Ellis Peters - George Felse 07 - The Grass Widow's Tale (15 page)

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 stairs 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:

“Boss, they’re over the other side, too… among the trees, five or six of ’em…”

There had been no sound of a car, no glimpse of headlights. They had drawn in as silently as the night itself; so they knew what kind of hunt this was, and what to expect when they sprang the trap. Could this be all on account of Rosamund Chartley and her mythical address in Hereford?

There was a hoarse, muted shout overhead, a rush for the stairs. Skinner came bounding down in three stumbling leaps, fending himself off from walls and furniture with flailing arms.

“Boss, it’s the police! We better get out of here fast… they’re all round us…”

A sudden pale eye of light stroked its way down the wall, dimmed and diffused by the drawn curtains, probing at the window and passing in absolute silence. In a moment they saw it through the open door of the living-room, spilled in a lace of pallor on the floor of the hall, patterned by the frosted glass in the front door. When it passed from there, there would be darkness across the stretch of gravel to where the Jaguar stood in the shelter of the trees, turned and ready to run.

“That’s it, then,” Fleet said in a clipped whisper, meant for no ears but his own, though Bunty heard it with the exaggerated clarity of voices in dreams. He knew the game was up. He knew when to throw in his hand.

The light passed on from the hall, and left the front door in darkness again.

“Now!” hissed Fleet. “
Out
!
Run for the Jag
!”

And out they went, tumbling, jostling, thrusting, all in something so like silence that their flight became more dreamlike than their lingering. Fleet was first out of the door, fast and light on his feet, a man well named; and after him Blackie, hurtling like a terrier, Con, outlined for a moment in the doorway all arms and legs, Skinner pounding along heavily in the rear and rolling like a half-filled barrel. All the darkling crew streamed out across the open court before the cottage, night-birds startled from their carrion. Bunty sat dazed with all the accumulated weariness of a night and a day, and listened to their flight.

There was a postscript. Leaning heavily on the bannisters, Quilley came stumbling and groaning after, down the stairs and through the hall.

“Boss, wait for me… don’t go without me…!”

She heard the moaning complaint ebb along the wall, and reach the front door. And then the two of them were alone. Stiffly she got up from the floor, laying Luke gently down out of her arms, and went out into the porch.