I grabbed my stick, hopped and hobbled the length of the passage, and flung open the door. She was already through the gate.
“Alice,” I shouted, “you’ve taken something that belongs to me.”
She hesitated.
I yelled her name again. I started after her. I could see Digby opening the car door. Wouldn’t
Alice had started walking on again, without even turning round. She reached the front gate and groped for the catch, which was placed low on the post. Tricky, against the weight of the rucksack.
I negotiated that path in about six strides, angling my stick like a ski pole. I reached out and grabbed her arm with my free hand.
I said breathlessly, “I want it back. You’ve no right to take it.”
She turned and gave me a cold-eyed look. “Who are you to talk about rights? It wasn’t yours in the first place.”
I said, “I made you a present of the carving. Isn’t that enough?”
“That was something else,” said Alice. “What are you afraid of, Theo?”
I didn’t answer. Digby had hauled himself out of the Anglia and lumbered over to us.
He asked, “What’s all this? Do you require the services of an arbitrator?”
I warned him, “Keep out of this.” To Alice I said firmly, “Would you come back into the house, please?”
Digby said, “What is the young lady supposed to have done-walked out with the family silver?”
I said, “Sod off.”
Alice was looking thoughtful. She asked me, “Can we do a deal on this?”
The words I’d used on Digby were almost out of my mouth again before I thought better of it. She’d outsmarted me. I wanted the gun back. If she handed it to Digby, my story would be headlined in next week’s issue: MURDER BOY’S 20-YEAR SECRET. She had all the top trumps. I was bound to fall in with her offer.
I nodded to Alice and tilted my head towards the house. We left Digby standing openmouthed at the gate.
Inside, she took off the rucksack. I moved forward to reclaim the gun, but she waved me away. “Don’t come any closer, Theo. I have reinforcements out there.”
“What do you mean by a deal?”
“I want you to take me to Somerset and show me the farm where it happened.”
I screwed up my face in disbelief. “Why?”
“I thought you’d have my number by now. I want to find out what really happened at that place.”
“I told it to you last night.”
She shook her head. “Theo, I don’t want to seem ungrateful, but I find it impossible to believe. I’m not getting at you personally.”
“What’s so incredible about it?”
She sighed. “Let’s just consider the gun. You said you found it in the barn.”
“Correct.”
“So the murderer must have dropped it after he shot Cliff Morton, right? If it was my daddy, why would he do such a stupid thing, for crying out loud? He must have known it was vital evidence, an American Army automatic. Wouldn’t he have taken it away with him, gotten rid of it someplace else?”
I shook my head. “He was afraid the others would see it. He was coming back later, you see, to dispose of the body and clean up the blood. So he tucked the gun out of sight, between two bales of hay.’”
She clicked her tongue in disbelief. “I don’t swallow that, either, but let’s stay with the gun. He didn’t pick it up later, did he?”
“Because I’d already found it.”
“And you secretly kept it: that much I’m forced to go along with.”
I said ironically, “Thanks.”
Alice regarded me with that penetrating gaze of hers. “Theo, has it ever occurred to you that you weren’t actually protecting my daddy by withholding the gun from the police?”
I frowned back.
She went on. “If you’d handed it in, they would have asked the questions I just did. As it is, they assumed he got rid of the murder weapon himself, like the ruthless killer they made him out to be.”
A pulse started drumming in my forehead.
She said, “Disturbing thought, huh?”
I answered hollowly, “It’s another way of looking at it. It didn’t occur to me at the time.”
“Because, like everyone else, you assumed Daddy was guilty.”
“He was.”
She simply looked at me and said nothing.
She’d made her demand. A quixotic trip to Somerset to prove her daddy’s innocence. I suppose I should have seen it in her eyes the first moment she mentioned him. To my mind it was misguided and likely to cause us both unnecessary distress, but I was lumbered. I could see she wouldn’t be argued out of it. The best I could do was get some safeguards into the contract.
I said, “If I agree, it’s between you and me, a private trip.
No press. Right?”
She nodded. “I can handle Digby.”
“No pictures. Nothing.”
“Okay.”
“We go today and come back tonight. We can do it in under two hours.”
“Fine.”
“And whatever the outcome, you’re on your own after this.”
“All right.” She held out her hand. “Is it a deal?”
I said, “When you return the gun.”
She gave a slight smile. “I didn’t take it, Theo. It’s in the box in the filing cabinet where I found it. I put it back there when I went to collect my backpack.”
TEN
We were on the A4, heading west to Somerset. Surprised? By now you must have got me down as a hard- nosed opportunist, so I won’t blame you for assuming I reneged on the deal after Alice made an idiot of me over the gun. Only I didn’t.
I’d like you to believe it was because, after all, I’m a man of integrity. Duke’s daughter had asked me to show her the place where the tragedy was enacted, and I was uniquely fitted to act as guide. It was a small repayment on my debt of gratitude to Duke.
I’d like you to believe all that, but you’re sharp enough to see that she still had me by the short and curlies while Digby Watmore was in attendance. Who wants to feature in
So I remained out of sight while she went out and talked to him. I’m not sure what was said. It took about ten minutes. The photographer got out to say his piece as well and looked decidedly annoyed. But Alice prevailed. Shaking their heads, the two men got back into the car and drove off.
When she came in, she handed me Digby’s card, which he’d wanted me to have in case I changed my mind about a photograph. She told me that he’d promised to keep in touch, and I took the hint. There was to be no ducking out of the Somerset trip.
I insisted that the rucksack traveled with us, telling Alice that she might wish to spend a few days in Somerset. She was a dream of a girl, terrific in bed, only, please God, not mine again. For peace of mind I was going to have to settle for Val, who went at it like a blanket bath but never mentioned her daddy.
For some while the only sound in the car had been the moan of the windscreen wipers working on a steady but meager drizzle. I can assure you that the weather wasn’t on our minds. I was still stewing over Digby when
