thoughtfully across the room, with the detached assurance of a practised mathematician solving a routine problem.
Bunty had been watching the active fingers for several seconds before their movements abruptly clicked into focus for her, and made blinding sense. Her heart lurched and turned in her with the shock of realisation. Suddenly she knew what had been lying there all the while beneath the surface man?uvrings of that tortuous mind, she knew what kind of bargain it was that Fleet had struck with his prisoners, and why he wanted Luke unbruised and unbattered. Once he got his hands on the money the whole gang would pack up and get out of here, yes; but not until they’d staged a second and less fallible tableau for the police to discover when they finally caught up. A murdered girl upstairs, a girl who would eventually be traced back to Comerbourne; in the garage the car for which the Midshire police had been putting out calls all day; and down here in the living-room another victim, some woman the fugitive had picked up in his flight, perhaps intending to escape abroad with her, only to despair and put an end to her here, before—last act of all—putting a bullet through his own head and dying beside her. The experts would easily demonstrate that the same gun had killed all three, the gun the police would find in dead Luke Tennant’s grip when they came. There would be no other prints on it but his; those softly polishing fingers were busy making sure of that now. She watched them in fascination. They had already finished with the barrel, wiped the grip clean, taken care of the trigger-guard, and now they were twisting another tissue neatly about the butt.
There remained only the trigger. There was no point in wiping that, of course; not until afterwards.
CHAPTER XII
« ^ »
So now she knew the score, whether Luke knew it or not, and they had nothing left to lose. She had perhaps two minutes or so to make up her mind. When he starts something, she asked herself, do I run or don’t I? Things are changed now, this is a life and death matter whatever I do. Have we a chance of getting out of here together? She considered that with the searching eye of one who has been through death once already, and is no longer flustered by its proximity, and told herself with detachment that the answer must be no. And if I run, have I a sporting chance of getting clear alone? Yes, I believe I might have. But have I any chance at all of reaching the police, or any other reliable help, and bringing them back here in time to save Luke? Over that she hesitated, but in the end the answer was that it might be betting against the odds, but it still might come off. With one of the victims lost, with a witness at large who could identify them, they might scrap the whole plan and think it wisest to get out, leave Luke alive, and cut their losses.
Do I run, then? Yes, she told herself, I run. On balance it seems the sanest thing to do, for both of us.
There were snags, of course, in Fleet’s design, but he couldn’t be expected to know about all of them, and in any case he would take the small risk involved as a natural gamble. There was the broken lock on the front door. Presumably his plan envisaged that break-in as being attributed to Luke on the run; he didn’t know that the key had its hiding-place right there on the spot, and that Luke was admitted to the secret, and had no need to break locks. The Alports would testify to that, and the point might stick in some Scots policeman’s craw, like a husk in porridge, and refuse to be dislodged. She knew it would have stuck in George’s. The shadow of the unknown other person would be there to be found, once the possibility was acknowledged. It is very difficult to erase yourself completely from the scene where you have once been, the imprint of your presence and your acts remains as a faint outline still, an indentation, never entirely smoothed out.
She wondered, for one broken instant, whether it was worthwhile calling Fleet’s attention to all the discrepancies he couldn’t possibly trim into his pattern. But that was no use; he didn’t expect a hundred per cent perfection, perhaps he wouldn’t even be happy without the residue of risk. Certainly he wouldn’t be deterred by it. No, there was nothing to be done here. What she had to do was be ready to seize the moment if it came, and make sure of getting through the doorway and into the trees.
It couldn’t be long now. She had done all the thinking she could do in approximately twenty seconds, though it had seemed an age. Now she rebelled at the silence. Nothing had a chance of happening successfully in this still, charged air; with a wind blowing through it there might be more hope.
“Do you mind if I have my handbag?” she said acidly, her bright stare hard and steady on Fleet’s face. “You guessed right, the grey one is mine. Your fellows have had everything out of it but the lining, so don’t be afraid I’ve got a bomb in it.”
It frees the tongue, knowing that what you say will make no difference, that buttering up the devil isn’t going to get you anywhere, and damning him to his face can’t do more than destroy you. Something else was stirring in the unexplored depths of her being, something never yet exercised in the serenity of family life, a pure personal fury that this man and his hangers-on should take it so insultingly for granted that no one could do anything against them, that guns called tunes, that lives were expendable like draughts in a game, and their proprietors would go quietly as lambs to the slaughter, just because the odds were against them. She cast one glance at Luke, and he was waiting for it with eyes flaring wide and aware. They conversed briefly, and were at one. Neither of them knew who was going to precipitate what was coming; both of them were playing by ear. But they understood the one weapon they had, their absolute unanimity. Whichever called, the other would respond; and they had no reservations, they trusted each other through and through. It was almost worth dying for that.
“
“Yeah, there’s nothing, just women’s stuff.”
“I need a handkerchief,” said Bunty. “Not to weep into, in case that’s what you’re thinking. To blow my nose. There’s a smell in here. Queer, that, it was all right until you people arrived.”
“Give her her bag,” said Fleet, half-bored and half-amused.
It was on the bookcase, cheek by jowl with the sumptuous cream-coloured concoction Pippa had affected; and Blackie was sitting sprawled all over a high-backed chair close beside the bookcase, with Bunty diagonally to his left, and Luke diagonally to his right. He had his gun braced ready in his right hand, but his left was free to reach for the bag and toss it to Bunty. He did so, lazily and inefficiently, as if under protest.
It was a disdainful cast, an insult in itself, designed to fall short and make her stoop for her belongings. She could have caught the bag if she had cared to lean forward and stretch out her arms. Instead she sat with a straight back and a scornful face, her lips curled in detestation, and never moved a finger, but let it fall, with a dull plop and a rattle of small feminine arms within, just a yard from her feet. It lay innocently on one end of Louise Alport’s most beautiful rug, a Scandinavian piece in broken forms and muted colours. A long rug, it was; the other end reposed under Fleet’s hand-made shoe and Fleet’s wicker chair, tilted back lazily on its rear legs beside the table.
She looked down at the bag with a fine, considering smile, and her eyes travelled the length of the rug slowly, and measured the distance to the door, and the half-way mark in that five-yard journey, the console record player
