. To be frank I’m not sure I’d believe me, my tale sounds pretty fantastical and I’m damned if I’m going to hand myself in to be hanged for something I didn’t do.”
“So then what happened?” Freddy’s prompt was given with all the enthusiasm of a boy hearing an amazing adventure story.
“Well, then I made a mistake. I’d been out there on the run for two nights in this ridiculous weather and I was getting pretty tired and hungry. There’s only so much food just lying about waiting to be taken by passing fugitives so as dawn was just coming up I thought I’d drop in on Jamie’s sister to see if she could shed any light on this thing. She lives in Miserden, you know? Lord only knows what I was thinking, going there. Anyway, as any fool could have guessed, they were there, waiting for me.”
“The police?”
“No, Freddy, the same two men who had attacked me before.” He shifted uncomfortably in his chair and I think his shoulder was hurting him. “Luck abandoned me then; I got cornered. They managed to stay out of sight until I was very nearly knocking at the door but suddenly a car’s headlights flicked on and I was blinded, pinned against the wall by the light. I didn’t wait to see who it was – whether police or crooks – I ran round the building and dived behind an outhouse but they must have anticipated it because just as I ran out the other side, they cut me off. I was forced to jump a wall and scramble across some pretty deep drifts. Until that point I’d had a reasonably good lead but all of a sudden I was exposed; I turned to see where they were and at that moment one of them fired his gun. I didn’t even realise immediately that I’d been hit. You don’t always …”
I had the horrible realisation that he was speaking from previous experience and suddenly I knew how little my quiet enquiries had told me beyond the information that he had been caught in the bloody retreat through Ypres. It had been an impossible situation, having absolutely no right to the information and knowing how the gossips would get to work if I mistakenly asked the wrong person.
“All I knew was that something had knocked all the breath out of me and I hit the ground hard. But some rush of adrenalin got me to my feet again, and somehow I managed to get far enough under cover of some young saplings to shake them.” A fresh grimace. “It was just starting to snow again, I remember, and I was getting pretty panicky by then. I didn’t know how badly I was hurt and I didn’t want to hole up somewhere for fear that they’d find me, so I kept moving.”
“Until I saw you!” Freddy suddenly piped up, “I told Eleanor but she didn’t believe me. I was bringing in the ponies that had wandered down to the far fields and I saw you.”
Matthew’s expression suddenly lightened. “You did, did you? Well, you saved my life, young man. And a second time when you persisted in stalking me in the dead of night and foisting food upon me when I thought I was incredibly well concealed.” He ruffled the boy’s hair and then smiled as the beaming youth smoothed it down again.
“Oh, well, it was nothing really.” Freddy was trying to adopt a cool man-to-man nonchalance which might have worked had his grin not been quite so large. “And Eleanor did her bit too,” he added generously.
“She most certainly did,” Matthew said, slightly less enthusiastically. And then his expression changed all over again as he added; “So, now you know …”
What an extraordinary mixture of elation and dismay at the sudden release from ignorance. And it still felt rather surreal to be sitting opposite him in the cosy warmth of my kitchen, after all the recent drama, and after all these long years.
I had boiled the kettle; we were all sitting nursing fresh cups of tea looking thoughtful and I caught myself staring at Matthew again, examining his face, trying to understand how he or I were ever going to make sense of this mess. There was still that trace of dark forbidding tension about him and I could perceive now that it was beginning to coil itself around me.
He looked up suddenly and caught my eye before I could look away, and the faint half-apologetic lift that tugged at his cheek made me wonder if he too was thinking that only a few short hours ago he had thought himself alone in this. I wasn’t sure if he thought things had yet changed for the better …
He dropped his eyes quickly enough to the teaspoon that was slowly spinning on its heel beneath his fingers but a trace of warmth still lifted the corner of his mouth and yet again it was disturbingly familiar. I felt like demanding: is this it? Are we friends now? But instead I took a calming breath and said, “So no prizes for guessing where you went today.”
“Well…” Matthew began, glancing from me to Freddy and back again, looking so tired that I couldn’t help feeling a fresh rush of concern. Then he shrugged haplessly in the face of my disapproval. “It did seem sensible to take the opportunity of the manhunt looking the other way to go and have a little peek at Jamie’s house.”
Freddy gasped.
Matthew smiled grimly. “It’s all right, I was more careful this time. I have no desire to take any more chances against that gun.”
“They were there?” I asked sharply.
“They were there,” he confirmed. “Like the last time and if it wasn’t too bizarre I’d say they were still waiting for me.” A swift glance in response to my exclamation. “Yes, there’s little doubt they were waiting the last time. He was quite cold, you see, so he’d been dead for a while. So if they didn’t clear out then as soon as the deed was done, the only logical conclusion is that they must have known I was coming and decided to lay a particularly odd trap for me. And that leaves us with the eternal question, why? Jamie may well have been little better than a penniless, workshy criminal living in a crumbling farmhouse but I’m a partner in a reasonably successful architects firm in Gloucester and though I’m not exactly rich, I’m definitely a step above having shady dealings with men like them. In fact, it occurs to me that they were very lucky indeed that I got away.”
“Why?”
The teaspoon was arrested abruptly in mid-spin by the palm of his hand and it made me jump. “Why? Because if I’d died they would have had a hell of a job convincing the police that I’d had reason to rob and then kill him, whereas now they have a ready-made suspect complete with a dramatic manhunt and some very incriminating behaviour!”
The sudden anger of this outburst rang loudly into the silence that succeeded it. Then, looking a little sheepish at our expressions, he added in a considerably more measured tone, “But today, anyway, they were conveniently sitting in a car away from the house and near the barn where they thought they would get a good vantage point. I managed to slip around the back and over the brook without being seen and then I turned burglar …”
“For someone who claims to be so squeaky clean, you seem to have a remarkable number of dubious skills.”
Matthew shot me a sudden grin. “Only from my misspent youth, I assure you.” He carefully restored the teaspoon to its place near the milk jug before adding, “I hoped to find some clue of what Jamie had been up to so I had a good look around.”
“And did you find anything?” Freddy asked eagerly.
“No, nothing, the place was clean.”
“Oh,” I said in heavy disappointment.
“No, no – you misunderstand me. The house was clean, as in really clean. If you had spent as many years stuck with the man as I have, you would know that it just doesn’t fit.”
“It doesn’t?”
“Jamie Donald was the most untidy person I have ever met, and that’s saying something.” Unconsciously his eyes scanned the
room, taking in all the little piles of my accumulated clutter. Hmph, I thought. “You know we served together? Well, I even had to put him on report once, it got so bad. No – someone’s been in there and tidied up, and I’d cheerfully bet my life on it that it was our friendly Irishmen.”
“So you didn’t find anything? No letters, no slips of paper with a hastily scrawled note? That sort of thing?”
“You mean anything conveniently naming his attackers? Or explaining how he somehow decided to involve me? Sadly not.” He was smiling gently.
“Oh,” I said, feeling deflated. “But you seemed so cheerful when you got back.”
“That’s because I put some more of my misspent youth to work and left our friends in their car a little present. An old trick I’ve learned from somewhere is to stuff wadding into the exhaust – the car won’t start properly and it’ll take them a while to figure out why.” All tiredness vanished as he grinned devilishly.
“That’s awful,” I cried. “They might have caught you!”
“That’s brilliant,” said Freddy, laughing uproariously.
“They were in the house anyway, shouting at each other and spotting my muddy footprints all over the floor so they didn’t notice me up by their car. I was tempted to steal it, but I probably couldn’t have got it moving and anyway I decided that this little gesture of defiance would be more annoying.”
I shot him a disapproving look. “That was still very risky.” I frowned. “And that was where you’ve been all day? It’s not that far to Warren Barn.”
To my surprise he looked a little uncomfortable. “Well, I drifted back by a long route to avoid leaving a trail for our local manhunt. It’s lucky that the woodland is dripping like it is; my footsteps dissolved even as I walked. And then I just sat and contemplated the view for a while.”
“Really? Where?” Freddy asked interestedly.
Matthew shifted in his seat before finally replying. “At the bottom of Sixty Acres, the corner that looks out over that odd little cottage and down to the stream at Washbrook. Do you know it? You can see for miles from there and today it was beautiful with mist blanketing the hills and wisps of steam rising from the thawing trees.”
I understood then why he had hesitated. I didn’t need to hear his description to picture in sharp detail the meeting of three wooded valleys with the straggling cottages of Caudle Green on the far slopes, and a faint outline of the houses of Miserden on the horizon beyond. Only in my mind it was summer, the grass was full of the purple-flowering vetch, a skylark was dancing overhead and the warm breeze was ruffling my hair as I turned with a happy smile towards the sound of a stone turning under foot …
“What were you doing there?” Freddy asked curiously.
“Thinking,” Matthew said, looking straight at me. There was a long pause and then, watching me for a reaction, he said carefully, “You won’t ask what I was thinking about? I was thinking about you, what I’m doing to you by coming back here, and whether I’m doing the right thing by letting you embroil yourself in my mess. I was thinking about you, as I seem to have been doing rather a lot recently.”
I got up so abruptly that I think I made Freddy jump.
“More tea?” I asked with a strangled croak.
“Eleanor…” Matthew began but I ignored him.
I concentrated very hard on the kettle as it boiled. It is amazing how interesting tea leaves can be as they are spooned carefully from the caddy into the pot. And collecting more milk from the dairy for the little jug – which must have been my mother’s because otherwise my father would never have tolerated anything quite so floral – was a task that could not be put off any longer.
“Eleanor,” Matthew said insistently. “Eleanor? Will you look at me?”
“Stop it,” I said quietly to the teaspoon in my hand.
“Pardon?”
“Just stop it,” I said again, this time to the teacups.
There was an awkward pause, and then Matthew said levelly, “All right, I can see that you don’t want to talk about this now.” Then he added very softly, “It’s not exactly easy for me either, you know.”
The room seemed to shrink and tighten around me, making me feel horribly claustrophobic like I couldn’t breathe. If anyone had asked me a week ago how I felt about him I would have happily told them that I was perfectly indifferent but somehow it was as if a switch had been pressed in my brain and suddenly the anger which had lain undetected for years now broke with blinding force. I twisted to face him and found that I was shaking in my fury:
“How dare you? How dare you? You have no right to keep pushing me like this! I’ve already given you shelter and now I’m to understand you’ve embroiled Freddy. And for what? To sooth your wounded ego?”
“I know I have no right, Eleanor!” He jerked his head in exasperation. “You can’t honestly think that I’d fling further demands at you after all you’ve done so far? That’s not what this is about. This is about you and how you flinch like a scalded cat every time I ask you if you’re sure you want to be doing even this much – is it really so hard to trust me even a tiny bit?”
He stopped and took a long breath before continuing in a voice that was once more measured and calm. “Look, I’m not trying to upset you; you said yourself that you weren’t happy being drawn into the thick of things – yes, you did, you said it earlier, I heard you – and I’m just trying to work out whether this, having me here, risking imprisonment and Lord knows what else is actually what you want?”
“Well, that makes a change,” I said acidly, misunderstanding him deliberately. Poor Freddy might not have been in the room for all the notice I now took. “You’ve never worried about what I wanted before.”
“That’s not quite fair, Eleanor, and you know it,” he said, very softly indeed.
I shrugged off his reproof impatiently and turned back to making the tea as if my hands were steady enough to pour it. With a voice barely recognisable as my own, I spoke with increasing hysteria; “Why are you doing this? You finally start to tell me what happened and I think that perhaps I was mistaken and we could become friends and I can help, and then without warning you twist it and suddenly I’m on the defensive again as if I’ve done something wrong. You wouldn’t tell me, remember? You’ve trampled enough on my…f…feelings… No more, no more, do you hear?!”
I took ragged breath before finishing in a foolish rush. “And anyway, in case you’ve forgotten, you waived your right to question my choices in life eight years ago.” My voice crackled awfully and I stopped in a belated attempt to gather the shreds of my dignity together.
I noticed then, with a twist of something indefinable, that the handle of the tin teapot had been repaired and realised that he must have done it this very morning before the manhunt had appeared. This unfortunate discovery rather took the wind out of my sails but nevertheless I managed to slam the steaming cups down on the table and then glower at him with cheeks that burned with angry heat.
He returned my gaze with infuriating calm. “You’re very anxious to avoid a discussion on this, aren’t you?” If he had dared to look amused by my outburst I think I might have killed him. Instead he added carelessly, “I notice you were able to talk to the blue-eyed wonder earlier, but then I suspect he’s … different.”
I gaped at him in confusion. “Who?”
“The loverboy who’s heroically leading the hunt.”
“What on earth has John to do with any of this?” Then suddenly it hit me so that I said with a mocking laugh, “Are you jealous?”
He did not reply. He simply raised an enquiring eyebrow which irritated me to an extraordinary degree.
“Oh push off,” I snapped childishly, waving farewell to my dignity once and for all. “You think you’re so clever sitting there toying with me and baiting me like all this is just a game. Well, it’s a living hell for me. My involvement with you begins and ends with preventing another man from going to the gallows; you can stay here until you’re free
of this horrible thing, and then you’re out of my life. Have I made myself clear?”
I still don’t really know what made me blow up like that. Murder I could cope with, harbouring a wanted man I could cope with, but being made to talk about parts of my life that I had carefully locked away was more than I could bear. I felt tears prick at my eyes again and I blinked furiously; somehow I had fretted more in the past few days than I had in years.
He was staring at me across the abyss that was my kitchen table. His voice when he finally spoke was cold and entirely detached. “If that is what you want.”
“Yes. Yes, it is,” I whispered and fled.
It was a long time later that I realised the handle was back on the bedroom door.
Chapter 10
My mother once had to go and sit with an old school friend whose son was to be hanged. She never told me what they talked about, or even if they spoke at all but it is hard to conceive of them doing more than wait in the shrouded embrace of a sitting room until the seconds had finished their dismal climb towards midday.
Last night I closed my eyes to the memories of my last meeting with him; to dream of an eight-year-old argument where a brief romance had ended in rejection and man’s denial. This morning I opened them to the realisation that I hated the fact he could still have such a claim on me. And worse, that there was within me a nightmarish impulse to exact the very worst kind of revenge.
