The Grass Widow's Tale

there may be, and if we’re going to handle it we may as well take no chances.” He caught the sudden kindling flare of her eyes, and made haste to answer before she asked. “No, really, it hasn’t been like that all the time. I put the safety on after I came round, as soon as I made up my mind I had to get out and take everything with me. I don’t even know why. I suppose I was afraid to handle it without, not being used to such things. Pippa was no good with it, either,” he said wryly, “she had to shove it over with her free hand instead of just using her thumb. She always had to wrestle with anything manual, even bottle-openers.”

Bunty turned the little thing incredulously in her hand. It couldn’t have weighed much more than half a pound. “You mean it was on safety all that time…” She let it go there, sparing a brief smile for the memory of her night’s ordeal. His subconscious rebellion against death had certainly been doing its best for him and for her.

“I think so. I hope so! I don’t actually know which way is which, and I haven’t fired it, to find out. But you can’t help picking up the general principles if you see enough telly serials. And she certainly wasn’t in any mood to be switching it on to safety when she started waving it at me. And it wasn’t muzzled when it killed her, either, that’s for sure. I only pushed the catch off again,” he said, paling, “when the police… when you went to the door…”

She knew exactly when he must have given this little snake its teeth back, and for what purpose, and the less he thought about that now, the better. “I suppose we can take it for granted,” she said briskly, “that this is the gun that killed her? It’s the only way it makes sense. They wouldn’t leave you there holding a different one, what would be the use? As soon as the police had recovered the bullet you’d have been in the clear. We could at least have a look how many shots have been fired from it, couldn’t we? How do you open this thing, do you know?”

He took it from her. “Most of them seem to have a little catch at the bottom of the butt, and the magazine slots in there. This must be it…” His finger was on the little clip when she suddenly caught him by the wrist, her eyes flaring.

“No, wait… don’t! I’ve just thought of something! What’s it like, this magazine thing?”

“A sort of little oblong steel box with one side open. You slot the bullets in, and a spring moves them up singly into the chamber. I think! But we can have a look,” he said reasonably.

“No, don’t open it! If there are good hard surfaces, like that, it would hold prints, wouldn’t it? Whoever loaded it would have to handle it… and I know we’ve completely wrecked any chances there might have been of getting anything off the outside, and in any case there wouldn’t be any traces there but ours. But we haven’t touched the inside! And I bet nobody thought of wiping that part off before they planted it on you.”

“But it isn’t going to tell us anything, is it?” he objected ruefully. “Whoever shot Pippa didn’t have to touch the magazine. She was the one who loaded it…”

“Ah, but was she? How do we know that? She got that gun from somebody else, probably somebody shady. And you said yourself, she was hopeless with her hands, she had to wrestle with things. If she got somebody to give her a gun, wouldn’t she get him to load it for her, too?”

“You could be right, at that!” he agreed, reflecting the cautious glow of her excitement back to her; and he took his finger from the clip in haste. “You don’t think, do you, that the chap who gave it to her may be the same as the chap who killed her?”

“Why not? Pippa got into something that was too deep for her, if you ask me, and where the guns are the motives for murder often are, too. But even if we only find out who gave it to her, that’ll be something. You know,” said Bunty intently,“what really puzzles me about Pippa? Not so much why she dropped you—most likely that was when she picked up with this other man—but why she picked you up again. Not out of any affection, you soon found that out. She wasn’t changing back, not on the level. No, she came running after you and made herself charming again because she wanted something out of you.”

“It would make sense,” he agreed painfully, remembering Pippa alive, ambitious and energetic. “Only she never actually asked me for much, did she? A trip to London in my company. Oh, yes, and the loan of the car on Thursday, because she was going shopping for clothes. It’s a bind, getting on buses with dress-boxes. She brought it back in the evening, and we went to a cinema. But that’s all she asked from me. And what is there in that?”

“But that drive to London with you she wanted very, very badly. She showed you that when you held out on her. What could possibly have been so urgent about it? I mean, she could as easily have got herself there by train, if she wanted to go as badly as all that. But that wouldn’t do. It had to be with you.”

“But why? Why should it matter to her how she ran out, even if for some reason she had to run?”

“I don’t know. But Pippa knew. She knew of a very strong reason indeed, or why should she still go on persisting, even when she found out that you knew about her visitor, and weren’t going to be taken in any more? When she couldn’t get her own way by charm, she was even desperate enough to use the gun. And now I’ve thought of something else about this gun. You were meant to be found right there on the spot, a sitting duck, ready to be charged. Either still out, or half-dizzy and half-drunk, dithering over the body and not knowing which way to run. Caught red-handed with a murder you couldn’t even begin to deny… even believing yourself guilty…”

“Yes,” he said, “that’s the way it would have been.”

“Then,” she said, closing her eyes tightly in concentration, “whoever planted you would have to take steps to ensure that you should be found like that. He couldn’t leave it to chance. I’d stake my life that the police got an anonymous telephone call to go to your house, just as soon as the other fellow had made sure he was out of range. From a public call box. Not too near. He’d have liked to keep a watch and make sure everything went according to plan, but he wouldn’t risk it. Professionals don’t take chances, he’d get well away. And you said you were only out about twenty-five minutes… Whoever he was, he was relying on having much longer than that.”

She opened her eyes, wide, brilliant, greenish-hazel, and stared at him. “You know what? I reckon you slid from under simply by having a good hard head, and coming round more quickly than anyone could have expected. Your part was to be discovered groggy and helpless with drink, if not still out, with the girl dead on the floor and the gun still in your hand, caught in the very act. Instead, you came round too early and scared sober, cleaned up the place, ran for the car, and got out with all the evidence. And you know, I begin to think it may have been the best thing you could do.”

“Maybe I had one more small stroke of luck,” he said, taking fire almost reluctantly from her sparks. “I’m sure about one thing, we were wrestling for the gun, and somehow we lost our balance and started to fall. Supposing someone coming in behind me had just let loose with a cosh—just supposing it’s true:— then if I was already falling with the blow I should partially ride it. And he might not even know.”

“And that is how you were placed? I was right? You had your back to the door?”

“More or less, yes. If you’d known Pippa… She owned whatever she made part of her outfit, like me. She owned