No Way Of Telling (16 page)

She had stopped polishing. She thought he was never going to speak. When he did it was a relief and a surprise: he sounded the same as usual—amused, careless, with the tinge of contempt that was always in everything he said.

“Mrs Bowen, I can assure you in our branch of the police force we frequently change our names. As you were so quick to remark, Mr Nabb is also called Harris, and at Scotland Yard he’s known by half a dozen other titles too which he can assume or discard whenever necessary—isn’t that the case, my dear Nabb?”

Mr Nabb at the window gave an angry-sounding grunt.

“The same goes for myself: today I’m Inspector Catcher—tomorrow I may be Colonel Bramble or the Prince of Darkness or the King of Siam. It’s all part of our job as detectives, Mrs Bowen—we have to adapt our identities according to the circumstances—blend with the landscape.”

“Oh, blending is it?” said Mrs Bowen. “Well, I’ve never had much to do with the police, I’m thankful to say, so I’ll have to take your word for it, won’t I? But if that Victor Pugh ever comes to me with this tale of having another name to the one he was born with, I’ll blend him.”

The strain was too great. The room was too hot.

“Where are you going, Amy?”

“Just out.”

In the shed she hugged Mick against her chest. He had been shut into the side-kitchen since half past seven that morning because, unlike Mrs Bowen and Amy, he made no attempt to conceal his real feelings.

“Oh, Mick—what are we going to do?”

She was desperate.

Her grandmother, provoked, would say too much, and what would happen then? Amy thought of how Mick had been kicked out of the way for no other reason than that he had barked, as it was his duty to do. She remembered the Inspector’s curved finger-tips and the blue blaze of his eyes when he turned his head and looked across the room at Mrs Bowen. It was not just Bartolomeo who was in danger; they all were.

“If only someone could help us, Mick. If only Mr Protheroe knew—if he was to come up here, somehow, after his ewes—”

If only! But the snow imprisoned them. It whirled about the cottage as close, as thick, as though the air itself had clotted. How could anyone breathe in that for five minutes, much less force a way through it? Even within the shelter of the shed the five ewes were discouraged by the proximity of a storm so dire and huddled together, motionless, against the wall. Amy had flung handfuls of grain for the chickens before breakfast but they too, after pecking about for a bit, had lost heart and returned to the comfort of their stuffy little house. It was not a day for any living creature to choose to be out; not, at any rate, for as long as this blizzard lasted.

But of course it would not last. Presently it would ease off. The flakes would get smaller and the space between them greater, and the wind would drop and the light increase, and then there would be a huge still pause, like peace after a fight, and all the snow that had been in such a commotion would lie tranquil on the ground. And during this pause the Inspector and Mr Nabb would come out into a calm immaculate waiting white world, and put on their skis, and glide away to hunt for what they were so certain, sooner or later, of finding: in her imagination Amy saw them. And should she not then, while they were gone—before it began to snow again, before they came back—get on to her tin toboggan and shoot away down the hill in search of help?

Supposing she did?

It would be easy enough to reach the stream, but the track on the other side that skirted round the foot of the great hill towering above it would almost have disappeared by now under its three days’ and three nights’ accumulation of driving and drifting snow; almost perhaps, but not quite. If this had been her worst problem Amy could still have found her way, but there were other problems, more conclusive. At two separate points the track was cut through by deep wide rocky channels where every spring and autumn the rain-water was borne in torrents down from the hill above to swell the stream below. It was these channels, full to the brim, not with water but with snow, that would defeat her. If she tried to cross that seemingly solid floor of snow on foot she would sink like a stone in a bog.

Then she would not cross on foot: she would use her toboggan instead. All that was needed for her toboggan to skim safely over the danger zones was enough momentum. Would there be enough momentum? Amy wrinkled her brow. For the first of the channels the answer, she decided, was yes. It had a long steep approach where she would be able to get up the speed necessary to carry her in a rush to the top of the further side. But for the second channel the situation was reversed and it was the approaching pitch that was short and slight and the far pitch that was long and steep. Amy considered earnestly and had to acknowledge that with the slope against her and the snow profound she dared not attempt such a crossing, neither on foot nor yet with the aid of her little tin toboggan. It would need skis, she reflected grimly.

But in any case, even supposing there had been no snow-filled channels to stop her, the route she took each day to school would still have been impossible, for the road on from Casswell’s Gate to the village would be thoroughly blocked, and once it was blocked it stayed blocked until the thaw set in; Ted Jones, who drove the snow-plough, had orders each winter not to waste the Council’s valuable time clearing a stretch of undulating narrow lane that, officially speaking, led to nowhere.

Well then, supposing she were to use the frozen stream itself as a path? Might this be her answer? But the stream ran a devious course, twisting and turning, and there were deep black pools beneath its icy surface; waterfalls interrupted it, rocks overhung it. Branches and brambles would get in her way. Even on a sunny happy-go-lucky idle summer afternoon it was slow hard work to follow the stream down; she had tried more than once and always given up long before she reached the village. How much slower, harder now? They would catch her at some dark and narrow bend where there would be no one to hear her cry of terror.

And Bartolomeo—where was he? Suppose, when the snow stopped, his great clumsy figure should come shambling down the hill with no notion of what awaited him? He might; after all, he had taken such a risk before.

It was then—only then—that Amy remembered the letter.

He had taken the risk before for the sake of writing that letter; and he had given the letter to her, pressing it into her hands and her hands over it. And she, in haste and fear, had posted it under the newspaper of the shelf in the back-kitchen, stood a jar of pickles on top, and forgotten it.

The letter was real. It was lying under the jar of pickles at this very moment. She had no idea who it was to, or what was in it, but the more she thought about it the more she felt that it must be immensely important, that it contained the solution to the whole of this dreadful tangle, and that if she could only get it into a post-box, somehow, they would all be saved. But how in the world was she to reach a post-box?—
how?
And in her head once again, chance by chance, she began to go over the possibilities of escape.

Both the track on the other side of the stream and the stream itself were, for different reasons, out of the question; also the road from Casswell’s Gate to the village would be blocked. As for Tyler’s Place, it was worse than useless to think of fleeing there—no path existed beyond the ruined farmhouse, and her action might well betray Bartolomeo; besides, she had promised her grandmother not to go. There remained a single alternative, one so awful that until now she had managed to avert her mind from even admitting it was an alternative: the high wild short way over the top of the hills to Dintirion.

As she allowed herself to realise what that journey would mean, Amy’s eyes widened and her breath came faster. It would mean for two miles or more tracing the course of a path, at the best uncertain and for much of the distance totally invisible, knowing that on either side were deep drifts like continuous white graves, waiting to bury her; it would mean wind and snow biting her to the bone for every step she took, and it would mean that if she missed her footing at the cliff’s edge her rash venture would come to an end far from the bustle and glow of the great Dintirion kitchen, at the bottom, instead, of Billy Dodd’s Dingle.

It was impossible—she could never do it, never! No, never!

Or could she?

How many times had she been along that same path, alone or with the Protheroe boys? Times without number; she knew every inch of the way. Well then! Oh, but that was different! That was in spring or summer when there were harebells growing in the short dry grass and wild scabious and the wind blew warm and there was no hurry—that was different! It would be like another country under snow. She would feel lost before she started.

“I couldn’t do it,” she whispered in horror to Mick, holding him close.

But she knew all the same that she must; and from that moment she began to think of how it could be done.

Amy lingered on in the shed. Her head was teeming with plans. She was oblivious to the cold. One thing was clear to her: she was going to have to be extremely clever. Inspector Catcher thought her stupid, and she felt that this was to her advantage; she could hide from him behind a mask of stupidity. And yet she must not be so obviously stupid as to make Mr Nabb suspect she was up to something, for he, on the contrary, believed her to be smart.

It was another, even greater advantage that they neither of them knew of the short way over the hills to Dintirion. And then she wondered whether she might not be able to manage it so that they would never discover she was missing at all. Could they be made to think she was ill in her room, perhaps? But for this she would need her grandmother’s co-operation, and Amy knew there was no hope of that. If she could mislead them, though, into thinking she had gone by a different way from the way she had gone by she would gain time, and it was time that was more precious than anything else to her because of the terrible swiftness of those pursuing skis.

When should she go? By night? But she had no torch, and a hurricane lamp would show for miles; besides, by night she would undoubtedly get off the path—be lost either in a drift or over the cliff-edge of the Dingle. On the other hand in daylight the risk of being seen was much more. And then there was the obstacle presented by her grandmother who would never agree, under any circumstances whatever, to Amy setting off on such a trip. Consequently she too would have to be deceived, and this was indeed a problem for her grandmother was a person not easily deceived. In addition Amy was worried by the risk of Bartolomeo reappearing. How could she warn him to stay away without the warning being understood equally well by Inspector Catcher and Mr Nabb-Harris?

Her difficulties were many, and for each and all of them she had to find an answer. So preoccupied was she in searching her head for the necessary solutions that Amy forgot how long she must have been standing outside until Mick, still hugged in her arms, began to growl and she heard the door open behind her.

“So that’s where you are,” said the harshly grating voice of Mr Nabb. “I was beginning to wonder where you’d got to.”

“Amy!” called Mrs Bowen. “I’ve made you a cup of cocoa—come on in and drink it. You’ll catch your death of cold out there.”

Amy ducked her head and slipped obediently into the cottage past Mr Nabb.

“Granny,” she began presently, armed with her cup of cocoa, “I’m worried about Mr Protheroe’s ewes.”

“Why—what of them?”

“I don’t think the hay’s enough—they ought to be having cubes as well. And they’re going to lamb soon, Granny. Any moment now they might start lambing—I’ve been having a look at them, out in the shed. Mr Protheroe doesn’t even know we’ve got them up at our place. He ought to know, shouldn’t he? He ought to be told. I’ve been thinking, Granny—couldn’t I get down to the village and tell him?”

“Get down to the village?” exclaimed Mrs Bowen, and in her astonishment she stopped kneading dough and rested her floury hands on the sides of the bowl while she gazed at Amy as though she thought she must have gone out of her mind. “Whatever possesses you, child? In this weather? You might as well think of flying!”

Amy dipped her nose into her cup of cocoa. She was aware in the silence of a sharpening of attention. They were all listening to her. She said, carefully looking at no one:

“It’s just I can’t help but worry for those ewes, Granny. I’d like for Mr Protheroe to know we had them.”

“Why, Amy—” Mrs Bowen started to say, and then stopped. Amy could tell she was wondering what was the purpose of these remarks. She would have realised that they could only be a cover for some other deeper meaning; both of them knew perfectly well that the ewes were not due to start lambing for another two weeks at the earliest and that they would come to no harm if for a few days they were fed on a diet of hay alone. But why should Amy deliberately talk of getting down to the village when she knew it was impossible? Mrs Bowen started to knead the dough again with a thoughtful air.

“Well, maybe the Inspector here and his friend could take a message,” she suggested tentatively. “It wouldn’t be much trouble for you, would it?” she said, speaking to him directly. “With those slidey things on your feet you could be down to the village in no time, I daresay, once it stops snowing.”

“We’re not here to run errands for sheep, Mrs Bowen,” he replied in his slow contemptuous drawl.

Amy kept her back turned on him; she was afraid that otherwise he might read secrets in her face. Loudly, with a show of eagerness, she cried out:

“But I could get down, Granny, I’m sure I could—I was thinking just now, the stream’s bound to be frozen over. I could go on the ice, like it was a pathway.”

“And how about the pools?” said Mrs Bowen sternly. “Deep they are—dangerous! And waterfalls—they’ll not be frozen. How do you think to get by them, with ice on the rocks, and steep too, slippery? Oh, Amy, no!—you never could and I’d never consent to such a folly, so you can put it right out of your head this minute.”