The Alamut Ambush

the morning. Then he used to spend the rest of the day pottering. He was fixing up the two-way speaker in the porch this leave, so that I could answer the door from here when the family was out. I don't believe he went out anywhere else during the whole time he was here.'

Like Harry, Alan had always used home for relaxation and family life: his London existence had been frenetic, and Firle was where he recharged his batteries.

'He rode up to the Beacon, then.'

'He walked Sammy up the steeper parts – he liked to get to the top as quickly as possible. I used to watch him through the telescope –

he'd wave when he reached the top.'

'And you watched him on Tuesday.'

She looked at him in despair. 'Hugh, I didn't – not on Tuesday. I had a bad day on Tuesday — I try not to take the pills the doctor gives me. They make me whoozy and I want to keep them for when I shall really need them. But I just had to take one that morning, and I didn't feel up to anything after that. I'm sorry.'

Roskill couldn't hide his disappointment. It had been a black Tuesday indeed – not only because Alan had chosen to ride to the dummy2

Beacon at that fatal moment in time, but because twice thereafter the chance of learning what he had seen had been lost.

'But you saw him when he came down.'

'Only very briefly. I was resting and he only came to borrow a stamp, and then to say goodbye. He was always very considerate when I had a bad day, and I'm not very good company then.'

'Did he say anything?'

'He said he was writing to you. He was excited, Hugh – he certainly wasn't frightened. I do remember asking him why he wasn't staying for lunch, because Penny was cutting the asparagus for him. But he just said 'The sooner I'm off, the better' – I think he said.'

Like Harry, Alan had a broad streak of ambition in him. And if he'd had some idea of what he'd seen, he might also have had an inkling that it might be dangerous as well as important. And that would account for the letter, and for his leaving it to Penelope to post, as well as for the quick getaway. It might even account for his not leaving his new address.

But it all added up to nothing new, except that what he'd seen had been on the Beacon itself – and that the only lead lay in Penelope's identifying the dishy young man.

He stared forlornly past the shining brass case of the telescope to the hillside beyond. But looking wouldn't turn the clock back four days to betray what had taken place up there, six hundred feet above him.

Yet the hill drew him. It was hard to imagine that Alan had dummy2

unwittingly seen his death up there, if that had been how it had been. There was nothing up there but the birds wheeling and diving over the grassland. On warm, windy days the gliders joined the birds, and in summer there were wild strawberries – he'd picked them with Harry and had brought them down here to this very room.

He got up and began to move towards the window.

'Don't go near the window, Hugh,' Mary said suddenly. 'There's something else.'

Roskill froze in mid-step.

'Go directly behind the telescope,' Mary ordered him. 'Now look through it at the Beacon.'

Obediently he focused the telescope on the top of the hill. It was a splendid instrument, heavy yet moving smoothly and freely on its mounting. The hilltop came up sharply, every feature of it clear even though no direct sunlight came through the grey clouds above it. But there was nothing to see on it except the grass shivering in the wind.

'Come right along the skyline, away from the long barrow towards the tumuli – the tussock of grass on the right at the base of it. Do you see anything?'

As a fire order it left something to be desired: there were a whole series of mounds up there, most of which were not visible at this angle, or at least not visible to Roskill's eye except as slight irregularities in the grassland. Mary knew this landscape like the back of her hand and she could –

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But there was something up there, snug down beside the trailing edge of one hump. And not something, but someone.

'Have you got him? Deerstalker hat and binoculars. I spotted him more than an hour ago, just after breakfast – it was the flash of the binoculars that gave him away. A bird-watcher I took him for.'

A bird-watcher? Well, there were birds up there right enough.

'And I thought what a very silly bird-watcher he was.'

'Silly?' Roskill turned his eye away from the hilltop towards her.

'He can't see much ground from there. The hill falls away too quickly in front of him. And even if he could see enough ground, the Beacon is the last place I'd go to bird-watch. Far too many people go tramping over it – quite enough to spoil it for him, anyway.'

Roskill squinted through the eye-piece again. Deerstalker and binoculars, and the suggestion of a dark jacket.

He turned back to Mary again. 'You think he's watching us?'

'I thought he was watching this house an hour ago, but I thought I was imagining it because I couldn't think why anyone would want to do that. But now – ' she trailed off. 'Now I don't know what to think.'

No one had tailed him to Firle – the MG had seen to that. So whoever was watching up there had to be directly