‘All the stuff I stopped the earth with – did you move it?’ he asked.
‘No, there was nothing in the mouth of the hole. It was all outside, just as it is.’
‘Then she must have pushed it all out and left.’
‘Or Botswinger found her and pulled it out.’
‘Wasn’t he watching the spring, sir?’
‘No, but he had been there very recently. There’s a damp mark of his body still on the stone and two fresh cigarette ends. He is not in the hanger. We have been right through it.’
‘And he didn’t leave the hanger,’ Mr Midwinter added. Not on the two sides I could see, he didn’t. And you could see the other sides, Inspector.’
‘There’s a bit of the top that we couldn’t, but if he broke out there he must have run straight up to the Abbey.’
‘And then I would have seen him,’ Mr Midwinter said.
He strolled off round the hanger to test his opinion. He had the air of being on his own front lawn and standing no nonsense about what anybody could see from where. Evidently he had lost patience with police theories.
‘Would you have seen him from the ruins, Mike?’ the Inspector asked.
‘Not if he went right round them. And the Sergeant and the others were too occupied.’
‘If he did, he must have run like hell and got clear before my road block was in position. My chaps report that a car passed them as they were coming up. Only the driver was in it, but Botswinger could have been down on the floor. In that case what warned him? Could he have seen you running for the village?’
‘I suppose he could, sir. But if he had seen me he’d have dashed up at once to warn his pals to escape. And he didn’t.’
‘So it must have been something up at the Abbey which warned him.’
‘He would have heard the shots.’
‘Three of them, weren’t there? Midwinter told us that it was one of his neighbours after pigeons.’
‘Two of them were fired at nothing at all,’ Mike said.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, sir. He just fired them at the cloister wall. It could have been a signal.’
‘Hmm. Well, we can only hope that Carrie Falconer is not with him.’
There was a yell from Midwinter.
‘I’ve found his gun. Leaning up between two hazel wands it was, with the butt half buried. I wouldn’t have seen it in a million years if a little bleeder of a wren hadn’t been looking down the barrels for her lunch.’
‘Would you please bring it here at once, Mr Midwinter, and very carefully,’ the Inspector called.
The police were all silent. Mike looked at the Inspector who looked away. Mr Midwinter came trotting through the bushes and handed over the gun.
‘So I was wrong,’ he declared cheerfully. ‘He got out that way and hid his gun before he ran.’
The Inspector broke open the gun with Mike looking over his arm. They both exclaimed together:
‘Thank God!’
Neither of the two cartridges in the breach had been fired.
‘The well!’ Mike exclaimed. ‘We must look in the well at once.’
The whole party left the hanger and hurried up the hill. Two figures were running down to meet them. Mike rushed ahead into the arms of his father and mother.
Tears streamed down his mother’s face as she hugged him. His father stroked his head with a very hard and unsteady hand. Mike said that he was all right and that there was nothing wrong with him – only a bit tired.
‘And you’ve got them?’ Jack Prowse asked the Inspector.
‘Two of them, thanks to this boy of yours. We have missed the third but he won’t get far.’
‘And Carrie Falconer?’
‘We’re hoping for the best. She could be with him.’
‘She wasn’t where I left her when I went for help, Dad,’ Mike explained.
‘Couldn’t you have taken her with you?’
‘We had only a minute, you see. They were all round us and meant to kill us if they caught us. And so I hid her and tried to slip through to the police myself.’
‘I see. Quite right. You’d have a better chance than she would.’
‘She’s become pretty good at it, Dad, but … oh, let’s go on quick!’
The whole party hurried up to the wood where Mike showed them the hole which led down into the remains of the Abbey barn. Screw and Chauffeur had replaced the brushwood and the ladder. There was no obvious sign of any opening in the bank.
‘Wasn’t this ever known?’ Janet Prowse asked.
‘No. The man we want had been warden of the Abbey for a few years,’ the Inspector replied. ‘He must have found it and kept quiet about it. We have reason to believe he may have used it more than once.’
Mike led the way down.
‘Keep round by the wall!’ he advised. ‘It’s not very safe.’
The grating was in place. They lifted it and descended into the arched cellar.
‘This is where we were kept.’
The police torches lit up the lines and shadows of arches. Apart from the smell, the only evidence that anyone had been there for the last four hundred years was Mike’s home-made poncho.
‘And here for days in pitch darkness!’ his mother cried in horror.
‘Carrie was, and all alone. After they put me down they gave us two candles.’
‘They deserve anything they get, those fellows. Everything that’s coming to them!’ his father growled savagely.
‘And the well is through here.’
There were the piled bricks and the open hole. Torches revealed the broken ladder and the black, still water far down which glistened and held its secrets. A handkerchief floated on it.
‘She may have been crying when she believed I was dead,’ Mike suggested with his voice breaking.
‘I’ve got a rope in my shop,’ said Mr Midwinter. ‘Back in ten minutes if one of these coppers can drive!’
8
The Fox’s Earth
Carrie lay full length well inside the fox’s earth. It would have been a comfortable enough resting place after all the desperate activity if it had not been for the pungent, musky smell. At first she was confident that Mike must have got safely away. Down in her burrow she could hear little of what was going on outside – if anything was – but she was sure she would have heard any shot or shouts within the hanger.
The waiting went on and on. She tried to work out how long it would be before rescue – perhaps quarter of an hour for Mike to reach the village and another quarter while he talked to police. It surely could not be more than an hour altogether before she listened to the rumble of approaching voices and a large hand came down to pull her out.
But in loneliness and silence there was no way to tell half an hour from ten minutes. It was a bore to lie there doing nothing, so she wriggled backwards a little further down. Perhaps there would be baby foxes to keep her company. Her left arm went into an opening which might be a rabbit hole or a bit of experimental burrowing by cubs. Her right leg seemed to be kicking around in emptiness; she could bend her leg straight up from the knee without touching anything. She wisely decided that she had gone far enough and it was no time for curiosity and getting buried by a fall. Where she was the soil was firm enough, pressed and polished by the passage of animals, but the rabbit hole was all loose and her right leg had knocked down a shower of earth and pebbles in the course of its explorations.
Wriggling up again towards the mouth, she tried to pass the time looking out through the stoppers which Mike had jammed in the hole and watching a green caterpillar standing on its tail and weaving about, trying to fasten on a twig just out of reach.
At last she heard someone running. The branches were pulled aside. She was just about to call out when feet came down instead of the expected head and shoulders. Before the body filled the hole altogether and cut off the light she had time to see the colour of socks. They were green with a line of black checks up the side. In the
gorse she had once been near enough to Beard’s feet to recognise them.
He was sweeping the soil outside to cover his footprints, just as Mike had done. Frantically she tried to work out what action to take, wishing she had a syringe and poison for Beard’s hairy calves. She thought of biting them hard, but that wouldn’t do any good. He might crawl out and then come in head first to deal with her. Did he know she was there? Suppose he had caught Mike and made him confess where she was hidden? But then why had he not come in head first or simply fired a shot down the hole? It began to look very much as if he knew police were on the way and was himself hiding in the one spot he could reach quickly without taking to the open.
Every time he kicked and squirmed she backed further down so that any noise she made was drowned by his own. All that mattered was that he should not discover she was there. He kept sliding down, pushed by knees and elbows, until the soles of his boots were within a foot of her face and her own legs were becoming jammed.
She managed to bend her knees and fit them into the space which her right leg had felt. She twisted her way into it like a snake, and then at last the blind, threatening feet that seemed to hold all Beard’s brutality were no longer right on her. She could see nothing. Probably Beard’s knees were now across the entrance to her private burrow and his feet had reached the end of the passage.
He lay still for a while, perhaps listening. Having reached the end of the fox’s earth, he decided that he need not be so tightly packed and started to heave and kick. It was almost impossible for Carrie to make sense of the commotion. She was certain, however, that one boot had gone through whatever earth and rubble separated her chamber from the main passage. With more room to move the boot searched for something to push against.
She stretched out a nervous hand and found that his boot was up against hard rock, pushing it to drive himself forwards. Suddenly the leg behind the boot shot out straight. She heard a trickle of earth and splashes. Then it seemed that the whole world below her was sliding backwards and she with it. The world above came down in a shower of earth which buried her. There was a roar and a crump. She found herself sitting with the upper part of her free and the rest loosely covered by whatever had collapsed.
She was unhurt beyond bruises and some small cuts on her shoulders from which fingers came away sticky. She was even glad that she was free of those unbearable legs. Darkness was not absolute as it had been after Beard’s body filled the hole. Far overhead showed a triangle of light. Mike had never had time to recount all the details of his escape, but he had mentioned the triangle and how thankful he had been to see it. It was unmistakable. Where she had landed must be the underground stream, and she was sure she would be safe there until the police dug down to get her out. Mike could tell them what had happened, and Mike must have got away if Beard was hiding.
She extricated herself and slid down a slope of rubble without bothering how much noise she made. Immediately the beam of a torch picked her up. Reflection from the limestone allowed her to make out the bulk of a human being with a dark beard. She screamed in terror and was answered by a roar:
‘So we’re back together again!’
She plunged and plodded down the rest of the slope, coming out on to hard rock at the bottom. She raced down the channel of the stream, trying to remember all that Mike had told her about it and realising – in a sort of dream picture rather than any thought – that the dip in the ground which held the fox’s earth must be above the landfall over which Mike had climbed. Beard was close behind her but limping badly. She knew that from the splashing. Instead of a regular splash-splash of fast feet, they went splash-pause-splosh-splash. If only she could keep ahead of this wounded beast she must come to the pool of which Mike had told her.
The beam of the torch behind her wavered, sometimes holding her so that she could not escape into any side passage if there was one, sometimes lighting the channel for Beard. That was useful because it prevented her tripping over stones which were agony to her bare feet. She dared not look back to see how close he was. Once he seemed within grabbing distance; once he yowled with pain and there was a second or two before the splosh-splash restarted.
She saw faint, diffused light ahead of her and then the pool. It was very different from the picture she had made for herself after Mike’s brief description. It was not at all beautiful. It was a dark, dead end. At the brink the water was indeed calm and greenish, but farther out it swirled beneath ledges and between rocks, all smooth and rounded by aeons of floods. The roof was very low and the outlet to the spring not at all obvious.
She waded in, hoping that Beard could not swim. He did not have to. He ripped off coat and trousers and waded in after her up to his chest. She could not find the round boulder which Mike said he had shifted. She had never seen it from the outside and could not distinguish it from the rock face. She wasted time diving in a panicky effort to get through a lit opening which was barely big enough for a fish. When she had to come up for air, Beard was within yards of her. The main current was gently swirling against his waist, and he was blocking what must be the correct way out.
‘Come on, sweetie!’ he ordered, holding out his arms.
The roof came down so close to the water that he could not reach her without stooping and putting his head under. He hesitated. Carrie guessed that he did not want to get head, shirt and shoulders wet. If they were, he would be suspect to everyone who saw him after his escape.
She dived again, feeling her way like a crab under a smooth ledge of rock from which she hoped it might be difficult to haul her out. But the recess did not go back far enough. She took two more kicks with lungs bursting and cautiously broke the surface without a ripple. Where she had come up it was black night – a miniature bay cut off from the seeping daylight of the spring. The beam of the torch was searching for her. She had time to hide her head behind a jagged rock fallen from the roof, the tip of which was just above water.
Beard had retreated a little from his position and was flashing his torch along the surface of the pool. She was sure she had puzzled him. He was only visible as a dark bulk in a green shadow, but he was turning and peering in all directions. It was possible that he now thought he had blocked the wrong place and that she had found the way out. There was an eddy which had helped to carry her under the recess, and he would have felt it against his legs. She dared not move or hope until she saw him wade out and put on coat and trousers. Then he limped splash-pause-splosh up the channel again. She asked herself what Mike would do now. The answer was clear. Make sure that he has really given up and then take your time!
Creeping along behind him in the darkness, she saw him begin to climb the sloping slab of rock half covered with debris. That was good enough. He was getting out. The landslip must have left a considerable crack on the surface within easy reach. And if the police had not yet arrived at the hanger he was the sort of criminal to have a plan for escape worked out long beforehand.
She returned down the channel – her feet more sore than ever with no torch to guide them and no terror to take her mind off them – and plunged into the water again. She had no more doubt where the outlet was, for Beard had shown her. Her first two attempts failed. That boulder which blocked the way was never going to move even an inch from where it had settled after Mike and the current had jammed it; but there was just room for a child who was very determined and accustomed to swim under water. Carrie was both, and on her third attempt she was through into the sunlight of the pool. She had half expected somebody to be there to receive her, but there was no one – no Mike, no Rupert and Mary, no police. The hanger was quite silent except for the cooing of a dove.
She could not make up her mind what to do. It seemed wise not to run for the Abbey and to stay in cover in case Screw and Chauffeur were still about. She crept up as far as the fox’s earth. The mouth of it was just as it always had been. All around it the earth was pitted with footmarks as if an army had walked over. Among them she spotted t
he smaller prints of Mike and sat down sobbing with relief.
So he and the police had been there and she was free at last wherever the criminals were. But before she ran out of the hanger she looked to see whether the collapse had left an opening through which Beard could have escaped. She found it in a thicket of elder beyond the dip in which was the earth and outside the range of the footmarks. There the ground had slipped down in a rough circle and the upper end of the slide was crossed by a crack easily wide enough to allow Beard’s body to pass.
Everybody must now be at the Abbey. All the same she approached it cautiously, first taking cover behind the long, dry-stone wall. Then on the skyline she saw the top of a uniformed policeman and heard in the distance the wailing of an ambulance siren. She limped painfully up the hill on to the blessedly soft lawns among the ruins. The car park was full of cars. It swarmed with press photographers and men with notebooks.
She shivered in the wind, standing in nearly the same corner of the Library where Screw had drawn his gun. Nobody noticed her. People scuttled about without any single object like disturbed ants round their nest. Some were apparently demanding to be let into the cottage and being held back by a policeman. A tall Inspector had a knot of men and women round him all talking at once. A truck with a TV camera had come down the lane and stopped. She was ashamed of her appearance and afraid of so many strangers. There was nobody she knew to comfort her.
And then it was that Mike came through an opening in the cloisters, walking between a plump, very pretty woman and a tall, dark man so like him that he had to be his father.
‘Carrie!’ he shouted and rap to her.
She was dripping water and her rags were stained with the mud and earth of days which even the spring pool could not wash away. Her hair stuck to her face in rat tails; but that face was all Mike looked at. There was nothing to set it off or conceal its shape. He had never noticed before how fine-drawn and gallant it was.
He hugged her, asking again and again what had happened.
Escape into Daylight Page 10