by Ellis Peters
‘In that case, why didn’t he persuade her to run at once – permanently – instead of coming home at all? He had the girl, he had the money. Why not make off with them both while he had the chance?’
‘Because he was comfortably sure there was nothing in the world to connect him with the murder, and to run without reason just at that time would have been the quickest way of inviting suspicion. Wouldn’t it?’ challenged Dominic earnestly, brilliant eyes clinging to his father’s face.
‘You’re forgetting,’ said Tom, ‘the roaming Romeo who tried to pick her up.’ He caught himself up too late, and met George’s eye in embarrassed dismay. ‘I’m sorry, probably I shouldn’t have mentioned that. It hasn’t been published, has it?’
‘It hadn’t, but since we seem to have embarked on a full-scale review, it may as well be.’ He recounted the episode briefly. “There’s certainly a point there. When he heard of that incident he’d know there was a possible witness who’d be able to tie in Annet, at least, to the scene and time of the murder. It isn’t difficult to give a recognisable description of Annet. It would be impossible not to recognise any decent photograph of her, once you’d seen her at close quarters.’
‘But she wouldn’t know there was any urgent reason to warn him that a witness existed, because she knew of no crime. And without an urgent reason,’ said Miles with absolute and haughty certainty, ‘she wouldn’t say a word to him about a thing like that.’
‘Not tell him, when she’d been accosted by a street-corner lout?’
The very assumption of intimate knowledge of her, even at this extremity of her distress and need, could prick both these unguarded lovers into irritation and jealousy. Kenyon had allowed himself to slip into the indulgent schoolmaster voice that brought Miles’s hackles up, Miles was staring back at him with the aloof and supercilious face that covers the modern sixth-former’s wilder agonies. The minute action and reaction of pain quivered between them, and made them contemporaries, whether they liked it or not. Dominic’s very acute and intelligent eyes studied them both from beneath lowered lashes, and what he felt he kept to himself. But the air was charged with sympathy and antagonism in inseparable conflict, and for a moment they all flinched from the too strident discord of the clash.
‘No,’ said Miles, more gently but no less positively. ‘It was a thing she wouldn’t confide. Especially not to him.’
‘Well, if you’re right about that, he’d have no idea that there was going to be anyone to give a description of either of them. He knew he’d left no traces, he thought he was quite clear. Every reason why he should hope to lie low for a reasonable time, and let the robbery in Birmingham blow over. Yes, that makes sense,’ agreed George. ‘It seems possible that he may not even have known, at first, that the old man was dead. Most probably he hit and grabbed and ran, and left him, as he thought, merely knocked out.’
‘And even when he knew it was murder, there was nothing, as far as he knew, to connect him with it. The obvious thing to do was come inconspicuously home again, and go back to work, and act normally. Hide the money and the jewellery,’ pursued Dominic, returning to his trail tenaciously, ‘or get Annet to hide them, somewhere where naturally he hoped they’d stay safely hidden, but where at any rate they couldn’t incriminate him any more than anyone else if they were discovered. But now it’s gone past that. There was a witness he didn’t know about, and Annet has been identified. The case is tied firmly to Annet and the man who spent the week-end with her. And only Annet’s resistance stands between him and a murder charge. That’s the situation he finds himself in now.’
‘There’s another point.’ Miles frowned down at the hands that had tightened almost imperceptibly on each other at every repetition of her name, and carefully, painfully disengaged them. ‘Supposing this is a good guess of ours, and she was entrusted with the business of hiding the money, then of course they may have agreed on the place beforehand. It may even be a place they’ve used for other things before now. But it may not. Supposing nobody but Annet knows where the stolen jewellery and money is now? He knows his life depends on her keeping silent. If he gets to the point of being terrified into running for it, he can’t even get his loot and run without contacting Annet. And if he does—’
‘He can’t,’ George said reassuringly. ‘We’ve got a constant guard on her, inside the house and out. The degree of her danger hasn’t escaped us. And we don’t intend to take our eyes off her. You can rely on that.’
‘Yes—’ And he was grateful, a pale smile pierced the preoccupied stillness of his face for a moment. ‘But he’s got nothing to lose now unless he can get the means to make his break. And if he can find a way to her somehow, he’s liable to remember that she— that nobody else can identify him—’
Miles carefully moistened lips suddenly too dry to finish the sentence.
‘Yes, I realise all that. But I’ve got a man outside the house, Miles, and a policewoman inside with her. And however desperate he may be, we’re dealing with only one man. The essence of his situation is that he’s alone.’
‘Not quite alone,’ said Miles almost inaudibly. ‘He’s got one person who might help him to get to her, if ever you so much as turn your back for a minute.’
George stood off and looked down at him heavily, and said never a word in reply to that. It was Tom Kenyon, still fretting against the arrogance of the boy’s certainty, who demanded: ‘Who’s that?’
‘Annet,’ said Miles.
They had talked themselves into dead silence. The two boys sat with the width of the room between them, braced and still, their eyes following with unwavering attention every quiver of George’s brooding face, while he told over again within his mind the points they had made, and owned their substance. They had good need to be afraid for Annet, and very good reason to look again and again at the looming, significant shape of that long hog-back of rock and rough pasture that linked her with and divided her from her lover. Was it necessarily true that Annet had had a particular purpose in being on the Hallowmount that night of her return? Wasn’t it simply her road back? Wasn’t it natural enough that they should use the same route returning as departing? She wouldn’t be afraid of the Hallowmount in the dark. But in that case, according to Miles, she wouldn’t have troubled to cover herself and her movements with that fantastic story, even when she was taken by surprise on top of the hill. She drew her veil of deception because she had something positive and precise to hide. Who should know better than Miles?
But even if she had indeed been entrusted with the hiding of the plunder on her way home, was it likely that she had put it somewhere unknown to her partner? Possible, at a stretch, but certainly not likely. What appeared to George every moment more probable was that they had some hiding-place already established between them, and frequently used, their letter-box, their private means of communication, accessible from both sides of the mountain without difficulty and without making oneself conspicuous. Given such a cache, tested and found reliable from long use, it would not even occur to them to hide their treasure anywhere else. And it would be the most natural thing in the world for Annet to undertake the job of depositing it, if the spot was directly on her way home. The boy had his motor-bike to manage, and his own family to manipulate at home; and by consent, so it seemed, they made use of the Hallowmount as the watershed of their lives, and the act of crossing it alone had become a rite. It was the barrier between their real and their ideal worlds, between the secret life they shared and the everyday life in which their paths never touched, or never as lovers. It was the hollow way into the timeless dream-place, as surely as if the earth had opened and drawn them within.
What was certain was that they had between them a treasure to hide. What was likely was that they had a place proved safe by long usage, in which to hide it. What was left to question was whether it was still there. Up to the appearance of the evening paper, probably he had no reason to see any urgency in its recovery, and every reason to avoid goi
ng near it. But now?
For some hours now he had known how closely he was hunted. Frightened, inexperienced, unable to confide in or rely on anyone but himself, how long would it take him to make up his mind? Or how long to panic? He might well have retrieved the money already. But he might not. And whether they were justified in all these deductions or not, there was nothing to be lost by keeping a watch on the Hallowmount, in case he did betray himself by making for his hoard. Heaven knew they had no other leads to him, except the mute girl in Fairford.
Price wouldn’t thank him for a chilly, solitary night patrolling the border hills, but anything was worth trying. George excused himself, and went to the telephone. When he came back into the room none of them had moved. They all looked up at him expectantly.
‘I’m putting a man on watch overnight,’ said George, ‘in case he goes to recover it during the dark hours. You may very well be right about it being hidden there, somewhere on the hill. Night’s the most likely time for him to go and fetch it, if by any chance he does know where to look, but covering the ground by daylight won’t be so easy. The last thing I want to do is put him off, and the sight of a plainclothes man parading the top of the Hallowmount would hardly be very reassuring. And man-power,’ he owned, dubiously gnawing a knuckle, ‘isn’t our long suit.’
‘We could provide you with boy-power,’ said Tom Kenyon unexpectedly. ‘Plenty of it, and it might be a pretty good substitute. Miss Darrill’s taking out the school Geographical Association on one of their occasional free-for-alls tomorrow. They were having a field-day on Cleave, but there’s no reason why they couldn’t just as well be switched to the Hallowmount. It’s geologically interesting, it would carry conviction, all right. And if we deploy about forty boys all over the hill it will make dead certain nobody can hunt for anything there without being spotted. As well as giving us three a chance to do some hunting on our own. If you gentlemen,’ said Tom, looking his two sixth-formers in the eye with respectful gravity, ‘wouldn’t mind joining in for the occasion?’
They had stiffened and brightened, and looked back at him as at a contemporary, measuring and eager, only a little wary.
‘If it would be any help?’ said Miles, casting a questioning glance at George. ‘And if you think we should involve Miss Darrill? We should have to tell her why.’
‘It would give me a day,’ said George, ‘the most important day, the day he’s likely to break. He knows now how he stands. Of course Miss Darrill must know what’s in the wind, but nobody else, mind. And if she does consent, she’s to do nothing whatever except what she was going out to do, take her members on a field expedition and keep them occupied in a perfectly normal way. All I need is that you should be there, and prevent him from getting near any possible hiding-place on the hill. If he’s collected his loot already, it can’t be helped. But if he hasn’t, that’s our only working lead to him.’
‘Jane will do it,’ said Tom positively. ‘And what if we should find the stuff ourselves? What do we do?’
‘You leave it where it is, but don’t let the spot out of your sight. I’m going to have to be in Birmingham part of the day, but before the daylight goes I’ll be ready to relieve you. Can you hold the fort until then?’
‘Yes, until you come, whenever that is.’ It was the only way he had of helping Annet. She might not be grateful, she might hate him for it, but there was no other way.
‘Good! I’ll try to be back in the station by four-thirty. Will you call me there then? If anything breaks earlier, I’ll get word to you as soon as I usefully can.’
‘I’ll do that. And may I call Jane Darrill now? Better give her what warning we can, if we’re upsetting her bus arrangements.’
He called her, and the light, assured, faintly amused voice that answered him manifested no surprise. Curious that he should be able to hear in it, over the telephone, wry overtones of reserve and doubt he had never noticed in it in their daily encounters.
‘That means switching tea to somewhere in Comerford,’ she said, sighing. ‘There won’t be time to take them out to the Border. And what do you suppose the Elliots will do with the provisions laid in for forty hungry boys?’
‘I didn’t think about that,’ he said, dismayed. ‘Well, if you can’t do it, of course—’
‘Who said I couldn’t do it? Twenty-four hours notice is required only for the impossible. Don’t worry, I live here, I can fix tea, all right. By the way, who’s asking me to do this, you or the police?’
‘Me,’ he said simply, without even the affectation of correctness.
‘Just as long as we know,’ said Jane, a shade dryly. ‘All right, it’s on.’
She hung up the receiver, and left him troubled by tensions newly discovered in himself, when he had thought that Annet had exhausted all his resources of feeling and experience. He wondered, too, as he went back to report to George in the living-room, why he should feel ashamed, but he had no leisure to indulge his desire to examine the more obscure recesses of his own mind. There had been, throughout, only one person who really mattered, and for the first time in his life it was not himself.
‘That’s that,’ he said. ‘It’s arranged. I think we’d better call it a day now, if we’re going to be on patrol between us all day tomorrow. Come on, Miles, I’ll run you home.’
In the hall he hung back and let the boys go out into the chill of the night ahead of him. There was still something he had to ask George. He could not remember ever feeling so responsible for any boy in his charge as he did now for Miles; the act of confiding had drawn them closer than he found quite comfortable, and probably the boy was chafing, too.
‘It’s definite, isn’t it?’ he asked in a low voice, as they emerged on the doorstep. ‘What you said about young Mallindine? They were up there in Snowdonia the whole time?’
‘Quite definite. We’ve already checked on their weekend.’ George remembered the mental clip over the ear that was in store for Dominic when the time was ripe, and smiled faintly in the dark. The two boys were talking in low tones, out there beside the Mini, small, taut, tired voices studiously avoiding any show of concern with the things that really filled their minds. ‘Don’t worry about them, they’re in the clear.’
‘I shouldn’t think you’ve ever been so glad to cross off your prime suspect,’ said Tom, feeling his own heart lift perceptibly, even in its passionate preoccupation with that other hapless young creature for whom there was no such relief.
‘Well, he wasn’t that, exactly, he was rather down the list, as a matter of fact. Though as it turns out,’ said George with soft deliberation, ‘we’ve lost Number One as well.’
‘You have? Who—?’ But perhaps he wasn’t allowed to ask; it was all too easy to assume that goodwill entitled you to the confidence of the authorities. ‘Sorry, I take that back. Naturally you can’t very well talk about it.’
‘Oh, in this case I think I could.’ George cast one brief glance at him along his shoulder, and saw the young, good-looking, self-confident face paler and more thoughtful than usual, but unshakable in innocence and secure as a rock. ‘Number One was an obvious case for investigation. In close contact with her daily, then clean away from here for the week-end just as she vanished. Involved closely in her reappearance, too, as if he knew where to look for her, and was interested in creating the atmosphere for her return. Anxious to be around when I began to ask questions, very anxious to know the odds. And falling over himself to point out to me indications that someone else had been on the scene.’
Tom was staring back at him blankly, searching his mind in all the wrong directions, and still quite unable to see this eligible lover anywhere in the case.
‘But there wasn’t anyone. The trouble from the beginning was that there was no one in close contact with her like that—’
‘No one?’ said George with a hollow smile. ‘Yes, there was this one fellow. Right age, right type, and rubbing shoulders with her every day. You mean to say you never noticed him? But
we’ve checked up on his movements all the week-end, too, and he’s well and truly out of it. He went home like a lamb, just as he said he was going too, and he was in a theatre with another girl when Jacob Worrall was killed. For God’s sake!’ said George between irritation and respect, ‘do you want me to tell you what they saw?’
Then it came, the full realisation, like a weight falling upon Tom and flattening the breath out of him. He froze in incredulous shock, heels braced into the gravel, staring great-eyed through the dark and struggling for words, confounded by this plain possibility which had never once occurred to him. What sort of complacent fool had he been? He stood off now and looked at himself from arm’s-length, with another man’s eyes; and that, too, was a new experience to him.
‘You mean to say you never realised? Why do you suppose I asked Doctor Thorpe to stay with Annet, that night, until my man came to keep watch on her? Who else knew at that time that we were on to her? Who else could have known that she was a threat to him? Did you think I was protecting her from her father? You weren’t a very likely murderer in yourself,’ said George gently, propelling the stricken young man along the path towards the waiting boys, ‘and you could hardly have been her partner in that first attempt at flight, six months ago, that’s true. But even now it isn’t by any means certain that the man we’re looking for is the same person, it’s merely a fair probability. And on circumstantial evidence alone, until Miss MacLeod put you clean out of the reckoning today, you were undoubtedly Number One.’
CHAPTER VIII
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George came to Fairford very early in the morning, intent on being unexpected, appearing when Annet was still in a housecoat, pale and silent and unprepared for the renewed assault. But it seemed there was no time of the day or night when she was not armed against him and everyone. Her great eyes had swallowed half her face, the fine, clear flesh was wasting away alarmingly from her slender bones. She looked as if she had not slept at all, as if she had stared into the dark unceasingly all through the night, gazing through her window at the ridge of the Hallowmount, stretched like a slumbering beast against the eastern sky.
