The Grass Widow's Tale gfaf-7

by Ellis Peters

  “We wanted it. Damn it, we’d been up all night, we needed a bath… I had to shave… We weren’t expecting any trouble. I’ve been here before with the owners, I could account for being here if I had to—for everything except Pippa and the money.” He wiped his forehead feverishly; there was no need to act, sweat stood on him in globules, bitter as gall on his lips. “Pippa—it was too light to risk being seen carrying her down to the boat, and anyhow, there was no way of hiding her there any better than here. No use trying to sink her here, inshore. She had to wait for dark. But the money, just a flat parcel, that was only a minute’s job, so we made sure of it.”

  “It occurs to me,” said Fleet thoughtfully, “that with all this talk of ‘ our ’ luggage your lady friend here doesn’t seem to have any belongings, beyond a handbag—I take it that grey one belongs to her? That was going to be a bit awkward, wasn’t it, girl? Are you always so improvident?”

  “I’ve got nothing but a handbag,” Bunty said with hard deliberation, “because I walked out with nothing but a handbag. Why, is my business. He doesn’t know the reason, and you’re not interested, either. He told you, he picked me up in a pub. What’s the odds? If you know anything about that kid upstairs, you know that king-size case of hers is full of brand-new stuff. I carry a few extra pounds, but we’re much the same size. I could get by.”

  Amazed, she watched the image she was projecting emerge and parade before him, no predictable bar-fly, but a woman on the dangerous verge of middle-age, a woman who had suddenly rebelled, looked over her shoulder and cut her losses. And how far from the truth was that picture? There had been a time, only twenty-four hours ago, when it would have seemed to her as close as a mirror-image. Now it was clear that she and this imaginary creature were at opposite poles, and never could, by any miracle, have touched fingertips. Fleet’s eyes went over her with mild curiosity, and looked away again. To him it was a reasonably convincing portrait she had drawn, or perhaps he didn’t care enough to probe any further.

  “So you hid the money ready,” he said, eyeing Luke, “in the boat.”

  “I didn’t say it was in the boat.” That would have been too easy, one man could go over the whole craft in ten minutes, and Luke wanted at least two of them out of the way. “It was getting light, we couldn’t hang around to unlock the boat-house. We had the stuff all proofed up for sea, in oiled silk and plastic, we just fastened a nylon line on the parcel and let it down over the edge of the jetty, into the water. There’s an old mooring ring down there, right at the seaward end, well down the stone facing, it’ll be under water now. But you can reach it, all right, if you lie on your stomach and reach over. The end of the line’s made fast to that.”

  Blackie Crowe had paled with shock at the thought of fifteen thousand pounds bubbling about beneath the tide on the end of a nylon line. Even Fleet’s thick eyebrows arched as high as the Neanderthal bone-structure within would let them.

  “I hope for your sake you did make it fast,” he said grimly. “How come, is it weighted, then?”

  Luke nodded. “Enough to keep it down out of sight.” He came to his feet, slowly and cautiously, in order not to provoke Con’s jumpy trigger-finger, but readily enough to show his willingness to oblige. “I’ll go down with your man and show him,” he said, in a soft voice that did its best not to seem too eager.

  “Ah, now, just a minute, not too fast.” Fleet waved him down again, but Luke, though he stayed where he was, remained standing. “How do I know you’re not in Channel class in the water? You might make a break for it with a nice clean dive while one of the boys was fishing off the end of the jetty. You might even stick a toe under him and help him into the water. And we might still be whistling for that money. Oh, no, laddie, you won’t do any showing, only on paper. We might never see you again.”

  Luke jerked his head at Bunty. “You’d have her, wouldn’t you?” he said, aggrieved; but the very faint, opportunist glint in his eye was not quite concealed. “Think I’d do a thing like that to her?”

  “Since you ask me, yes, I think you would. I’m not so sure you put the right value on the lady. No, you’ll stay here.”

  “One man alone won’t have an easy job finding it,” Luke urged earnestly. “It’s pitch dark down there now, he’ll need somebody to give him a light, and hang on to him while he leans over. The ring must be eighteen inches under by now, and there’s a tidy drag below those rocks. You could lose him and the money.”

  Fleet hesitated. “Know what, kid? I think you’re trying to pull something. You didn’t have much trouble putting it there, seemingly.”

  “I didn’t have any! It was nearly daylight, and low tide, and I know the place. It’s a different cup of tea now, for somebody who doesn’t. Better let me go. I’ll do the fishing, if that’ll satisfy you.”

  He made the offer with a tight, strained urgency and fevered eyes, sure now that it would be refused, and sure that he could get two of the enemy out of the house on this fools’ errand. He ventured one brief flicker of his eyes in Bunty’s direction; she knew, she was on his heels now, close and eager.

  Fleet made up his mind. It might be true, and it would take no more than a quarter of an hour or so to put it to the test.

  “Here, come to the desk. Draw me a map, and make it good. Direction and distance from the foot of this path you talk about—the lot.” He watched Luke stoop to rummage in the top drawer of the desk for pen and writing-pad, tear off the top sheet of the pad, and without hesitation begin to sketch in the jetty and the approach angle of the cliff path. Satisfied, Fleet turned to Skinner, who was lounging against the wall by the door, one shoulder hunched as a prop. “You go down and fish up this parcel. Take Con with you. And give me that Colt, just in case.”

  For one moment his back was turned squarely on Luke, and his bulk partly hid the desk from the eyes of the others. For once Luke could move a hand in the shelter of his own body, and not be observed. The large, smooth granite pebble, veined and beautiful, that his friends used as a paperweight, lay close to his right sleeve. He closed his hand over it and drew it towards him, sliding it quickly into the pocket of his coat. By the time Fleet swung round on him again he was scribbling measurements on his sketch-map, and turned to show his hands otherwise empty and innocent as he handed it over.

  “There you are. X marks the spot where the treasure’s buried.”

  He stayed where he was as they examined it, his back to the desk. It was a good place, if they’d let him keep it. It meant that when the moment came he could draw the two remaining armed men to this side of the room to deal with him, and leave Bunty a clear run to the doorway. The lame man upstairs, edging anxiously and audibly from front window to rear window and back again, would never get down the stairs in time to intercept her.

  “Seems straightforward enough,” said Skinner, memorising the lay-out. “Better get that big torch out of the Riley, Con, this one here’s giving out.”

  Without a gun in them, Con’s hands were discontented and at a loss what to do with themselves. Only the weight and solidity of the Colt had held them still. They had the twitches now. Maybe Con was already hooked on one of the hard drugs, maybe he was only half-way there on LSD. Fleet himself was watching him, as the boy left the room, with a considering coldness, a practical speculation. Con might not last very long in Fleet’s employ; but he hadn’t become a liability yet.

  Luke strained his ears for the sound of the front door opening and closing on Con’s exit, opening and closing again as he came back with a large, rubber-cased torch. The latch clicked into place lightly on his return, and he came on without any delay into the living-room. The bolts were not shot, the lock no longer functioned; the way out was open.

  “And who,” Fleet asked suddenly, settling back in his chair, “has got the other gun—his gun?”

  Skinner turned in the kitchen doorway. “I have. Want it?”

  “Yes, hand it over.” Fleet laid down the Colt close beside him on the edge of the tab
le, and took Pippa’s Liliput in his hands. No doubt he had supplied it in the first place, while he still half-trusted her. “That’s all. Go on, get on with it.”

  Then there were four of them left in the room. They heard the receding footsteps cross the kitchen, heard the outer door open and close, and for a moment or two faint sounds still reached them, dropping away down the first steps of the path. Bunty sat erect and rigid, her eyes fixed on Fleet. Luke quietly turned the chair round from the desk and sat down there; and no one ordered him back to join Bunty in the window embrasure. So much gained. Two ways to aim and shoot now, instead of one.

  Fleet had pulled a handful of paper tissues from his pocket, and was polishing idly at the Liliput, his hands at work almost absent-mindedly, filling in time by getting on with the next job while he waited. His eyes studied Luke thoughtfully across the room, with the detached assurance of a practised mathematician solving a routine problem.

  Or an experienced undertaker measuring a potential client for his coffin?

  Bunty had been watching the active fingers for several seconds before their movements abruptly clicked into focus for her, and made blinding sense. Her heart lurched and turned in her with the shock of realisation. Suddenly she knew what had been lying there all the while beneath the surface manœuvrings of that tortuous mind, she knew what kind of bargain it was that Fleet had struck with his prisoners, and why he wanted Luke unbruised and unbattered. Once he got his hands on the money the whole gang would pack up and get out of here, yes; but not until they’d staged a second and less fallible tableau for the police to discover when they finally caught up. A murdered girl upstairs, a girl who would eventually be traced back to Comerbourne; in the garage the car for which the Midshire police had been putting out calls all day; and down here in the living-room another victim, some woman the fugitive had picked up in his flight, perhaps intending to escape abroad with her, only to despair and put an end to her here, before—last act of all—putting a bullet through his own head and dying beside her. The experts would easily demonstrate that the same gun had killed all three, the gun the police would find in dead Luke Tennant’s grip when they came. There would be no other prints on it but his; those softly polishing fingers were busy making sure of that now. She watched them in fascination. They had already finished with the barrel, wiped the grip clean, taken care of the trigger-guard, and now they were twisting another tissue neatly about the butt.

  There remained only the trigger. There was no point in wiping that, of course; not until afterwards.

  CHAPTER XII

  « ^ »

  So now she knew the score, whether Luke knew it or not, and they had nothing left to lose. She had perhaps two minutes or so to make up her mind. When he starts something, she asked herself, do I run or don’t I? Things are changed now, this is a life and death matter whatever I do. Have we a chance of getting out of here together? She considered that with the searching eye of one who has been through death once already, and is no longer flustered by its proximity, and told herself with detachment that the answer must be no. And if I run, have I a sporting chance of getting clear alone? Yes, I believe I might have. But have I any chance at all of reaching the police, or any other reliable help, and bringing them back here in time to save Luke? Over that she hesitated, but in the end the answer was that it might be betting against the odds, but it still might come off. With one of the victims lost, with a witness at large who could identify them, they might scrap the whole plan and think it wisest to get out, leave Luke alive, and cut their losses.

  Do I run, then? Yes, she told herself, I run. On balance it seems the sanest thing to do, for both of us.

  There were snags, of course, in Fleet’s design, but he couldn’t be expected to know about all of them, and in any case he would take the small risk involved as a natural gamble. There was the broken lock on the front door. Presumably his plan envisaged that break-in as being attributed to Luke on the run; he didn’t know that the key had its hiding-place right there on the spot, and that Luke was admitted to the secret, and had no need to break locks. The Alports would testify to that, and the point might stick in some Scots policeman’s craw, like a husk in porridge, and refuse to be dislodged. She knew it would have stuck in George’s. The shadow of the unknown other person would be there to be found, once the possibility was acknowledged. It is very difficult to erase yourself completely from the scene where you have once been, the imprint of your presence and your acts remains as a faint outline still, an indentation, never entirely smoothed out.

  She wondered, for one broken instant, whether it was worthwhile calling Fleet’s attention to all the discrepancies he couldn’t possibly trim into his pattern. But that was no use; he didn’t expect a hundred per cent perfection, perhaps he wouldn’t even be happy without the residue of risk. Certainly he wouldn’t be deterred by it. No, there was nothing to be done here. What she had to do was be ready to seize the moment if it came, and make sure of getting through the doorway and into the trees.

  It couldn’t be long now. She had done all the thinking she could do in approximately twenty seconds, though it had seemed an age. Now she rebelled at the silence. Nothing had a chance of happening successfully in this still, charged air; with a wind blowing through it there might be more hope.

  “Do you mind if I have my handbag?” she said acidly, her bright stare hard and steady on Fleet’s face. “You guessed right, the grey one is mine. Your fellows have had everything out of it but the lining, so don’t be afraid I’ve got a bomb in it.”

  It frees the tongue, knowing that what you say will make no difference, that buttering up the devil isn’t going to get you anywhere, and damning him to his face can’t do more than destroy you. Something else was stirring in the unexplored depths of her being, something never yet exercised in the serenity of family life, a pure personal fury that this man and his hangers-on should take it so insultingly for granted that no one could do anything against them, that guns called tunes, that lives were expendable like draughts in a game, and their proprietors would go quietly as lambs to the slaughter, just because the odds were against them. She cast one glance at Luke, and he was waiting for it with eyes flaring wide and aware. They conversed briefly, and were at one. Neither of them knew who was going to precipitate what was coming; both of them were playing by ear. But they understood the one weapon they had, their absolute unanimity. Whichever called, the other would respond; and they had no reservations, they trusted each other through and through. It was almost worth dying for that.

  “Did you vet it?” asked Fleet lazily, without condescending to glance either at Bunty, who had addressed him, or at Blackie, whom he was now addressing.

  “Yeah, there’s nothing, just women’s stuff.”

  “I need a handkerchief,” said Bunty. “Not to weep into, in case that’s what you’re thinking. To blow my nose. There’s a smell in here. Queer, that, it was all right until you people arrived.”

  “Give her her bag,” said Fleet, half-bored and half-amused.

  It was on the bookcase, cheek by jowl with the sumptuous cream-coloured concoction Pippa had affected; and Blackie was sitting sprawled all over a high-backed chair close beside the bookcase, with Bunty diagonally to his left, and Luke diagonally to his right. He had his gun braced ready in his right hand, but his left was free to reach for the bag and toss it to Bunty. He did so, lazily and inefficiently, as if under protest.

  It was a disdainful cast, an insult in itself, designed to fall short and make her stoop for her belongings. She could have caught the bag if she had cared to lean forward and stretch out her arms. Instead she sat with a straight back and a scornful face, her lips curled in detestation, and never moved a finger, but let it fall, with a dull plop and a rattle of small feminine arms within, just a yard from her feet. It lay innocently on one end of Louise Alport’s most beautiful rug, a Scandinavian piece in broken forms and muted colours. A long rug, it was; the other end reposed under Fleet’s hand-made
shoe and Fleet’s wicker chair, tilted back lazily on its rear legs beside the table.

  She looked down at the bag with a fine, considering smile, and her eyes travelled the length of the rug slowly, and measured the distance to the door, and the half-way mark in that five-yard journey, the console record player with the single brass candlestick and the Benares ashtray on top of it. Her eyebrows signalled amused disdain.

  “I perceive,” she said, “that I am in the company of gentlemen. That’s always so satisfying.” And she leaned forward without haste, and stretched out a languid hand towards her property.

  She moved slowly, because their eyes were too intently fixed upon her movements, she had to give Luke time for his own diversion; and as though she had whispered in his ear, he provided her with what she needed. He rose abruptly from his chair, whirled it about under the knee-hole of the desk, and took two rapid steps forward towards the bag, as if to pick it up and hand it to her, exasperated by his own impotence and their boorishness.

  Attention swung upon him in an instant. Fleet dropped Pippa’s gun upon the table at his elbow, and picked up the Colt with the smoothness of a snake uncoiling. Blackie’s thin, sharp profile swung towards Bunty, the gun in his hand levelled and pointed, freezing upon Luke’s middle. Bunty said in a high, clear voice: “Don’t bother! I can stoop to conquer!”

  She leaned from her place, both hands reaching for the handbag; but what she grasped, fingers clenched deep into the blessed long woollen pile, was the edge of the Scandinavian rug.

  She tugged with all her heart and soul and venom and love. The rug surged across Louise Alport’s polished woodblock floor like a live thing, plucking the rear legs of Fleet’s chair irresistibly after it, an enthusiastic Sealyham tangling its boss in its lead and bringing him down with a shattering crash on his back.

  The wicker chair screeched like a parrot, Fleet went over in a backward dive on his heavy shoulders, and his head hit the parquet with a most satisfying crunch. Attention swung back to Bunty like mad magic, and Blackie came out of his chair in a frantic leap, hesitant whether to pounce upon her, fire at her, or rush to salvage his boss. For one instant no one had time to spare for Luke, and though it was only an instant, it was enough. He plucked the granite paperweight out of his pocket, and hurled it into the light fixture with all his might—he had played cricket for his school and college as a fast bowler of erratic speed but deadly accuracy.