The Grass Widow's Tale gfaf-7

by Ellis Peters

  To Bunty, swept suddenly away out of reach of fear on a wave of exultant battle-madness that stemmed from somewhere very far back in her ancestry, the sequence of events was for ever crystal clear, though they all followed one another so rapidly as to be virtually simultaneous. The first thing was that Fleet was on his back, but still with the Colt in his hand, and all his resilient faculties gathering in his trigger-finger. The next was that she was on her feet, hands stretched up to the extreme of her reach, flourishing the rug. It was interposed between her body and the gunmen for an instant too brief to measure, but in its shelter she flung herself to one side, expecting the shot that would surely come. It came from Blackie, though she would have bet on Fleet. Fleet was always to surprise her. Even on his back, balance gone and senses momentarily disorientated, he made an instant decision, and it was at Luke he fired. The two shots stuttered like a double report, but between the two Bunty, hardly aware whether she was intact or not, had done the beautifully simple thing, and hurled the rug from her, to descend with all its woolly suffocation over the sprawling figure on the floor. Fleet’s shot, blanketed by Swedish blues and greens, foils to all that orange and white, burned a hole in the rug and went wild, plunking harmlessly into the wall.

  And only then did Luke’s pebble hit the glowing fluorescent ring in the middle of the ceiling, hard and accurately at the point where the glass fitted into its plastic seal. A loud note of song, almost too high to be within human range, vibrated above their heads. There was a spitting explosion of brilliant, bluish radiance, like close lightning, and then a darkness like midnight and heavy rain, absolute darkness coruscating with piercing, infinitesimal points of sound, a rain of bitter ice. Fine particles of glass whispered down into hair and eyelids and folds of clothing. And on the instant all the lights in the house went out.

  In a darkness which he could navigate only from memory, Luke took a flying leap, and came down heavily with both feet on the threshing canvas backing of the Scandinavian rug. He had aimed for where he hoped Fleet’s solar plexus would be, but no part of Fleet was ever going to be where one expected to find it. Nothing else so big could ever have been so elusive. He had foreseen the line of attack, and rolled himself under the table, swinging clear of the mouthfuls of exquisitely-dyed long-pile wool that had threatened to smother him. From under the table he lunged in a round swipe, found Luke’s left foot, and gripped like an octopus. Luke lifted his right foot, and stamped it down with all his weight on the wrist of the hand that held him. There were no rules. He hadn’t even known, until he began, whether he could fight or not. He had never fought since he was about ten years old. He wanted to cry out to Bunty to run, but he dared not, for fear one of the enemy should divert his attention to her in time. Surely, surely she would take her chance now, as he had begged her.

  And Bunty had meant to; but it must have been out of some misconception of what she was, for things turned out quite differently. She launched herself towards the doorway, made a long controlled sweep of her left hand along the wall, and found the brass candlestick on top of the record player. The rounded candle-holder fitted snugly into her hand. She gripped it firmly, even took time to settle it comfortably. There seemed to be no haste, the gale that carried her accommodated itself to the speed of events, and made everything seem easy and leisurely, as though these happenings took their time from her, and not she from them. She paced out without hindrance the remaining yards to the door, seized the handle and hurled the door wide open, so that the wooden panels shuddered against the rubber door-stop. But when she ran, it was because the darkness was already beginning to pale for her, and the direction in which she ran was back into the room, towards the shapeless mêlée in the twilight there. She did not think at all, except with her blood and her bones. Bunty had lost herself in the gale-force wind of her own instincts, which had never been loose like this before, and probably never would be again.

  Fleet’s long arm heaved convulsively under Luke’s foot, and a grunting curse jerked from under the uncurling edge of the rug. Then the right hand that held the Colt hooked itself round Luke’s knees and brought him down in a crashing fall on top of his adversary. The moment of alarm was already over, and Fleet still wanted him alive, and if possible undamaged. A suicide should not have the grazes and bruises of a stand-up fight all over him, it tends to complicate the proceedings of the coroner’s court. Bunty, one hand extended to catch at Luke’s sleeve and guide him to the doorway, had a precarious hold on him when he fell, but the fall dragged him out of her grasp. She circled the two threshing bodies on the floor, and could not distinguish friend from enemy. But the third presence, still erect, was now visible as her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. Blackie, too, was circling the wrestlers, and probing forward into the untidy struggle with his gun hand. And Blackie was not in his master’s secrets, and by the shape and the movement and the long, steady, hissing breath of him he meant to shoot the instant the chance offered.

  A head and shoulders reared out of the tangle on the floor. Someone got a foot to the ground and laboured to pull clear and spring erect, and by the slightness and shape of the shadow emerging from shadows Bunty knew him for Luke. So did Blackie, and took a rapid step to one side to have his target well clear of Fleet’s bulk when he fired. The movement took him nearer to Bunty, who had hung for one appalled instant torn between grabbing at Luke’s arm to pull him clear, and hurling herself at the weaving manikin who threatened him.

  She chose Blackie. The brass candlestick, swung underhand with all her strength and fury behind it, took him fairly and squarely on the point of the right elbow. The blow had been designed only to sweep his gun hand upwards, but by luck it did much more. It hit his funny-bone with a tingling shock that paralysed him to the fingertips. The gun was jerked out of his hand, and flew jarring across the parquet floor. He uttered a weird, sharp yelp of pain that trailed off into incoherent curses, and went groping lamely after his weapon across the floor, like a crippled spider, one arm dangling.

  Bunty swung the candlestick back, startled and exhilarated by success, and struck blindly at Fleet. The blow was smothered in a thick shoulder that rolled aside and rode it almost casually, and then a hand grasped the base of her weapon and pulled dexterously and sharply to jerk her off her feet. Instinctively she released her grip and let the thing go, springing back from too close contact. And then Luke had scrambled clear and was on his feet, and had her by the hand.

  “Quick . . .run!”

  Neither of them had heard, or could possibly have heard in that chaotic interlude, the labouring footsteps dragging their way down the stairs. They had forgotten Quilley. Fleet fired after them towards the door as he came to his knees, but the bullet plugged harmlessly into the lintel. It was the other shot that stopped them cold as they hurled themselves out into the hall, a shot that spat accurately into the wood blocks of the floor just before their feet, and flung them back in a frantic recoil against the balustrade of the staircase. It came from the corner just within the front door, out of absolute darkness, whereas they had one faint light upon them from the glass panel of the door, and another behind them from the open doorway of the living-room.

  “Hold it right there!” said Quilley’s voice, faintly stirred this time with earnest zeal, for who was the useful one now? “I can see you, and you can’t see me. One step this way and I plug you.”

  Luke recovered from the check in a moment, but a moment was too long. If they could not both get away, he could still break a way through for Bunty, and this time she would have to go, because there would be nothing left for her to do here, no one to salvage. He put her aside by the shoulder, flattening her into the shelter of the newel-post, and sprang for the armed darkness, diving low.

  His arms found and circled Quilley’s knees, Quilley’s gun hand swung towards the ceiling, and down they went in an ugly, heavy fall in the corner beside the door, both heads jarred against the wall.

  “Run, Bunty!” Luke panted, clawing his way
along Quilley’s right arm towards the gun, and forcing the struggling wrist to point the barrel away into the wall.

  The way was clear for her to reach the door, but time had already run out. The narrow hall was suddenly full of people. Blackie had an arm locked round Bunty’s neck, and his gun pressed left-handed into her back. And Fleet was lunging past them to reach Luke and Quilley and drag them apart. A faint, flickering pencil of light suddenly sprang up, scurrying through the living-room to shed a queasy pallor on the struggle, and after it a cone of steady light from Con’s long, rubber-cased torch came surging eagerly in. They were back from the jetty far too soon, and empty-handed, just in time to put the quietus on all hope of escape.

  The beam of yellow light swung upwards and bounded along the ceiling, swung downwards again and danced over the glass panel of the door. The thick rubber case hit Luke low in the back of the head with a solid, sickening sound. His shoulders hunched oddly, he hung still for an instant, and then collapsed over Quilley like a discarded rag-doll, and lay in a motionless sprawl of arms and legs and lolling head, dead to the world.

  “All right,” said Fleet’s voice out of the dark, soft, savage and frightening, “bring them back inside. All right! There are other ways.”

  He was out of breath, ruffled, bruised. He looked from Luke’s huddled body to his own awed and silent lieutenants; he looked at Bunty, and the ray of the torch showed her his face outlined in abrupt lights and shadows, planes of steep pallor and obliques of dusty black. All the debonair, easy, vigorous bonhomie had cracked and fallen away from those razor-edged surfaces. This was basic Fleet, the bedrock fact of what he had made of himself, for in every aspect of him Fleet was a selfmade man. Neither her life nor Luke’s was worth half a crown now, but for one thing. Fleet still didn’t know where the money was. And Luke was past questioning. A respite for him, at least; he’d had more than enough. Now she was left. Fleet’s marmalade eyes, orange-flecked, glowed almost to red as he stared at her.

  Without turning his head he addressed Quilley, who had clambered painfully to his feet again, and was holding himself up by the wall. “Get back upstairs, and keep a sharp eye out. Somebody could have heard the shots.”

  “Yes, sure, boss, I’m going. I had to come down… the front door… they’d have made it if I hadn’t…” He edged away along the wall, eager and anxious, hooked an arm heavily over the bannister rail, and began to drag himself back to his guard duty. The torch caught the whites of his eyes, turned back hopefully and fearfully upon Fleet.

  “All right, you had to come down! Now get back!”

  Quilley went in fear, groaning as he climbed.

  “Well, what happened to you two?” But he knew already. “There was nothing there, of course.”

  “Nothing. No ring, even. A lot of lies,” Con said indignantly.

  “We had to get out of sight fast, too,” Skinner supplemented. “There’s a boat making up-coast, not far offshore. We didn’t want to be seen. But we’d already made sure. He was lying, all right.”

  “Bring him in,” said Fleet, and stalked ahead of them into the living-room.

  Blackie prodded Bunty before him into the ravaged room, and pushed her down into the settee. The other two dragged in Luke by his arms and tumbled him on the floor in front of her feet, a thin, long, disjointed puppet. They had only the two torches for light, the small, guttering candle that belonged to the Alports, and the illuminated club that had battered Luke into unconsciousness. Fine slivers of glass crunched under their feet, and drew thin silver-point lines the length of Luke’s dangling hand.

  By this curiously stagey lighting Bunty looked round the chaos of the room, from the shattered light-fixture to the door-lintel where Fleet’s second bullet had buried itself.

  There was no passing this off as a murder and suicide from despair now. Did that make bargaining possible? No, not a hope. There was a lot of room in the sea, and such witnesses as Fleet had at his mercy were better out of the way.

  “You’ll need a new script, won’t you?” she heard herself saying with unbelievable calm. “Four bullet-holes to account for, and all this wreckage. And after you’d polished all the prints off the business gun, too! I can’t wait to see you tidy this lot up.”

  “Too true,” said Fleet, in a voice as soft as it was vicious. “You couldn’t have put it better—you can’t wait! You’re too sharp, my dear, too sharp altogether. A lot too sharp for your own good. Wouldn’t you do better to cooperate, and tell me where the money’s hidden?”

  “No,” she said with a tight, tired smile, “I shouldn’t. That’s the last thing I’d be likely to do, even if I knew. You’re so sure I’ve got no time left. But I have! I’ve got until you know the answer to that, either from him or from me. That long, and not many minutes longer. You think I don’t know a killer when I see one? If I told you what you want to know, that would be the last thing I should do. So wouldn’t I be a fool to tell you? Even if I knew?”

  Fleet hit her then, with his open hand, deliberately and yet not too hard. He took pleasure in weighing and measuring the blow nicely, to jerk back her head and send a jarring shock down her spine without, as yet, doing her any damage. And Bunty laughed.

  “You think you can open my mouth that way? I should have to find living more uncomfortable than dying before I’d be driven to talk. And I like living. I’ll put up with a lot for it. By the time you’d got me to the amenable stage, I should be incapable of telling you. anything at all. I’m not the kind that dies easily. Either way, you’ll never know.”

  Luke, crumpled at her feet, heaved a deeper breath into him, and moaned. Ignoring the guns, Bunty slid from her place and crouched upon the parquet beside him. She lifted his head into her lap, and stroked back his lank hair. A spasm dragged his face awry for a moment, and smoothed out again into the indifference of unconsciousness.

  “Boss,” said Blackie in a low voice, “I reckon you’d be wasting time on her. I don’t believe she knows. He’d never trust her that far. Damn it, he only picked her up last night, on the run. It’s him we want.”

  She gathered the limp body more closely into her lap, arched over him jealously. Let them think that, by all means, until Luke showed signs of coming round. Until then, he was safe. There was nothing they could do to him, and nothing effective they could do to her. To keep silence might be a slow sentence of death, but to speak was instant death, and between the two there was not much doubt of her preference. Time, if it took sides at all, was on her side, hers and Luke’s. Things become very simple when you have no choice, when there’s nothing left for you but to endure as long as you can, and survive if you can.

  “Get him round, then,” Fleet spat viciously. “Pour cold water on him, anything, only bring him round, quick.”

  Bunty laid her hand on Luke’s forehead, holding him at rest, willing him to remain absent.

  “Damn you!” hissed Fleet through his teeth, in sudden fury, and kicked out ferociously at the limp body before him.

  Bunty uttered a brief, furious cry, and flung herself across Luke’s helpless form, spreading her own arm and shoulder to ward off the blow. The face that glared up at Fleet, with bared teeth and flashing eyes, was the face of the antique woman that Caesar respected, the red-haired Celtic Amazon who emerged at need to fight shoulder to shoulder with her menfolk, huge, noble and daunting. Bunty’s Welsh ancestry went back beyond the small dark men. She saw Fleet start back from her in astonishment, almost in dread, so unused was he to people who forget to be afraid. She saw the gun in his hand prick up like a live snake, its cold eye fending her off; and she laughed, staring it down defiantly, with Luke gathered close into her arms from harm.

  “Go ahead, then, shoot! Shoot, and then hunt for your money till your heart bursts, and much good may it do you, Mister Fleet!”

  His mouth fell slack, he drew back from her a step in almost superstitious recoil; and in the moment of stricken silence they all heard Quilley’s voice calling down the well of the s
tairs in agitation, and trailing a hollow echo after it :

  “Boss… boss! There’s a boat-load of men coming in towards the inlet. They’ve put out their lights… they’re coming in to land…!”

  Fleet turned and rushed to the window, dragging the curtains aside and craning to see down into the inlet, to the faint phosphorescent glow that was the sea, palpitating and shimmering with almost imperceptible movement. Skinner, who was nearest to the door, made for the stairs and went up them three at a time. Crouched on the floor with Luke inert in her arms, Bunty heard their footsteps crossing the boards overhead, Skinner rapid and blunt, Quilley dragging like a crippled beast, crossing and re-crossing from front windows to rear, and back again. Con and Blackie crowded to the window behind Fleet’s hulking shoulders, peering, straining their eyes, holding their breath.

  They had forgotten her. In a moment of time everything had gone into reverse. She could have risen and walked out at the front door, and she felt that no one would ever have noticed. Fear, anger and stress withdrew and stood at gaze, distant in the dark corners of the room, still present but now almost dreamlike, unable to touch the island where she kneeled with Luke’s heavy head in her arms. She made no move, she said nothing, she had no conscious thoughts; there was no longer any need for her to think or act, and because there was no more need, suddenly she had no more power.

  Distantly, like something remembered, she heard Skinner’s voice calling urgently down the well of the stairs: