The Grass Widow's Tale

“What if they jump him? So he plugs one of ’em in the leg, and the other’s out of the room and out the front door, and us all back there in the kitchen. And that’ll sound good when you make your report, Blackie, me old Crowe.”

“All right, then, we’ll make dead sure. Bring ’em in here with you, and lock ’em in the store. There’s no window in there, and only one door, and that’s into the kitchen. That’ll make four of us between them and any way out. Satisfied?”

“Whatever you say.” Con rose, unfolding his long legs and arms with the stiffly articulated movements of a grasshopper. He made a brisk upward gesture with the gun. “Come on, then, let’s have the pair of you. You heard the gentleman. You want showing the way to the store? Hey, Blackie, there’s nothing useful in there, is there? Garden shears or secateurs, or like that?”

“Nah, nothing, we done in there. Bring ’em along!”

“After you, lady!” said Con with a whinnying laugh, and ground the barrel of his revolver hard into Luke’s ribs out of sheer exuberance. From his chair Quilley watched them go with harassed, apathetic eyes, as if he had resigned perforce from the whole business, and was waiting with apprehension for someone to decide what was to be done with him now.

All Mrs. Alport’s primrose-coloured kitchen fitments stood open, and the giggler was grubbing among the taps under the sink. The store measured only three feet by two, and some of that was taken up by shallow shelves at the back, where Reggie Alport kept his electrical spares, bulbs, fuse-wire, plugs and adaptor. Luke had to stoop to enter it; even Bunty’s hair brushed the roof.

Con watched them fold themselves uncomfortably and closely together in this upright coffin, and shrilled with horse-laughter as he closed and locked the door on them.

“Nice and cosy for two… I call that just the job. Hey, Blackie, I hope you know what you’re doing. I can’t see ’em wanting to come out o’ there.” He thumped the locked door just once with the flat of his hand. “Have fun!” he called, and went off to sack Louise Alport’s cupboards.

In the darkness, smelling of timber and fine dust, Luke shifted gently to make more room for her, and drew her closely into his arms; there was no other way of finding adequate space. Her head fitted into the hollow of his shoulder and neck; she felt his cheek pressed against her hair, and his lips close to her ear.

“Bunty…” The finest ardent thread of a whisper. “Did you understand? They can’t lock the front door, they had to break the lock. Bunty, I’m going to try to start something… the first chance I get, when they fetch us out of here…”

“No,” she breathed into his ear as softly and us urgently, “you mustn’t. They’ll shoot you…”

“Not until they’ve found out what they want. They don’t want to go to extremes until he gets here. You heard them. They as good as said he’s already rubbed out one person too soon, before he got his questions answered. Bunty, I’m going to try it. What else is there for us? I’ll try to give you the item, but when I cut loose, you run.. . .”

“No!” she said, an almost soundless protest.

“Yes. I’ll cover you… somehow I will. You go straight for the front door and out. And, Bunty… don’t stay on the road, get into the trees… This lot are car men, cross-country you can leave them standing…”

“I’m not going,” she said.

“Yes . . . you’ve got to go. You can go to the police, then, you can tell them. I’ll stick it out here till they come.”

“In what sort of shape?” she whispered bitterly.

“Alive… and not a murderer. Better shape than I was in this time last night.”

“But Luke, listen… the police have had time by now to check up on that name and address I gave them. Suppose they do? Suppose they find out your friends have never heard of me, and the address I gave doesn’t exist? They’ll be back to find out what I’m up to, what’s going on here. This is the one place they’ll make for— they’ll come to us. They could be back any moment,” she said, and her breath was warm on his cheek, turning his heart faint and crazed with love.

“Yes, they could,” he said, and his whispering voice trembled with the effort it put into being convincing; but she knew he didn’t believe in it.

Neither did she, altogether, but it was at least a possibility. Especially if, by any remote chance, someone had brought in that purse with Bunty Felse’s name on it, and tried to return it, and so set the Midshire police hunting for a missing woman, whose description would fit the totally unexpected woman in the Alports’ cottage here in Angus. Such a long and complicated “if ”; but no one is more likely to fit diverse pieces of a puzzle patiently together than the police, whose job it is. And no one has better communications.

“But I want you out,” he said, “before it comes to shooting. Even if they do come, it might be touch and go. I’d rather get you away. If I can make that chance, promise to try… promise me, Bunty…”

She lifted a hand and touched his cheek gently, let her palm lie there for a long moment holding him, partly in apology, partly as a distraction, because she had no intention of making any promises. When the time came she would play it as seemed best, weighing the chances for him as well as she could in the split second she would have for consideration. But she could not conceive of any combination of circumstances that was likely to induce her to leave him now.

He wanted to turn his head the few necessary inches, and press his lips into her palm, but he didn’t do it, because he had no rights in her at all but those she had given him freely, and they were not that kind of rights. Until they were out of here—if they ever got out of here alive—there was nothing he could say to her, though his heart might be bursting. Afterwards, if they could clear up this affair with all its debts and start afresh, things might go very differently. But the darkness in which they stood seemed to him a symbolic as well as an actual darkness, and he couldn’t see anything ahead. And there might not be any more time for talking, to-night or ever.

“Bunty, I’m sorry!” he breathed, and that seemed to be it. He had never been so short of words, and in any case, what good were they?

“For what? For getting into a mess through no real fault of your own?”

“For everything I’ve done to you. For involving you. I wish I could undo it,” he said. “Forgive me!”