Ellis Peters - George Felse 07 - The Grass Widow's Tale (10 page)

“You really think it may be that? I know she was extravagant and spoiled… But she’d never… Oh, I don’t know!” he said helplessly, winding the pink tape nervously round his fingers.

“What else could it be? How could she come by this much money in cash, otherwise? And if she had, honestly, why
keep
it in cash and have it hanging around? And why did she acquire a gun, unless it was because she had something to protect, and somebody willing and able to find her a gun to protect it with? Who carries this kind of money in a parcel? Not honest people.” Bunty sat down and stared at the uncovered notes, brooding with her head in her hands. “How long has Pippa worked in Comerbourne?”

“Nearly three years. I met her soon after I started work there.”

“Then this comes from some local coup,” she said with authority, and closed her eyes the better to think back over recent history. The sight of all those miniature queens, so demure and complacent in whatever hands, was distracting. “You said she started getting off-hand with you about two months ago. That was probably when she first picked up with these people. And just over a week ago she came back and began to make up to you. And she worked at Pope Halsey’s, as an assistant buyer…”

Her voice snapped off abruptly. She opened her eyes wide, bright-green in this slanting pre-evening light, dazzled eyes. “Oh, no! That
must
be it! Tell me again, Luke, what department did she work in?”

“I don’t think I did tell you. But it was furs,” he said, puzzled, forgetting the money in her intensity. “Why?”

“And she was assistant to the buyer?”

“Yes… she used to model furs for their advertisements. She looked marvellous… I’ve seen the stills…” He caught Bunty’s bright stare, fixed as a fortune-teller’s crystal-hypnotised gaze, and trembled with a premonition of final truth. “
Why
?”

“There was a big van-load of furs,” she said like a clairvoyant, “coming from London for Pope Halsey, just about six weeks ago. It was hi-jacked soon after it left the M.1, flagged down near a lay-by, by somebody pretending there’d been an accident. The driver was picked up with bad concussion next day, the van was ditched on a minor road. The furs were gone, clean trade. Probably turned into cash that very night. Somebody had advance notice of that consignment. How if Pippa gave them the tip-off?”

“Oh,
no
! ” he said, with the last anguish on her account, and drew back his hands from the banknotes on the table. “You think this could be that money? After all this time?”

“No,” said Bunty positively, “not that money. The last place they’d be likely to unload the goods and pick up the cash would be Comerbourne, where the stuff was consigned. No, not that. But supposing she’d been the contact for that. And supposing the same gang needed a safe deposit in Comerbourne on a later job, and thought they had a reliable little girl there—respectable, above suspicion, and already implicated in one affair. Because there
was
another gang job in Comerbourne, just three weeks ago. Didn’t you hear about it? The pay-roll of Armitage Pressings was snatched on its way from the bank. The gang vanished, and so did the money. There were road-blocks up almost at once, but the money vanished, all the same. I reckon it vanished inside Comerbourne. Don’t you? They found the van in a scrap-yard afterwards, right there in the town. The money had to lie somewhere until the heat was off. Deposited with some confederate inside the town, somebody they could trust. Somebody they
thought
they could trust. Armitage’s pay-roll per week is around fifteen thousand. How much do you make this lot?”

He had been counting the number of notes in one bundle, and the number of bundles, but he couldn’t believe the answer. “I figure it as something over fourteen thousand, anyhow. There’d be change, too, of course, if it was wages money, but that wouldn’t be so portable, maybe she ditched that. Even the notes… but banks don’t keep the numbers of the used notes they hand out, do they?”

The timing was right and the amount was right, and where else would a shop assistant get fifteen thousand pounds in notes? Bunty watched him fingering through the neat, banded bundles, still dazed. She saw his hand halt upon one of them, and his face grew sharply intent as he turned its edges towards him.

Black, rigid card—or was it a blue so dark as to be nearly black?—jutted on either side of the banknotes by a fraction of an inch. Luke had felt the alien stiffness even before he had seen the slivers of darkness. He thrust his thumb under the brown paper band and ripped it open, tumbling out upon the table a small black book, its cover printed in gilt lettering and heraldry between two white windows.

“A passport!”

Fire-new, virgin, its stiff cover opened a little as soon as the constriction was removed.

“Pippa’s. Of course!” said Luke in a low voice, and opened it where the blue-tinted pages yielded of their own tension. Something folded double inside began to unfold in sympathy. “Aaaah!” he said in a long sigh. “Now I see!”

It was a B.E.A. ticket. He unfolded it and studied the details with a closed and unrevealing face.

“Dated for to-day. A single from Heath Row to Le Bourget. The eight o’clock Trident flight. So that’s why she needed the Kwells! She’d have had to be at West London Air Terminal by seven o’clock. I don’t suppose I should even have been awake by the time she took off for Paris. There wouldn’t have been any difficulty. We… hadn’t planned on sharing… The only trick would have been getting this out of the tool-box while I wasn’t around to see, and that wouldn’t have bothered her. She’d only have to say she’d left something in the car, some time when I was shaving, or something, and couldn’t run her errand myself. She could do harder things than that by far. And I don’t suppose I was much of a problem to manage.”

“No,” agreed Bunty, “I don’t suppose you were. But things didn’t work out so easily. They came back for their money, just when she had everything planned for her run-out. What else could it be? They followed her to your house. Maybe they had someone watching her moves all along, those people don’t trust anyone far. They saw her leaving with a suitcase, and followed her, and it would be simple enough getting into your place, even if the door was locked, but I don’t suppose it was…”

“It almost never was,” he owned, fingering the air-line ticket sombrely on the table. “Sometimes not even when we went to bed. We hadn’t anything worth stealing, we didn’t think in terms of locking things up.”

“So they just walked in. Just like Pippa. And they heard part—I’d say not very much—of what passed between you, and saw the struggle for the gun. How very easy, to knock you on the head, and then they could get rid of a liability and leave you to take the blame. When even you were convinced of your own guilt, why should the police look any farther? But you see where they went wrong. They were sure the money would be in Pippa’s case. But it wasn’t! And now it was too late to try and make her tell what she’d done with it.
They’d killed her
! She wasn’t going to answer any questions any more. Probably they searched your cottage, but they can’t have known about the car, waiting in the garage a whole street away, with this money packed inside it. They couldn’t begin to guess where the loot really was. No! But they took her keys with them, and went back to make a thorough search of her flat. My guess is they’d take it for granted she’d moved the actual money, but they’d be looking for a left-luggage ticket, or a safe-deposit key, something that would show them where she’d hidden it.”

He looked up at her, and his face warmed into a faint smile. “That’s quite a lot of supposing.”

“I know it is, but it adds up. And in that case we can be certain of one thing, the anonymous caller who alerted the police to come and fetch you
didn’t
identify the corpse. They’d want the police busy round your place with everything they had. They wouldn’t want any premature clue to send the investigation over to Pippa’s flat, because they had a longish job of searching to do there themselves. And did you notice, none of these things in her bag has her name on it—not even in the purse, now I come to think of it.”

“And now
I
come to think of it,” he said, suddenly rearing his head like a hound pricking his ears at the distant sounds of the hunt, “they’d be expecting sensational news by this morning, a broadcast item about the murder at the least, police activity all round our quarter. And there wouldn’t be any! They’d know it had gone wrong. They’d know I’d somehow managed to dispose of the body and get clean away.”

Bunty made a soft, smothered sound of dismay. She got up quickly, beginning to thrust the bundles of notes together and fold the paper round them. “Yes… Luke, I hadn’t thought… I didn’t realise…”

“And as they wouldn’t find anything at Pippa’s place,” he said, “not even a left-luggage ticket, the next thought that would occur to them would be that I must have got away not only with Pippa and all the evidence, but also
with their fifteen thousand pounds
.”

They stared at each other across the table, across those absurd trivialities for which murder had been done, and the small, vicious personal treasons that make love unlovely; and each of them was furiously reckoning the risk to the other, and beginning to erect barricades.

“They’d be on the alert to-day,” said Bunty, “for
any
police news from yesterday. There’ll be nothing about murder, but they won’t miss the significance of a car that went through a red light, and then nearly ran down a constable, because it was in such a guilty hurry to get away from Comerbourne.”

“No,” he agreed grimly, “they surely won’t. The police up here were alerted, so there’ll be something to give them the tip down there, even if it isn’t exactly public yet. They’ll know which way the police hunt has come. Within limits, they’ll know where to look for me…”

“For us,” she said instantly.

“For
me
! Oh, Bunty… Oh, God, I ought to have sent you home!”

“You did try. Don’t think of it, it isn’t your fault that I wouldn’t go. I wouldn’t go even now,” she said stubbornly.

“Then let’s take all this stuff and get out of here, while the going’s good. I want to get you to the police. I’ve never wanted the police so much,” he said, and laughed rather breathlessly, tying the pink tape hurriedly round the parcel of notes. “Put your coat on,” he said. “Never mind anything else, we’ll bring them back here.
I’ll
bring them back here. You’ll stay where you’re safe.”

Yes, she thought, just get yourself and me into police hands, and I might even sit back and leave the rest to them, and to you.

“But we still have to avoid notice. The car…”

“It doesn’t matter now,” he said with decision. “If the police are on the look-out for me, so much the better, I’ll gladly pull in and hand over to them. The others won’t know details like our registration… or will they?” he wondered blankly, pulled up short at the thought of their complete isolation all day from the bulletins of the B.B.C. “Oh, lord, why doesn’t Reggie put a proper radio in here? They bring the transistor, of course, damn the thing! We haven’t a clue what they’ve been putting out all day, but I'll bet the gang have had a constant radio watch operating. You can pick up the police broadcasts, too, if you hunt round the wave bands. Many a time I’ve listened in to their two-way conversations about stolen cars. Ours is just the sort of item they’d be batting back and forth all day long.”

“Those people may not be all that efficient,” said Bunty scornfully, shrugging into her coat. She stooped to unplug the electric fire. “Don’t forget the main switch, you know where it is, I don’t. Look what a bad blunder they made, killing her…”

He said: “Yes…” in so low and bitter a voice that she was suddenly visited by a private revelation of the love he had felt for that wretched girl upstairs, and the hooks it still had in his deepest sensitivities.

“Here, you have this!” He thrust the parcel of money upon her. “I’d rather… You found it. And you wouldn’t believe,” he said, “what a bad moment it gives you to have several thousand pounds of someone else’s money in your hands, when you’re broke every month-end without fail.”

“It sticks to my fingers, too,” she said, shaken by the knowledge that she was uttering no more than the truth. “Poor Pippa! ” she added, and the connection was clear enough. “But we’re luckier. It’s better than fifteen thousand pounds to us, it’s evidence for you.”

The room looked as they had found it. When he threw the main switch there would be nothing but the tins and the broken china in the bin to show they had ever been here. Luke looked round him alertly, approved what he saw, and thrust the gun carefully into his right coat pocket, barrel foremost, a dormant devil. There remained, of course, out of sight but not out of mind, that pale blonde girl upstairs, impenetrably asleep in the pale blond room.

Outside the windows the world already looked dark; in reality it was no more than dusk. When they put out the lights within, the light without would revive and blossom almost into day.

Luke leaned into the broom cupboard, “Ready? I should get out to the front door, it’ll seem dark at first. I’ll bring a torch, there’s one they keep in the store here.”

She didn’t move. She knew the geography of this house now rather better than that of her own. And she was going nowhere without him. Her honour was involved. What you pick up of your own will you can’t in decency lay down. You must carry it as long as there’s need, until it can stand alone, and walk alone, and not be challenged by anyone.

The light went out, and the window bloomed gradually into greenish, bluish pallor, lambent and enchanted, casting a faint gleam upon shapes inside the room. She waited with the flat packet under her arm, clutched tightly against her heart; and in a moment light, assured steps brought him to her side. A hand felt delicately in the gloom after her free hand, and found and clasped it.

And in that moment they heard it, the engine of the car that was winding its way cautiously along the sunken lane towards the house. A slow, sly, casing note, moving in methodically and without haste by the only approach, sure of closing the box on whatever was within. They heard it stop, somewhere round the curve of the grassland, beyond the trees. They stretched taller in the brief silence, waiting for it to start up again; and faithfully it throbbed into life and came on, with the deliberation of fate itself. Nearer now, but still with swelling ground between. But for the twilight silence it might have passed for traffic somewhere on the road, innocent and absorbed, not touching them.

Bunty thought hopefully, the police coming back. And as though she had spoken aloud, he said in a whisper: “No!” And after a moment of listening with held breath: “Not the same car.”

He drew her out into the hall, and loosed her hand gently, and she heard him climbing the stairs in long, ranging, silent steps, three at a time. She groped her way after him, and found him in the large front bedroom, crouched at the window. Her eyes were already adjusting to the half-light, she could see clearly.

She saw the car creep very gently round the curve of the drive, shy in the shelter of the trees. She saw it halt to breathe, to observe the house in darkness, and then to accelerate and slide onward, reassured, into the gateway. Reassured? Or galvanised into more open action by fear that the place was indeed empty, that the birds were flown? It came on without concealment now, but quietly, hissed on to the edge of the gravel, rolled round before the door.

The doors of the car opened before it was still. Silently and purposefully two men slid out of it, one on either side, and then the motor cut out as suavely as a held sigh, and the driver slithered just as noiselessly from behind the wheel. Three figures, mute, shapeless and anonymous, deployed across the width of the gravel court, and looked up contemplatively under shading hat-brims at the blind frontage of the house. And two of the figures, quite suddenly and smoothly and naturally, as though these were the inevitable fruit you would expect to see ripening there, had guns in their hands.

Luke drew back from the window, caught Bunty in his arm, and swept her away through the doorway to the landing, closing the door of the bedroom silently behind them. Silence was everything now. Neither of them risked a word, even in a whisper. Thank God they’d switched off all lights before the car came within sight of the house. But they were both remembering what the police sergeant had said in the morning. He and his companion had seen a light in one of the windows here “from up the coast road a piece.” So might these men have seen one, a quarter of an hour ago. Bunty and Luke hadn’t thought to be cautious about showing lights. Mrs. Chartley had reported her presence to the police, so why disguise it? And now it was too late to worry. Simply get out of here by the only remaining way, and pray that the searchers were merely following up one possibility, and would come to the conclusion that the house was empty, and go away to hunt somewhere else.

But the guns, flowering miraculously in hands that had seemed to conjure them out of empty air, hadn’t looked at all tentative, or in the very slightest doubt of their premises.

Neither of them stumbled on the stairs, even in that quietly frantic rush they made; neither of them fouled any of the gay, impermanent fixings of the hall. They could hear the faint, deliberate crunch of gravel under cautious feet as the invaders cased the windows; but the darkness inside was sufficient to swallow all movement, and the glass in the panel of the front door was pebbled and opaque without light to bring it to life. Luke felt his way through the living-room door, and closed it gingerly after them just as a hand eased up the latch of the front door, with the faintest of metallic sounds, and tested it and found it locked. After that they had more freedom to move, more insulation between themselves and their enemies, and they could concentrate on saving time, which was the most vital factor of all. They had to be well down the slate staircase to the inlet before the hunters found their way round the corner of the house to the rear terrace and the faint, lambent plane of the seascape beyond.

The boat was the only card they had left. Why, oh, why had she listened to her tidy, housekeeper’s mind, and sent him to lock it away in the boat-house again? If it had still been riding at the jetty it would have saved them minutes now.

Out through the kitchen, out past the store, and Luke spared a moment to turn the key of the back door behind them. It slowed their retreat, but it completed the picture of an empty cottage, if only they could be far enough down the path to be out of earshot. There was no moon yet, but a faint starlight that brushed the flags of the tiny terrace, and gleamed on the level places in the pathway down the cliff. Thank God for the twists and turns in that erratic descent, that would take them out of sight within seconds. Sound would be a more dangerous betrayer.

Luke plunged to the edge of the terrace and led the way down in the dusk. He was on a path he knew, and could make good speed on the descent, but out of that complex of rocks the smallest rattle of a stone displaced would start a volley of rising echoes; and those characters out on the gravel weren’t going to waste much time getting into the house. A shot will open a lock, if there’s no other means at hand.

Luke put all thoughts out of his head for the moment, and concentrated on keeping his footing at a crazy speed, and bracing his left arm steadily to give Bunty a safety barrier from falling as she leaped and slid and bounded after him, and a grab handle whenever her foot stepped askew on the slates. The way was narrow as well as steep, his body would prevent her from crashing down towards the sea, even if she lost her footing. Whenever they reached one of the more level stretches he took her hand, but on the patches of broken shingle, laid with loose slate slabs for steps, she pressed close at his back and held by his shoulder. And at every step he quivered to the touch of her fingers with delight and agony, and wished her away, miles away in safety out of this mess in which he had involved her. But even then wishing her away was almost more than he could manage.

They were half-way down when he heard the back door of the cottage crash open above them, and at the same time the sound of running feet on the paved path that led round the house to the seaward side. One man had come round; two, probably, had gone through. Round the other end of the house it was impossible to go, it was built out to the edge of the drop. You could climb below safely enough if you had a fairish head for it, but not in the dark. Luke gripped the key of the boat-house in his pocket, his knuckles pressed for comfort against the gun. A finger of light from a torch fumbled down into the crevices of the rocks. They were sheltered from it by the tortuous turns, and close to the jetty now, but the pursuers could not fail to see the path, and the roof of the boat-house a sheen of grey in the sudden beam. With a light they could cover that descent only too quickly.

He was so intent on the movements of the men above that the movement below took him by surprise, bringing him up shocked and short like a blow to the heart.

A fourth man rose out of the shadows and bulked in their path darkly, blocking the way. The large, square-shouldered shape, neckless and muscular, closed the passage between the rocks solidly. A flat grey voice like the flat grey slates said: “Hold it right there, mate! Stay put, and get your hands up!”

Luke, arrested in mid-flight on steps steeper than average, pulled up with a suddenness that jarred him from heels to head, and cost Bunty her balance. Her foot slipped on a shifting stone, an unstable slate tilted forward as she stepped on it, and she was down on hands and knees, clinging to the rock, the displaced slab hard and heavy against her side. Some of the stones that supported its forward edge had rolled out of position and made it treacherous. She shoved her shoulder under it and heaved it back to its proper level to free herself of its weight, and the moment of confusion and alarm dissolved in understanding at that instant, and she knew they were not going to get away. They’d underestimated their opponents. The lay-out had been surveyed from the seaward side before ever the car drove up to the house. And this way, too, was closed to them.

She scrambled to her feet again, covered by Luke’s body. She heard the hard voice below say impatiently: “You heard me, chum. Let’s see your hands.”

Luke fired from the pocket of his coat on the last word. He hadn’t known he was going to do it, he hadn’t even realised that his thumb had already shoved off the safety catch. Still less consciously had he calculated the angle of the drop before him, and tilted the thing well down in his pocket, to startle and cripple, perhaps, but not to kill. At this distance even he couldn’t miss, the whole crevice between the rocks seemed to be full of the bulky body, with the lambent native silver of the sea outlining it clearly. He and Bunty had the dark and solid rock behind them; but even so, he reached for her with his left hand as he fired with the right, and drew her close to his back, covered from sight by his body.