The Antique Dealer's Daughter

by Lorna Gray

  Abbey’s wandering gaze, as it snapped over my head, was wild with incomprehension. He too was shaken by how little the detective seemed concerned by Duckett. The detective was studying Abbey gravely, with only a brief allowance of a momentary glance past me to the Colonel. I couldn’t read the message in his eyes. It wasn’t meant for me. Perhaps he was noticing the way the old man was panting. Then Abbey was drawing the policeman’s attention back again because he was muttering, ‘There’s another door. A hatch where the hay gets brought in. It steps straight out into the lee of the road and the watershed above the church.’

  He meant the patch of ground where Mrs Abbey’s car had been parked on the day that my cousin had come spinning around the bend on her bicycle.

  ‘Is the hatch into the hayloft locked?’

  The policeman’s query was loud and it made Abbey’s face cloud into deeper puzzlement. He jerkily nodded his agreement. ‘The key is on the set left by the housekeeper.’ I saw him gulp and then, when the policeman seemed to have satisfied himself with that peculiar run of questions, Abbey gabbled almost plaintively, ‘I had to hide there. I hadn’t got a choice. Brian’s been in a high state of aggression ever since I got out. He acts as though everything might have been fine between us if I had only gone to his office and brazened it out like a man, but it’s like the girl says. Brian’s been hunting me. He’s been turning everything to ashes for weeks, even his mistakes.’

  Abbey’s head turned to me. Then he added with quiet desperation, ‘Except he didn’t quite count on meeting you. Brian exposed himself to you.’

  The sudden twist in his voice terrified me. It was a sudden return to the attack. Power for him lay in the chance to nudge Duckett into focusing upon me. It made me race to contradict. I snapped, ‘Duckett hasn’t exposed anything. Don’t be absurd. Your wife laid me out as the decoy when she first sent him after me. Everything you both have done has been designed to make another person act out your crimes for you. And now you’re trying to make this man here use that gun because you think it’ll pass responsibility for everything to him. Only you know full well your hopes of remaining at large are for naught because you’ve already shot a man with it today and you were seen. By more witnesses than me.’

  ‘Shut up.’ A snatched intake of air. A shake of Abbey’s grip, which set me against the table and made the crockery clatter. Abbey jerked his head aside to note that Duckett was there and listening intently, then he turned back to me and he suddenly steadied. I could feel every grain of the rim of the table against my thigh as he remarked quite seriously, ‘Anyway, don’t you think it’s a good job that you came to the pump house?’

  There was an intensity to that pale gaze. I didn’t quite understand his sudden calm. I saw the drift as the policeman considered creeping closer, only to check the movement when Duckett uttered a sharp tsk. The policeman’s eyes turned right, found Duckett and received one brief discouraging shake of the head. I understood suddenly why Duckett was allowing us this time to speak. He was fiddling with one of the lamps and in danger of dropping the lot because he had to do it without loosening his hold on the gun.

  Abbey’s lips were shaking. ‘If you hadn’t come,’ he was saying with a voice that was heavily glossed with a desperately false kind of satisfaction, ‘no one would have been shot and I’d have still been following my wife’s profoundly convoluted idea of escape. I’d have been left issuing vague threats towards the good name of this old Colonel Langton, but it would never have been enough and, anyway, look at the state of him. This old man couldn’t have coped with the strain.’

  Abbey barely gave me room to turn my head to the Colonel before he jerked his hands to straighten me again. The act drew an involuntary sound from me that sent a shiver through every muscle and made me press my lips tightly shut because this was why I’d stopped fighting. Abbey wanted me to call out, to struggle, to protest; to do anything that would escalate this debate to the point of requiring Duckett to settle it.

  But Duckett wasn’t moving; he wasn’t intervening nor even paying very much attention while Abbey said on a gratified note, ‘Personally, I don’t think I need to convince Brian that you are the danger here – he already knows you’ve seen everything. You’ve been hounding him for days. I know you have. Because I was upstairs when you disturbed him while he ransacked this house. I’d run to ground there after helping myself to a bottle on the Colonel’s spirits trolley. I was frightened and I made some accidental sound, and you saved me by dashing through just at the moment that Brian was starting up the stairs. So I don’t have to do anything any more. I don’t even have to coerce that man of yours into stepping in because Brian’s already proved that you can ruin him.’ Abbey stopped with an entirely dismal grin, then squeaked breathlessly, ‘I’ve done nothing except defend myself and Brian’s here and exposed and whether he sets that gun down or makes his attempt on a life and escapes, every action is a mistake now; because it’ll all be for you.’

  For me.

  That last wild, optimistic declaration ran on and on in the air around us. It was the confession I’d expected, but still my mind stumbled. It was impossible, but he really seemed to be inciting Duckett to do it.

  This was precisely the opposite feeling to the responsibility I’d been feeling for every other life in this room. Abbey meant capitalise on the opportunity he and the others would win while Duckett was distracted by his assault on me. Abbey was pretending that there would only be an ‘attempt’ on my life, swiftly suppressed. But Richard and I had noted earlier that these people seemed to take advantage of every changing circumstance. Why on earth would a desperate man like Abbey settle for implicating Duckett in a crime that might only cost the man a few years in prison, when there were other charges that would carry a more permanent sentence? Such as hanging for the murder of an innocent young woman, for example.

  As it was, I didn’t know that it mattered what Abbey thought. I’d seen the expression on Duckett’s face as I had stepped down off the stairs into this room. Duckett didn’t need to be told what I was to him.

  And yet Duckett wasn’t acting upon it. He was still midway between the table and the door, cradling his lamps, and he was suddenly laughing in a way that bordered on hysteria. He was saying, ‘So, Detective, did you make note of that? I’m the innocent party. He’s just broken into this house and performed an act of vandalism on the Colonel’s kitchen and now he’s admitted that he’s trying to drive the girl into the path of violence here.’

  The madness of the moment was playing through the grip Abbey’s fingers had upon my arms. They were conveying the message that I’d saved him here once already this week. Now he was telling me that I was going to save him again.

  For a moment I thought he was mistaken. For a moment, I still had the giddying belief that my wildly flawed attempt to continue the detective’s idea of showing Duckett just how much Abbey had made a mess of things had put an end to this after all. I thought Duckett was going to hold out the Webley. I thought Duckett was going to surrender the proof of Abbey’s crimes to the policeman and slap him on the back and show him Abbey’s wrists for the handcuffs.

  Then, as a perfect illustration of why it was imperative that none of us frightened Duckett and why it had been a risk too far to even hint at the prospect that Abbey might be already facing a return to prison, Duckett shuffled the lamps and the gun into one arm. His other hand reached into a pocket for his matches.

  He was never going to let us go. Abbey’s terror hadn’t been imaginary. And Duckett really was here for me. It didn’t matter to him now that I was bringing two additional characters into his sights – the policeman and the old soldier. A course of memory followed on a little haunting note; what he’d said about the firemen who had suffocated in the warehouse attics. That no man who had taken human life was ever quite the same again.

  He’d lit that fire as well; the one that had claimed the lives of those men. And this was the betrayal he dreaded. This was the reason he had hunt
ed Abbey through all these weeks since Abbey’s release from prison and why the man’s wife was so appallingly afraid. The betrayal Duckett was fighting to curb was the one where someone found a way to prove who had really destroyed the warehouse under the cover of the air raid.

  And now he had decided I was a threat to him for the very flawed reason that I could accuse him of a pathetically small crime that tied him to this area, when he wanted to claim he had never climbed the hill out of Gloucester. So this time the coming blaze wouldn’t be a mere sacrifice of walls and timber. The loss of life wouldn’t be accidental. And this time it would all be fully attributable to Abbey by the lucky fortune of being able to leave us with the evidence of his stolen gun.

  For a moment, just a short moment, I almost pitied Abbey and his wife and the efforts they’d gone to in order to cling to someone else for safety. They’d been trying to escape the desperate wrath of the guilty.

  There was a clatter beside me as the Colonel staggered a little into my discarded chair. Even standing there in the fierce lock of Abbey’s grip, I turned to him.

  It came at the same moment that Duckett decided Detective Fleece was moving to seize that gun.

  Chapter 31

  I swear it was that way round. I swear the gun levelled a fraction before the fierce determination showed on the detective’s face. The next is a crystal clear memory that I wished was a blur. The gun hand lifted, steadied and I shouted a warning, with hands thrusting at the man before me. But I wasn’t shouting at the finger drawing white upon the trigger or the sheer fantasy of hope that it would be possible for the detective to close the range in his fearsome dive for that gun hand. But at the Colonel who was on the floor, propped against his kitchen counter, grey, head back and eyes closed, gasping for breath.

  The report of the gun firing passed unnoticed. Unnoticed, that is, by all but the policeman, who had the horrific experience of being flung to the tiled floor by the force of a bullet passing through the muscle of his upper arm.

  Then Duckett was panicking because the report of the Webley deafened us a second time and it drew a yelp and a flinch from everyone and I honestly didn’t believe Duckett had ever considered the possibility that he would actually shoot anyone. He’d meant Abbey to do everything. But suddenly this wasn’t a careful incrimination of his enemy but his own crime and the warning had been given twice by his own hand that would bring a small army of policemen running, and a retired old soldier’s breath was rasping in his throat and the detective was down with a hand clapped over his left sleeve and blood was staining the tiles beneath him.

  ‘Oh hell, you’ve still got the gun. I didn’t want it to come to this.’

  It was the detective, shouting but breathlessly, as well he might, as Duckett abandoned his lamps amongst the clutter on the tabletop, scampered around its perimeter and bent over the Colonel from the other side. The detective’s words were an effective warning to the rest of us that Duckett’s power hadn’t been overcome.

  ‘Oh God, oh God, oh God!’ Duckett was saying as he bent. ‘Did I shoot him too?’

  The policeman was watching him and twisting onto one knee when he looked as though he would have liked to have stayed writhing on the floor for a while yet to give full release to the shock and pain of his injury. Instead he was up and on his feet and staggering a little, with his hand clamped over the wound so that his left arm was held immobile against his side, and from the way his gaze was fixed he too was clearly very much focused upon the state of the Colonel. I was dropping into a crouch beside the old man so quickly that I crashed into the chair I’d recently left and had to pause to set it aside before trying to crouch again.

  My hands were mirroring Duckett’s as we both reached to loosen the collar about the Colonel’s neck. The old man was alive but gasping, as pale and blotched as ever, and collapsed with his head against the neatly painted panel that boxed in the base of the heavy stone worktop. There was, I saw after the first frantic second, no blood. The second gunshot had missed us all and embedded itself harmlessly in the wall above the sink.

  The Colonel’s breath was rattling. I whispered frantically to no one in particular, ‘It’s his heart. We must have finished his heart.’

  Duckett had the collar and a twitch of his wrist cautioned me to resist the impulse to compete with him for control of the invalid, so I had the old man’s right hand. It was lifeless. Nervous fire ran quivering through every corner of my body when fingers suddenly slid about my waist from behind. After the first frantic second while instinct decided that this was Abbey’s attempt to reclaim me, I realised it was Detective Fleece’s arm and it was begging me to draw back a little from the Colonel. I didn’t want to go, but the policeman was insistent. I went with him, even though every part of me that dwelt in fear was focused on the knowledge that there would be blood on the policeman’s hand. My brain clung to the idea that it wasn’t the blood that frightened me but the violence it represented.

  Unfortunately, because the violence was in the kitchen with us, this didn’t remotely help.

  Duckett still had the Webley. He was bending close to the Colonel; he was abandoning the throat and reaching for the old man’s wrist in a quest to test his pulse. As Duckett moved, the detective’s touch suddenly hardened and snatched me back from the careless aim of that weapon. The shock of our movement made Duckett start and crack his head on the overhanging worktop. He leapt back as if we’d attacked him. I thought I knew now why the policeman had dragged me out of the way. That gun was close to going off again. Duckett was barely in control of the way his finger lay upon the trigger. He was too busy screaming out orders to the Colonel. ‘Get up. Move! We’re going to the car.’

  And the Colonel made some sound, a wheezing groan as nothing obeyed the command except one flailing hand and I was lurching instinctively towards him again to try to help him breathe, but Duckett was snarling and the detective’s good arm had come about me securely now. He held me. It was probably for the best. I was gibbering and Duckett was trying to marshal us into order and the Colonel’s mouth was working for air like a landed goldfish. Richard’s father looked finished.

  Across the Colonel’s floundering form, I found that Duckett was fascinated by me again, staring with more of that blankness that seemed to be a precursor to action and all the while he was still hovering over the Colonel as if to drag the poor old man from the floor. I was snarling at him. And clinging to the detective now as he gripped me, and sobbing all at the same time. I was saying, ‘He can’t move to the car. Look at him. And who’s going to carry him? Detective Fleece? Abbey?’

  The detective could barely support the weight of his left hand and Abbey was shaking his head. Abbey could have managed me, but the Colonel must have rivalled his weight. I saw Duckett’s eye stray to the gun. The finger shifted slightly on the trigger.

  ‘Don’t you dare.’

  I didn’t know I had it in me to growl like that. It made Duckett flinch. In a raw, alien tone, I hissed, ‘Don’t make this your death. I did this by seeking shelter in his house. If it’s his heart, leave him be.’

  In my head was the desperate will to drive this point home. That Duckett hadn’t killed him. He hadn’t killed anyone yet – at least, not willingly, even if we included the poor unfortunate firemen at his warehouse. He could leave the Colonel here, leave him to gasp his last. And I could live with the hope that whatever else happened to the rest of us, there was one small chance that this wasn’t as bad as it looked and Richard might arrive in time to save his father.

  There was a pause; a momentary consideration. I felt the detective adjust the grip of his arm about me. I was clinging to him fiercely now. The policeman was panting and sweating too, like the Colonel had been. He was feeling the strain of a body put to injury but still trying to function. He and I gripped each other while Duckett made his decision.

  ‘Give her to me. Bring the lamps.’ Duckett’s voice disturbed the sanctuary of stillness in less time than it took him to m
ove around the fallen man to join us. He was very close. He robbed me of my last chance to see the Colonel. The yard outside the kitchen window was fearsomely bright but empty. If anyone had heard the two gunshots, they weren’t near enough to make a difference here.

  ‘Bring the lamps yourself. They’re your problem if we’re stepping out there.’ The detective’s voice was loud again. His grip drew me a step away. His arm was strong. The policeman wasn’t surrendering me for anything, but not solely for the purpose of protecting me any more. Because the man who held me must believe we’d reached the point where anybody’s life might rank now in Duckett’s mind as useless as the Colonel’s fading gasps, and the policeman was specifically considering the value of his own. It changed everything; the idea that if Detective Fleece allowed Duckett to separate us here, the act itself would almost certainly lead Duckett to think of him as an aggressor once more rather than my support. It was an awful concept to consider how swiftly Duckett might lurch into realising that it would be simplest to leave the policeman behind here to keep company with the Colonel, and in a similar state of health.

  Responsibility revived and with it came awful hopelessness that was like an angry sickness. I supposed that ever since I had entered the kitchen I had presumed that the policeman was only waiting. That I could depend on him to know what to do if only the balance of the odds against us were changed, but he was no more in control than I was. I’d been making the same selfish mistake that Mrs Abbey had in thinking that a man with experience would know what to do to make all the difference. But, in truth, training stood for nothing against the insanity of an impulsive decision made by a man who was holding a gun.

  So I gripped him like a woman caught in a paralysis of horror and saved him, and in a moment Duckett was distracted by his habit of believing that control might always be restored through fire.