The Old Vengeful

—he still thinks he only killed two men, not three . . . But when he asks me—as he surely will—I shall have to be as brutally frank with him as I am being with you, Miss Loftus.'

Brutally frank was what he was determined to be: she hated him for it, but she couldn't stop him, any more than Paul Mitchell could have stopped in the kitchen—she understood that now.

'He had one bullet left then. But he probably wasn't counting by then—he was probably too scared to count his shots by then, and the SAS rule is to keep moving—it's like the old house-clearing discipline in the war: once you're in the house you must go through it like a dose of salts, that was the rule—

if you stop, you're dead. So he didn't stop.'

'Please, Mr Audley—'

'I haven't finished. The last bit is the best: he killed your little man with a single shot, right through the heart —a professional couldn't have done better than that, Miss Loftus

—with a snap shot. But that's the shot which may get him into most trouble, unfortunately.'

He let her think about it this time, until she could formulate the obvious question. 'But—why?'

'Because the little man wasn't armed. He had a scalpel in his pocket—an adjustable typographical scalpel. But that was all he had.' Audley shook his head sadly. 'And that won't look good on the report . . . apart from the fact that we'd have liked to have talked to him, and now we can't.' His voice dummy3

became gentler again. 'It was an accident, of course. But it won't look good.'

'But. . . but he couldn't have known . . .'

'That's what we'll be arguing, certainly. And with your supporting statement—and the gun—we ought to be able to manage 'Justifiable homicide', with a bit of luck,' agreed Audley. 'There's a button on the wall there—by the bed . . .

Would you press it please, Miss Loftus.'

Elizabeth rose shakily, and stepped over the Sunday papers, and pressed the button.

'Thank you,' said Audley politely.

She sat down again, and waited, and tried to think coherently.

He had done it deliberately, of course—all of it, intentionally and with deliberate brutality designed to shock her. But, deliberately or not, he had succeeded: he had shackled her to Paul Mitchell for ever, with unbreakable chains of obligation.

The door opened, and Paul was there in the doorway—and she didn't know where to look, with the way she must look, sans the slightest advantage of make-up, and her hair every which-way, and the old dress which Humphrey Aske had offered her yesterday, when it hardly seemed to matter what she looked like.

'It is customary to knock, Mitchell,' snapped Audley testily.

'Have you brought the box? And the form?'

Paul Mitchell hefted a suitcase on to the bed, snapping the dummy3

catches but leaving the lid closed. Then he felt inside his breast-pocket and produced a folded document.

'This is an Official Secrets form, Miss Loftus.' Audley unfolded the document and handed it to Elizabeth. 'Sign it at the bottom there—'

'But read it first, Elizabeth,' said Paul Mitchell.

'Shut up, Mitchell,' said Audley. 'Just give her a pen.'

Elizabeth took the form from Audley and the pen from Paul Mitchell.

'Sign it, Miss Loftus,' said Audley.

'You're signing away your rights,' said Paul. 'Once you've signed, they can shut you up and throw away the key.'

'She's not stupid.' Audley gestured towards the form. 'After what you've done, she knows she hasn't got any rights—

except maybe the right to be shot by you, Mitchell. Sign it, Miss Loftus.' He paused. 'And the copy underneath—sign that too.'

Elizabeth signed. In the silence of Paul's failure to reply to Audley's last remark she heard the scratch of the pen on the paper.

'Good.' Audley folded the forms and transferred them to his hip pocket, where the identification folder was stowed.

Elizabeth observed that Paul looked decidedly miserable, and not at all the confident young man she had first seen in the mirror. If she'd wanted to go on hating him it would have been difficult, but now it was impossible.

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' Elizabeth Jane Varney Loftus' said Audley reflectively.

''Varney' for the naval Varneys, on your mother's side, from way back—from Boscawen and Hawke, and the Seven Years'

War, and all the other wars thereafter . . . There was a Varney who was Admiral of the Blue in the West Indies, I remember from my history books—and that must have perked up the family fortunes, with his admiral's share of prize-money—