The Grass Widow's Tale

accidental… if you’re thinking I might have some sort of connection with crooks… I swear I haven’t. I’ve never had anything to do with anybody like that. Not out of virtue, or anything, they just never came my way.”

“You’ve got something there,” she agreed. “The people who carry coshes are much the same sort of people who carry guns.” She added pointedly: “Pippa had a gun. You hadn’t any acquaintance among the pros., but how do you know she hadn’t?”

After a long moment of hurried calculation, swinging hurtfully between his anxiety to grasp at this life-line and his terror of finding it gossamer, he asked very quietly, his eyes clinging desperately to her face: “Bunty… do you really believe what you’re saying? You wouldn’t try to… soothe me, would you? Just out of kindness?”

“No,” she said sturdily, “I wouldn’t. I’m only saying what I mean.”

“Then… what do you think happened?”

“I think someone else walked into that room—and I’ll back my judgment by betting you what you like that you had your back to the door and Pippa was facing it— laid you out economically with a knock on the head, and then dealt with Pippa. For some reason of his own, which we don’t know. As evidence for her having got involved in something in which she was out of her depth, there’s the gun. As you say, what would such a girl as Pippa want with a gun? Where would she get one? It’s the pros, and the would-be pros, who carry them. So there was Pippa dead, and you beautifully set up to take the blame. So beautifully that you yourself believed you’d killed her. That’s the lines on which I’m thinking at this moment. But as yet we’ve hardly begun.”

“Then in any case it looks as if I’ve cut my own throat, doesn’t it?” he said with a lopsided grin. “I’ve run out and pointed the finger at myself. What do I do now? Who’s ever going to believe I can possibly be innocent?”

“They might,” said Bunty. “I believe it.”

“Ah, you!”

She saw it in his eyes then, though she was too intent on the matter in hand to pay much attention, that for him she had become a creature immeasurably marvellous and unforeseen. But he didn’t expect to find more than one of her.

“Bunty, what am I to do now? Go to the police and give myself up?”

“No,” said the law-abiding police wife without hesitation. “Not yet! I’ve burned my boats, too, remember? I bought a few hours for consideration by lying to the police and sending them away. I gave a false name. To them I’m an accessory after the fact. What we do now is make use of the short time we’ve got in hand. Before we go to the police, let’s see exactly what we have got, and have a go at making sense of it. The more evidence we can hand to them, the better prospects we’ve got.”

“We?” he said softly, and one black eyebrow went up unexpectedly in sympathy with the corner of his mouth. A slightly wry, slightly careworn smile, but nevertheless a smile, the first she had seen on this haggard face.

“We!” she repeated with emphasis. “And the very first thing you do is get a few hours’ sleep… and a bath, if it’ll help. You’ve had no sleep for two nights, and I haven’t had much, and we’re going to need our wits about us. I’ll tidy up this mess, and then I’ll snatch a sleep, too.”

“A bath!” His face brightened childishly. “I never thought I should be looking forward to anything again!”

“Go and get it, then. You’ll be more use when you’ve had a rest, and can think straight again.”

He rose and made for the door like a bidden child, dropping with sleep, but in the doorway he turned once again to look at her long and earnestly. His eyes had cleared into a pure, tired greyness, young and vulnerable and still heavy with trouble, but hesitant now on the edge of hope.

“Bunty…”

She was already gathering up the scattered dishes from the tea-stained cloth, and piling them on the tray. She looked up at him inquiringly across the table.

“… what’s the Bunty short for?”

She smiled. “Bernarda. But I don’t tell everybody that. They took to calling me Bunny, and I wasn’t having that, cuddly was the last thing I intended to be. So I twisted it into Bunty myself. At least that’s got one sharp angle to it. What can I call you?”

“Luke. My name’s Luke Tennant. All sharp angles. Bunty… Bernarda…” His voice touched the names with timid delicacy, like stepping-stones to what he wanted to say. “I’m sorry!” he blurted painfully. “Did I… hurt you very much…?”

“No!” she said quickly. “Hardly at all. It’s all right!” She had scarcely noticed the stiffness and soreness of her throat, and touched the bruises now with surprise.

“I’m sorry! How could I? I must have been clean out of my mind…”

“Think nothing of it!” Bunty was beginning to experience a lightheadedness that could all too easily be mistaken for lightness of heart. She looked ruefully at the long scratch on his neck, on which a few beads of dried blood stood darkly. “I’m sorry I tried to kill you, too, for that matter. Neither of us was much good at it. Let’s just say we both failed our practical, and call it quits!”

The turmoil of hope had finally overwhelmed and wrecked him. He rolled himself in the quilt on the Alports’ bed, and drowned in the vast sea of sleep that had been waiting for his first unguarded moment. And Bunty, having restored order in the living-room, lay down on the cushions of the settee and tried to think. It was the first time she had had a moment for thinking since this fantastic affair began, and it was the last such moment she would have until this affair ended. At least she was sure now of herself and him. But who could be sure of the ending?

She had meant to go carefully over his story, to try to extract from his halting account some significant point which had meant nothing to him. But as soon as she closed her eyes George’s thin, middle-aged, scrupulous face was there within her eyelids, and she could see nothing else. If she had wanted something of her own to do, as proof that she had been in the world in her own right, she had it now, and for her soul’s sake she must succeed in it; and George was far away and knew nothing about it, and could not help her. Be careful what you pray for, she thought wryly, you may get it. And to the beloved face within her closed eyes she said: You concentrate on your own case, chum, this one’s mine—whether I like it or not. I got myself into it, and now I’ve got to get two of us out of it. You know how it is, there’s no other way home. So go away, like a good boy, and let me think.

But he wouldn’t go away; and in a few moments she let go of her anxieties and embraced the thought of him