Ellis Peters - George Felse 07 - The Grass Widow's Tale (5 page)

“Get out. And don’t try to run, you wouldn’t get far.”

As she straightened up stiffly after the long ride, the round black eye of the gun stared at her steadily across the roof of the car. She didn’t try to run. Against the ten yards of pale wall on either side she would have been an easy mark. He came round to join her at his leisure, and taking her by the arm, put her before him into the porch, where his own bulk securely hemmed her in. He reached above him under the low roof, and swung aside a corner of the wooden beading. The key had its regular hiding-place, and he was in the secret.

“Go in, please.”

The growing daylight showed her a tiny hall in spectral pastel colours, a staircase on one side, two white doors on the other, the minimum of holiday-cottage furniture, but of an elegant kind. The outer door closed behind them with a solid, final sound, and they were shut in together. She heard the key turned again in the lock, and watched him withdraw it and pocket it. And now at last he was no longer occupied with driving; his hands were free.

“Upstairs! You’ll find the bathroom on the left. I’m sorry there’ll be only cold water until I see to the main switch. Take your time.”

It was fantastic. The automatic politeness of his upbringing still clung to him, glaringly odd in this relationship. He might have been apologising to a guest for the lack of amenities, except that his voice was too dull and drained of feeling to match the words. She looked back from the door of the bathroom, and saw that he had seated himself on the stairs below, and had the gun ready in his hand still. No chances were going to be offered to her, no chances of any kind.

The back view of him was strangely desolate, the head drooping with its lank black hair dishevelled, the shoulders sagging. If she was sick with weariness, what must his exhaustion be? In the end there might be the chance he could not deny her; even he must succumb to sleep sooner or later.

She shot the bolt of the bathroom door after her, and groped for the cord of the light-switch, but nothing happened. Of course, the main switch was off, somewhere down there in the back premises, and there’d be no lights until he turned it on. The window was small, and the light from outside seemed to have dwindled almost into night again, now that she saw it from withindoors. It was barely half past five, after all that nightmare journey.

The cold water was bracing and welcome, and simply to be alone there, with a door and a bolt dividing her from him, was in itself a new lease of life. Evidently this place was used frequently and always kept ready for occupation, for there was soap on the wash-basin, and towels in the small white cupboard. Neat, small guest tablets of soap that fitted admirably into the palm. She considered for a moment, and then rolled the one she had used in her handkerchief, and slipped it into her handbag. There was nothing else she could see that might be useful to her; she took her time, as he had suggested, about looking round for a weapon to use against him. She had hoped there might be a razor, at least of the safety variety, in the cabinet, and therefore blades; but of course, the owner used an electric, there was the socket for it beside the mirror. Nothing there for her. The bolt on the door was a fragile thing, if she refused to come out it wouldn’t preserve her for long. There remained that window, discouragingly small and high though it was.

She carried the stool over to it, climbed up, snapped back the latch and hoisted the sash. Empty air surged away before her face. Craning over the sill to look down, she saw that on the rear side of the house the ground fell away sharply in a tumble of stones, almost a cliff, and instead of being one modest story from safe ground, she found herself peering down fifty feet of broken rock. No hope of climbing out from there.

So in the end she would have to open the door again, and go back to him. She did it very softly and cautiously, easing back the bolt without a sound, for she had left him sitting on the stairs a long time, and sleep might have (NB: typo in printed book (...instead of being one modest story from safe ground,...) she set foot on the landing he was on his feet, too, and turning to mount the remaining steps of the flight.

“Into the next room, please.” He reached past her to open the middle door of the three. “Yes,” he said, following the rapid glance she gave to the curving latch and the key-hole below it, “there’s a lock. I can’t afford any slips now, can I? You didn’t leave me much choice.”

Just over the threshold of the little bedroom, primrose and white, a charming place to house a guest, Bunty halted. With her back turned to him she said softly and deliberately :

“Do you know why I opened the boot?”

She didn’t look round, but she felt, almost she scented, the effusion of his desolation, bewilderment and despair, and the ache of his amputation from the harmless creature he must once have been.

The dull voice behind her said, dragging with weariness:

“What difference does it make?”

“I was looking for a rug,” she said, “to put over you.”

There was one instant of absolute silence, then the door closed as abruptly as a cry, and she heard the key turned hastily, clumsily in the lock. For a long minute she caught the deep, harsh, strained accent of his breathing, close there against the door, so that almost she could see his damp forehead pressed against the cold white panelling, and the veined eyelids heavy as marble over the burned-out grey eyes. Only slowly and with infinite effort did he drag himself away; she heard his steps slur along the carpeted landing, and stumble down the stairs.

The first thing she did was to cross to the window and hoist the sash, to have a second look at the lie of the land seawards. The bedroom looked out, like the bathroom, to the rear of the house, but not directly towards the water. To the left lay the outline of the coast above the cliffs, undulating between tree-lined hollows and blanched grassy brows, but beneath the walls of the cottage the land crumbled away towards the sea. By craning out to extend her view to the right she could see the cliffs broken by a small, tight inlet, where the tide came in to a tiny jetty and a boat-house. Many a small house like this must have been snapped up by boating enthusiasts as desirable weekend accommodation, all round the Scottish coast. Did it belong to this man’s family? Surely to someone who knew him well, or he wouldn’t have been admitted to all its secrets. There seemed to be a rocky path leading down from the house to the inlet, but only here and there could she glimpse a level, slated spot that formed a part of it.

The drop from the window she abandoned as impossible. Even if she had had sheets enough to knot into a rope, and confidence enough in the finished article to trust herself to it—after all, what had she to lose?—she didn’t believe she could climb round the corner of the house to level ground. Forget that, and consider the contents of the room.

She was closing the window again when she heard the car below start up, and gently roll the few yards into the garage, and in a moment the double doors closed hollowly over it. Naturally he wouldn’t risk leaving that where it could be seen, and draw attention to itself and him.

Well, if she couldn’t get out of here, could she keep him from getting in? The trouble with modernised holiday cottages is that everything tends to be either light-weight or built-in. Wardrobe and dressing-table here were neatly contrived with white-wood shelving built on to the wall, there was nothing of any solidity that was movable, not even the bed. A child could have shoved that across the floor on its admirable and infuriating ball castors. There were no bolts inside the door to supplement the lock, and she couldn’t barricade herself in.

There remained only the lock itself, new and presumably efficient, but surely also a light-weight, a token seal on privacy. She emptied the contents of her handbag on the bed, and fingered them over for anything that might provide a tool or a weapon. The obvious lock-picker was her nail-file, a giant from the lavish manicure case George had once given her, long and strong and with a formidable point. She had another use for that, however. It was the only thing she had that even suggested a weapon, all it lacked was a comfortable handle that would give her more control and force in using it, and she supplied that by embedding the unpointed end firmly in the cake of soap she had stolen from the bathroom. It wasn’t much as defence against a gun, but if she got a chance she intended to forestall that direct confrontation. If she had had this in her hand half an hour ago, when he had sat there in broken exhaustion on the stairs, with his back turned to her…

So this, she thought, pushing back the tangled hair from her forehead, this is how killers are made. No, I can’t! Not unless… not until… All the same, she fingered the point of the file, and remembering that there were bricks outside the window, went and flung up the sash again, and began carefully whetting the improvised dagger, first one end, then the other, watching the scored surfaces grow bright.

The light was growing brighter, too. She was facing to the right, towards the sea, and the layer of mist that floated above the water thinned before her face into diaphanous wisps, and dissolved in light. She looked down towards the inlet, her eyes drawn by a tiny point of colour and movement. Out of the boat-house a graceful blond shape slipped demurely, all pale, smooth woodwork and gleaming brass and bright blue paint, stealing along like a cat to rub itself delicately against the jetty. Of course, how lucky for him that he knew somebody with a secluded cottage on the coast, and a boat that could make it, in the right hands, over to the Low Countries. Somewhere at any rate, on the way to a much more distant place where a man could vanish.

He was there in the boat, she saw the thin dark figure step ashore and make the boat fast. He was bringing something in his arms from the foot of the path. What it was she could not see at first, though she saw him stoop to hoist it, and could easily recognise that it was heavy, and filled his arms. Only when he stowed it aft, and went to drag up a tarpaulin cover over it, did she realise how simple and significant a thing it was. A large, jagged stone. That was all.

She stood at the window, the file arrested in her hand. Of course, that was one of the simpler essentials. He would need a weight.

No, she corrected herself, two weights. And here he came with the second one, placing it carefully, to avoid disturbing the trim of the boat. There would be two bodies, a double burial at sea. No use hiding the first without at the same time disposing of the second, and rendering it silent for ever.

She was looking on at the final preparations for her own death and burial.

She was probing desperately at the lock with a straightened hair-grip, two of her nails broken and a fingertip bleeding and raw, when she heard her enemy enter the house and begin to climb the stairs. The key turned in the lock; the door opened.

“Come down, when you’re ready.”

His voice was level and dull. His eyes, though they did not avoid her, hardly seemed to see her, but she had no doubt that they would give him notice sharply enough if she made a false move. Nor could she see the gun, but it must be ready in his pocket in case of need. The dimness on the landing sheltered him a little, turned him into a mere lay figure, a cardboard cut-out in shades of grey. She picked up her handbag from the bed, walked steadily past him to the bathroom, and bolted the door; and after a moment she heard him go slowly down the stairs, step by heavy step like a lame man.

All the time that she was in there, making up her face with almost superstitious care to get everything right, and with a flat, dream-like sense of saying good-bye, she could feel his eyes down below, never swerving from the staircase, penning her in. When she had done her extended best for her appearance she would have to go down and face him. You can’t just crouch in a corner and close your eyes, and wait for a miracle. She made sure that her make-shift dagger was disposed at the right angle at the top of the jumbled possessions in her bag, with a fold of her handkerchief covering it. If you have to go down, you go down fighting.

Sunday morning breakfast she thought numbly, on a brief week-end jaunt before the winter sets in! Where was I yesterday? Safe at home in all that autumnal oppression, with nothing to do but wait for everything to be all right again. If it had been a clear, sunny morning like this, nothing need ever have happened, all those cobwebs would have melted from me like mist. She counted the years now, and they were nothing, a triviality, dropped petals, with illimitable wealth still to fall. She took her sights from the past resolutely, and set them on the shrunken future.

With a step as slow and drugged as his, she went down the stairs; and he was there, as she had known he would be, waiting for her. He held open the second white door in the hall. The living-room of this spectacular little house would obviously be designed to overlook the sea. A remnant of curiosity remained to her. She looked round the room with remote, unreal interest. There was a picture window, with the dawn sun framed in it in impossible beauty, for they were looking almost due east. There was a narrow white door beside it, no doubt leading into a tiny, built-in kitchenette. Everything was white wicker and orange corded silk, bright, inexpensive and gay, cushioned chairs, a light settee, a small dining-table with an orange-coloured cloth.

Her sense of unreality grew extreme. There must be a store of non-perishable and tinned foods left in the cottage. He had made tea, and produced tinned ham, cheese and crispbread. For himself, no doubt, and he must have needed it, but he had laid two places. Either he was gone beyond the boundary of reason, or the cottage exerted on him the compulsions to which he was accustomed within its walls, and the first of them was hospitality, even to his victim.

She lost touch with her own destiny then, the unreality of that room was too much for her. She knew the facts, she knew what they predicted, but she could no longer behave in accordance with what she knew. Beyond a certain point you abandon carefulness, because it is so patently of no more use, and silence, because it makes no difference any more, and because caprice may by some freakish chance hit the jackpot you’ll never get by taking aim. She began to range the room, paying no attention to him, examining everything that bore witness to the absent owners. And there on the small white bookcase, stocked with Penguins and other paperbacks for their guests, was their double photograph, a studio portrait of man and wife in their comfortable fifties, he in white open-necked shirt and silk scarf, with a round, amiable face and receding hair, she in the ageless Paisley silk shift, with a modish new shingle and a good-humoured middle-aged smile.

“Your parents?” she asked with deliberate malice; for she was quite sure that they were not his parents.

“Friends,” said the heavy voice behind her. “Louise is my godmother,” he added, with shattering calm.

“Ah, so that’s why you’re so at home here,” she said. “What’s their name?”

“Alport. Reggie and Louise Alport.” Why care enough now to make secrets of these details? He answered her because it would have taken more energy and effort to keep silence than to speak. “If you want some tea,” he said remotely, “help yourself.”

She turned to look at him then, and even came to the table and sat down, suddenly aware how desperately she wanted some tea. The suggestion of the laid table was too strong to be resisted, even though all this was a pointless interlude on the way to something else, something final.

“Do they live in Comerbourne, too?”

“No, in Hereford.” A dreary and desperate wonder sat upon him; and now that she saw him in the full light from the eastern window he was pale and insubstantial as paper, perished paper, so brittle that it might crumble to dust at any moment. “That’s where my family come from.”

“Then you work in Comerbourne.” She could not have explained why it was so important to keep talking, to keep drinking tea, and swallowing mouthfuls of sawdust food that stuck in her throat; to maintain, not a pretence, but a hypnotic suggestion, that everything here was normal, and had to be preserved, so that scoring through its normality with an act of violence should be increasingly difficult. Nor could she have said why a grain of information added to her knowledge of him should seem to add to her meagre resources. The nail-file was surely a better bet. Yet she persisted. Of course, who else enjoys even one October week-end lasting until Wednesday morning? It was the half-term break; she ought to have known. “You teach,” she said, feeling her way, “at one of the schools in Comerbourne.”

“I did,” he said distantly.

“What did you teach?”

“Art… if it matters now.”

I wonder, she thought, feeling the shuddering undertones beneath these exchanges, whether he knows what I’m thinking as clearly as I know what’s going on inside him? Kill me here and now, and he’ll have the trouble of carrying or dragging me down to the boat, and the risk of being seen at it. Make me walk there to be killed on board, and he takes the chance that I may try breaking away, even at the last moment. Why not, with nothing to lose? The whole thing
could
go wrong then, even if it’s an outside chance. I
might
survive to talk. No, he’ll want to make sure. It will be here!

He’s just made up his mind!

“How odd,” she said, her eyes holding his across the table, her right hand in the open handbag on her lap, “to think that I don’t even know your name.”

“Why should you?” he said. And suddenly he set both hands against the edge of the table, and pushed back his chair. His face was more dead than alive, blue-stained at lips and eyes, cemetery clay, but he moved with method and certainty, like a machine.

“Yes, what are you waiting for?” she blazed abruptly, on her feet with the nail-file in her hand. Her handbag went one way, her handkerchief another. “Do you think I don’t know you’ve got everything ready? Even the stone for my feet?”

He got up slowly and started round the corner of the table after her, hooking a hand under the edge to hoist it aside from between them. She caught the brief reflection of light from eyes opaque and dead as grey glass.

“I’m sorry!” said the distant voice, from somewhere far beyond sorrow. “What can I do? You shouldn’t have looked in there. What choice have you left me? I
liked
you,” he said, wrenching at his own unavailing pain, “you were
kind
to me! But what can I do about it now?”

“You could let me walk to my grave,” she said, backing from him inch by inch, “and save yourself trouble.” Anything to spin out five more minutes, three, even one, to give time one more chance. And still, at this extremity, she had a corner of her mind free to wonder where the gun was, why it wasn’t in his hand. He couldn’t be afraid of the shot being heard, not here, there was no other dwelling in sight. If he’d had the sense to use the gun he needn’t even have come within her reach, she would have had no chance at all.

His hand swung the table round, shedding the tea-pot from its tilted edge, and drove it hard against the wicker arm-chair beside the wall. She dared not turn her head to look, but her hip rammed hard into the arm of the chair, and she could retreat no farther.

“Not you,” she heard his voice saying hopelessly, “you’d run, you’d swim for it,
I know you
. Why did it have to be
you
?”

Bracing her fingers round the hilt of her dagger, she had just time to feel one angry stab of amusement, involuntary and painful, at his appropriation of what should surely have been her question. And then the moment and he were on her together.