Ellis Peters - George Felse 05 - The Piper On The Mountain (11 page)

“He’s dead!” whispered Tossa, shivering with shock.

“He
is
dead, isn’t he? There’s nothing we can do for him?”

“No, there’s nothing we can do. He’s dead.” It disposed, he saw, of the first urgency. He felt her relax in his arms. Now they were two, burdened with the responsibility only for themselves. It was no comfort at all, but it simplified things. It even accelerated understanding.

“I came here to meet him,” she said numbly. “He telephoned me. It wasn’t my mother.”

“I know. Never mind that now. What happened? When you came in here? Tell me what you can.”

“He was standing over there,” she said in a dulled but obedient whisper, “beyond the window, where it’s dark. When I came in, he started across to meet me. He stepped right into the sunlight, and then he suddenly lurched forward, and fell past me. I couldn’t understand what had happened to him, all at once like that.”

“Somebody shot him,” said Dominic. “Somebody’s outside with a rife. I heard the shot. He was covering that window, waiting for his chance, and he got it when this chap stepped into the light. So keep down here in the shadow, whatever you do.”

“He may have seen us come,” she said, shuddering in his arms, “you or me or both. Especially me—I didn’t hide. Suppose he thinks Mr. Welland may have told me something before he was killed? He
came
to tell me something!”

“Somebody out there was damned determined he shouldn’t get the chance.
Did
he manage to say anything to you? Anything at all?”

“When I came in he started to say: ‘Miss Barber, there you are.’ Something like that. And then he pitched forward and fell down.”

“And afterwards? When you were kneeling by him?”

“He did try to say something. It sounded like: ‘But he couldn’t have known—nobody else knew!’ And then he said: ‘Impossible!’ quite clearly, sort of angrily. Just: ‘Impossible!’ And then there wasn’t anything else. And now he’s dead!”

“And on the telephone? He didn’t tell you anything then?”

“He only said he must see me, and would I meet him here. It’s my fault. If it hadn’t been for me, if I hadn’t interfered, he’d still have been alive. I never wanted to break things, but I do. I break everything!”

She was shaken by a momentary gust of weeping, but she pushed the weakness away from her indignantly, and clung to Dominic’s sweater with convulsive fingers, as to the anchor of her sanity.

“If the man outside—the man with the rifle—if he knows we’re in here, if he knows we’re defenceless, we’re as good as dead, too, aren’t we? Because he can’t afford any witnesses.”

“He may not know. And even if he does, he can’t be all sides of us at once. Listen, Tossa! You stay here, and stay down. You understand? I want to take a look out of the window.”

“You can’t! He’s that side, he must be. He’ll fire again.” She kept her hold of him fiercely, and it was not a hysterical grip, but a very practical and determined one, meant to secure what she valued.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to show myself, I’m not such a fool. I’ve got to see where he could be, and how much ground he can cover.” He detached her hands from his person firmly, and slid away from her along the dusty floor, to draw himself up cautiously on the dark western side of the window.

With his cheek flattened against the wall, he could peer out with one eye over the range of country which must contain, somewhere, the man with the rifle trained on this spot. He found himself looking out, as he might have realised before if his mind had been working normally, over the full width of the valley, for below him the ground fell away to the path and the brook. Only a long segment of the opposite wall of the valley was presented to view. That was comforting, for it meant the marksman must be some considerable distance away, too far to change his ground quickly.

His field of fire was more or less determined. Dominic recollected the way the bullet had entered, slightly to right of centre near the base of the skull. That seemed to indicate that the rifleman was somewhat up-valley from their position, undoubtedly somewhere in cover on the far side, and approximately on a level with the chapel.

Right opposite the window where he stood, and on a level perhaps a few yards higher, was the scarred face of rock where Herbert Terrell had fallen to his death. There were plenty of bushes at the up-valley side of that cliff-face. The position was approximately right. Murder, it seemed, clung very close to this spot.

What could the distance be? Nearly half a mile, surely. Did that mean telescopic sights? If he couldn’t sight them from where he was, he certainly couldn’t change his position and shorten the range very quickly. And if he was covering this window from over there, he couldn’t even see the doorway, it was round a good, solid corner of masonry. So with a lot of luck he might not have seen them at all. In that case he could only feel uneasily certain that the young man who knew too much must have come here to meet someone, and he might, just might, know enough to feel sure who that someone was likely to be. But he couldn’t
know
, at this moment, and he couldn’t break cover and show himself, in
case
someone escaped to tell the tale. Secrecy was of the essence. When he killed it had to be anonymously, unless he could be absolutely sure of killing
everyone
who might be able to connect him with the affair.

There was cover for most of the way back to the Riavka hut; only the thirty yards of open rock here outside the door, and the expanse of meadows well below, presented real hazards. And the first was surely the worst, just the getting out of this stone box, and into the bushes. It was all very well calculating hopefully that the enemy must be in a position from which he ought not to be able to see the doorway, but even so he might be able to see the last few yards of that rock shelf before the path dropped from it into the trees. And it appeared that he was an excellent shot, too good by half. Could he command a view of the lower meadows from his perch? And would a target crossing them be still within his range?

If they waited a little while the abrupt dusk would fall, and make it easier to move unseen; but easier for their enemy as well as for them. And in that same little while he could be down in the valley, if he knew enough to be sure who they were and where they must make for, and slicing diagonally across rough ground to get to the meadows before them and cut them off there.

Dominic licked sweat from his lip, and hung irresolute for a moment. The slanting shaft of sunlight, narrower and narrower every moment, had begun to tilt steadily now. The globule of brightness where it struck the far side of the window-frame was climbing upwards, accelerating all the time. He understood; the sun had reached the point of dropping behind the crests, and when the last sliver of orange-red vanished it would suddenly be half-dark. If there was going to be one moment when it would be safe to run across the shelf of rock and into the trees, that would be the moment. The valley dusk fell like a stone; even eyes braced and trained to watch steadily must be blind for a second or two.

He looked down at Tossa, coiled in the dust of the floor and watching him unwaveringly. She had on a heather tweed skirt that could vanish against almost any indeterminate background, but her sweater was cream-coloured. Dominic peeled off his dark-red pullover, and tossed it across to her.

“Put this on. And for God’s sake do just what I tell you, and don’t give me an argument. We’ve got to get out of here intact, that’s all that matters.”

She looked at the dead man, and said faintly: “We can’t leave him here like this.”

“Don’t be an idiot! We can’t take him with us, and if we get knocked off ourselves we can’t even report his death. Do as I tell you. Put that pullover on, and get over to the door. Stay inside until I give you the word, and then run for the trees. And I mean
run
! And keep running. Stay in cover. When you come to the open bit, I hope it’ll be dark enough to cover you, but run like a hare, anyway. Don’t stop till you get home. I’ll be following you.”

The globule of gold, redder and angrier now, was halfway up the window-frame, and gliding upwards always a shade more rapidly. Tossa scrambled into the dark pullover, and slid like a cat along the flagstones, but towards him, not away from him. Before he knew what she was about she was on her feet close to him, trembling against his shoulder.

He turned on her furiously. “Get the hell over to the door, I told you!…”

He broke off there, confounded. In the half-darkness her soiled, strained face was only inches from his own, and not fixed in ill-judged obstinacy, as he had expected, but utterly grave and calm. It was as if he had never seen her eyes fully alive and conscious before, because what she was looking at now was the intimate prospect of death.

“Yes, I’m going,” she said placatingly, and leaned forward suddenly the last few inches, stretching on tip-toe. Her mouth touched his hesitantly, fixed and clung for a staggering instant. “Just in case!” she said in a rushing whisper, and she was gone, stooping and darting under the wasting finger of light, and crouching alert and still just within the doorway.

The circle of gold reached the top of the window-frame, and collapsing together like a punctured balloon, vanished. The glow went out, the dusk came down like a lid.

“Now!” urged Dominic hoarsely. “
Run
!”

She was off like a launched arrow. He heard the light, rapid flurry of her footsteps racing across the smooth rock, heard them recede, vibrating away into silence. He held his breath until the blood thundered in his ears, waiting for the shot, but it didn’t come. She was away safely, she hadn’t been seen.

His knees shook under him with relief and reaction. He clung to the edge of the window and leaned his forehead against the chilly, flaking whitewash of the wall for a moment. Now give her time, don’t follow her too soon, in case
he
makes some move to case the chapel more closely. Because he must be wondering desperately how successful he’s been, whether this poor devil’s mouth is securely closed, and whether it was closed in time. There must be no more disturbances, here round the chapel, until Tossa’s clear away and safely out of it.

He laid the back of his hand against his lips, carefully and wonderingly, pressing the lingering warmth and stupefaction of her kiss more intimately into his flesh. It would be a mean thing, as well as a stupid one, to attach too much significance to it. She’d kissed Mirek when he left them. Dominic was beginning to understand that action of hers very well now; it was an act of atonement for the distrust she had felt of Mirek’s disinterested kindness. And she’d kissed him now out of gratitude just for his being there, and as a symbol of human solidarity, in the face of the threat to their lives. And that was all. An impulse, like the other one, because she was not very articulate, even if there’d been time for words.

Five minutes, at least, before he ought to move to follow her, and nothing now he could do, except watch that darkening expanse of mountain-side across the valley, and listen with strained ears for any sound. She would be among the rocks now, near the edge of the meadows. Thank God she could run like a deer. And the man with the gun was half a mile away, even as the crow flies, and nearer a mile on the ground. Out of his sight was out of his reach.

But what had she meant by: “Just in case!”? The words penetrated to his brain only now, and shook him with a new astonishment, and a new and illuminating recollection of her face, half out of focus because of its nearness, reaching up to his. He had never seen her utterly relaxed and at rest until that moment; as though she had only just seen clearly what it was all about, and what was of value in it, and what of no value, and dropped all the non-essentials, like worrying about her own conscience, to concentrate on what really mattered. And kissed you, he said to himself sardonically. My boy, you fancy yourself!

Detail was lost now in a dimness which was not yet dark—the afterglow was something for which he hadn’t, in fact, made sufficient allowance—but which did confuse vision over any distance. The five minutes were up, surely he could risk leaving now. If he attracted notice, at least she was clear of it, there was one safely away to raise the alarm. And since Tossa had crossed the open space without producing any reaction, the odds were that his original calculations had been accurate, and that whole shelf of rock before the doorway was out of the murderer’s range. No harm, though, in making a run for it.

He stepped wincingly round the body stretched on the dusty floor, and for a moment the thought of leaving him here alone was almost unbearable. Death is lonely enough in any case. He had never seen it quite so close before, and never so crudely, only in its tamed and mitigated state, ringed with rites and sympathisers. Dominic stood shivering for a moment in his thin sweater-shirt, irresolute over the dead man, and then turned his head aside with determination, and made for the door. The only thing he could do for this poor wretch was not to be done here. He slid round the leaning door, stepped out gingerly on to the rock, and ran.

Half-way across the open space a stone rolled under his foot, and brought him down in a heavy fall, knocking the breath out of him. The noise seemed enormous, and set echoes rolling from side to side of the valley. He lay half-dazed, but already groping forward with his hands to thrust himself to his feet again; and suddenly a second sharp, dry crack sent sharper echoes hiccuping down the rocks, and something hit the ground close beside his right ear with a horrid leaden plunk and a sharp, protesting whine.

Every nerve in him curled willingly in upon itself, struggling to make him smaller and less vulnerable. Every particle of energy he had left in him gathered him to his feet in a wild leap, and hurled him forward towards the shelter of the trees. He knew very little about guns, but he knew the whimper of a bullet ricocheting. Not an inch of this shelf was out of the marksman’s range now, and a racket like that fall, to a true ear, made almost as fair a target as a proper sighting. He
had
changed his position, but he was still up there on the hillside, he’d merely worked his way down-valley on the same level, to cover the doorway. By the only route, then—by the traverse path across the cliff, from which Terrell had fallen to his death.