Rainbow's End gfaf-13

by Ellis Peters

  And outside everything, wherever he turned the tiny beam of his torch, the huge, impersonal darkness, distorted by enormous shadows that dwarfed the little light, and a smell of disturbed earth, like a cemetery. It was getting distinctly chilly, too, he felt himself shivering.

  Well, if there had been anything concealed in the upper layers here, in the centre, where they were working on the tiling, they would certainly have found it. No need to disturb anything there. All that remained was the wall itself, and the flooring under it, which was certainly where Toby had found his leaf, even if it didn’t look very promising now.

  He was working his way methodically along the rim of the roped-off area, where the earth flooring was excavated to a depth of about three inches, and the raw edges at least offered a possibility that a corner of parchment might show among the soil and gravel, when a sudden small sound caused the hair to rise on the nape of his neck, and sent him diving into the corner behind the hand-cart, his torch hastily extinguished. The grate of a key in the lock might have alerted him more rapidly, but the door was not locked, and what he heard was the neat click of the latch yielding, and without even a full second in between, the door swung silently open. It was new, light and noiseless; it ought to have been heavy, creaky and slow, to give him time to make the best of his inadequate cover. But if this was simply a routine round, there would be the merest flick of a torch round the interior, and then the warden would move on, satisfied.

  Bossie had miscalculated, owing to inadequate data. The careful restorers of the paving, salvaging broken tiles from under layers of soil, matching and repairing and patiently assembling the fours into their patterns of coiled leaves and tendrils, had sometimes worked both early and late, and fitted up for their needs a highly efficient temporary lighting system, which was not used during show hours. Of all the things to which Bossie was blind, the marvels of technical efficiency came at the head of the list. Probably Ginger could have told him the place was wired for a perfect blaze of light, but Bossie had noticed nothing, neither the switch by the door nor the dangling bulbs all along the north walk. And the flood of light that suddenly sprang up overhead almost flattened him into the floor with its unexpected force. Crude white light that threaded through the wheels of the handcart, probed behind the stacked wood, and reduced the derelict stones to unhelpful pebbles. Light crashed down on his head and pressed him to his knees, but he knew at once that if this person in the doorway came on into the room, he could not possibly avoid being seen. His heart stopped for one frightful instant, and then sturdily picked up its beat. Being scared was no protection whatever, he might as well go on breathing, after all. There could be credible, if not respectable, reasons for being here at this hour.

  ‘Well, well!’ said a familiar voice, mild, amused, even teasing. ‘This is really excess of enthusiasm. I gathered you were a devotee, but don’t you think this is carrying it to absurd lengths? Oh, do come on out of there! You might as well, I can see you perfectly, and I don’t get one like you every trip. I’ve recognised you already, and you don’t look at all comfortable’

  Bossie wasn’t comfortable, and besides, he had recognised the intruding voice as quickly as its possessor had recognised him, and the relief was enormous. Not the warden, after all, but the nice guide who had been so patient and accommodating in showing them round in the afternoon. In any case, Bossie’s dignity was affronted at crouching behind a handcart in full view of an eye-witness. He rose to his full unimpressive height, and came out from behind his barricade. The big, fair-haired, amiable young man grinned at him from just within the doorway, and made no intimidating move to approach nearer.

  ‘Well, now I’ve seen everything! I’ve known kids driven in here in a state of mutiny, but I’ve never before known one come back for more out of hours. You’ve made my day. But I shudder to think what you’re laying up for yourself. Do you realise it’s getting on for ten? Your parents must be worried sick about you. Whatever possessed you to hide away in here like this?’

  He sounded just as he had sounded in the afternoon, patient, tolerant and amused, and that gave him every right to take the mickey, in his airy way. Bossie drew a little nearer, cautiously but placatingly.

  ‘I wasn’t going to steal anything, or do any damage. But did you know there are stories that the last prior buried the church plate and treasures somewhere here? I wanted to try and find them, make some fabulous discovery and get to be famous. But if I’d found anything, I should have told!’

  ‘I’m sure you would,’ agreed the guide with amusement, and studying him very attentively. ‘Well, that’s all very nice, I dare say, and no doubt places like this ought to be bulging with buried treasure all over the shop. But we’ve exhausted the possibilities in this part, you know, and you are rather wasting your time. As well as frightening your folks half to death, I should think. And just as well for you it happens to be me making the rounds tonight, and not the warden, he’d have you frog-marched up to the police station in no time flat. You be thankful he wanted to go out tonight, and I volunteered to do the locking up for him.’

  ‘Oh, I am!’ agreed Bossie fervently. ‘But I didn’t mean to do anything wrong, really, and I didn’t realise it was as late as all that.’

  ‘I should think not! Do you realise you could have got yourself locked in here overnight? That would have scared them even worse, and I don’t suppose you’d have been feeling quite so cocky yourself when it got really cold. So now hadn’t you better tell me where you live, and let me drive you safely home? And don’t blame me if you get your behind tanned when you get there!’

  That was when Bossie made his great mistake, and after that there was no salvaging it. Obviously he couldn’t let himself be driven home, having accounted for a night’s absence, or in the stress of the moment he had no time to realise that that would now have been his safest and sanest course, however many awkward explanations it might involve. He never gave up his enterprises easily; and before he had time to think he heard himself politely declining this fair offer.

  ‘That’s awfully kind of you, really, but you see I’m staying with some friends for tonight, here in Mottisham. So my people won’t be worrying about me. But thank you, all the same. It’s only five minutes’ walk.’

  There was a brief and deep silence. The guide did not move from his position with his back against the door, and his eyes narrowed thoughtfully upon the small, stolid figure before him, though he continued to smile and speak with amused resignation.

  ‘It is, is it? And home, I suppose, is somewhere a good deal further away. But surely somebody must be wanting to know where you’re prowling at ten o’clock at night? What sort of friends do your parents have, if they let you run wild to this hour?’

  Bossie floundered in deeper in his haste, and felt the morass of all too detectable fibs tugging at his feet, but it was too late to draw back. ‘Oh, they weren’t expecting me very early, because I told them I should be coming late from my music lesson.’

  ‘About three hours late, I imagine,’ said the young man drily.

  He ought to have known. He could see all the flaws himself. A twelve-year-old’s music lesson would be arranged for a civilised hour like half past six or seven. He’d given himself away completely. It wouldn’t take a genius to conclude that he was lying about his night’s lodging, and it wasn’t a long step from that to concluding positively that he had so played off the two ends against each other as to leave his parents convinced he was safe with a known host in Mottisham, while the supposed host had no notion whatever that he was anywhere but in his own bed at home. In short, nobody knew where he was, or what he was doing…

  The fair young man heaved a philosophical sigh, smiled at him even more benevolently, and reaching a hand into his pocket, drew out a bunch of keys, and selected the right one with a flick of long fingers. Silently he closed the door, and moving aside for the first time, turned the key, and locked them in together.

  Perhaps the act in itself
would have been enough, but it was what the act revealed that hit Bossie like a lightning-stroke. For a moment he stopped breathing, frozen with shock. The flooding light that had blazed down on them all this while now fell for the first time directly on the right hand that was so deliberately turning the key. and on the third finger of that hand was a large, flattish seal-ring made from a black stone like an onyx or a very dark moss agate. He had seen just that motion and just that flat flash from the polished blackness once before, and had failed to remember and identify it. Among the tangle of tombs under the church tower that same hand, wearing the same ring, had turned up Rainbow’s limp head to the light of a torch No other part of the nocturnal marauder had been lit like that. Now the turn of the long muscular hand echoed the same gesture, and memory recovered from the paralysis of shock. He didn’t know who this man was, but he knew all too well what he was. He was Rainbow’s murderer.

  And he, Bossie, was locked in with him, and like a fool he had brought it on himself. If only he’d jumped at the offer to drive him home, maybe snivelled a little and repented of his adventure, this man might have been reassured that he knew nothing, had nothing to tell, could never identify him; and he might have done just what he had offered, driven him home and stopped worrying about him. Which would have been his mistake. But now Bossie was the one who’d made the mistake. There was only one thing he hadn’t betrayed, and that was that all five of his companions of the afternoon knew very well where he was, and could tell the police as soon as it dawned on somebody that something was wrong. If he dropped that out now, casually, or deliberately and with obvious intent, would he be believed? And would it make any difference now? No, it was too late. If he’d blabbed all that like a scared kid right at the beginning, it might have worked, his captor might have decided it was too dangerous to make away with him, and returned to his role of tolerant Dutch-uncle. Not now! He’d watched the door being closed, and the murderer had watched his face as he took in the significance of the act. It would take more than a sudden story of five potential witnesses to undo that. Even if he was believed, it would only hasten whatever was going to happen, to get him out of the way at once, and Bossie was pretty sure he was in no hurry to get on with it.

  Which left only the delaying tactics of gormless, childish stupidity, innocence almost incredible. Notice nothing, admit nothing, remain trustingly ingenuous, not to say imbecile.

  He shuffled his feet uneasily, and crossed his eyes, as he could do at will, though he never knew when he did it involuntarily. ‘I’m sorry, it wasn’t really true, that stuff I told you. I shouldn’t have tried to fool my parents like that. Maybe I ought to go home, after all. I only wanted to explore… I did tell them I was going to stay with Philip Mason, I’ve often done it before, so they won’t be anxious. But it wasn’t right, was it? You know, I’m ever so glad you came. I don’t really like this place, after all, not now it’s dark…’ Bossie could raise a tear just as nimbly as he could raise a fist, and produced a heart-rending contortion of a face never notable for beauty, as well as a genuine trickle down his cheek. And all the while he knew it wasn’t any good. His brains did show so plainly!

  They were working frantically now. He was sure this man knew the name James Jarvis, and his address, from the Locke anthem he had lost in the churchyard, but did he know what James Jarvis looked like? At least he’d gone to the trouble to find out Bossie’s routine, enough to hunt him down on his way home from the music lesson. But there might still be room for confusion. To some people all kids of about the same age looked alike. Who else of comparable age lived up that same road?

  ‘Would you really take me home?’ he bleated hopefully. ‘I’m Adrian Bowen, my dad lives at the Moor Farm in Abbot’s Bale. I don’t care if I do get into trouble, I want to go home!’ If a miracle happened, and he was believed and duly delivered there, the Bowens would at any rate haul him into the house, if only to demand explanations, and it would be too late then to drag him out again by force. But he didn’t believe in it! He worked at it, but he knew he was up against a stone wall. Solider than the one now flanking them!

  The man leaning back against the door never moved, never took his eyes from Bossie, and as yet said no word. His smile had vanished, he peered from beneath brows drawn and morose, almost irritable, and jutted a thoughtful lower lip as he wrestled with this problem. But the false name did not make the slightest impression on his fierce concentration.

  ‘And for a while there you almost had me fooled,’ he mused at last, as much to himself as to Bossie. ‘Why the hell did you have to go and get mixed up in this business? Why did you meddle? You’re the one who’s made this necessary, you know that?’ Downright accusingly, as if Bossie owed him an abject apology for forcing his hand like this to a repugnant act. ‘What am I going to do with you now?’ he demanded, in tones decidedly aggrieved.

  ‘You could drive me home, like you offered,’ sniffed Bossie, determinedly obtuse. But the disguise was thinning; what was the use of it, if it was ineffective?

  ‘Knowing as much as you know, James Boswell Jarvis?’ said his enemy, and heaved his broad shoulders with an effort away from the door, and took a long stride forward into the north walk. ‘Not bloody likely!’

  ‘Your show, Toby,’ said George, marshalling his handful of men within the barrier, and casting a glance aside at the ticket-office, where a uniformed constable had taken over the-switchboard and re-established contact with the system, and was at this moment engaged in the first of a series of calls designed to run to earth the truant warden of Mottisham Abbey, who apparently had all available keys with him, since they had found none in the office. ‘Lead on, you know where Bossie’s liable to have holed up.’

  In the complex of buildings, gardens, excavations and reserves of plant and scaffolding, Toby moved with cautious speed. Things had changed since last he gate-crashed this enclosure.

  ‘The stable-block’s this way.’ He went ahead steadily, and brought them face to face with the long line of the eighteenth-century wall. The night remained dark, and George had thought it best to work as far as possible without lights, using torches only fleetingly where necessary. He had given no voice to his misgivings, but Toby had grasped that the absence of John Stubbs was a matter for anxiety. He was one of the names against which a question-mark reared, he was here conveniently installed on the spot, and he was not where, by the terms of his appointment, he should have been. Moreover, he had been absent now for a length of time which should have allowed him to make the round of his charge, and be back at his post, but there was still no sign of him.

  The gate that guarded the archway was closed, but yielded to a touch. The key was not in the lock. Toby pushed the gate open and slid through, with George and Sergeant Moon at his heels, and turned right, to make for the door in the north-east corner of the yard. And there he halted at the first step. The range of small, high windows in the inner wall of the north range glowed hollowly with a steady but muted light, reflected from below and patterned with shadows from the network of roof rafters.

  ‘There’s somebody—’ began Toby, low-voiced, and bit off the rest as George laid a warning hand on his arm. For there was indeed somebody within there, and though it might be Bossie, was it likely that a boy playing the secret investigator by night would run the risk of betraying his presence by switching on a whole array of lights, in a place where he had no right to be? Not a boy as bright as Bossie!

  George went forward alone, moving silently along the wall to the door, beneath which a very thin line of light showed. He grasped the handle, and very gingerly turned it, but it did not yield to pressure. Locked! And locked with someone inside, and the lights on.

  Correction, with two people inside. For hollowly from within he heard voices.

  ‘What the hell can you expect, now you’ve put me in this position?’ The once-amiable and encouraging guide looked a very different person now, coming forward slow step by step, glaring annoyance and genuine resentment from
under brows tight and creased as though in pain. ‘It’s your own damned silly fault, you should have let well alone. You don’t think I like having to do this, do you?’

  ‘You don’t have to.’ Bossie was backing cautiously away along the rope, feeling his way. Not that it was going to do him much good even if he could dodge round to the other side and make a dash for the door, because he had watched his enemy withdraw and pocket the keys. ‘Nobody’s making you do anything. And if you know what’s good for you you won’t try, because my friends who were here with me this afternoon are coming back for me. They’ll be here any minute, you won’t have time to get away.’

  ‘What a hope!’ said his enemy with a tired and petulant smile. ‘You’ve made it clear enough that nobody knows where you are, and nobody’s going to know where you disappear from. I’ve got plenty of time.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong. There are five of them who know exactly where I am, and if I don’t show up again they’re going to tell…’

  He wasn’t believed, of course. There was no way of making that story convincing now. And he had reached the place where the piled junk and the hand-cart narrowed the way, and was feeling his way blindly past the obstructions when his foot slipped over the edge of the excavated section, and slight though the drop was, it threw him off balance. He fell against the rope, and rolled under it, and then a large hand had him by the back of his blazer, hauled him upright, and slammed him against the stone wall, and its fellow was clamped over his mouth just too late to suppress a single yell of indignation, rage and terror.

  As if that one shout had set off a chain reaction of unnerving assaults upon the silence of the night, there was a sudden thunderous salvo of knocks on the locked door, a violent rattling of the handle, and a peremptory voice ordering: ‘Open up in there! This is the police! We’re here in force, you can’t get away. Unlock this door!’