by Lorna Gray
Then John blinked. “Oh, damn you to hell!”
The next moment found me thrusting myself forwards across the terrace. He had turned again and as Matthew tried and failed to scramble desperately to his feet, the gun rose once more in his hand. With my heart pounding in my ears and a voice that quavered with fear, I raced past the frozen figures to the top of the steps and somehow, in a breathless jumble, managed to say:
“Actually your fortune won’t be made in a Boston salesroom next week, John. The lorry should be where I left it, which is on the Mason’s Arms haulage yard. Complete with horses…” I had to pause to gather my nerves; and then committed myself to this fate.
“… And artwork.”
What followed felt like an eternity of silence. In reality it probably only lasted for a millisecond. John took a few faltering strides towards me and then stopped, eyes glinting beneath dark streaks of flattened hair. The latticed glass in the windows made a crazed pattern across his face as he stared up at me. Then his mouth twisted strangely and with sudden terrible knowledge of what was to come, I took a few uselessly instinctive steps backwards.
A low murmur of engine noise washed across the wall of the house on the wind, in so fleeting a crescendo that it may well have been only in my imagination but then, whether truth or fantasy, it faded again, and with it took the last vestiges of hope. Desperate eyes flicked right to the Colonel but he was staring at his son with the blank mindlessness of shock and I knew that he would not help me. Sir William was simply gaping stupidly and I wondered if he was aware that we were still there at all. Matthew, I knew, had not even had strength enough to preserve his own life, he certainly had nothing left to offer for me and I do not believe I have ever felt so alone, flanked as I was by all those people and yet so very far from any kind of help.
Reluctantly my eyes returned to John’s icy blue and suddenly my desperate burst of bravery seemed very foolish indeed. His eyes were wide and very light and when he uttered a strange strangled groan, I thought for an appalling moment that he was going to shoot me as I stood there. But then the gun flashed down into the grass and he started towards me once more.
“You little bitch,” he said and closed the last few yards in a bound.
Chapter 36
I remember a confused blur; hands reaching for me, grasping and clutching. There was a hoarse shout of my name and then a piercing scream that could only have been mine but somehow seemed to come from somewhere else entirely. I hit out. I must have connected because he spat an oath but then he drew back and suddenly I was flung cruelly backwards to fall hard against the house wall. My head hit stone, painfully, then he was on me and I went down beneath him with a panicked cry and a disorientating flurry of dirt and stunted shrubbery. His grip hurt and there seemed to be a bitter sort of twisted irony that this story would begin and end with a man’s strength easily imprisoning my hands.
I screamed again, uselessly, only to be sharply silenced as his fingers finally moved to my throat. I twisted frantically, desperately, but it was no use. The hand shifted, found its grip, and then with devastatingly practised skill, determinedly, agonisingly tightened.
An angry bellow from a gun penetrated the roaring by my ear. It was the sound of his breathing and the excruciating throbbing abruptly eased as an impossible pressure was dragged clear from my throat. My world span and my limbs were leaden, and for a moment it was all I could do to lie there, gasping painfully while grime and gutter water was thrown up in coarse clouds to crunch and splatter around me. It smelled of lavender.
A lump of mud, or a twig perhaps, struck my face, jerking me back to some sort of consciousness. Twisting, finding the boiling light clearing from my eyes, I saw the Colonel snatch the gun from Sir William’s hands to throw it violently to the ground. Looking utterly and genuinely aghast, Sir William did nothing to stop him and as the black glint of falling metal drew my eye, I realised that the expanse of dappled window light that ran cascading down the steps behind them was empty. Entirely empty.
The sharp hiss of an ugly curse snapped my attention to the booted feet that had been scraping and straining unnoticed by my head for some time, and it finally dawned on me with a crushing surge of realisation that somehow Matthew had found the strength after all.
With the careful deliberation that comes from shock, I deduced that the gun had gone off instinctively, accidentally, at the very same instant that Matthew had plunged up the slope to crash bodily past Sir William and onwards to tackle John. With the same dazed stupidity, I noticed that fresh marks had streaked the stone stabs near my head from the spray of lead pellets. They almost made a pattern.
I came back to life with a jolt when the blur of wrestling men crashed noisily into the stone frame of the window above me. As a foot slipped in the wet to pass within inches, it actually tangled a little in the spread of my hair. The sudden unexpected sting of pain was the stimulus I needed and I managed to roll aside just as a clipped cry of pain overhead was followed by the tinkling crash of breaking glass.
Slithering back into my shelter of the creeper, I saw to my horror that it was Matthew who was being pressed painfully back against the buckling panes of the latticed window. But then his grip on the other’s body shifted and then shifted again, and John was sent backwards into a stagger that very nearly left him sprawling on the terrace.
I heard Matthew’s breathing, rough and laboured in the cold night air as he lingered above me for a brief moment, fighting desperation and fatigue before thrusting forwards to meet the other’s attack across the running surface. A knee lifted gruesomely, connected; John was fighting brutally and it was clear that he was perfectly determined to kill his opponent in any way he could. A fist swung for Matthew’s jaw but the blow fell short to glance harmlessly off a shoulder and then John's foot slipped so that he had to flail desperately for balance and grip the person he was trying to destroy. In an instant Matthew closed on him and they both went crashing down in a rough scattering of mud and water so that for a moment I couldn’t tell who it was that had the other held in a savage grip. But then Matthew managed to twist free and John’s head snapped back and he fell away with a sharp animal cry of pain.
Matthew took a while to get up – too long, and I saw a flicker of triumph pass across John’s clouded face as, muttering a lurid threat woven about my name, he stepped in to prepare another punishingly brutal blow. I screamed a warning, fingers tearing shreds out of the creeper as I dragged myself to my feet. It was only as I drew in another gasping breath that I realised that I had made no sound at all.
But whether by instinct or by luck, Matthew twisted aside in mid-rise so that I saw the kick cut a sodden arc to glide harmlessly past him and then he was on his feet again, stepping forwards into a determined lunge so that they disappeared together in another chaos of disturbed evergreens and straining limbs. They crashed down again, this time into one of the tall sculpted yews to carve a grotesque hole in the side before dislodging one of the stone urns in an uncontrollable dive that sent them both tumbling to the foot of the stone steps. Again, it was John who was first to stagger drunkenly to his feet.
Staggering myself as I took those first urgent steps away from the support of the sagging creeper, I saw that man, snarling, reach for his opponent’s throat. His fingers worked with the same ugly confidence that had grasped at mine but he was not so bold when Matthew only stepped in and broke his hold with all the fluidity of experience. John gave ground, limping now as he slithered backwards down the slope of the mud smeared lawn and he seemed suddenly aware that as he tired, the distinction between murderer and victim became considerably less well defined. But then I noticed a black line in the rain-soaked grass behind his feet and as light burst from the house to cast their shadows long across the blackened hillside, I realised what he was doing. I set my dogged course towards it.
Light flickered again. It swung in a dizzying lurch across the bowing flowerbeds before fixing into a narrow wavering beam. Another joined
it, swaying crazily from the other end of the terrace, and I realised that the lights were not coming from the house at all, but beyond from the sweeping driveway as, running with torches, the police finally arrived.
Hands touched me, gripping me as I reached the top of the steps and hung there briefly, gasping for breath and gripping the newly vacated plinth in my turn. They were patting me – the Colonel beside me with his brother just behind, checking I was unhurt I think – but their presence faded to nothing in my consciousness when beyond I saw John abandon the gun and break away to lift his head, listening. He took another clumsy step backwards, dodging Matthew’s reach with a desperate snarl and then turned his head to listen again. Craning my aching neck past the old men, I tried to peer into the flickering darkness and it was only when a great shape detached itself from the shadows that I finally understood.
Spooked and maddened by the crush of approaching men who ran along behind her, Beechnut must have been sent on a frantic charge out of the driveway and around the far side of the house towards us. She jinked right, stirrups flapping and hooves scrabbling wildly for purchase on the slippery terrace before launching herself in a scattering of wind-ravaged buddleias over a flowerbed and down onto the greasy surface of the mud-scarred lawn.
Caught in mid-lunge, Matthew let out a cry as she crashed past him, sending him spinning aside from the force of her impact to land sprawling in the mud. John was more fortunate. Forewarned and already making a side-stepping evasion, John threw up his arms to ward her off and as she veered away I saw his hands stretch out and reach for the reins. She flung her head wildly, trying to tear away from him, but somehow he held her and even as Matthew scrambled into a desperate dive, he jumped and swung himself up onto her back.
The horse plunged and kicked savagely and I thought that he would fall but somehow he managed to force her up into the bridle to take her prisoner between hand and leg. He turned her in a spinning circle. It was very nearly a rear and as she shied from the spreading line of policemen, he dragged on a rein and at last released her to send her at a pounding gallop away from us down the slope.
She went at a maddened race. Her flying hooves sent up great clumps of earth as she charged across the slanting lawn towards the low hedge on its crumbling boundary that overlooked the great lake. It stretched black in the distance and suddenly I realised with a sense of numbing horror what was about to happen.
John was crouching low over her neck with all the precarious perfection of a racing jockey as he urged her ever onwards, and in that position he never stood a chance. As before she threw out her legs at the last possible moment and once again she crashed to a slithering halt so that her chest pressed brutally against the sharp evergreen of the box hedge and her muscles strained hard to hold her back. Her head dropped and then he was airborne, soaring high and far over the steep slopes of the black wooded valley. He seemed to hang there for an eternity, an unnatural creature snatching greedily at the sky. But then, suddenly, he lost his battle with gravity and at last, gracelessly, with terrible and devastating finality, he fell.
Chapter 37
I must have somehow staggered down the steps and onto the lawn because I found myself hurrying blindly across the dirtied ground towards Beechnut as she hovered by the hedge, nostrils flared and head flung high in wild agitation. The reins were hanging from her bit to trail about her feet as she anxiously stamped about and I desperately wanted to reach her before she could step on them and damage herself. But then, with a sudden and terrible awakening to fresh horror, I stopped dead, and try as I might I could not force myself to move any closer.
His heel, the booted heel of his foot was just visible above the low curve of the wall where it rested in unnatural stillness on the far pasture, and I knew with a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that I really did not want to see any more. I stood there, swaying gently in a helpless paralysis of horror, knowing that nothing on earth would be powerful enough to make me do it, and yet still trying to force my frozen limbs to carry me forwards to rescue my straying horse.
Then there was a wet crunch of footsteps behind and suddenly strong hands grasped my shoulders to pull me roughly round. My body obeyed helplessly and it was done with such insistence that I would have kept spinning but for his support. Raindrops streaked hard across the wild night air as with rapid breath and a ghostly complexion, his dark eyes stared down at me to intently search my face. There was fresh blood across his cheek and a weary line along his jaw, and when his questioning gaze finally came to rest upon mine, it brought with it such a powerful jolt of realisation that I actually felt as though it must be some kind of mistake.
“Matthew …” I whispered in an agony of disbelief. For a moment he simply stood there, looking down at me, his exhausted face mirroring my own feeble doubts. But then, with a sudden contraction of his mouth, his hands shifted and I found myself being pulled into a tight embrace that was so very solid and so very determined that it seemed like I might never need to draw breath again.
It seemed to be hours later when I found myself dry and huddled warm under blankets, quietly listening to the steady pounding of rain outside. I was leaning against him in a drowsy haze of peacefulness on my settee; the gentle rhythm of his heart was regular now, settled and easy, and a world away from the rough embrace we had shared out on the windswept hillside.
My forehead had been buried in his shoulder then, and I do not believe that I had been capable of doing anything other than cling to him in determined oblivion, concentrating hard on the sound of his breathing as it gradually steadied. He had held me close and even when a police officer appeared by his side he had only lifted his head to confirm that we were all right before allowing his cheek to rest upon my hair once more. I was very cold, it must have been a long time before I could begin to control my shocked shivering and even longer before I was able to lift my head. But then at long last I did, and when I lifted my eyes to meet his, he lightly brought his hand to cover mine in a gesture of such tenderness that finally I was able to accept that his touch was real and he was definitely very much alive.
Now there was no doubt. His voice was warm and relaxed in my ear as he talked and the two police officers – who I suspected were Downe and Fleece only I couldn’t remember which was which – were nodding seriously at us from their station near the fire. A fresh cup of tea materialised magically in my hands and reluctantly I roused myself from my cosy stupor enough to take it. Matthew paused in the act of taking his hand away and, gently, closed his fingers briefly over mine in quiet affirmation before turning his attention back once more to the patiently listening policemen. His other arm was wrapped heavily about my shoulders, pinning me against his side as if I had any intention of going anywhere, and occasionally, where he felt that he needed to expand on some particularly unpleasant point, his hand would tighten a little in its grip upon my arm. I gave a comfortable sigh and nestled a little closer.
The trip home had been a long blur of headlights and exhaustion, winding round by a long route to avoid roads closed by flooding and windblown trees, and that first step into my deserted kitchen, which still held Matthew’s frantic note and the evidence of my hasty departure, had been the most bizarre kind of homecoming. Freddy, unfailing in his demonstration of the resilience of youth, was somewhere outside accompanied by a kindly policewoman as he settled a surprisingly sedate and blessedly unharmed Beechnut back into her stable. I had tried to insist on leading her back myself but Matthew’s negative had been resoundingly firm and Beechnut had been so delighted to see someone she knew that she forgot to resist when he caught her and handed her to a ceaselessly euphoric Freddy.
That darling boy had arrived in the back of a police car looking anxious and deathly pale and, bursting heedlessly through the assembled policemen, had flung himself headlong at us with such energy that he almost knocked Matthew flat. The enthusiasm of their reunion had been wonderful and Matthew had smiled for the first time, a tired attempt at warmth, and
enveloped him in a comfortingly smothering bear-hug.
And he was smiling now, a reassuringly familiar lift to one corner of his mouth and I looked up to realise that one of the policemen had been speaking to me for some time. That smile grew wider as he mildly observed, “You’re not really with us, are you? That was the Inspector on the telephone.”
I hadn’t even heard it ring.
The policeman beamed largely, seeming suddenly startlingly human behind the blank impartiality of his uniform. “The Inspector told me to give you his best, Miss Phillips, and instructed me to give you a severe dressing down for sending him racing away this evening, in this weather, all the way down to a poky little Hampshire police station only to discover once he’d got there that all hell was breaking loose back here…” He grinned. “Oh and by the way, the Turford brothers send their best.”
I sheepishly sat up a little straighter in my seat. “And how did he find them?”
“Bruised. And just a little bit confused.”
The policeman’s smile widened. It was a little startling how with the telling of my grim tale these two police officers seemed to have forgotten the normal bounds of their strict formality and were now treating me with friendliness, deference and a rather disturbing amount of frank respect.
The policeman’s gaze sobered a little, lifting from mine to Matthew’s face. “You will take good care now, won’t you, sir? And you do know not to do anything stupid like attempt to take yourself away somewhere in the next few days, don’t you…?”
It appeared that whatever reply the officer read in Matthew’s short laugh was to his satisfaction because he suddenly gave a nod that was startlingly like his superior’s and shut his notebook with a snap. Then he smiled again and extended his hand, “I’m very glad you came to see us today, Mr Croft. Inspector Woods had already begun to suspect that the bleak picture being painted of your character was not entirely accurate, helped – if it’s not too bold to say it – in no small part by the actions of this young lady, and he was glad to have it confirmed. No, don’t get up either of you, we’ll see ourselves out. The Inspector will drop in after a day or two if he may, just to complete his notes … And to see Freddy, of course. I’m not sure the desk-sergeant will ever be quite the same again after the tongue-lashing he received. Now remember what I said, sir; don’t wander far.”
