The Grass Widow's Tale

enough.”

“Junk, mostly,” he said. “I’m a jackdaw.” And he hoisted the tray in one hand, himself fleetingly curious.

“Hey!” he said sharply, his voice losing its reminiscent ease. “What’s this? I’ve never… Father Christmas has been!” But there was no recapturing the note of innocence. Wary, mystified and calm, he lifted out the book that was no book, and studied the gay wrapping paper, dotted with variegated bookworms of all ages, with their noses appropriately buried. “I don’t understand. I didn’t put this in here.”

“What is it?” asked Bunty at his shoulder. “Open it!”

And he opened it, on the lid of the boot, sweeping the folds of paper aside with a large vigour which it seemed belonged to him when he was in possession of himself. She watched the sudden rigidity of his face, the dropped jaw, the bewildered eyes, the wonderfully quick apprehension. All genuine. What she was less prepared for was the instant understanding, the blazing intelligence with which he turned his face upon her.

“You knew, didn’t you? You’d already found it?”

No bitterness, no accusation, only that quick, alert, brittle tone of someone who feels ice cracking under him. She had every right in the world to put him to the test; the ache in him was only the longing to be found intact after the test was over.

“Yes,” she said, “I found it while you were down at the boat.”

“I give you my word, I didn’t know.”

“I know you didn’t. I wondered for about five seconds,” she said steadily, “but that was all. No, Pippa put it there, of course. It was why she had to go to London with you. No other car would do. And it was why she died.”

He had paled afresh at the revelation of how difficult and new and vulnerable was his relationship with her. You had to work at this as hard as at a marriage. What was more surprising was the clarity with which they both suddenly saw that there would never be any need for a second such assay. From that moment they knew each other through and through.

They locked the garage again, and took their find into the house and there opened it upon the living-room table. All that money, they couldn’t believe in it. Neither of them had ever seen so much.

“So that’s why she was in such a state when I told her to get out,” said Luke, looking down at it with a shadowed face, almost afraid to touch. “And that’s what he was looking for. He searched her case, and then took the keys away to search her flat, and all the time it was where she’d hidden it, in my car. Where do you suppose she got it?”

“It’s stolen money. What other possibility is there? I can’t believe she was up to anything on her own. Somebody deposited this with her until it cooled enough to be distributed or moved out of the area. And before the heat was off she’d had it in her possession so long she’d come to think of it as hers—so much in clothes and clubs and parties and travel and fun. Everything she wanted. She’d begun to question whether it ever need be distributed at all. Who could make better use of it than she could?”

“You really think it may be that? I know she was extravagant and spoiled… But she’d never… Oh, I don’t know!” he said helplessly, winding the pink tape nervously round his fingers.

“What else could it be? How could she come by this much money in cash, otherwise? And if she had, honestly, why keep it in cash and have it hanging around? And why did she acquire a gun, unless it was because she had something to protect, and somebody willing and able to find her a gun to protect it with? Who carries this kind of money in a parcel? Not honest people.” Bunty sat down and stared at the uncovered notes, brooding with her head in her hands. “How long has Pippa worked in Comerbourne?”

“Nearly three years. I met her soon after I started work there.”

“Then this comes from some local coup,” she said with authority, and closed her eyes the better to think back over recent history. The sight of all those miniature queens, so demure and complacent in whatever hands, was distracting. “You said she started getting off-hand with you about two months ago. That was probably when she first picked up with these people. And just over a week ago she came back and began to make up to you. And she worked at Pope Halsey’s, as an assistant buyer…”

Her voice snapped off abruptly. She opened her eyes wide, bright-green in this slanting pre-evening light, dazzled eyes. “Oh, no! That must be it! Tell me again, Luke, what department did she work in?”

“I don’t think I did tell you. But it was furs,” he said, puzzled, forgetting the money in her intensity. “Why?”

“And she was assistant to the buyer?”

“Yes… she used to model furs for their advertisements. She looked marvellous… I’ve seen the stills…” He caught Bunty’s bright stare, fixed as a fortune-teller’s crystal-hypnotised gaze, and trembled with a premonition of final truth. “Why?”

“There was a big van-load of furs,” she said like a clairvoyant, “coming from London for Pope Halsey, just about six weeks ago. It was hi-jacked soon after it left the M.1, flagged down near a lay-by, by somebody pretending there’d been an accident. The driver was picked up with bad concussion next day, the van was ditched on a minor road. The furs were gone, clean trade. Probably turned into cash that very night. Somebody had advance notice of that consignment. How if Pippa gave them the tip-off?”

“Oh, no! ” he said, with the last anguish on her account, and drew back his hands from the banknotes on the table. “You think this could be that money? After all this time?”

“No,” said Bunty positively, “not that money. The last place they’d be likely to unload the goods and pick up the cash would be Comerbourne, where the stuff was consigned. No, not that. But supposing she’d been the contact for that. And supposing the same gang needed a safe deposit in Comerbourne on a later job, and thought they had a reliable little girl there—respectable, above suspicion, and already implicated in one affair. Because there was another gang job in Comerbourne, just three weeks ago. Didn’t you hear about it? The pay-roll of Armitage Pressings was snatched on its way from the bank. The gang vanished, and so did the money. There were road-blocks up almost at once, but the money vanished, all the same. I reckon it vanished inside Comerbourne. Don’t you? They found the van in a scrap-yard afterwards, right there in the town. The money had to lie somewhere until the heat was off. Deposited with some confederate inside the town, somebody they could trust. Somebody they thought they could trust. Armitage’s pay-roll per week is around fifteen thousand. How much do you make this lot?”