A Shot at Nothing

by Roger Ormerod

  ‘And the first prize, this time,’ I offered him, ‘will be worth having. If you can throw an eight-pound wellie from the French windows and over the hedge, I’ll concede. It’ll indicate where the gun got to—into somebody’s cupboard. And that’ll be it. The answer to the problem. And I’ll leave…if I can get my car out.’

  ‘Hah!’ He gripped his hands together, fingers linked, and flexed his chest. Stomach muscles disturbed his hairy tangle. ‘We’ll lift your car out for you, me an’ my mates.’

  ‘You’re on,’ I said.

  ‘And I’ll carry you,’ Oliver said, reaching out and touching my cheek with the tip of his fingers.

  The surprising thing was that Oliver was very serious about it. Did he envisage carrying me, kicking and screaming?

  We watched as Glenn strode away down the slope, hunting for his mates, Josie moving a few yards after him, then standing and staring at his back.

  The afternoon was wearing on, the sun lowering, but the activities were still proceeding briskly, the throngs not lessening. Now they’d set up long tables, and crates of beer were being loaded on to them. Free beer, probably. Send the bill to me, Clare had most likely said.

  ‘There’re fireworks later,’ said Oliver reflectively. ‘Should be spectacular, viewed from the slope.’

  ‘I doubt we’ll be here then.’

  ‘I’ve got an idea we shall,’ he said quietly.

  ‘And what did you mean…you’d carry me?’ I demanded. ‘I’ve still got my own two feet.’

  ‘I told you. I’ve consulted Madame Acarti.’

  ‘Rubbish! Ginger hair, indeed!’

  ‘She told me that the lady of the ginger hair, if she was in any way precious to me, should be taken away from here, if I had to carry her screaming and kicking.’

  ‘What did you say to that?’

  ‘I said you’d scream right enough—and kick.’

  ‘No!’ I nearly stamped a foot. ‘The first bit. If I was precious to you…even if it is copper and not ginger.’

  ‘Oh…I said yes, you were.’

  ‘Were what, damn you?’

  ‘Precious.’

  ‘You don’t make it sound convincing,’ I said suspiciously, perhaps wistfully.

  He didn’t seem to notice my tone, but was staring way out into the distance.

  ‘And she also said that if I didn’t—that’s carry you out kicking and screaming—I might find myself carrying you out limp, and getting colder and colder every second.’

  ‘Now wait a minute…’ I pulled at his sleeve.

  He took no notice. ‘Ah…here he comes now, and with his support team. Let’s start filling my wellie with stones. Got any newspaper?’

  I was gripping his arm. His bad one. If there was any pain, he ignored it.

  7

  I had to bear in mind that Madame Acarti hadn’t made that statement, Sergeant Alice Carter had. And female police officers don’t get promoted unless they’ve got a fair quota of intelligence. Ralph Purslowe had suggested that I should consult her. Visit, was the word he’d used. The implication was subtle. To consult suggested that I would be seeking advice; to visit suggested she had advice she wished to pass on. And if she knew of something that might render me limp and rapidly becoming cooler, then it would be a good idea, I thought, to learn what she had in mind. I wasn’t taking this very seriously, though.

  But now there was no time to spare. A group of men had separated themselves from the pulsating masses, and they were advancing on me up the slope. They maintained a purposeful and somewhat disconcerting silence, as though it might be me, and not a wellie, that they’d be hurling around.

  Amongst them I saw a man with only one eye. Another man had a youngster in his teens clinging to his arm, limping with a foot twisted inwards, his head at a strange angle. These were two of my suspects, if Inspector Purslowe were to be believed. And Josie was there with them.

  Oliver was no longer at my side. Doubtless he’d gone round to the front and was collecting gravel. No word was spoken as the cortege reached me. It might have been that I was not there, was no more than an irritating noise in the background.

  It was perhaps as a gesture of solidarity with her own sex that Josie moved to my shoulder. To me it seemed that the hint was there—that I needed support. I glanced sideways at her.

  ‘You don’t approve?’

  She pouted. ‘It all seems very silly to me.’

  ‘But you must see’, I said, ‘that it could be important to find out how a shotgun could have just disappeared.’

  ‘You’re putting a blight on the whole day. Do you realise that, Philipa Lowe?’

  ‘It’s not intended that way. Oh, Josie! I’m really sorry, getting Glenn involved like this.’

  ‘Don’t worry. He wants to do it. If it’ll persuade you to leave us in peace, he’d throw the damned wellie over the steeple.’

  A certain amount of emotion was involved now. It irritated her, too. But it was necessary that I should be silenced, and if a far-flung wellie would do that, then they would whang it well, and Josie would cheer them on.

  There was no need for me to offer help or suggestion. They knew the way through the gap in the corner of the hedge. They knew where the French windows were situated; they were now facing them. And the croquet players had decamped. It was apparently open house, because the windows were already flung wide in welcome. They streamed into the gunroom. They said nothing until Oliver appeared.

  There was, fortunately, no sign of Clare.

  Oliver held his wellington boot beneath his left arm, his hand under the sole as though it was now heavier. He nodded to his friends. They nodded back. A third prize entitled him to recognition. It in no way entitled him to intimacy.

  ‘We’ll have to get the weight right,’ he said, I thought with a note of apology in his voice. ‘Or it’ll mean nothing.’

  ‘Kitchen scales,’ suggested Josie softly, and Glenn darted a glance, possibly disapproving, in her direction.

  We all trooped into the kitchen. I was trying to be quiet and circumspect, being the pest who’d plagued them into this. Josie touched by elbow and whispered, ‘It’s just a game to them.’

  I nodded.

  Glenn found a set of kitchen scales. There was then a discussion as to what weight to aim for. Ten pounds was considered unlikely. Nine was perhaps still on the heavy side. Seven wouldn’t have been a fair trial, as it would be a light weight for anything but a single-barrelled gun. We knew, now, that the missing gun was a Dante with a sliding breech, but although it was known that it was double-barrelled, nobody knew how heavy it had been. So in the end they settled for eight pounds. What I’d said in the first place. Four bags of sugar, roughly, before they started packing it in kilos. All right…just over three and a half bags. I tried it, when they’d got the gravel packed in tightly with paper kitchen towels. Six feet, I might have thrown it.

  Then we went back to the gunroom, to find that Clare was waiting for us, studying the dirty footprints and the trails of grass on the polished oak parquet floor, her eyes following their line out into the hall.

  ‘Would someone be kind enough’, she said, in a dangerously calm voice, ‘to tell me what the hell’s going on?’

  With the exception only of Oliver, who decided to consider the view from the windows, they concertedly turned and stared at me. To my surprise, Josie chose to stand at my shoulder. I saw Glenn frown at her. She lifted her shoulders fractionally.

  ‘We’re about to conduct an experiment,’ I explained.

  ‘What damned experiment?’ Clare’s fingers were playing invisible keys on the top of the table. Rat-a-tap-tap…

  ‘There’s a gun missing from your collection,’ I reminded her. ‘If it had landed on the lawn, the police would have collected it up. They didn’t. So I thought we’d see how far it could have been thrown, using a weighted wellington boot, because if it could’ve gone right over the rhododendrons, some casual passer-by might have picked it up and taken
it away. That would explain it—’

  ‘Wait!’ she cried. ‘Wait, wait, wait, damn you!’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘What the hell does it matter now?’

  There were murmurs of agreement from the group.

  ‘You heard a third shot, Clare.’

  She stared at me blankly.

  ‘You said you heard a third shot,’ I went on, trying to maintain a steady voice. ‘If that’s not true, then we can forget all this, and our fine and manly team can get down to the beer table. If it wasn’t true. But you said it was.’

  ‘I heard it.’

  Her face was set. Her eyes were huge, slightly moist with an emotion I couldn’t rationalise, and her lips were thin and pale. She was tired. I could tell that by the slump of her shoulders.

  ‘Then if you did hear it…’ I ignored the dangerous glint in those eyes. ‘And there’s a gun missing, then the assumption has to be, considering that the forensic people didn’t find a fired gun in the ones they had—other than the one you fired—then…’ I took a deep breath, surprised she hadn’t interrupted. ‘Then that missing gun has to be the one that fired the third shot. I just thought…’

  I stopped there, deliberately to allow her to say her piece, for her to bring out a string of protests. But all she did was shake her head, and her whole body seemed to become limp. She was exhausted through and through. It had been a long day for her—and there was still plenty left.

  ‘Oh…do what you like,’ she said sharply, then she turned away.

  That she turned so that she faced Oliver might have been pure chance. But he didn’t take his eyes from me, and the abrupt and momentary glance of sheer panic she addressed to him was wasted.

  ‘All right,’ I said, turning to the waiting and silent men. Very nearly I clapped my hands for attention. In Clare’s presence, in the presence of her displeasure, they were like a bunch of cowed children.

  ‘Let’s get started.’ I tried for a voice that would boost them, but managed no more than a weak plea. ‘Who’s going first?’ They shuffled their feet and glanced from under lowered eyebrows at each other, but no one offered.

  ‘I’ll go first,’ said Oliver, rescuing me manfully.

  ‘All right.’ I raised my voice, now more confident. ‘It doesn’t matter who goes when, or how many times. The idea is to throw it over the hedge and into the field. All right. Understood?’

  ‘Yeah. Sure. Right enough.’ Their muttered responses had all the inspired enthusiasm of a soaked postman.

  ‘And I’ll bring it back for the next throw,’ I offered, my own optimism misplaced.

  So we did it. Clare now sat—how long since she’d taken the weight off her feet?—on one of the upright and uncomfortable chairs. Throughout, she offered no cries of encouragement. Her face was pale and set. I went across the terrace, down the steps, and way over the lawn, keeping to one side at first. Oliver threw it, making a great show of working up to the climax. I collected it up and trotted back, up the steps, across the terrace, and returned it. The throw had been ten yards short of the hedge. The others, once started, took their turns. Each one must have realised that he was trying to prove that Clare was not a liar. To do this, the boot needed to clear the hedge, or so they simplified it.

  They had varying styles. The fact that they had to throw clear of the open windows somewhat limited them. But they tried. By heavens, how they tried! Faces flaming red, pouring with perspiration until they could barely grip the wellie, they launched their whole beings into it. And not one throw landed further than six yards short of the hedge. Oliver threw only twice. I felt that his concern was for Clare, who, towards the end, drooped pallidly over the table.

  At first, as I said, I dutifully returned it to the gunroom, then it became too much effort to carry it further than the edge of the terrace, until eventually I could barely make it to the terrace, and then was hard pressed to lift it on to the surface.

  At this point, Josie, no doubt feeling sorry for me, quietly took over. She seemed stronger than me, even had breath to spare in those moments between the arguments as to whose throw it was next.

  ‘A pity Harris isn’t here,’ she said vaguely.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘He could throw further than any of them.’

  For a moment I feared that this would invalidate the experiment.

  ‘Throw it over the bushes?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh no. Not that much better.’

  ‘If he was here, we could ask him,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Ask him what?’

  ‘If he threw one of the guns over the bushes. That would explain it, you see.’

  She stared at me. ‘Harris couldn’t have said…’

  I sighed. My little pleasantries so often die a death. ‘Everybody calls him Harris,’ I said quietly. ‘Was it short for Harrison?’

  This too didn’t go over well. She stared at me, her expression blank.

  ‘What?’

  ‘His name. Harris. Short for Harrison…’

  ‘Of course not!’ She was very vehement about it.

  ‘Look out. They’re starting again. I’ll take over, if you like.’

  But there were only half a dozen more throws. The point had been well and truly made.

  ‘That’s enough,’ said Oliver, to my infinite relief. He said it in a firmly authoritative voice, one that I hadn’t heard before. I crawled up the steps and tried not to stagger across the terrace.

  The men stood around uncomfortably, wiping the backs of their hairy hands across their dry mouths, until Glenn said, ‘Clare,’ and nodded, and the others followed him out with grunts of, ‘Miz Clare…’ Josie went with them.

  And they disappeared rapidly in the direction of the beer.

  ‘So what does that prove?’ demanded Clare, with a flash of anger. ‘Ridiculous display…Oh God, I need a drink.’

  I caught Oliver’s eye, and nodded. Me too. Quietly, he left the room. I fetched the chair from the other end of the table and placed it firmly in front of her, then sat down and eyed her carefully. The fire had died from her eyes.

  ‘So where does that get you?’ she asked. ‘And what the hell does it matter, anyway?’

  ‘I’d have thought I’d made that clear. There’s only one way…no, two…two ways that your gun could have gone missing. Either it was thrown, by your husband, right over the hedge, where anyone could’ve come across it—or it was picked up from the lawn and taken away.’

  ‘All right, all right.’

  ‘I wish it was all right,’ I assured her. ‘We weighted that wellie to eight pounds…’

  ‘The Darne was nearer ten.’

  I sighed. ‘That only makes the test more positive. Your blasted Darne couldn’t have been thrown anywhere near the hedge. So someone must have picked it up from the lawn—that would’ve had to be after you’d shot the hole in the window, and after you’d run round to the front. Picked it up and loaded it and fired the shot you heard as the third. More distant, you said. So it probably was the third. But what was it fired at? Certainly not through the hole in the glass, and at Harris. And why was it fired—and the gun taken away?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered, her voice a little hoarse. ‘And I’m tired of hearing about it. I want a bit of peace…oh God, Philipa, I want to lie in my own bed and sleep, sleep…’

  Then Oliver entered, with a decanter in one hand, a bottle in the other, and three glasses somehow gripped in his spare fingers. ‘Brandy or sherry?’ he asked brightly.

  As he placed his cache on the table, she reached out a hand and rested it on his wrist. She managed a weary smile for him. ‘Brandy, Ollie, please.’

  I said, ‘Sherry,’ and Oliver followed my lead.

  There was no other chair for him, so he wandered the room casually, as though considering the expert carving of the dark oak panelling. I thought that he had realised we’d reached a critical stage in this matter, and was allowing me to get on with it.

  The brandy seemed to restore Cl
are to some of her energetic norm. Her eyes were now bright. There was more mobility in her features, and spots of colour appeared on her cheeks.

  She said, her eyes now holding mine, ‘I’ll tell you what I want, shall I.’ Not a question; she intended to, anyway. ‘I want you to go away from here and forget all about it. As simple as that.’

  ‘But don’t you see, Clare,’ I cried, full of enthusiasm now that we had a positive result from the experiment. ‘If we could find the answer to these two questions, it could well prove your innocence. Why would anyone steal a gun from you? And if it was simply stolen, why was a shot fired from it? At nothing. Probably into the air. It’s all so illogical…’

  ‘If it’s so damned illogical, why can’t you let it drop?’

  ‘I’m trying to help you, Clare,’ I told her patiently.

  ‘I don’t see why you’ve got to pester me like this!’ she said forcefully. ‘You and your stupid ideas. What does it matter, for Chrissake!’

  I sighed. It was an uphill struggle with her. ‘If something happens that’s illogical in the known circumstances, then there have to be different circumstances in which it is logical.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘So the whole picture could change, and the new one could include proof of your innocence.’

  ‘Who asked you to prove anything?’ she demanded, her chin lifting, her eyes angry. Then she glanced up at Oliver, as though anticipating agreement from him. But he stared at her blankly, and she shrugged in disgust.

  ‘I’ll have a little more, Oliver, please,’ she said, hissing the final word.

  He beamed at her, possibly because she hadn’t called him Ollie. She missed it, sipping morosely.

  ‘But don’t you find it fascinating, Clare?’ I was trying to fire her imagination. ‘That someone would be walking across your lawn in the middle of a thunderstorm, and tripped over one of your guns. “Oh goody—look what I’ve found,” he might say to himself. “And a Darne, too.” That’s always supposing it was someone who knew his guns. Would that person then put a cartridge in the breech—one that happened to be in his pocket, and the right size—and fire it, just to check that it worked? And so near the house, too! Why not take it far away—if all that was wanted was a shot at nothing? That’s what’s so fascinating.’