by Joan Aiken
“My name’s not Fred!”
“Now I remember that trip so well, because that’s when I lost my hand,” Harbin said, and took a step forward.
Wilbie’s nerve broke, he made a jerky movement to one side, and then saw Goetz looking down at him from the cab of the tractor.
“I like your American accent, Fred. Tell us, then, what did you spend the cash on? Set yourself up in a nice little business, did you? Funnily enough, you know, it’s not the thirty thousand I begrudge; it’s just this.” He shook his empty sleeve. “It was those years in jail while you were living it up. I’ve thought about this meeting quite a lot.”
Wilbie saw that there was no escape downhill past them, so he turned and ran up the track. No footsteps followed. For a moment of wild optimism he thought that perhaps they had intended to do no more than give him a fright; then he heard the tractor start up with a grinding roar that drowned even the stream’s voice. Glancing haggardly behind, he saw the tractor begin to move; he also saw his niece Lucy run out of the cottage and stand at the top of the steps, staring across the brown, tossing water. Her face was very white, her clothes were soaking. She called something, he could not catch the words.
“Lucy!” he shouted. “Get help!” He knew she would not be able to hear him with the stream and the tractor; anyway, what could she do? No phone at the cottage. She’s a witness, though, he thought; now they know she’s seen them they can’t really do anything to me.
But he knew this was not true. They could and they would. Desperately, he ran on uphill, slipping and stumbling on the wet rocky track.
Lucy went back into the cottage, sat down by Aunt Fennel on the window-seat, and put an arm round her.
“God knows what’s going on, but I don’t like it one bit. Were those two men in the tractor the ones who tied you up, Aunt Fen?”
“Yes, dearie.”
“But who are they?”
“I don’t know.” Strangely, Aunt Fennel, who should have been terrified, was not; although very exhausted she seemed quite serene, even cheerful. “Do you know,” she confided, “it wasn’t as bad as I expected, being jumped on. Doesn’t that show you should never worry about things beforehand? Though I was glad when you came and untied me, of course, dearie. What’s happening now?”
“Those two men are chasing Uncle Wilbie up the hill. Do you know why they are after him?”
“No, dearie. I daresay they have their reasons. It won’t do him any harm to have a good fright.”
“I guess plenty of people have reasons for chasing Wilbie.” Lucy tried to control her chattering teeth; the cottage was bone-chillingly cold. “Aunt Fen, please tell me—is Uncle Wilbie That Other One? Do you believe that it was he who killed your friend?”
Aunt Fennel peered out of the window, as if to make quite sure that Wilbie was out of sight. The tractor had vanished round a bend in the track and its roar had been replaced by the voice of the stream. What was happening farther up the hill? Lucy shivered again.
“You see, he always had that habit at meals, even as a little boy,” the old lady said irrelevantly. “He was so greedy—it was as if he wanted time to stop while he was eating. What do you suppose they’ll do to him, dearie?”
“I don’t know—and quite honestly I’m scared to think. Why should they grab you and tie you up? Didn’t they say anything?”
“One of them said something about a tethered goat. The other was talking about someone called Bess.”
Lucy shook her head. She was too tired to try and understand it all.
“We oughtn’t to stay here,” she said. “If—if they do anything to Wilbie—if they come back—” Looking down at the windowsill she saw a small, gleaming lens in the dust. Idly, she pushed it with her finger.
“They can’t reach us here, dearie, with the bridge broken. It was wonderful you got across.”
“The stream might go down again. Anyway, we’re both wet and cold and you haven’t had your lunch—”
“We could light the fire,” Aunt Fennel suggested hopefully. Lucy shook her head.
“No matches. I’ve looked. And all the wood’s soaking. No, we mustn’t stay, Aunt Fen.”
“But suppose Taffypuss comes back and we’ve gone?”
Oh damn Taffypuss, Lucy thought wearily. Her wet clothes were dripping on to the granite flags. She squeezed Aunt Fennel’s hand.
“We’ll come back another day to hunt for Taffypuss. You could even come back and live here if you liked, Aunt Fennel. Fiona says she’d come and look after you.”
“That would be nice, dearie! So long as That Other One was dealt with, so he couldn’t come and try any of his wickedness. It is such a dear little house, isn’t it?”
With Aunt Fennel in it, Lucy realised, High Beck had lost its aura of anguish. She was what the house had wanted.
“But I’d much rather you came and looked after me, dearie—if That Other One was safely out of the way.”
“I’m going to be learning the piano—remember?” Lucy said gently. “But I’ll come and visit very often.”
Aunt Fennel preserved a reproachful silence. After a while she said, “Anyway I don’t see how we can leave, dearie. I’m far too tired to walk three miles over the moor.”
Lucy said, “But didn’t you tell me there’s a kind of sheep track along the cliff to the church and Colonel Linton’s?”
“But that’s so steep, dearie, and it’ll be slippery as glass after all this rain. We’d never get along it!”
We’ve got to, Lucy thought, slippery or no. She longed just to curl up in her wet clothes on the window-seat, to lean against Aunt Fennel and shut her eyes, regardless of cold, to doze and wait, in the silent little house, wait in hopes that help would finally arrive. After all, Max had said he would ring the police in an hour and a half. But would the police immediately come to High Beck? No, they would go to Wildfell Hall first, but they might not do that for several hours, if they had other calls to deal with; several hours spent in sopping clothes in an unheated stone kitchen might well be the death of Aunt Fennel. Besides, what about those two men and Uncle Wilbie? Should not something be done about them?
No, we must leave, Lucy decided, and she said, “I’m going to have a look at the sheep track. Back in a minute.”
The rain was still driving steadily down. Although it would be several hours to dusk, the light was bad; a kind of heavy, saturated gloom hung in the dene, and the tree-grown cliff looked dark and forbidding. However, when Lucy climbed along one of the terraces of the neglected garden she found a wicket-gate and a narrow little path, rabbit runway rather than sheep track, which disappeared through tangled growth along the steep bank. Well, at least there are plenty of bushes to grab when we slip, Lucy thought.
She went back to the cottage.
“Come along, Aunt Fen, love. At least climbing will warm us up. I think we can make it. Honestly, if you wait here much longer, you’ll catch your death.”
“I’m much happier staying in my dear little house,” Aunt Fennel said piteously. And she added, with one of her occasional devastatingly intuitive shafts, “I expect you’re anxious to get back and listen to some concert, are you? Why don’t you go on ahead, dearie, and then presently you can bring your car up the Water Board track with some matches and dry wood. Or wait till the beck has gone down. I’d much rather stay here. I’m not a bit afraid any more.”
Lucy said, trying to be patient, “Aunt Fen, I simply can’t leave you here on your own! And it’s probably only about ten minutes’ climb along to Colonel Linton’s—then we can sit and dry off in his nice warm kitchen and he can phone Fiona, who’ll be worrying about us.” She slipped a hand under Aunt Fennel’s arm and gently but firmly hoisted her to her feet. “Come on, love—that’s the way. Think how pleased Colonel Linton will be to see you.”
Very reluctantly Aunt Fennel let herself be stee
red to the door.
Dear Max, it’s perfectly true I do want to get back in time for your Goldberg Variations. But also, surely what I’m doing is for the best?
Russ glanced at his watch for the twentieth time. What in heaven’s name could the old boy be doing? If he was seizing the chance to polish off Great-aunt Fennel—as Russ strongly suspected—he was taking a devilish long time about it. Was he slicing her up piecemeal? And what was happening to Lucy?
I’ll give him ten minutes—fifteen, thought Russ. Then what’ll I do? Suppose a Water Board official comes up to make sure the reservoir’s not overflowing, and asks what the hell I’m doing here? I do not like that prospect at all.
He glanced uneasily behind him along the raised track on which he had parked the Land-Rover. The reservoir showed no signs of overflowing, but it was plainly over its usual high-water mark. It lay behind him, a great pewter-coloured lake, stretching for a couple of miles in either direction, sullen-flat, except for the tiny stalagmites of water that rose to meet the forest of rain coming down out of the sky. In front of Russ the land fell away eastwards; on his right stood the little cairn marking some Ordnance Survey point.
Beginning to be cold, Russ got down and walked along the concrete lip of the reservoir, which presently described a sharp curve, paralleled by the track, and rose in graceful steps to the beginning of the dam. Below the dam, a rocky, tree-scattered valley descended towards Kirby, and the track shot steeply down it in a series of zigzags. Hope Wilbie turns up before it gets dark, Russ thought, otherwise I’m going back and round; I don’t fancy taking that track at night, in this weather.
He had walked back and forth between cairn and dam half a dozen times; was just turning away from the cairn when he heard a shout.
Pausing, he stared down the steepish path which led over the moor in the direction of Appleby. Somebody was running up it —Wilbie? When the figure came a bit closer, he recognised the gaudy tartan parka. And something was following him, a darker patch in the general grey of the rain. Its pace was too slow, its engine too noisy for a car, it appeared to have some swinging extension out front—a breakdown truck? When it came closer he recognised the tractor with its hedge-cutting shear-mechanism. What the hell’s going on? thought Russ, with calm objective interest. What’s Wilbie gotten himself into now?
For the tractor appeared to be chasing Wilbie, veering from side to side as he tacked erratically up the hillside, keeping within snatch-range of him, every now and then making a grab at him with the shears—which consisted of two blades set against two dovetailing rows of rake-teeth.
Kind of teasing him, thought Russ. They could have caught him up and run him down long ago if they’d wanted to. So what’s the idea?
Dropping behind the embankment out of view, Russ made his way back to the Land-Rover, which, where it stood, was concealed from the approaching tractor by a heather-grown hummock. He had noticed that the tractor was chivvying Wilbie, herding him as a collie urges a flock in one particular direction, away from the path, up the steeper hillside towards the lip of the reservoir. Russ quietly started his engine, got into gear, and waited. The chase was hidden from him now.
Suddenly he heard an appalling shriek—so high, so prolonged that it sounded more like a machine misused than any human cry. He heard the tractor change key and stammer in its roar; then it came into view, heaving up and on to the track that circled the reservoir. Wilbie was ahead of it, running lurchingly towards the dam. They haven’t actually done for him yet, then, thought Russ dispassionately. He shot forward in pursuit.
The two men in the tractor were not expecting to see another vehicle, and the Land-Rover took them by surprise. For an instant it hung alongside, two wheels on the track, two on heather and scree, then it was past and cutting in sharply just where the water-edge curved and the track veered to the left.
The tractor swerved and tilted. “Watch it, you fool!” yelled Goetz, who was driving, to Harbin who, leaning over his shoulder, was operating the crane. Harbin, startled out of his usual impassivity by the sudden swerve, pulled the wrong lever, and the crane swung over and down to the left, fatally adding to the tractor’s imbalance. The high, top-heavy vehicle teetered for a moment on the extreme lip of the great concrete bowl, then fell sideways down into the grey water and disappeared.
Russ missed the moment when this happened; having cut in, he had spun his steering wheel to the right and accelerated, to put himself between the tractor and Wilbie; it was out of his rear-view mirror at the instant when it overbalanced. When he looked in his mirror the track behind was empty; startled, incredulous, he looked again, jamming on his brakes, then stopped and stared at the reservoir in which huge black-and-steel concentric circles were shooting out, far across the water.
“Holy cow!” said Russ.
He ran the Land-Rover backwards to the torn spot on the bank where it had occurred, and peered down: nothing could be seen except a great dark crack in the concrete rim, running far down out of sight.
“Russ! Russ!” Wilbie’s faint voice echoed along the bank; Russ jerked into forward gear again and ran the Land-Rover along to the dam against which Wilbie was leaning in a hunched position, holding one arm with the other; blood streamed down his parka. Russ looked at his right arm and then away again.
“Can you put a tourniquet on this?” Wilbie said hoarsely. “And then get me to a doctor fast.”
Using a spanner, Russ twisted his scarf round the mangled arm.
“Who were they?” he inquired. “Old pals?”
Wilbie glanced behind him. The water was calm again, noncommittal.
“Never mind,” he said. “For God’s sake, just forget them.”
“I dunno,” said Russ uneasily. “Oughtn’t we to report that we saw the tractor go in? It’s cracked the reservoir bed; maybe all the water will escape.”
“Someone will notice soon enough. Let’s just get away from here!”
“Was it on account of that pair that you weren’t keen to come to England?” Russ asked, helping Wilbie into the Land-Rover. Wilbie did not answer the question.
“Brandy in my hip flask,” he muttered; tears, and blood from a gash in his cheek ran down his face. When Russ had found the flask and given him a swallow—
“Did anybody see you come up this way?” he asked.
“Not a soul.” Russ had started up again and was driving with extreme caution down the zigzag track into Kirby.
“Nothing to connect us then. And I daresay Harbin wasn’t the owner of the tractor—”
Wilbie stopped short, but Russ took him up.
“Harbin—that rings a bell. He was the escaped convict—the gold smuggler. Right? They reckoned his pal who was released last fall must have helped him escape. Oh, now I see the whole thing. You must have nipped over here for a quick visit from Stuttgart last summer while Rose and Corale were in Florida and before the first guy—Goetz was his name wasn’t it?—was released. I’ve a notion you meant to get rid of old Aunt Fennel then—why? Maybe because she was the one person in England who knew your whereabouts? Or did you just want those pictures? Of course you didn’t want to leave it till after Goetz was out and maybe looking for you. Am I right in guessing that you were the third member of the gang, the one who crawled out of that crashed plane and made off with all the loot? One has to hand it to you, Dad, you certainly seize your chances. In fact the only mistake you ever made was to push the wrong old girl in the river, was that it?”
“Oh God, Russ, stop talking and drive a bit faster, can’t you?”
“So then everything was a mess; the old lady was maybe still alive, or anyway you couldn’t be sure and if she was alive she was a link with you; she knew your address in America; and Goetz had come out of prison and might have some reason for connecting you with Appleby; evidently did; and all you could think of was to send over little Lucy to sort matters out. That wasn’t smart
; you’d much better have sent me.”
Wilbie was silent. Suddenly he realised how much he hated Russ. God, and I’m saddled with him for life now, he thought. Why do my kids turn out so badly? Puny little Lucy’s the only decent one of the bunch with any guts; shame she wasn’t mine—
“You realise we can hardly go along to this Doc Adnan’s surgery with a crateload of stolen art in back,” Russ said.
“There’s a first-aid place on the front promenade,” Wilbie said. “Right opposite that big underground car park. I noticed it this morning. You can go there.”
“Okay. I guess this is Kirby now. And thank God. My arms are just about wrenched out with nursing this monster round those bends.”
Wilbie said nothing. He sat holding his arm, grey, sweating, but calm; things aren’t working out too badly, he thought.
XII
“Pictures by an old lady patient, half embroidered, with bits of stuff stuck all over them?” Superintendent Nottall smiled sceptically. “They seem funny things to make off with—someone playing a practical joke, maybe? What would you value them at, Dr. Adnan?”
“Well, I gave the old lady fifty pounds apiece for them,” Adnan replied moderately.
Nottall dropped his ballpoint and gaped at the doctor.
“Fifty pounds apiece? You’re joking?”
“I am aware that I got them at a bargain price and was hardly playing fair with the poor old person, but what have you—I am only a hard-up general practitioner, I am not a Rothschild.” Adnan carefully rubbed one of his bronze buttons and flicked a ruffle into place. “One must be thrifty where one can.”
“I think you must be clean round the bend,” Nottall muttered, making a note. “A dozen pictures, owner’s valuation six hundred pounds. Subjects?”
“Christian mythology. Bible pictures.”
“Any suspicion as to who might have made off with them?”
“Yes indeed.”
Nottall’s telephone rang. He picked up the receiver.