The Judas Pair (25 page)

My elbows were like balloons full of fluid, swollen and soggy. My wrists were more painful still but not so swollen. Despite them and the blisters I had to resume at the bellows.

As time wore wearily on, I became aware of lessening temperature. In rest periods I could hear rain on grass and a faint drumming. Could it be rain on the old Armstrong? My rest periods were becoming longer and safer and the need of cool air was not so absolute. I was able to risk sitting down and having a rough meal.

Eventually, there came a time when I felt it would not be risking total extinction to fall asleep. I lodged myself upright on the steps and was into oblivion within seconds.

You’d never seen such a sight. The cottage was a pile of smoking cinders and ash. In the dusk the garden seemed so small without the cottage to make the plot seem a little more imposing. The whole scene seemed pathetic. Where the kitchen alcove had been the ash was knee-deep, perhaps the result of my water-trap. Water was seeping from below, there, probably from a damaged rising main.

The rain had ceased. Smoke still rose from the debris in places. You can’t help wondering at the curious consequences of physical events, almost as much as at biological goings-on. Why, I wondered, had that particular crossbeam, lying half charred among the ruins, not burned all the way through as the rest appeared to have done? And why was part of the wattle-and-daub wall still standing to a height of about three feet close to where the front door stood, with the rest in ashes?

It had taken me a full hour to extricate myself from the hole. The weight of smouldering debris had made the slab difficult to lift. Still, I thought grimly, the murderer can’t push even his phenomenal luck too far – quick-to-burn stuff makes light ash.

I placed the time at about nine o’clock Sunday night. The grass was wet from the rain. I had the sense to kick ashes back on to the paving over the priest-hole to obscure signs of my escape, and skipped swiftly on to the damp grass because my trousers were smouldering. With the same facility of the previous night I knew he’d gone. I had the Nock with me and slipped it to half-cock for safety.

The motor was a wreck, the tyres shreds of charred rubber, the paint gone, the metal twisted and the trimmings burned to blazes. I hadn’t a bean. Except for the few items down in the priest-hole, I was bust. Dizziness forced me to rest a few minutes. I sat in the darkness beneath the hedge to recover and bathed my face with wet grass. There was nothing for it but to ask for help, but from whom?

My neighbours didn’t get back until Monday as a rule, so they weren’t about yet, assuming I’d guessed right about it being Sunday evening. Other people up the lane couldn’t be approached. I knew hardly any of them and anyway would send them into screaming fits by heaving out of the darkness like a charred scarecrow. I would have to phone somebody – Muriel? Margaret? Jane? Tinker? Dick or Brad? Who was safe?

There were signs people had come. Great marks were gouged in the gravel path. Several bushes were crushed. A fire engine, probably. Foot hollows in the grass were filled with rainwater already. A small crowd of well-wishers, half disappointed at not seeing Lovejoy crisped, the rest busy speculating which bird it was that had luckily seduced me away from danger. Friendship’s a great restorative.

The idea of a telephone seemed bizarre. You just pick up the receiver, dial and have a perfectly normal conversation with whoever’s at the other end. After a night such as I’d spent? I’d heard somewhere that people rescued from bizarre episodes full of danger – like sailors on a raft for days – weren’t allowed back to normal life immediately, but were put into solitude until the idea of rescue became a tangible reality. Maybe human brains can’t accept too much relief all at one go. Not knowing if I was doing right or not, I compelled myself to sit there beneath the darkening hedge watching the ruins smoulder, trying to keep my relief from dominating my thoughts.

The proper thing to do would be to walk through the gathering dusk to the policeman’s house. It was only about a half-mile. Nobody would see what a state I was in. He might lend me some clothes. I was wearing socks, shoes, trousers and a shirt, all filthy and torn. Caked as I was with grime, ashes and dried blood I couldn’t be a pretty sight, cut and blistered. Or perhaps the telephone box? Our one public phone was always lit and stood by the village pond in front of the White Hart. We have no street lamps but the place was too prominent.

After some two hours or so tasting fresh damp air, I rose creakily, holding on to the hedge to keep myself upright. It proved difficult even to walk, to my surprise. I kept to the verge of the gravel path so as to make no noise and examined the lane before limping quickly across, carrying the two-barrelled pistol now at full-cock should my premonitions let me down.

My neighbour has two cottages knocked into one and extended to the rear. Like me he has a curving gravel path up to the front. I ignored this and crept slowly through his garden to the rear of the house. To help in harvesting his apple trees he has two extending ladders in an open shed there. I laboriously carried one to the house and climbed to an upstairs window. Anybody can get in modern catch windows. Within minutes I was blundering about downstairs in the darkness and on the phone.

I dialled Margaret. Mercifully, she was in.

‘Thank God!’

‘What’s He done to earn gratitude?’ I snapped. ‘Look. Have you your car?’

‘Yes. Did you know . . .?’ she began.

‘I know. I’m still in it.’

‘What?’

‘Come and get me, please.’ I rang off.

I’d cleared away any trace of my trespass in the house as best I could and was back in the shelter of my own hedge by the time her Morris approached. Funny how bright the headlights seemed.

‘Lovejoy?’ Her voice was almost a scream as she slithered to a halt on the gravel. The cottage really did look like something from a nightmare.

‘Here.’

I stepped from the hedge and she really did scream before I could calm her.

‘It’s only me, Margaret.’

‘My God! Are you –’

‘Sorry about the fancy dress,’ I said wearily. ‘Calm down.’

‘What’s happened to you? The police phoned me. I came round. We’ve looked everywhere. The fire brigade was here. It was terrible. Somebody said you’d gone off with –’

‘Turn the headlights off, there’s a good girl.’

With her help I got in and leaned back feeling almost safe. She slid behind the wheel. I could see her white face in the dashboard’s glow.

‘Shouldn’t I phone Geoffrey, or –’

‘Disturb him at this hour?’ She didn’t miss the bitterness.

‘I’ll take you round to the doctor’s –’

‘No,’ I snapped. ‘Are you on your own at home?’ She nodded. Then can I come there, to clean up?’

‘Yes.’ She started the engine and backed us down to the lane. ‘Did you manage to save anything?’

‘One thing,’ I said, lying back, eyes closed. ‘Me.’

Bathed and in some clothes Margaret happened to have handy – perhaps from the estranged husband – I examined myself in the bathroom mirror. I’d have been wiser to stay filthy. My face was cut in a dozen places. An enormous bruise protruded from my temple. My left eye was black, a beautiful shiner. I’d lost a tooth. My hands were blistered balloons.

She gave me a razor to shave with, a messy job with more blood than whiskers.

‘Your husband’s?’ I asked.

‘Mind your own business,’ she said.

She made a light meal and I went to sleep on her couch with the television on. I couldn’t get enough normality. She sat in an armchair close by to watch the play.

‘Let me take that.’

I hugged the Nock close and refused to give it to her. ‘I’m trying to make the pair,’ I said, a standard antiques dealer’s joke. She didn’t smile.

T
HE DAY DAWNED
bright and brittle. For an hour I could hardly move a joint and tottered about Margaret’s house like a kitten. A bath loosened me up. I felt relatively fresh after that. Just as well, I thought, as it was going to be a hard week.

The telephone rang about eleven, Tinker Dill asking if I’d been located. I told Margaret to say I’d gone to London for a couple of days with a friend. She didn’t like this but went along with it. The story was the post-girl had seen the cottage afire. She’d called the police, the fire brigade and an ambulance, a thorough girl. I made Margaret ring Dandy Jack to say she wouldn’t be in to the arcade for a few days and to let prospective customers know she’d be back soon.

I also got her to ring Muriel and say there’d been an accident of some description. She told her about the cottage and what she’d heard over the phone. Muriel seemed dismayed, Margaret reported to me. Real tears, as far as one could judge.

‘Well, some people love me anyway,’ I cracked, leering with my gappy grin.

‘God knows why,’ she said.

They gave me a column and a picture – of the burned cottage, not me – in the local paper on Tuesday morning. Police, it said, were making enquiries. Arson could not be ruled out. My own whereabouts were not known but speculation was that, in the throes of a depressive illness, I had accidentally started a fire and died, or else I was staying with friends. It was made to sound fifty-fifty, and who cared anyway. Too bloody casual by far. The ruins were being searched for clues. It was widely known that I was mentally disturbed after the unfortunate accidental death of a close friend. By Thursday I was written off from public awareness, which suited me. The local paper went back to the more important foot-and-mouth disease.

On Friday I asked Margaret to take me for an evening drive.

I felt absolutely calm. The Nock just fitted the glove compartment, wrapped in a dry duster to prevent scratches. All anxieties and fears vanished in the calm that certainty brings.

Margaret had been marvellous during the week. We’d chatted about antiques and I’d been pleasantly surprised at how stable my thoughts were, and how I enjoyed her company. She’d taken the full account of my escapades at the cottage quite well. The only point where I differed from the truth was the invention of a hidden tunnel beneath the sink out to the back, of the copse. After all, the honour among dealers is bendable and my remaining stuff was still down there. I’d partly paid my keep by authenticating some, musical seals of about 1790 for her, lovely they were, too.

‘You’re not going to do anything silly, Lovejoy?’ she asked as she drove.

‘People keep asking me that.’

‘And what do you answer?’

‘Women do keep on, don’t they?’ I grumbled.

‘I’m waiting, Lovejoy.’

‘Of course I won’t do anything silly.’

‘Then why the gun?’

‘Because he’ll have two, and a crossbow.’

The car slowed and she pulled in, angry as hell. ‘Who?’

‘The murderer.’

‘Is that where we’re going?’

‘Yes.’

There was a prolonged silence. For a moment I thought she was going to make me get out and walk.

‘Does she know?’ she asked after a while.

‘No.’

‘Certain?’

‘No.’ I paused. ‘But she might have guessed – you know how people guess the truth sometimes.’

We resumed the journey.

‘Aren’t you going to tell me?’ she said.

‘Lagrange, the Reverend Gentleman from near the wrong bird sanctuary.’

‘So that’s what all those lies were about stuffed birds?’

‘Well, the odd white lie . . .’ I mumbled.

‘You mean it was him? The shooting? The . . . Sheila’s accident? Everything?’

‘And poor Eric Field.’

‘And you?’

‘And
nearly
me,’ I corrected.

‘But he’s a . . . a reverend.’

‘Borgia was a pope.’

I told her how my suspicions gradually rose about Lagrange. Who had the best opportunity of learning of Eric Field’s find? Who couldn’t afford a car yet would need a small putt-putt for frequent local visits in a rural community? And what was more natural man a woman’s bike for somebody who occasionally had to wear priestly garb? An authentic collector-friend of Eric Field’s, he’d started revisiting Muriel’s house. Collectors, like all addicts, need money. He was with Muriel in her posh grey Rover when Sheila gave me the turnkey at the war memorial. Muriel had blossomed with his feet under her table, and he’d started watching me from then on, using Muriel’s place as a base. Not a lot of trouble with a small motorized bike, and only a narrow valley to cross.

I’d stirred things up and reaped the consequences.

It fitted together.

‘Are you . . . fond of this Muriel?’ Margaret wanted to know.

‘I suppose so.’

‘More than that?’

‘I’m always more than that where women are concerned,’ I said starchily, then added, ‘She’s just a child, gormless and bright.’

‘Poor Lovejoy,’ Margaret commented in a way that told me I’d had my lot. You can tell from how they say things, can’t you?

She asked if Lagrange would be at Muriel’s. I said I couldn’t be sure.

‘He’s her boyfriend, though,’ I said sardonically. ‘The gardeners set me off thinking the other day, by being embarrassed at the odd innocent cussword – thought I was him for a moment. He’s a cool customer, insists on having tea in the same room where he killed poor Eric Field stone dead. A right nutter.’

‘Couldn’t we get the police –’

‘Not just yet.’

After that I got a dose of the thick silence they give you as corrective when you’ve transgressed. Nothing short of a miracle would make her smile on me again.

There was a small blue motorized bike to one side of the Field drive, no surprise. We rolled to a stop.

‘Lovejoy?’

I paused, already at the door.

‘Is there no . . . jealousy in this?’

‘Jealousy?’

‘You. Of him.’

‘No.’ Nothing had ever seemed so true. She accepted it and came with me.

‘Good heavens!’ Muriel, open-mouthed, was in the doorway. Her reaction was a disappointment to me. They are supposed to faint or at least go white, but then she hadn’t felt quite so gone over me when I was alive so I couldn’t really expect too much.