‘From all we know of him,’ agreed George drily, ‘he probably will. Is Mrs Rainbow still in there with them?’
‘Try and get her out until she knows the score. His folks are on the way, did they tell you? We called them, they know he’s OK. The chap who hit him took off like a rocket when he heard us coming. We wondered what had bitten somebody up there ahead of us. I reckon he was going to have a look what damage he’d done, but when he heard us coming he didn’t want to be there to answer for it.’
‘Lucky you were driving so circumspectly,’ said George, with only the mildest irony, for Willie’s volcanic but expert driving was notorious.
‘I wasn’t driving, George. And we were in no hurry.’ Willie the Twig had a gentle line in irony, too.
The nurse on reception, who was young, and not a local girl, hovered suggestively, primly waiting for the newcomer to state his business and credentials, but she was forestalled by the appearance of an elderly sister who knew Superintendent Felse very well from many and varied contacts. Sailing before her, in a burst of brightness that cried aloud gloriously against all the hospital white, came Barbara Rainbow. She wore a long, narrow skirt slit to the knee, in a deep petunia colour, and an embroidered mandarin coat of thin, padded silk, and her hair was knotted in a bunch of curls on top of her head, and fastened with a tall jet comb. Anything further removed from widow’s weeds it would have been impossible to imagine; maybe that was the reason for the get-up. And here sat Willie the Twig in his usual country suiting, as perfectly content with her brilliance as she was with his casualness. She saw George, and smiled radiantly. She looked fulfilled and roused and happy, whether for private reasons of her own and Willie’s, or simply because she had risen to an unexpected occasion with decision and success, and felt all the better for it.
‘You don’t want to see the patient tonight, do you?’ said the sister promptly. ‘It wouldn’t do you a bit of good, he’s sedated, and in any case the doctor won’t let anybody try to question him yet.’
‘I did come with that intention,’ George admitted, ‘but I’d already gathered it wouldn’t be allowed. As long as he’s all right I don’t suppose leaving it until tomorrow morning will make much difference. You are keeping him overnight?’
‘Doctor thought it wise, in case of delayed shock, but if you ask me he’s pretty tough. Dazed, but there doesn’t seem to be any concussion. But we’re keeping him in to be on the safe side.’
‘And there’s nothing really damaged? Nothing to worry about?’
She detailed Bessie’s few abrasions and bruises placidly, and guaranteed his generally sound condition.
‘Did he have anything to say when you got him in? He usually has plenty, if he was conscious I can’t imagine him being silent.’
She thought about that seriously, as if something unusual had just been brought to her notice. ‘Now you come to mention it, we hardly got a cheep out of him, except answers to, “does that hurt?” and that sort of thing. Oh, and he did say he’d lost his music-case, and Mrs Rainbow assured him Mr Swayne had picked it up and it was quite safe. After that he really did go mute. I suppose it was catching up with him by then.’
Perhaps. But for some reason it failed to sound like Bossie.
‘Any use my putting a man in with him, in case he wakes up and wants to get it off his chest in the night?’
‘Wouldn’t get you a thing,’ she assured him. ‘He’s as good as out now, and he’ll sleep right through until tomorrow. You can make it fairly early, though, and see if he’s awake about seven.’
So that was that, and the arrival of Sam and Jenny, roused and anxious but calm, brought the number of people attendant upon Bossie to an inconvenient crowd.
‘Come on,’ said Willie the Twig practically, ‘they’re not closed yet, and I’m hungry. And I rather think the Superintendent would like the first-hand story from us, at any rate, since he can’t get it yet from the kid. Let’s all go and get a pint and a snack at the “Fleece”, and George can ask us whatever he wants to know.’
They left both cars where they were, safe in the hospital grounds, and walked the few hundred yards to the “Fleece”, an old, half-timbered pub, with mediaeval tiles still paving its short passage to the public bar. There were deep settles in which small groups could be as private as in separate rooms, and if the bread, though pleasantly crusty, was slightly past its best at this time on Saturday night, the cheese was good, the ham even better, and the pickles home-made.
‘It was going to be a slap-up dinner over at the “Radnorshire Arms”,’ said Barbara, buttering bread with ardour. ‘But that went for a Burton. Tomorrow, maybe?’ She looked across the table at Willie the Twig, and her eyes were large and eloquent.
‘If we’re still out of jug,’ said Willie imperturbably.
‘Maybe George could arrange for a double cell,’ she said serenely. ‘That would be nice.’
‘If you’re trying to tell me something,’ said George tolerantly, ‘I’d rather you did it right-way-round. But first of all, about tonight. Let’s have your version.’
‘We were going out to dinner,’ said Barbara, ‘as we’ve mentioned, and then we were going to have a long night drive round through Wales and come back over the border to the forest lodge. Time was no object, and I was driving, and I’m wary of those dark, winding, narrow farm roads, in any case, so we were only doing about thirty, probably less. We hadn’t seen another car since we turned into that road, and you know how it winds. One thing I’ll swear to, there weren’t any car lights on, anywhere ahead of us. Even with those hedges cutting off direct vision, in that darkness there’d have been a gleam, enough to see. Agreed, Willie?’
‘Absolutely. And then suddenly there were lights, just switched on, obviously, some way ahead and round a couple of bends, but you see the aura clearly enough.’
‘And it stayed like that maybe half a minute,’ confirmed Barbara, ‘by which time we were getting nearer, and then suddenly whoever it was opened the throttle and put his foot down hard, and the light patch shot off like a bullet. By the time we turned into that longer straight, just past the end of the lane, the rear lights were pin-points at the far end, and then vanished. Then Willie spotted the little boy, lying in the road. And we stopped, and went to see how badly he was hurt, but it wasn’t so bad after all. And Willie stayed with him and went over him for breaks and so on, and wrapped his coat round him, while I dashed off back to telephone. And that’s about all.’
‘I lifted him to the side,’ said Willie. ‘I thought I’d better, and there was nothing busted, it was safe to move him. But I marked the way he’d been lying.’
No particular surprise that Willie the Twig should have a stick of chalk somewhere in his pockets. He was the sort of man who habitually had string, nails, screwdrivers, and half a dozen other useful things distributed about his
