by Ellis Peters
Then everyone in the house was caught up into the hunt. They reached for coats and anoraks and sweaters, and the trail-breakers came pouring out from the bar steamy and warm after their coffee and rum. The driving wind met them on the doorstep. The snow was drifting high along the cleared track, piled in a great smooth wave wherever the sheltering bulk of the houses and fences parted. The searchers covered their faces and headed southwards, downhill through the village; there was no other way to go, if the lost ones had hoped to reach any other habitable place in this world.
Laurence, in a gigantic borrowed sweater pulled hurriedly over his own, was first into the slashing wind, head-down, running recklessly in his hopelessly inadequate shoes, stumbling, wading through drifts, slipping and falling and fending himself off and running on again. He did not know what had happened, but he knew that there was about it something so wrong and false that it must be undone. Susan was gone, Neil was gone. What did it mean to those others, spreading out now behind him to comb through the village and the valley? That they had some reason in common for vanishing, some guilty reason which they feared to be in danger of discovery? That they had run together? He did not believe it. He knew her, however he had tried to deny his knowledge because she had hurt him so cruelly. It was with him, not with Neil, she had spent that strange Christmas Eve. She had nothing to run from, even if she had been the kind to run away. He floundered through the snow and the whirling darkness, not thinking at all, only feeling; and what he felt, so passionately that there was no room in him for anything else, was terror for her, and love for her, and the piercing necessity for finding her. Everything else, everything in the world, could wait for that.
He halted in the middle of the track, and cupped his hands round his mouth to shout ahead into the wind. A faint cry, tossed among the gusts like wandering snow, answered him. He groped towards it, fearful and hopeful, though his senses told him it was not her voice, and he was even afraid that he had made a mistake in calling out at all. Blinded with snow, he blundered into the fence on the left side of the road, and clawing his way along it, fell over something that heaved feebly and darkly out of the whiteness. His outstretched hands found a sleeve, and a shoulder that jerked upwards, breaking the crust of snow as a mole breaks ground.
He got his arm under a heavy head and raised it, clearing away snow from the clogged eyes and gasping mouth with his mittened hand.
‘McHugh! My God, what happened to you? You’re hurt?’
‘Leg,’ shivered the blue lips, weakly spitting out snow. ‘Broken. Too big a hurry – bloody silly trick—’
‘Hold up, we’ll soon get you home. They’re close behind me.’ Laurence turned his chin on his shoulder, and sent a great bellow back along the road towards the search parties.
‘Shouted – nobody heard me—Couldn’t reach – blasted latch of – gate.’ McHugh heaved himself higher against the supporting shoulder, and panted: ‘All right now, you go on!’
Laurence shouted again, and was answered. Dark figures loomed out of the murk, wading towards them. ‘Here!’ he yelled. ‘It’s McHugh. He’s had a fall. He’s hurt!’
‘You go on!’ McHugh swallowed the trickles of snow that crumbled into his mouth. ‘They went past me – that way. Something’s wrong—’
‘Went past you? They – who? Was it Susan? Susan and Everard? Not together?’
‘Yes – down that way—’
‘They walked past you?’ shouted Laurence frantically. ‘What, and left you lying here like this? Susan?’
‘No choice,’ mumbled the cold mouth, labouring painfully. ‘He made her – never spoke a word, but he made her. Go on after them – looked like death – both of ’em—’
Already braced to run, Laurence looked back in agonised hesitation. Klostermann was ploughing manfully through the last yards of the drift, the doctor close beside him, and after them came three of the men from Bad Schwandegg.
‘Run!’ insisted McHugh, feebly pushing him. ‘Leave me, I’m fine. I’ll tell them.’
Laurence scrambled to his feet and ran. As he disappeared on the downward road Dr Randall was on his knees in the drift beside the casualty, feeling his way gingerly down the distorted left leg, and Franz and two of the others were taking the nearest yard gate off its hinges. Laurence did not look back. He was at the rim of the village, where the open ground began, when they carefully lifted the injured man on to their improvised stretcher, and shed a couple of coats to cushion his head and cover him.
It was their efficiency that shut his mouth too soon, for he had not succeeded in fumbling out a coherent statement and making them pay attention to it before they raised him, and gentle and expert though they were, he fainted under their hands. By the time he came round they had him in the warmth of the inn kitchen, and it took him several minutes more to remember what it was he had to do, and to make a good job of it. Then they left him to the doctor’s care and set off again in haste into the night, calling the other searchers as they went; but Laurence was far ahead, and struggling downhill among the rocks.
Enough snow had fallen to smooth out all outlines. He waded as in water, unable to judge at any thrust forward how far he might have to fall. To be cautious was to be slow, and time was the one thing he could not afford, or so he thought until he stepped astray in his blindness and crashed painfully into a narrow crevice between boulders. He dragged himself clear again, shaken but intact, thinking of McHugh stranded with a fractured leg in the very village street, and for a little while he went less recklessly, for if he disabled himself what would happen to Susan?
But for every niggling devil in his mind urging him to be careful, ten were screaming at him to be quick, and he did not slacken his pace for long. Down the tortuous zigzags between the rock faces he crashed in a series of ricochets, fending himself off with spread hands at the turns, sliding in flurries of dislodged snow, falling breast-deep into drifts in exposed places, once slithering sidewise from the track into a hole which engulfed him in soft snow above his head, and crawling out again with half the skin of one cheek scored into ribbons by the rock. When he had to slow to a crawl he could feel himself shaking crazily, with a violence that alarmed him rather for his effectiveness than for his own safety; but when he was able to move at speed he had no time to be aware of the shortcomings of his body, and it served him well because it had to.
He saw nothing of anyone or anything moving ahead. The ground here was too broken and complex, even if the driving snow had not reduced visibility to a few yards. But presently the fall seemed to him to be slackening, or the high bulk of the mountain wall on the right made this particular stretch calmer, and the rocky gully opened out for a while into a narrow valley where it was possible to move more freely. He launched himself rashly down these gentler slopes, using his long legs like a scree runner, and reckless of the irregularities of surface that might lie beneath the uniform whiteness.
There was another brief passage among rocks, a series of blind corners where you might come face to face with an enemy round any boulder, or overtake him and have him in your arms before you were aware; and then an open shoulder of the mountain, calm as a meadow. There he suddenly saw the miracle of their tracks before him, an uneven furrow ploughed across a white field. They were so close that the wind had had no time to silt up their pathway, or even file smooth its jagged edges. He saw where the single furrow split into two for a few paces, and his heart leaped, and he pushed forward with fresh vigour.
The meadow terminated in a raised crest and a short, undulating plunge to where a steep and broken slope began; and here the path continued on its way to the valley by a narrow shelf, the bulk of the mountain on the right hand and the uncomfortable drop on the left. Laurence climbed panting over the crest, and looking down, saw his quarry below him. There was no doubt of it. The thin fall between them and him was no more than a fluttering veil now, though below the broken descent mist and snow together boiled up out of the valley and hid the rest of the world
from him.
Two small dark figures, close together, approached the beginning of the traverse. The path beyond was only a faint white diagonal along the mottled slope, so masked with snow that it hardly broke the angle of descent.
Laurence ran slithering down the deeply scored track they had left, and they vanished from his sight. One more rise, and he emerged suddenly so close to them that he dropped into the snow in terror that he might have been seen. Less than thirty steep, descending yards away from him they pushed reeling forward, their clogged movements heavy with exhaustion. They were very close to the edge now. He saw Susan turn her head, and caught a glimpse of the pallor of her face. He thought he heard the blown threads of their voices. Very clearly he saw how Neil’s right arm propelled her forward, nearer and nearer to where she must step on to the shelf path. It was sheer madness to attempt that traverse in darkness. She hung back, afraid of it, but he still pushed her forward. She crumpled under his hand suddenly, and went down into the snow, and lay huddled with her head bowed into her arms. Neil took her by the sleeve and tried to jerk her to her feet, and for want of the strength to lift her, suddenly kicked at her with all the force he had left.
Laurence launched himself downhill with a yell of rage that cut through the wind and brought them both round to stare up at him wildly. He caught one glimpse of Susan’s face, great desperate eyes that flared suddenly into recognition and joy, and a panting mouth that shrieked at him: ‘Look out, he has a gun!’
He was aware, even as he crashed down on them like a flung stone, of the shock of astonishment. He had not reckoned with guns, they were things he had never encountered in his life until now.
It was his recklessness that saved him. He came down in a rolling fall, sweeping a bow wave of snow with him, and Neil’s bullet ploughed harmlessly into the ground behind him; if he had been still on his feet it would have found its mark somewhere high in his body. His impetus carried him right to Neil’s feet, and swept them both a yard nearer to the edge of the drop. He rolled to his knees and clutched Neil about the thighs, trying to bring him down. Neil braced himself back to resist the pull, and clubbed viciously at the uplifted face with fist and gun together.
Dimly, through the explosions of pain, Laurence heard Susan scream. He ground his head hard into Neil’s body to shelter from the senseless, frenzied blows, and shifted his grip lower, wrenching at the stiffened knees. It had better be short, he was in no case to keep this up for long, even if he had ever had any skill in fighting. He heaved with all his strength, and down came Neil in the snow with him, and they rolled together, wrestling frantically for the gun. Laurence realised then why Neil had used only one hand, his gun hand, to batter off the assault. He had been clutching something tightly to his body under his left arm, and with his fall it had been flung out of his hold. It dropped into the snow, and Susan threw herself full-length along the trampled ground and snatched it away.
Neil had felt it go from him as sharply as he might have felt a wound. He stretched out his hand vainly after it, turning his head for one instant with a lamentable cry. Laurence lunged for the gun, gripping the tensed wrist and straining to force the fingers open, but the moment of distraction was already past. His attention torn back perforce, Neil shoved him off frantically to the full length of his left arm as they rolled on the ground, and drawing up a knee between them, drove his foot hard into his opponent’s groin. Laurence’s grip broke. He curled upon himself, groaning, doubled over the pain, and came sickly to his knees; and Neil, scrambling out of reach, lurched to his feet and levelled the gun for the kill.
Susan shrieked: ‘Neil!’ on so terrible a note of frenzy that he wavered, half-turning towards her. She had stumbled to the edge of the drop, the briefcase clutched in her hands. She knew what she had to do; suddenly it was quite clear and very simple. She swung the briefcase by its handle and flung it out over the void. It fell, twisting and turning slowly, and the boiling mist swallowed it. Far down the steep, invisible slope they heard it fall and rebound; and then there was nothing but the rustle of snow silting downwards from the edge of the scar.
Neil uttered an incredible, heart-rending sound, a wail of inhuman despair; it was as if the wind had risen and wrung suddenly at a harp of naked trees. He turned from Laurence and sprang to the edge of the slope, peering down hopelessly into the shifting mists, weaving like a frantic animal driven by one fear and halted by another. The breath sobbed through his lips in little whimpering cries of frustration and desire. He put a foot over the edge, drew back afraid, flung himself on his knees in the snow and let himself down backwards into the void, scrambling and slipping desperately after the prize for which he had thrown away his world. He could not be parted from it, it was all he had left.
The gun was torn from his hand, and he let it go, spreading his fingers like claws to check his rolling descent. Broken faces of snow slid from the tattered slope and ran with him, half-burying him. Once Susan saw him raise his face and look up at her, and then the mist and the snow and the dizzy, falling distances took him and swallowed him up, and there was only the continuous rustling sound, diminuendo, smaller at last than the wind’s moaning.
She covered her eyes, and began to sob tearlessly. Not for him, not for herself, not even for Laurence, only for the terrible waste of it all. For one moment he had looked like the old Neil again, peering forward in incredulous astonishment at the new.
Laurence staggered to his feet, limped the few yards to her, and put his arms round her without a word. There was no physical assurance about Laurence, he touched her even now with the old constraint, until she turned and buried her face desperately in his shoulder, and locking her arms about his body, clung to him as though she wanted to grow into him and be lost. Then he stopped trembling, and tightened his hold on her for the first time as though he felt he might really have rights in her.
‘Come away,’ he said breathlessly into her ear. ‘Come along, I’m taking you back.’
‘He’ll die,’ she said, reassuring herself. It was better that he should. What was there left for him now? The night and the snow would take care of him, even if the broken face of the mountain refused him a death.
Laurence hadn’t understood. That was like him, too; she hoped he never would. ‘We’ll come back for him,’ he promised gently. ‘We’ll try to find him, don’t worry, we won’t leave him to freeze. But first I’m taking you home.’
She lifted her face out of his shoulder and drew his head down to her, holding him fast against her cheek until his warmth passed into her and calmed her. ‘Oh, Laurence!’ she said in a great sigh, and ceased to shudder. ‘Oh, Laurence! Oh, Laurence!’
They left the gun where it lay, only a few feet below the path, and struggled up the rolling meadow together, he helping her forward tenderly in his arm as long as they could move abreast. He was shaking with the weakness left over from his brush with death twenty-four hours ago, scratched and bruised from his hasty pursuit of her, wet and chilled through, and limping from Neil’s kick; and he had forgotten to feel any of these handicaps, because she was leaning on him. It wasn’t difficult to see how his mother had been able to live on him emotionally, as well as economically, all these years. He was even somewhat sick and sore with himself for not being more adequate, she could feel it in the pressure of his arm, and in his hard, controlled breathing. He would have liked to be able to loose a dramatic punch and lay his opponent senseless. Everybody always wants to be what he isn’t. But there was nothing about him, from the crown of his battered, straw-coloured head to the soles of his sodden shoes, that Susan wanted changed.
The snow had almost stopped, which eased their distress on the long climb back. It took them a weary time to reach the second defile among the rocks; but there they heard the welcome sound of men descending, and were met by Klostermann and his companions, coming down in haste to look for them.
CHAPTER XVI
Who was it called for help? Who broke the peace?
Act 3
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The warmth of the inn and the hysteria of their welcome, Miranda’s tears and embraces, Trevor’s frantic questions, the flurry of excitement and concern, swept over them like a tidal wave, and almost overwhelmed them in the heaviness and nausea of exhaustion. They allowed themselves to be engulfed, subsiding into a daze through which fleeting voices flashed like lightning. ‘Are you all right?’ ‘Where’s Everard?’ ‘What happened?’ ‘Tried to kill you! – what, Neil Everard?’ ‘Gun? What gun? Nobody here has a gun.’
They tried to answer, but speech was too much effort. Franz came to their rescue with hot, strong drinks that went down like fire, and the doctor, coming in haste from McHugh’s bedside to confirm that the truants were safely home, had them both hustled upstairs instantly, stripped of their sodden clothes by hands less cold and clumsy than their own, and chased into hot baths. By the time they emerged in dry clothes the shock and sickness were gone, and when he tried to persuade them to go sensibly to bed they resisted his authority strenuously.
‘I couldn’t rest,’ said Susan, ‘not until the men come back, not until we know what’s happened. Laurence wanted to turn back with them, to show them the place, but Herr Klostermann wouldn’t let him. I don’t want to be alone yet. I’d rather be with the others. And besides, I’m hungry!’
‘Well, then, if you must go down,’ said the doctor resignedly, ‘you might just look in and have a word with McHugh before you go. He’s been asking for you. I told him you were all right, but he’ll be happier if he sees for himself. Go and talk to him, then maybe he’ll sleep.’
She went in quietly, but McHugh’s head turned at once as the door opened, and his bright, wide-awake eyes saluted her with a somewhat distorted smile. The bedside lamp was turned so that it would not shine on his face, and over his legs they had erected an improvised cage that bulged the feather quilt like an aeroplane hangar under snow.