Shroud of Silence (18 page)

Was I drowning already?

The belt buckle would not give. I tugged madly at it, cursing the strength of the thing. And then suddenly it was undone, and the relief made me swallow some water. Spluttering, I struggled to get my arms free of the sleeves. And then I was out of the coat, and the pole had lost its deadly hook on me.

With a final effort I kicked back to the surface.

Where was Drew? Why didn’t he hear? Why didn’t he come to help me?

Battling for short sweet breaths, I must have shouted his name. I heard Corinne’s savage laughter.

“You’ll have to call louder than that for your darling Drew. He’s not here.”

It didn’t penetrate, then.

“Drew!” I cried despairingly. “Help me, Drew!”

Treading water, flinging far too much strength into the simple task of keeping afloat, I had little energy to spare for facing up to Corinne. In the whirling background of my mind I heard her shouting at me. It sounded like mockery. Spiteful, searing mockery.

There was a streak of something silver in the pale moonlight. But it wasn’t silver, it was hard steel. The wicked blade of the long sickle came whistling across the water in a wide, sweeping arc.

I had to duck under again to miss it. And when I surfaced, choking, I saw it coming at me from the other side.

I gulped air and dived again and again before I was able to swim a few strokes under water and get beyond Corinne’s reach. Idiotically, I lashed myself for being so feeble in the water. My casual bathing, idling in the sun at pools, had not fitted me for this grim fight.

Then by a miracle my kicking feet struck something solid. I tried to balance on it and found my head and shoulders were held clear above water level. There must have been some sort of boulder standing up from the floor of the pond. Its top was quite small, but just enough for me to perch on. A tiny, submerged, life-saving island.

It gave me the breathing space my aching lungs craved for, and I sucked in air with prayers of thankfulness.

It
was only as my panting subsided that I began to realise the full extent of my danger. The pond water, fed by currents from underground springs, was at winter temperature. My whole body was numb with cold. I was hardly able to think, in no condition to combat a deadly enemy.

I had no idea why Corinne should want to kill me, but it was blazingly evident that she did. And she would almost certainly succeed. What was there to stop her?

If I tried to swim to the farther side, away from Corinne, she had only to run round the bank. She could easily beat me to it

The thought of Drew was a sharp pain. Where was he? Surely he and Corinne couldn’t have planned this monstrous thing together? I couldn’t believe it.

“Drew,” I shouted again, “Drew, where are you?”

“He’s with Bill Wayne.” Corinne’s voice came back at me almost conversationally. “I saw him go down to the cottage myself.”

“You’re lying! I know you’re lying.”

She laughed harshly. “If you’re puzzled about that little note, I might as well tell you that
I
sent it. I wanted to get you down here on your own, you see.”

“You
sent it?”

So there was no help coming from Drew!

In my new despair the icy water seemed to bite into me. The thinning clouds broke, and stark moonlight lit the .scene with bleak impartiality. I could see Corinne on the embankment, still gripping the long-handled sickle. A triumphant figure spelling death to me.

A few yards along the road the car stood abandoned. Its headlamps still blazed out, floodlighting the trees.

Corinne was shouting at me again. “I’ve been watching you, Miss Clever-Clever Bennett. I’ve seen you adding things up in your sly little mind.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I jerked out.

“Don’t try to come the sweet innocent with me. You’ve guessed about Brian, haven’t you? I heard you telling Drew you knew how he died.”

I was too numbed and confused to understand fully what Corinne meant. But I grasped enough to realise that she was somehow involved in Brian’s death.

“And now,” said Corinne viciously, “it’s your turn.”

I saw her bend down quickly to pick something off the ground. An instant later came a loud splash barely two feet from my head, where the stone had hit the water.

But Corinne was only having fun. She was playing a waiting game, I suppose. She must have known I couldn’t last long in that freezing water.

“You chose it the hard way, like this,” she mocked. “If you hadn’t dodged the car just now it would all have been over nice and quickly. Now it’ll have to be like it was with Brian. I’ll have to wait for you to drown.”

Corinne was somehow involved, yes. But the mystery surrounding Brian Hearne’s death still wasn’t fully explained.

I forced control into my shivering jaw enough to say, “But Gwen told me
she
pushed him in ...”

Corinne laughed loudly. “So she did, the old battle-axe! Only Brian got out again. When I was driving home I came across him sitting in the middle of the road laughing like a loon. He didn’t have his jacket on then, so he must have taken it off himself.”

“And you ... you pushed him into the water again?”

“I made damn sure he didn’t get out the second time. He was drunk, of course, as usual, so I didn’t have to wait too long.”

“But why?” I cried incredulously. “Why?”

I suppose I was really asking a larger question. Why, when she’d got everything, did Corinne have to make such a mess of it all? Why, when she had the luck to be married to Drew Barrington, should she ever have got herself tangled with any other man?

“Brian said he’d decided to walk out on me,” she spat, in suddenly flaring rage. “He thought it was all a screamingly funny joke. He said it would suit him very nicely to disappear for a bit, so why not let Gwen think he’d been drowned, and his body washed away or something. It would serve the old bitch right. He didn’t have a second thought about leaving me—and he had the damned nerve to expect me to accept that.” Corinne’s anger had petered out, and she began giggling inanely. “It
didn’t strike the poor fool that he was handing me a chance on a plate. If anyone suspected his death was not an accident, Gwen would take the blame.”

“What about Jane?” I asked, appalled. “Was she with you? Did she see ... ?”

Another stone came whizzing towards me. Before I could duck, it hit the water just ahead of my face,

Quickly, Corinne stopped and gathered more stones. She rained them at me in a frenzy, as if the mention of Jane had enraged her afresh.

“Don’t think I haven’t seen you making a big play for my husband, Kim Bennett! What a trick that was, giving him the patter about your magic cure for his poor little daughter!”

She stopped abruptly and turned her head, as if listening. I couldn’t hear anything myself. Only the busy chattering of my teeth as I fought against cold and fear.

But something had alerted Corinne. She was suddenly afraid, urgently afraid. She grabbed at the sickle again, swinging the blade out across the water. But now I was several feet beyond range of the vicious knife edge.

“Why don’t you come here where I can reach you?” Corrine screamed. Then raising the sickle above her head, she flung it at me like a javelin.

I couldn’t duck in time. The tip of the blade caught my cheek and I felt a slashing sting, and then the warmth of flowing blood.

But at least Corinne was no longer armed. Could I swim to the bank and clamber out to meet her on equal terms?

The feeble hope died at birth. It was impossible. I was cramped, numbed right through. I doubted if I could manage to swim just those few yards in the cold black water. I knew I could never haul myself out over the edge, even without an enemy there to push me back.

It was just a matter of time before the cold got me and I went under. Corrine need do nothing more. She could stand guard on the roadway and watch me drown.

The Mildenhall ponds would have claimed another victim. It would be officially recorded as another “tragic accident.”

But Corinne seemed impatient for me to die. She was searching the ground for more big stones. Not finding any, she ran over to the car and dragged something from the boot. I heard the clink of metal. The tool kit!

She dumped the heavy box on the bank and unripped it, spilling the contents, I watched in cold horror as she raised her arm and took deliberate aim.

This time the splash was bigger than ever, and terrifyingly near. A heavy hammer, perhaps, or a wrench. Whatever it was, the blow would certainly have finished me if Corinne had found her target.

Other missiles followed, a hail of smaller tools. Too weak now to try dodging any more, I stood rigid on my tiny island rock, my hands feebly warding off the bombardment.

And then I saw Corinne pick up the toolbox itself, lifting it high in the air with both hands. But she didn’t throw it. Her head was half turned, as if again she could hear something.

And then I too heard it. Men’s voices, and quite near. With a sudden curious clarity I heard Drew’s surprised exclamation.

“Look, Bill, over there. Something’s wrong.”

I screamed out wildly, an incoherent yell for help. At the same instant Corinne launched her last desperate shot, flinging the cumbersome, toolbox straight at me. It fell short. But the wash swept me from my unsteady perch on the boulder.

I thrashed about madly, hope injecting me with a new strength. Drew was coming.

My cry to him came out as a feeble whimper. But it was enough to be heard.

“Kim’s in the pond!” Drew’s voice seemed to be reaching me across oceans of wild dark water,

But then a light stabbed out, very close, right by the bank. It swung around, searching, and centred on me.

Drew shouted, “All right, Kim. I’m coming.”

With a crash his body hit the water. Within seconds his powerful hands were gripping me, supporting me.

His voice in my ear was urgent: “Keep still, Kim. Don’t struggle.”

I hadn’t known I was struggling.

Relaxing, I gave myself completely into the security of his lifesaving hold. I lay back on the water, and the moon smiled down at me.

As we moved with the current towards the farther bank, I was aware of an odd feeling of detachment. Freed now from all responsibility for my own safety, I was even able to absorb something of what was happening on the road.

Corinne had run to the car. I saw it start with a jerk, headlights still blazing, and accelerate away from the stocky figure running after it in vain pursuit.

I shall never be certain what was in Corinne’s mind at that moment. Did she realize that there was no hope for her, no chance of getting right away? Or was she still intent on murder?

I watched the car pull up abruptly some fifty yards off where the road widened. It reversed and spun in a tight turn to come hurtling back, engine screaming, heading straight at Bill.

At that moment I was sure Corinne meant to kill him, just as she had meant to kill me. For one horrible second I thought she was going to succeed. Bill’s silhouetted figure, arms waving in a frantic appeal to stop, was in the direct path of the car.

Corinne didn’t slacken speed, but at the last instant she braked hard, and the car went into a sickening skid. With tires screaming, it slewed violently across the road, seemed to hang for long seconds on the very brink, and then slid sideways into deep water.

The wash went right over our heads. But it helped to carry us to the bank. Drew reached out and grabbed a hold, and I tried weakly to do the same.

Bill had got there already, his flashlight playing on us.

“Here, Bill,” Drew gasped. “Look after her for me.”

I reached up, but Bill spurned my hands. His fingers clamped around my wrist and in one rapid movement he had hauled me out of the freezing water

Drew was already swimming strongly across to where the car had gone down. Now nothing showed above the surface. Only a thousand ripples in the beam of Bill’s flashlight.

Bill dumped the torch on the grass as he wrenched off his thick-knit sweater. “Here, get yourself into that,” he ordered.

And then he was gone, running around the perimeter of the pond, shining the light down to help Drew locate the car beneath the water.

Without warning, Drew disappeared under the surface. I cried out involuntarily, and kept my eyes clamped to the spot, as if in some way that would protect him. My teeth were clattering and I felt piercingly cold, but I was far too tense to think of putting on Bill’s sweater.

The black water swirled suddenly as Drew’s head, came up. But he paused there only long enough to gulp a huge breath, and then he had dived again.

This time he stayed down for an age. Surely it was impossible that he could survive for so long without air? I felt a pain in my own lungs and found I had been holding my breath in sympathy.

It
was difficult even to get up on my feet, but I had to help if I could. I stumbled round the pond to where Bill was lying stretched flat on the road, reaching out over the water.

I crouched down beside him, asking in a frightened whisper, “What’s happening?”

“He’s got her out of the car.” Bill’s voice too was hushed. He added in the merest thread of a murmur. “But whether she’s ...”

I could make out vague movement, an agonizingly blurred drama in slow motion deep below the surface. Then suddenly they came bursting up in a tumult of surging water, Drew gasping painfully and Corinne limp and lifeless in his arms.

Hastily, I grabbed the torch from Bill to give him both hands free. He got a grip on Corinne and dragged her body out of the water and up on to the road. Still gulping tortured breaths Drew began heaving himself up. I gave him my hand and pulled with a sudden strength that surprised me.

There had been no sound at all from Corinne. Snatching the torch from me, Drew shone the light where she lay on the road, Bill kneeling beside her.

Even with her clothes torn and clinging wetly, she was still a beautiful woman. Her glorious red-gold hair lay streaked across her face, and Bill smoothed it gently aside to free her nose and mouth.