Here Be Monsters

She sat up, shaking with fear and distaste with herself.

'He's gone, poor devil,' said someone. 'It must have been his heart.'

Her fear expanded almost into panic. No one with a heart condition passed R & D's medicals. And she was breaking the rules.

She picked up her bag and stood up. 'I'll get a blanket,' she said.

They were all staring at the Major. And who would want to question a Sister of Mercy after what she'd done already? 'I'll get a blanket from my car,' she repeated unnecessarily.

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Then she was in the passage again, with the still-empty reception desk in front of her - and then she was outside, backing into the Olde English coaching inn yard, with David Audley still fumbling around to get their overnight bags out of the car.

'Put them back in, David.'

'What?' He stretched, and stamped one leg. 'What?'

So little time! 'Put them back in.' She seized the car-key from him and threw the nearest bag into the car. 'Major Turnbull got here ahead of us. And he's dead.'

He stared at her for only a fraction of a second, and then threw the bag in his hand into the car and turned away towards his side of the car without any change in his expression.

Get in - start car - reverse out -

'Not too fast,' murmured Audley. Turn right.'

Not too fast - turn right -

Audley twisted in his seat. 'You watch the front. I'll watch the back,' he said.

8

There was nothing remotely menacing down the main street of Fordingwell: it was just a village street, nicer than most because the houses and little shops were set well back, a line of neatly-pollarded trees on one side and a scatter of parked cars on the other, with a few people going about their Fordingwell business.

Take it easy, Elizabeth - not too fast,' murmured Audley soothingly. 'Down the hill and over the bridge. The speed limit ends there. You can put your foot down then.'

Just ordinary people, they looked to be, left and right: butcher, baker, candlestick-maker - a knot of children, a young man chatting up his girl - a young motor-cyclist, black-helmeted, eyes on the girl, further down - a trio of men packing tools into a van outside a fine Georgian house locked in scaffolding -

Down the hill and over the bridge - but watch that motor-cyclist, just in case -

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'Where are we going?'

No answer. Audley was intent on his wing-mirror.

Odd, how her palms were sweating on the wheel when she wasn't in the least hot. ' Young ladies do not sweat, Elizabeth. Nor do they perspire. If they do anything, they 'glow' .' But her palms had always sweated when she took her first look at exam papers, and she had always surreptitiously wiped them on her skirt under the desk.

Over the bridge. No sound of any motor-cycle, and the road up the hill beyond was Roman-straight and empty. And steep, too - foot down - in Fordingwell's coaching days, if this was the old main London road, they must have had an extra team of horses here in the winter, to haul the coaches up in the snow, and slow their descent, like on Shotover at Oxford - but her own horses were pulling her away now, leaving Fordingwell, and the King's Arms, and Major Turnbull behind in their own shared forever.

'Where are we going?' Audley repeated the question. 'At this moment I have not decided where we are going. But take the first side road to the left, anyway. And then maybe left again - south-south-east is the general idea, for the time being. Just use your bump of direction.'

There would be a maze of little country roads ahead, because in England there always was.

'Is there anything behind us?'

Audley fiddled with the mirror again. 'Not as far as I can make out.'

'There was a motor-cyclist… The maps are under your seat.'

'Yes. But I think he was more interested in that pretty girl in the Laura Ashley dress.'

They were over the brow of the hill. And, sure enough, there was a sign-post coming up.

Funny that David had noticed that the girl had been pretty, when she hadn't. And funnier still that he had identified what she was wearing - David, of all people! Did Faith wear Laura Ashley dresses - or little Cathy? A bit old and a bit young, respectively, she would have thought. But they were all the rage, of course. But funny, all the same - David, of all people! Screamingly funny, even.

And now she could read the name on the sign-post - and that was funny too - Hell's Bottom 2 - and funnier still, again, that the road to Hell's Bottom wasn't as broad and wide as the road to hell ought to be, it was a narrow, pot-holed track. But she had better not start laughing, just in case she had hysterics, with everything being so funny.

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She decided against Hell's Bottom. 'You're sure it was a Laura Ashley dress, David?' she said instead.

He looked up from a map, which he had found, first at her, then in his mirror again, and then back at her. 'How was he dead, Elizabeth?'