by Ellis Peters
He thought, I’m going queer from being alone, getting fanciful; there’s a twentieth century somewhere around, and we’re in trouble in the middle of it, and no way out that I can see.
And it was then that the small sound that had been hammering for some minutes at his senses, unnoticed, achieved actual presence, and made itself known to him.
Time came back with it, and stress, and the inescapable memory of Annet, mute in the heart of her pathetic dream of happiness, with wreckage all round her. He moved out of the enclosing ring of the rocks, to hear more clearly.
Busy, regular, persistent, the hum of an engine climbing steadily, not on the Fairford side of the hill, but down there in the highest reaches of Middlehope. From the western flanks of the Hallowmount the sound would be cut off completely; here on the crest he heard it plainly. And when he moved out to the edge of the slope, looking down over the shallow bowl of the valley head, he saw the small glow-worm of a headlight weaving its way up by the sheep-path from Abbot’s Bale. Light and sound drew steadily nearer, crossing the boggy patches with assurance, mounting into the dry pasture where the path vanished like a smoke-trail on a pale sky. Close beneath the Altar, in the throat of Middlehope, the motor-cycle halted, and in a moment the engine stopped.
Like a cloud of birds disturbed, the silence wheeled, circled, and settled again. The tiny light went out. A small, dark figure detached itself from its mount, and began to climb the slope.
CHAPTER X
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He drew back hurriedly into the circle of rocks about the Altar, the beat of his heart suddenly violent against his ribs, the tatters of time past shuddering away from him. The grating of stones under his own feet sounded like an avalanche to him. He felt with stretched toes for the silent patches of short turf, groped his way round bony elbows of rock into a deep niche of darkness, braced his feet firmly in grass, and took hold on the harsh faces of spar with cautious fingers. With his head drawn back into cover, his cheek against the stone, he could watch the faint, lambent spaces of sky between the outcrops, overhanging the descent into Middlehope. If he failed to see where the intruder emerged, he would surely hear him come.
A motor-bike, and a solitary rider climbing purposefully towards this unlikely place in the night! They had not been so far out in their guesses, they had not wasted their day. And here was he alone, not empowered or equipped to do more than observe and identify. Above all identify. That he must do, at whatever cost. Because this could not be coincidence, it could not be innocent. The man climbing the hill was Jacob Worrell’s murderer.
How many minutes to mount from the last faint smear of the path above the brook? The head of the valley was shallow and bare, it could not take long. He waited with breath held, but the thudding of blood in his own ears deafened him to more distant sounds, or else there was no rising current of air to lift to this place sounds from too close below. Minutes dripped by like the slow drops of sweat trickling between his shoulder-blades, and still nothing. He began to think the newcomer must have swung away from the Altar to traverse towards the trees.
Then he caught the sudden rattle of a stone rolling under a foot, and the grunt of a sharply-drawn breath, both startlingly close. He shrank and froze in his cranny, cheek turned painfully against the rock, eyes on the paler levels where sky and earth met.
A head and shoulders, stooped into the effort of climbing, and all but shapeless in consequence, heaved from the dead black of the earth and hunched into the dim blue-black of sky. In lunging strides the shadow lengthened, came over the rim panting with exertion, and straightened and stretched with a sigh of relief as it stepped on to level ground. Against the sky he was a long silhouette, against the rocks, as he came forward, he was shapeless movement, almost invisible, and rapid movement at that. He knew exactly where he was going, and felt no doubt of his solitude.
Tom heard the slur of his steps along the short grass, the deep, whistling breaths he drew, still panting with the exertion of his climb. He was moving diagonally across the space within the rocks, somewhat away from where Tom lay in hiding. Sounds rather than vision traced his passage, and it was straight as an arrow to the furrowed faces of spar at the base of the Altar.
Craning out of his hiding-place, straining vision and bearing after identity, Tom gathered every detail only to doubt it the next moment, where so much was guessed at blindly. Now the shadow shrank, dropped together. He heard the effortful subdued movements that did not belong, surely, to the very young. And that fitted, now that the woman in Birmingham had given them the clue. The man was on his knees, close against the piled boulders of the outcrop, the buttresses of the Altar. Huddled, headless, the dull shadow hunched forward, reaching with both arms into a crevice of the rock face. The laboured breathing steadied cautiously, the faint sob at the end of every inhalation swung like a pendulum.
The sound of cautious groping, and a whispered curse, and then a strong and certain sound, the grating of stone against stone, as though a heavy stopper was being withdrawn carefully from the unglazed neck of a stoneware bottle. The stooping shoulders heaved back, the bent head reappeared. Something was laid aside on the grass with a soft thud, and he leaned and groped forward again, and again drew back with full hands. A deep sigh of thankfulness. He turned on his knees to face away from the rock, and held his prize before him on the grass.
Tom’s heart repeated vehemently and certainly: Not Beck! Not because of the motor-bike. Beck had never openly owned such a thing, true, but motor-bikes can be hired, or if necessary bought and kept secretly. And however grotesque it might seem to associate Beck’s narrow, unworldly nature and mild scholarship with such things, the fact remained that many even odder and more unlikely characters rode them. Not Beck, when it came down to it, only because he so desperately desired that it should not be Beck. But he clung to his certainty, and would not be dislodged from it.
A glow-worm of light sprang up abruptly between the arched body and the circling rocks, trained upon the grass. By the tiny pool of pallor it made, it could be only one of those thin pencil-torches that clip in a breast pocket, and even so the kneeling man held it shrouded in his hand, for his fingers were dimly outlined with the rose-coloured radiance of his blood. He could not risk showing a light openly on top of the Hallowmount, but neither could he handle his prize, it seemed, without using the torch for a moment or two.
Sharp in the gleam sprang the black outline of a small leather briefcase. He held it flat and steady with a knee, the torch cupped over it closely, while with his free hand he turned a key in the lock, tipped the case upright, peered and fumbled within. He had to satisfy himself that his treasure was intact, it represented his funds, his hope of escape, the only future he had. He wanted two hands to manipulate it, and leaned aside for an instant to wedge his torch in a crevice low in the rocks, turned carefully on the briefcase and shaded by his draped handkerchief. Now if only he would turn his head. If only the wind would rise and whisk the handkerchief away, so that the shrouded thread of light could expand and reach his face. But the air hung still, charged with indifference and silence.
Turning back feverishly to the examination of the contents of the case, he set his knee astray on the sharp edge of the flat plug of stone he had drawn from the crevice, and winced and gasped, but neither the hissing indrawn breath nor the painful exhalation had any voice to identify him. That cavity within the rocks must have been known to them for a long time, served them as letter-box and safe-deposit on more than one occasion, but it had surely never had to guard two thousand pounds-worth of small jewellery before. Could so small a case hold all that value in jewellery? Tom supposed it could. Most of it had been in good rings, and diamonds and sapphires and a few gold watches will lie in a very little space.
And it seemed there had been room left in the case for something else, besides the stolen jewellery. The motion of the hurrying hands brought it halfway out into the light, the right hand gripped it momentarily with a convulsive clasp
, the shape of the hold defining it clearly, even before Tom’s straining eyes caught the short black thrust of the barrel.
A tiny thing, a compact handful. Some small calibre pistol. He knew nothing about guns, he had never handled one. Some time, somewhere, this man had; the hand knew the motions, though it performed them as in a momentary and terrifying absence of mind. Men of an age to pass for Annet’s father had almost all of them been in uniform during the last war, and the trained hands don’t forget. And plenty of them had brought home guns at the end of it, and never bothered to hand them in, even after police appeals.
He was satisfied now, he sat back on his heels with a sigh, and thrust the gun down again into the case. His hand was swallowed to the wrist when the sudden sound came, lifted over the crest between them on a random current of air from the west, from the Fairford side of the ridge. Somewhere below there it might have been fretting at the edges of their consciousness for a minute or more, and they had been too intent to notice it; for now it was startlingly near and clear and resolute, for all its quietness, the soft slurring of light feet in the grass, running, stumbling, slipping, recovering, hurrying uphill to the Altar.
The kneeling man heard it, and wrenched round frantically to face it, plucking the gun from the discarded briefcase and bracing it before his body. His lunging shoulder swept the handkerchief aside and dislodged the torch after it; it fell and rolled sparkling along the ground, and he leaned after it with a hoarse gasp and snapped it off into darkness. But for an instant it had illuminated his tense and frightened face as it fell.
Tom clung shaking in his niche, the blurred oval of light and fear still dancing on the darkness before his eyes. Not Beck! No! Not any of the young bloods who gathered on the corner of the square in Comerbourne to compare the noisy and ill-ridden mounts that were their pathetic status symbols. Not young Stockwood. Not some mercifully expendable stranger. But Peter Blacklock, estate manager and husband to the wealthiest woman in West Midshire, secretary of half a dozen worthy bodies that operated under her shadow, choirmaster, organist, general factotum of the village, the prince-consort of Cwm Hall.
With the face everything fell into proportion, coherence and certainty, instantly, before the whorls of light had ceased to float in front of him in the darkness, and long before he relaxed the half-hysterical grip of his abraded finger-tips on the rocks.
Her father! Yes, he would do for that, she could have produced him before Mrs Brookes without a qualm. Forty-four or so, pleasant and charmingly-spoken, mild, easy-humoured, with a twist of rueful fun in him, and an uncle to her in her parents’ eyes – who could have filled the bill better? And he made sense of so much more than that, by the qualities he had not, by the voids he offered for her to fill. He was as inevitable as he was impossible.
Who else had been in such close contact with her? Thrown together by the hour, casually and practically, in Regina’s house, forced together by Regina’s pitiless committee work, those two, being what they were, might easily fall together into the abyss of love, and drown, and die. It wasn’t as if you were offered a choice. The time might well come when they could not bear it any longer, when they had to escape, had to be together somewhere out of her shadow. And once tasted, how could they let that desperate ecstasy go? Even the opportunist robbery, which at first seemed so improbable in one who had everything, fell implacably into place. Because he was penniless!
It was staggering, but it was true. What did he have of his own? From the time he’d married Regina her estates had taken up all his time. And what did he want with a profession when she would gladly buy him or give him anything he wanted? Except, of course, the one thing he had wanted to death, and couldn’t ask her for. For that he’d had to provide himself.
Poor devil!
All this passed through Tom’s mind by fitful glimpses, like light from a guttering candle, in the few seconds while he listened to the fervent footsteps his heart recognised now only too well. He wanted to call out to her to go back, while there was time, but he’d hesitated too long, and it was too late. Annet was there against the sky, her hair streaming.
Blacklock had lowered the gun; he knew her now, and sprang with open arms to meet her. But the true impetus that flung them together, strained breast to breast in a ravenous embrace, was hers, and had always been hers. She wasn’t his victim; he was hers. She had destroyed him by loving him. If she’d never even noticed him, except as a middle-aged man, a father figure, he’d have mastered his feelings for her. But she’d opened to him, she’d loved him, he’d been forced to turn longing and dream into action. No, Annet was nobody’s victim, she had done what she had chosen to do, taken him because he was the weakest, the most helpless, the least effective, the unhappiest of all the men it might have been. All good reasons, and there was no going back on them now.
Blacklock said: ‘Annet!’ as a man dying of thirst might have said: ‘Water!’ He had his arms locked round her, the gun, still in his hand, pressed against her back. And then there was a silence that tore at Tom’s senses, while they kissed and he burned.
‘I thought you weren’t coming. I was afraid!’
‘I came as soon as I could. You knew I’d come.’ And again the silence, aching and hurried and brief. ‘Darling! Darling!’ Her deep voice throaty and charged with agonising tenderness, the implications in its tones of stroking hands, and the deliberate, assuaging pressure of her body, reassuring, caressing, protecting.
‘Yes, I knew! If you could, I knew you’d come. But I was afraid. We’ve got to hurry,’ he said urgently. ‘The bike’s down below. If we can get an hour’s start we can shake them. They won’t look for us westwards. And from Ireland—’
He broke off there to take her in more exactly. ‘You haven’t even got a coat! We must buy you one somewhere tomorrow. You can wear my windjacket for tonight.’ He stooped to snatch up the briefcase from the ground, and caught Annet by the wrist. ‘Come on, hurry, they’ll be after us soon.’
They would go, he would tow her down the hill in his wake and drag her into his crime, she who had done nothing criminal yet. It was more than Tom could bear. She must not do it. She must not make herself an accessory after the fact, an outlaw and a felon, not even for love’s sake. To hold her back from that was something worth dying for.
He didn’t know what he was going to do until he had done it. Scrambling, shouting, he broke out of the shadow of the rocks and flung himself between them and the edge of the slope.
‘Annet, don’t! Don’t listen to him! Don’t go with him! Don’t make yourself a murderess! Don’t—’
Blacklock uttered a soft, terrified cry of panic and despair, and loosed Annet’s arm. Hugging the briefcase to him, he fired blindly at the half-seen figure that distorted the darkness, fired rather at the shouting and the threat than at any corporeal opponent. The impact of the bullet sent Tom staggering backwards, and swung him partially round before he dropped.
He groped along the ground, astonished, lucid and without pain for an instant, dazed by the whirling of stars over him, and the chill and shock of the ground under him. Then the pain came, knifing at his shoulder a full second after the impact, and he cried out in bitter indignation, one brief, angry shout of agony. The earth and the sky stilled, he knew himself lying at Annet’s feet, and felt the stillness of horror holding her paralysed over him. Fumbling at his left shoulder, he felt the hot stickiness of blood; and when he tried to lift himself on one elbow, he fell back ignominiously into the grass.
Darkness lurched at him, withdrew, stooped again. He fought it off, straining upwards obstinately towards Annet’s unseen face and frozen stillness.
‘Don’t go! Don’t let him make you.’ His own voice sounded grotesquely faint and far, and faded like a weak radio signal. He thought he had uttered more words than he heard, and some had been lost, but he went on trying. It was all he could do for her now. ‘You didn’t kill anyone – you didn’t steal— Don’t let him make you what he is.’
&nb
sp; There was no way to silence him but one. Shaking, sweating and half-blinded, Blacklock passed his forearm across his eyes to clear them, and reached the hand that clutched the briefcase to push Annet out of the way.
‘Annet, go on ahead!’
He pointed the gun carefully at the patch of muted darkness heaving on the ground. His finger tightened convulsively on the trigger. The voice had to stop. It was like a barrier between them and freedom, there was no escape until it was silenced.
She woke to realisation and awareness, starting out of her daze of horror.
‘No, don’t!’ She flung herself between them with arms spread.
‘Annet, please!’ He dropped the briefcase then to grasp her by the arm and pluck her out of the way, his voice a wail of despair.
Annet tore herself out of his grip and dropped like a bird, stretching her body upon Tom’s on the ground, winding her arms about him fiercely. Her cheek was pressed against his, her hair spread silken and cool over his forehead and eyes. Breast to breast, her chin upon his shoulder, she clung to him tenaciously with all her slight, warm, dear weight, covering him from harm.
‘Annet!’
‘No, you shan’t, I won’t let you!’
And she felt nothing for him, nothing at all! That was worse than the drain of blood out of his burning shoulder, worse than the terror of death. She felt nothing for him, all her agony and resolution was to save her darling from damning himself beneath a still greater load of guilt, a second and more deliberate murder.
Faint and sick, Tom lay quaking with his new knowledge of her. She had never needed him to show her her duty. He should have known it. She had run up here to her meeting without even a coat, without so much as a handkerchief by way of luggage. She never meant to go! It was for something quite different she came. And all he had done, with his interference and his disastrous want of understanding, was at best to subject himself to her humiliating pity, and at worst to destroy himself. Live or die, this was the only way he would ever have her arms round him.