WILDFIRE

by Mary Stewart

  He laughed ruefully. "I'm sorry. But I knew Grant might be nearer you than I was, and if you'd called out from too far away he might have reached you first. No, I wanted to get you safe under my wing, and then—"

  "So you knew it was Roderick."

  He glanced down sideways at me. "Then, yes. I'd been wondering about him for quite some time, and so had Inspector Mackenzie, but there was no proof."

  "What was the information he was waiting for from London? Or—no, you'd better start at the beginning, Nicholas. Tell me—"

  "That is die beginning. The information that came today is really the beginning of the story. It concerns Roderick Grant's family. Did you know his father was a minister?"

  "He told me a little bit about it. I felt rather sorry for him, a lonely little boy all by himself at the back of the north wind—that was what he called his home."

  "It's not a bad description either. I've been through Auchlechtie. It's a tiny hamlet of a dozen cottages in a valley near Bheinn a' Bhuird. The manse, where the Grants lived, was four miles even from the village, up beside the ruins of the old church and its primitive graveyard. The new church had been built down in the village itself, but the minister's house had no one for neighbor except that little square of turf, walled off from the heather, and filled with crumbling headstones and mounds covered with ivy and brambles and old, split yews deformed by the wind."

  "And he told me he lived alone with his father."

  "So he did. His mother died when he was born and his grandmother, his father's mother, brought him up till he was nine. Then she died—in an asylum."

  "Oh, Nicholas, how dreadful. So his father—his father's family—"

  "Exactly. His father had always been the stern, un-; bending, austere kind of godly Presbyterian that used to be common in fiction and, possibly, even in fact. In him the ?—the taint showed itself at first only in an increasing remoteness and austerity, a passionate absorption in his studies of the past which, gradually, took complete possession of him, and became more real than the real life round him—if you can apply the term 'real life' to that tiny hamlet, four miles down the empty glen. The . history of the long-dead bones in that long-dead graveyard became, year by year, the only thing that meant anything to me.

  He must have spent a large part of his childhood listening to his father's stories and theorizing about versions of the old folk customs or the North, the sort of half-connected, inaccurate rubbish you said he was telling you today. He must nave built, on b D I in his crazed mind, a new sort of mythology for himself, of which the so-called 'ritual' murder of Heather Macrae was a concrete example; a jumble of facts from books and from his father's researches, half-remembered, distorted bits of folklore that shook together like glass in a kaleidoscope and made a picture of violence that seemed, to a madman's brain, to be quite logical."

  "I know. I found some of the bits in The Golden Bough."

  "Oh yes, my Golden Bough! The Inspector told me you had it. I was looking all over the place for it last night. I thought I'd left it in my car."

  "I'd taken it to read, quite by accident." I told him about it. He glanced down at me with an enigmatic expression.

  "So you handed it to the Inspector. If you'd known it was mine—"

  "But I did. There was an envelope in it addressed to you in Daddy's writing. I have it in my pocket."

  "Have you indeed?" I could feel his eyes on me still, but I would not meet them. "Why didn't you give that to the Inspector, if you knew the book was mine?"

  "I—I don't know."

  The lark was descending now, in lovely little curves of sound. "How did Daddy know you were here, anyway?"

  "What?" He sounded oddly disconcerted. "Oh, I wrote to him and asked him to lend me his copy of the book. There was no one in my flat, so I couldn't send for my own copy. You see, Grant had made one or two remark? that had made me wonder about him—queer little misstatements and inaccuracies that sounded like half remembered quotations from Frazer and the older books that were Frazer's sources. And when I saw how some of Frazer's details checked with poor Heather Macrae's May-day sacrifice—" "May Day?"

  "May the thirteenth is May Day, according to the old calendar. Ancient lore again, you see. Oh, everything fitted, even though it did so in a queer mad way; so, of course, I showed the book to Inspector Mackenzie."

  "You did what?" I exclaimed. "When was this?"

  "Last week."

  "Then he knew the book was yours!" "Of course."

  "Then why—" A memory flashed back at me, of the Inspector's kind, compassionate gaze. "Did he never suspect you, Nicholas?"

  "He may have done, to begin with, and, of course, even after I turned up the evidence of The Golden Bough he may have kept me under suspicion, along with Hubert Hay, since we two, as well as Grant, have made some sort of study of local folklore. But Hay had an alibi— with you—for Marion's murder, while I, if you discount the intolerable possibilities of bluff and double bluff, had indicated my innocence by giving evidence to the police. Which left Grant."

  "Then why," I said again, "was the Inspector so—so kind, and so sorry for me, this morning? He talked about loyalties, and—"

  "And you thought he was warning you that I was guilty? Why should you assume that your loyalty should be directed towards me, Gianetta?"

  Abruptly, between one wingbeat and the next, the lark's song ceased. He shut his wings and dropped like a flake of shadow into the heather. I said, stupidly: "D'you mean he thought it was Roderick I saw by the bonfire?"

  "Of course. He thought you were falling for Roderick Grant. That was my fault, I'm afraid. I'd told him so— on very little evidence except that Grant, in his own way, was quite patently interested in you." , I was stupefied. "You told the Inspector that I was in love with Roderick Grant?"

  "I did, more or less. Sorry, Gianetta. Sheep dog-in-the-manger stuff. Jealousy exaggerates, you know." I I let that one pass. After a moment he went on: "The

  Inspector could only take my word for it, and when you seemed to be protecting Grant he thought you suspected him yourself, but hesitated to give him away."

  •Bu: that's absurd! Of course 1 was never in love with him! 1 liked him, yes, I thought he was very charming— but in love!" I spoke hotly, indignantly. "It's fantastic nonsense!"

  "Why?" The question was bland as cream.

  "Why? Because—"" I stopped short, and bit my lip. I felt the color flooding my cheeks, and shot a quick glance at him. His eyes, narrowed against the smoke from his cigarette, were fixed dreamily, almost inattentively, on the long glimmering verge of the mist where it lay along the far sea's edge. But there was a smile touching the corner of his mouth. I said hurriedly: "But when did the Inspector finally fix on Roderick? Surely the others at the hotel were suspect too?"

  "Of course. Any of the other men—Braine, Corrigan, Persimmon, Beagle, could have had an unconfessed interest in folklore, but Marion's murder, remember, narrowed the field down sharply, since it demanded that the murderer also be an efficient climber. And soon afterwards the only climber of the group—poor Beagle—was murdered too."

  "Which leaves us with Roderick again."

  "As you say. When the Inspector came over yesterday morning he found Roderick, so to speak, leading the field and hardly anyone else running, but still without a thing that could be pinned on him. Then you found Roberta, and he might have got his proof, but he didn't dare wait much longer for her to open her mouth. He put another hurried call through to London for any information about Grant that they could rake up. He was going to risk pulling him in on suspicion if he got anything from them that could justify him. But nothing came through till this morning."

  "The fact that his grandmother had died insane? Was that enough?"

  "It wasn't all," said Nicholas soberly. "His father died in a mental home two years ago."

  "Oh God," I said.

  "Quite enough," said Nicholas grimly, "to warrant his being detained—got somehow out of circulati
on till Roberta could talk. But it was too late. That damned fog came down like a curtain, and Grant gave Neill the slip, and went out looking for you." His arm, somehow, was round my shoulders. "Bloody little fool," he said angrily, his mouth against my hair.

  "I'd have been all right with Dougal if the mist hadn't come down," I said defensively. "Nicholas, tell me something."

  "Yes?"

  "Dougal—he had a knife. I saw it. Did he—down there when you caught Roderick—he didn't—hurt him?"

  His arm tightened, as if in protection. "No," he said soberly. "He came up spitting fire and brimstone and revenge, poor devil, but he shut up as soon as he saw Grant."

  "Why?"

  "Grant collapsed. When I caught him first, he fought like a wildcat, but when Dougal got there as well, and he saw it was hopeless, he just seemed to deflate. To break. He went suddenly quite helpless and gentle, and —I can't describe it, quite. It was rather beastly. He seemed to change character all in an instant."

  "He did it with me."

  "Did he? Then you'll know just how unspeakable it was. I'd just hit him on the jaw, and then there he was smiling at me like a nice child, and wiping the blood away."

  "Don't think about it, Nicholas. He wouldn't remember you'd just hit him."

  "I suppose not. He just smiled at all of us. That was when Dougal put his knife away and took him by the arm and said, 'Come on, laddie. Ye'd best be getting back oot of the fog.. ..' He went quite happily with the three of them." He dragged at his cigarette. "After they'd gone a little way off, into the fog, I heard him singing."

  "Singing?" I stared at him.

  "Well, crooning a tune, half to himself." His eyes met mine. " 7 to the hills will lift mine eyes, From whence

  doth come mine aid ' " He looked away. "Poor devil.

  : Poor crazy devil. . . ."

  * I said swiftly: "They'll never hang him, Nicholas." | "No."

  ?* He ground out his cigarette on a stone, and pitched it |*way as if with it he could extinguish and discard the memory of that nasty little scene. Then he turned his head again., and his voice changed abruptly.

  "You saw me with Marcia Maling, didn't you?"

  "Yes."

  "I heard you go past us when she—when we were kissing outside her room."

  "You heard me? But I hardly made a sound."

  He smiled crookedly. "My dear girl, my instincts work overtime where you're concerned. Even in the dark, and when I'm kissing another woman."

  "Perhaps even more when you're kissing another woman," 1 said drily, and got a wry look from him.

  "I suppose I deserve that one. But this time, I promise you, 1 was more kissed against than kissing."

  "All night?" I said.

  His brows shot up. "What the devil d'you mean?"

  I told him how I had heard a man's voice in her room later that night. "So of course I assumed it was you. And when I asked you next morning—"

  "I—see. I thought you were just referring to the kiss you'd seen. No, Gianetta, I did not spend the night with her. I merely got—how shall I put it?—momentarily waylaid, through no intention of my own."

  "I'm sure you struggled madly."

  He grinned, and said nothing.

  "I suppose the man in her room was Hartley Corrigan? Oh yes, I see! That was why he came home early from fishing that night, and yet Alma Corrigan said he didn't get to bed till three!"

  "I think so. And when she realized what had happened she took her lipstick and murdered Marcia's doll with it."

  "Poor Alma."

  "Yes. Well, it's over for her, too. I rather think they've both had a fright, and they realize that they do matter to each other after all. ..." He paused for a moment, looking down at me under lowered brows. "And now," he said, in a totally different voice, "shall we talk about us?"

  I did not reply. My heart was beating lightly and rapidly somewhere up in my throat, and I could not trust my voice. I could feel his eyes on me again, and when he spoke, he did so slowly and deliberately, as if with some difficulty.

  He said: "I'm not going to begin with apologies and self-abasement, though God knows you have plenty to forgive me for, and God knows, too, why you have apparently forgiven me. I'll say all that to you later on. No, don't speak. Let me finish. .. . What I want to say to you now is quite simple, and it's all that matters in the world to me. I want you back, Gianetta. I do most damnably want you back. I suppose I knew I'd been a fool—a criminal, brutal fool—about two days after you'd gone, and then my pride stepped in and stopped me coming after you."

  I remembered how I had told Alma Corrigan that there was no room for pride in marriage. His next words were almost an echo—almost.

  He said: "But pride and love won't go together, Gianetta. I discovered that. And I do love you, my darling. I don't think I ever stopped." He took me gently by the shoulders, and turned me so that I had to face him. "Will you have me back, Gianetta? Please?" ' "I never did have any pride where you were concerned, Nicholas," I said, and kissed him.

  Later—a long time later—he said, rather shakily: "Are you sure? Are you sure, my darling?"

  "Quite sure." The words were decided enough, but my voice was uncertain as his. I added, foolishly: "Darling Nicholas."

  "Gianetta mia. ..."

  Later—a rather longer time later—he held me away from him, and laughed.

  "At least, this time, there's no doubting the solid worth of my affections!"

  "Why not?"

  He looked down at me with the old, mocking look. "If you could see yourself, my Lady Greensleeves, you wouldn't ask me that! And if Hugo were here—"

  "Which God forbid—"

  "Amen.. . . No, don't try and tidy yourself up. It couldn't be done, and in any case I like you dirty, wet, I and semiragged. I want to concentrate on your beautiful soul."

  . "So I noticed."

  He grinned, and his arm tightened round my shoulders. * "It wasn't just coincidence that I met you here, you yknow."

  "Wasn't it? But how—?"

  "Your father," he said succinctly. "D'you mean to tell me—?"

  He nodded, still grinning. "I got into touch with your people again some time ago. As you know, the divorce upset them very much, and they were only too anxious to help me put things straight." He smiled down at me. "Poor Gianetta, you didn't stand much chance. Your father told me flatly that you'd never be happy without me, and your mother—well, I don't think she ever has quite grasped the fact that we were divorced, has she?"

  "No. For Mother, divorce just doesn't exist."

  "That's what I understood. Well, I was here at the beginning of May, and I happened to write to your father from this address, to ask him about The Golden Bough. A little later I rang him up—I was at Armadale then— and he told me you were due for a holiday, and that he'd contrived—"

  "Contrived!" I said dazedly. I began to laugh. "The— the old Machiavelli! And Mother said it must have been 'meant'!"

  "It was meant all right," said Nicholas grimly. "I thought that all I needed was a chance really to talk to you. ..." He smiled ruefully. "And then you ran away from me and I thought that perhaps your father was wrong and it really was all finished. I'd been so sure ... I deserved a setdown, by God I did. And I got it. You came—and I couldn't get near you. . . ."

  He gave a bitter little laugh. "So of course I behaved just about as badly as I could. I said some pretty filthy things to you, didn't I? I've no excuse, except that I thought I'd go crazy, being so near you, and having no— no claim. Somehow the biggest shock to my egoism was when I found you'd even discarded my name, and my ring."

  "I only dropped them when I saw your name in the register. Look." I held out my left hand. The white circle on the third finger stood out sharp and clear against the tan. Nicholas looked at it for a moment, while a muscle twitched at the corner of his mouth, then he turned again and pulled me into his arms. His voice was rough against my hair. "So you're going to let me walk straight back into your life
? After what I did? After—"

  "You said we'd not talk about that."

  "No, I like things made easy, don't I? It would serve

  me right if you turned on me now, and told me to get back where I belonged, and stop making a mess of your life."

  "No," I said.

  The lark had left his nest again, and was bubbling up through the clear air. I touched Nicholas's hand softly. "Just don't—don't ever leave me again, Nicholas. I don't think 1 could bear it."

  His arms tightened. He said, almost with ferocity: "No, Gianetta, never again."

  The lark rocked, feather-light, snowflake-light, on the crystal bubbles of his song. The great hills drowsed, drifting head under wing in the luminous haze.

  I stirred in his arms and drew a little breath of pure happiness.

  "What d'you bet," I said, "that when we arrive at Tench Abbas, Mother'll meet us just as if nothing had ever happened, and serenely show us both into the spare room?"

  "Then we'd better be married again before we get there," said Nicholas, "or I won't answer for the consequences."

  And so we were.