Flight of a Witch Part 7

'And she did did tell that tale? Pretending she knew nothing about the five days in between?' tell that tale? Pretending she knew nothing about the five days in between?'

'Yes,' said Tom.

'Then she did it for a pretty urgent and immediate reason. Dom and I have been thinking about this. n.o.body knows better than I do,' said Miles with authority, 'how Annet behaves in a jam like that. I've been through it with her once. She never told a single lie. She walked in at home again with a ruthless sort of dignity, told what she pleased of the truth, and wouldn't say another word. She didn't let me out of it, because I'd shown her I didn't want that. But she never admitted to anything against me, either. She'd have done the same again. That was what she meant to do, I'm certain. If you're thinking she cooked up that tall story as an alibi for the week-end, and turned up on the Hallowmount to give colour to it, you're way off target. No, the boot's on the other foot. She told it because she was caught there because she was caught there.'

'What you're saying, then,' said George intently, 'is that Annet was there on the hill for some private and sound reason of her own, and was taken completely by surprise when she came over the crest, intending to go straight home, and ran full tilt into her father and Kenyon.'

'Exactly. And she did the best she could with it on the spur of the moment. She'd have done better if she'd had time to think, but she didn't, she had to act instantly. So she fell back on the old tales, not to cover her lost weekend, but to distract attention from what she was doing there, at that moment there, at that moment.'

'Go on,' said George, after an instant of startling silence that set them all quivering like awakening sleepers. 'What do you think, in that case, she was was doing there?' doing there?'

'She could,' said Dominic, out of the long stillness and quietness he had preserved in his corner, 'have been hiding something, for instance. Something neither of them wanted to risk taking home with them.'

'Such as?'

'Such as two thousand pounds worth of small jewellery, and what was left of the money after they'd paid their bills.'

'No!' protested Tom Kenyon loudly, rigid in his chair. 'That's as good as saying she was a party to the crime. I don't believe it. It's impossible.'

'No, sir, I didn't mean that. She needn't have known at all. Suppose he gave her a box, or a small case, or something, and said, here, you keep this safe, it's all I've managed to save, it's our capital. Suppose he told her: Put it somewhere where we can get at it easily when we've made our plans, and are ready to get out of here together. He'd He'd know what was really in it, and how completely it could give him away if it was found, but know what was really in it, and how completely it could give him away if it was found, but she she wouldn't, she'd only think he was afraid of his family prying, and getting nosey about his savings, maybe even pinching from them if it happens to be that sort of family. And it easily could. He may be in lodgings, he may have a father who keeps a close watch on him, or scrounging brothers, there could be a dozen reasons why it would be safer to trust to a hiding-place in the footways of the old lead mines, or in one of the hollow trees up there, than to risk prying eyes at home. wouldn't, she'd only think he was afraid of his family prying, and getting nosey about his savings, maybe even pinching from them if it happens to be that sort of family. And it easily could. He may be in lodgings, he may have a father who keeps a close watch on him, or scrounging brothers, there could be a dozen reasons why it would be safer to trust to a hiding-place in the footways of the old lead mines, or in one of the hollow trees up there, than to risk prying eyes at home. She She wouldn't know how urgent it really was, but it would make sense even to her. And you see the one solid advantage of putting it somewhere outside rather than having it at either home if by bad luck it wouldn't know how urgent it really was, but it would make sense even to her. And you see the one solid advantage of putting it somewhere outside rather than having it at either home if by bad luck it was was found, there'd be nothing to connect it directly with him. She wouldn't question. She'd do as he asked, and think no wrong until you sprang the murder on her, two days later. found, there'd be nothing to connect it directly with him. She wouldn't question. She'd do as he asked, and think no wrong until you sprang the murder on her, two days later. Then Then she'd understand.' she'd understand.'

'In that case, why didn't he persuade her to run at once permanently instead of coming home at all? He had the girl, he had the money. Why not make off with them both while he had the chance?'

'Because he was comfortably sure there was nothing in the world to connect him with the murder, and to run without reason just at that time would have been the quickest way of inviting suspicion. Wouldn't it?' challenged Dominic earnestly, brilliant eyes clinging to his father's face.

'You're forgetting,' said Tom, 'the roaming Romeo who tried to pick her up.' He caught himself up too late, and met George's eye in embarra.s.sed dismay. 'I'm sorry, probably I shouldn't have mentioned that. It hasn't been published, has it?'

'It hadn't, but since we seem to have embarked on a full-scale review, it may as well be.' He recounted the episode briefly. "There's certainly a point there. When he heard of that incident he'd know there was a possible witness who'd be able to tie in Annet, at least, to the scene and time of the murder. It isn't difficult to give a recognisable description of Annet. It would be impossible not to recognise any decent photograph of her, once you'd seen her at close quarters.'

'But she wouldn't know there was any urgent reason to warn him that a witness existed, because she knew of no crime. And without an urgent reason,' said Miles with absolute and haughty certainty, 'she wouldn't say a word to him about a thing like that.'

'Not tell him, when she'd been accosted by a street-corner lout?'

The very a.s.sumption of intimate knowledge of her, even at this extremity of her distress and need, could p.r.i.c.k both these unguarded lovers into irritation and jealousy. Kenyon had allowed himself to slip into the indulgent schoolmaster voice that brought Miles's hackles up, Miles was staring back at him with the aloof and supercilious face that covers the modern sixth-former's wilder agonies. The minute action and reaction of pain quivered between them, and made them contemporaries, whether they liked it or not. Dominic's very acute and intelligent eyes studied them both from beneath lowered lashes, and what he felt he kept to himself. But the air was charged with sympathy and antagonism in inseparable conflict, and for a moment they all flinched from the too strident discord of the clash.

'No,' said Miles, more gently but no less positively. 'It was a thing she wouldn't confide. Especially not to him.'

'Well, if you're right about that, he'd have no idea that there was going to be anyone to give a description of either of them. He knew he'd left no traces, he thought he was quite clear. Every reason why he should hope to lie low for a reasonable time, and let the robbery in Birmingham blow over. Yes, that makes sense,' agreed George. 'It seems possible that he may not even have known, at first, that the old man was dead. Most probably he hit and grabbed and ran, and left him, as he thought, merely knocked out.'

'And even when he knew it was murder, there was nothing, as far as he knew, to connect him with it. The obvious thing to do was come inconspicuously home again, and go back to work, and act normally. Hide the money and the jewellery,' pursued Dominic, returning to his trail tenaciously, 'or get Annet to hide them, somewhere where naturally he hoped they'd stay safely hidden, but where at any rate they couldn't incriminate him any more than anyone else if they were discovered. But now it's gone past that. There was was a witness he didn't know about, and Annet a witness he didn't know about, and Annet has has been identified. The case is tied firmly to Annet and the man who spent the week-end with her. And only Annet's resistance stands between him and a murder charge. That's the situation he finds himself in now.' been identified. The case is tied firmly to Annet and the man who spent the week-end with her. And only Annet's resistance stands between him and a murder charge. That's the situation he finds himself in now.'

'There's another point.' Miles frowned down at the hands that had tightened almost imperceptibly on each other at every repet.i.tion of her name, and carefully, painfully disengaged them. 'Supposing this is a good guess of ours, and she was entrusted with the business of hiding the money, then of course they may have agreed on the place beforehand. It may even be a place they've used for other things before now. But it may not. Supposing n.o.body but Annet knows where the stolen jewellery and money is now? He knows his life depends on her keeping silent. If he gets to the point of being terrified into running for it, he can't even get his loot and run without contacting Annet. And if he does-'

'He can't,' George said rea.s.suringly. 'We've got a constant guard on her, inside the house and out. The degree of her danger hasn't escaped us. And we don't intend to take our eyes off her. You can rely on that.'

'Yes-' And he was grateful, a pale smile pierced the preoccupied stillness of his face for a moment. 'But he's got nothing to lose now unless he can get the means to make his break. And if he can find a way to her somehow, he's liable to remember that she- that n.o.body else can identify him-'

Miles carefully moistened lips suddenly too dry to finish the sentence.

'Yes, I realise all that. But I've got a man outside the house, Miles, and a policewoman inside with her. And however desperate he may be, we're dealing with only one man. The essence of his situation is that he's alone.'

'Not quite alone,' said Miles almost inaudibly. 'He's got one person who might help him to get to her, if ever you so much as turn your back for a minute.'

George stood off and looked down at him heavily, and said never a word in reply to that. It was Tom Kenyon, still fretting against the arrogance of the boy's certainty, who demanded: 'Who's that?'

'Annet,' said Miles.

They had talked themselves into dead silence. The two boys sat with the width of the room between them, braced and still, their eyes following with unwavering attention every quiver of George's brooding face, while he told over again within his mind the points they had made, and owned their substance. They had good need to be afraid for Annet, and very good reason to look again and again at the looming, significant shape of that long hog-back of rock and rough pasture that linked her with and divided her from her lover. Was it necessarily true that Annet had had a particular purpose in being on the Hallowmount that night of her return? Wasn't it simply her road back? Wasn't it natural enough that they should use the same route returning as departing? She wouldn't be afraid of the Hallowmount in the dark. But in that case, according to Miles, she wouldn't have troubled to cover herself and her movements with that fantastic story, even when she was taken by surprise on top of the hill. She drew her veil of deception because she had something positive and precise to hide. Who should know better than Miles?

But even if she had indeed been entrusted with the hiding of the plunder on her way home, was it likely that she had put it somewhere unknown to her partner? Possible, at a stretch, but certainly not likely. What appeared to George every moment more probable was that they had some hiding-place already established between them, and frequently used, their letter-box, their private means of communication, accessible from both sides of the mountain without difficulty and without making oneself conspicuous. Given such a cache, tested and found reliable from long use, it would not even occur to them to hide their treasure anywhere else. And it would be the most natural thing in the world for Annet to undertake the job of depositing it, if the spot was directly on her way home. The boy had his motor-bike to manage, and his own family to manipulate at home; and by consent, so it seemed, they made use of the Hallowmount as the watershed of their lives, and the act of crossing it alone had become a rite. It was the barrier between their real and their ideal worlds, between the secret life they shared and the everyday life in which their paths never touched, or never as lovers. It was the hollow way into the timeless dream-place, as surely as if the earth had opened and drawn them within.

What was certain was that they had between them a treasure to hide. What was likely was that they had a place proved safe by long usage, in which to hide it. What was left to question was whether it was still there. Up to the appearance of the evening paper, probably he had no reason to see any urgency in its recovery, and every reason to avoid going near it. But now?

For some hours now he had known how closely he was hunted. Frightened, inexperienced, unable to confide in or rely on anyone but himself, how long would it take him to make up his mind? Or how long to panic? He might well have retrieved the money already. But he might not. And whether they were justified in all these deductions or not, there was nothing to be lost by keeping a watch on the Hallowmount, in case he did betray himself by making for his h.o.a.rd. Heaven knew they had no other leads to him, except the mute girl in Fairford.

Price wouldn't thank him for a chilly, solitary night patrolling the border hills, but anything was worth trying. George excused himself, and went to the telephone. When he came back into the room none of them had moved. They all looked up at him expectantly.

'I'm putting a man on watch overnight,' said George, 'in case he goes to recover it during the dark hours. You may very well be right about it being hidden there, somewhere on the hill. Night's the most likely time for him to go and fetch it, if by any chance he does know where to look, but covering the ground by daylight won't be so easy. The last thing I want to do is put him off, and the sight of a plainclothes man parading the top of the Hallowmount would hardly be very rea.s.suring. And man-power,' he owned, dubiously gnawing a knuckle, 'isn't our long suit.'

'We could provide you with boy-power,' said Tom Kenyon unexpectedly. 'Plenty of it, and it might be a pretty good subst.i.tute. Miss Darrill's taking out the school Geographical a.s.sociation on one of their occasional free-for-alls tomorrow. They were having a field-day on Cleave, but there's no reason why they couldn't just as well be switched to the Hallowmount. It's geologically interesting, it would carry conviction, all right. And if we deploy about forty boys all over the hill it will make dead certain n.o.body can hunt for anything there without being spotted. As well as giving us three a chance to do some hunting on our own. If you gentlemen,' said Tom, looking his two sixth-formers in the eye with respectful gravity, 'wouldn't mind joining in for the occasion?'

They had stiffened and brightened, and looked back at him as at a contemporary, measuring and eager, only a little wary.

'If it would be any help?' said Miles, casting a questioning glance at George. 'And if you think we should involve Miss Darrill? We should have to tell her why.'

'It would give me a day,' said George, 'the most important day, the day he's likely to break. He knows now how he stands. Of course Miss Darrill must know what's in the wind, but n.o.body else, mind. And if she does consent, she's to do nothing whatever except what she was going out to do, take her members on a field expedition and keep them occupied in a perfectly normal way. All I need is that you should be there, and prevent him from getting near any possible hiding-place on the hill. If he's collected his loot already, it can't be helped. But if he hasn't, that's our only working lead to him.'

'Jane will do it,' said Tom positively. 'And what if we should find the stuff ourselves? What do we do?'

'You leave it where it is, but don't let the spot out of your sight. I'm going to have to be in Birmingham part of the day, but before the daylight goes I'll be ready to relieve you. Can you hold the fort until then?'

'Yes, until you come, whenever that is.' It was the only way he had of helping Annet. She might not be grateful, she might hate him for it, but there was no other way.

'Good! I'll try to be back in the station by four-thirty. Will you call me there then? If anything breaks earlier, I'll get word to you as soon as I usefully can.'

'I'll do that. And may I call Jane Darrill now? Better give her what warning we can, if we're upsetting her bus arrangements.'

He called her, and the light, a.s.sured, faintly amused voice that answered him manifested no surprise. Curious that he should be able to hear in it, over the telephone, wry overtones of reserve and doubt he had never noticed in it in their daily encounters.

'That means switching tea to somewhere in Comerford,' she said, sighing. 'There won't be time to take them out to the Border. And what do you suppose the Elliots will do with the provisions laid in for forty hungry boys?'

'I didn't think about that,' he said, dismayed. 'Well, if you can't do it, of course-'

'Who said I couldn't do it? Twenty-four hours notice is required only for the impossible. Don't worry, I live here, I can fix tea, all right. By the way, who's asking me to do this, you or the police?'

'Me,' he said simply, without even the affectation of correctness.

'Just as long as we know,' said Jane, a shade dryly. 'All right, it's on.'

She hung up the receiver, and left him troubled by tensions newly discovered in himself, when he had thought that Annet had exhausted all his resources of feeling and experience. He wondered, too, as he went back to report to George in the living-room, why he should feel ashamed, but he had no leisure to indulge his desire to examine the more obscure recesses of his own mind. There had been, throughout, only one person who really mattered, and for the first time in his life it was not himself.

'That's that,' he said. 'It's arranged. I think we'd better call it a day now, if we're going to be on patrol between us all day tomorrow. Come on, Miles, I'll run you home.'

In the hall he hung back and let the boys go out into the chill of the night ahead of him. There was still something he had to ask George. He could not remember ever feeling so responsible for any boy in his charge as he did now for Miles; the act of confiding had drawn them closer than he found quite comfortable, and probably the boy was chafing, too.

'It's definite, isn't it?' he asked in a low voice, as they emerged on the doorstep. 'What you said about young Mallindine? They were up there in Snowdonia the whole time?'

'Quite definite. We've already checked on their weekend.' George remembered the mental clip over the ear that was in store for Dominic when the time was ripe, and smiled faintly in the dark. The two boys were talking in low tones, out there beside the Mini, small, taut, tired voices studiously avoiding any show of concern with the things that really filled their minds. 'Don't worry about them, they're in the clear.'

'I shouldn't think you've ever been so glad to cross off your prime suspect,' said Tom, feeling his own heart lift perceptibly, even in its pa.s.sionate preoccupation with that other hapless young creature for whom there was no such relief.

'Well, he wasn't that, exactly, he was rather down the list, as a matter of fact. Though as it turns out,' said George with soft deliberation, 'we've lost Number One as well.'

'You have? Who-?' But perhaps he wasn't allowed to ask; it was all too easy to a.s.sume that goodwill ent.i.tled you to the confidence of the authorities. 'Sorry, I take that back. Naturally you can't very well talk about it.'

'Oh, in this case I think I could.' George cast one brief glance at him along his shoulder, and saw the young, good-looking, self-confident face paler and more thoughtful than usual, but unshakable in innocence and secure as a rock. 'Number One was an obvious case for investigation. In close contact with her daily, then clean away from here for the week-end just as she vanished. Involved closely in her reappearance, too, as if he knew where to look for her, and was interested in creating the atmosphere for her return. Anxious to be around when I began to ask questions, very anxious to know the odds. And falling over himself to point out to me indications that someone else had been on the scene.'

Tom was staring back at him blankly, searching his mind in all the wrong directions, and still quite unable to see this eligible lover anywhere in the case.

'But there wasn't anyone. The trouble from the beginning was that there was no one in close contact with her like that-'

'No one?' said George with a hollow smile. 'Yes, there was this one fellow. Right age, right type, and rubbing shoulders with her every day. You mean to say you never noticed him? But we've checked up on his movements all the week-end, too, and he's well and truly out of it. He went home like a lamb, just as he said he was going too, and he was in a theatre with another girl when Jacob Worrall was killed. For G.o.d's sake!' said George between irritation and respect, 'do you want me to tell you what they saw?'

Then it came, the full realisation, like a weight falling upon Tom and flattening the breath out of him. He froze in incredulous shock, heels braced into the gravel, staring great-eyed through the dark and struggling for words, confounded by this plain possibility which had never once occurred to him. What sort of complacent fool had he been? He stood off now and looked at himself from arm's-length, with another man's eyes; and that, too, was a new experience to him.

'You mean to say you never realised? Why do you suppose I asked Doctor Thorpe to stay with Annet, that night, until my man came to keep watch on her? Who else knew at that time that we were on to her? Who else could have known that she was a threat to him? Did you think I was protecting her from her father? You weren't a very likely murderer in yourself,' said George gently, propelling the stricken young man along the path towards the waiting boys, 'and you could hardly have been her partner in that first attempt at flight, six months ago, that's true. But even now it isn't by any means certain that the man we're looking for is the same person, it's merely a fair probability. And on circ.u.mstantial evidence alone, until Miss MacLeod put you clean out of the reckoning today, you were undoubtedly Number One.'

CHAPTER VIII.

George came to Fairford very early in the morning, intent on being unexpected, appearing when Annet was still in a housecoat, pale and silent and unprepared for the renewed a.s.sault. But it seemed there was no time of the day or night when she was not armed against him and everyone. Her great eyes had swallowed half her face, the fine, clear flesh was wasting away alarmingly from her slender bones. She looked as if she had not slept at all, as if she had stared into the dark unceasingly all through the night, gazing through her window at the ridge of the Hallowmount, stretched like a slumbering beast against the eastern sky.

He asked her the old questions, and she was silent with the old silence, patient and absolute. He sat down beside her and told her, in clipped, quiet tones, everything he knew about Jacob Worrell's narrow, harmless, shabby life, about his poor little backroom hobby of collecting local Midland porcelain, about the two blows that had splintered his fragile skull and spilled his meagre, old-man's blood over the boards of his workroom. He chose words that made her tremble, and pushed them home like knives, but she never gave him word or sound in return. The room was full of pain, but the only words were his words. He wanted to stop, but she had to speak, she had to be made to speak.

It occurred to him at length, and why he did not know, to send Policewoman Crowther out of the room, to wait below until he should call her back. As soon as the door had closed behind her Annet leaned and took his hand and smoothed it between hers, entreating him with clinging, frantic fingers and desperate eyes.

'Let me go!' Her voice was only a breath between her lips, a small, broken sound. She held his hand to her cheek, and the drift of her dark hair flowed over it. 'Take her away from me, take them all away, and let me go! Oh, please, please, take them all away and leave me alone!'

'No, Annet, I can't do that. You know I can't.'

How well Miles knew her, and how deeply he understood the real threat to her now. Whether she understood what she was trying to do was another matter. All George was sure of was that he had only to remove all restrictions from her, and sit back and watch, and she would lead him to her lover; and that he could not let her do it, that he would not risk her even to catch a murderer. He could not make her speak, and she could not make him grant her the freedom of action she wanted, to throw her own life away after the old man's life.

'You must! Please! I've done nothing. Let me go! You must let me go!'

'No.'

'Then there's nothing I can do, nothing, nothing Oh, please help me! Help me! Take everyone away and let me go free!'

The dark hair slipped away on both sides to uncover the tender nape of her neck, and its childishness and fragility was more than he could bear. He took his hand from her almost roughly, and walked out of the room, and her long, shuddering sigh of despair followed him down the stairs.

'No,' he said wearily, meeting her mother's questioning eyes in the doorway of the living-room. 'Hasn't she said anything to you that could offer us a lead?'

'She says nothing to me. She might be struck dumb. She's like this with everyone.'

'And no one's asked to see her? Or to speak to her on the telephone?'

'Not to speak to her, no. The vicar rang up to ask after her. And Regina, of course.' Even in this extremity she could not suppress the little, proud lift of her voice, at being on Christian name terms with Mrs Blacklock of Cwm Hall. 'Last night, that was, after the papers came. She and Peter were both very distressed about her. They asked if there was anything they could do, and if they could come and see her. I told them you didn't wish anyone to see her yet. Though she isn't charged with anything,' said Mrs Beck, staring him hard in the eye, 'and we have a right if we choose-'

'Of course you have. But you also have the good sense to understand the sound reasons why you should listen to me and do what I say. When you stop agreeing with me, let them all in,' said George patiently.

'We know you have a job to do, of course. And I suppose it gives an impression of activity to mount guard on my girl, when there's nothing else you can think of doing. Naturally you want to keep up your reputation-'

'What I chiefly want,' said George, walking past her to the door, 'is to keep Annet alive.'

He went out into the bright air of morning, and the sun was high above the Hallowmount, climbing in a sky washed clean of clouds. Thank G.o.d for a fine Sat.u.r.day for Jane Darrill's field-day with the Geographical a.s.sociation. No one would wonder too much at seeing forty small boys let loose over the hills on a sunny October afternoon, no one, not even themselves, would suppose they were there to fend off a thief and murderer from recovering his gains (if, of course, he had not already recovered them), and no one would think that even their supervisors and elders were looking for anything more sensational than samples of the local flora, and of the conglomerates, grits and slates of the ridge, or the occasional fragment of galena, or bright bits of quartzite from the outcrop rocks.

Thanks to them, George thought as he slammed the door of the car and drove along the lane to Wastfield, he had this one day's grace; and it hung heavy upon his mind that that was all he had, and that he must make it bear fruit. Time trod so close and crus.h.i.+ngly on his heels that he had difficulty now in remembering that the murder of Jacob Worrall was, in the first place, Birmingham's case and not his.

He had extracted a list of Annet's closest school-friends from her mother; he checked it with Myra Gibbons, who had been closest even among these, and she supplied, with some encouragement, details of their subsequent whereabouts and fortunes. It might be time wasted, but it might not. No one had yet provided any clue as to where Annet and her partner had spent their nights in Birmingham, though by this time the hotels were all eliminated, and even the bed-and-breakfast places dwindling. One of Annet's GCE cla.s.s, it seemed, was now reading English literature at Birmingham University, and another was studying at the School of Art. Probably both in respectable supervised lodgings, but sometimes they found flatlets which afforded them privacy enough to abuse the privilege. And even if they had not given her a bed, they might have been in touch with Annet while she was there. No need for them to have seen the boy, he could easily be kept in the background. But even there, there was at least a chance.

He telephoned Duckett from the box at the edge of the village, and reported his meagre gains: three addresses where there might be something to be gleaned, the two girl students, and an old, retired teacher who had once been on unusually good terms with the fourteen-year-old Annet at the Girls' High School in Comerbourne.

'They'd have come forward,' said Duckett positively, 'if they'd known anything about her moves. The teacher, anyhow.'

'You would think so. But we can't afford to miss anything. Have you talked to them again at that end? I take it they've got nothing?'

'Nothing? Boy, they've got everything, except what they want. The usual lunatic fringe ringing up from everywhere else but the right places, reporting having seen everybody but the right girl. They creep out from under every stone,' said Duckett bitterly, 'and run to the nearest telephone. But no sense so far. And yet they must have slept somewhere. And even with dark gla.s.ses and a different hair-do and whatever, you couldn't hide that girl every minute of the day. Somewhere in the ladies' room of a cafe she'd be sure to re-do her hair, somewhere she'd take off her hat, if she was wearing one.'