the fact that she was fat, fair and forty-five. Not that she cared what she looked like. The three Fs had kept the fourth at bay but they wouldn't help her in a world dominated by lecherous men.
It was all the more galling that she would have escaped if it hadn't been for Glodstone's clumsiness. Another damned man had fouled things up for her, and an idiot at that. Baffled by the whole affair, she was about to move on when another thought struck her. Someone had certainly come looking for her and having found her they'd let her get away. Why? Unless they'd got what they'd wanted in her suitcase. That made much more sense. It did indeed. With a new and nasty determination the Countess climbed off the wall and turned back up the drive. She had gone twenty yards when she heard footsteps and the sound of voices. They were coming after all. She slipped into some bushes and squatted down.
'I don't care what you think,' said Glodstone, as they passed, 'if you hadn't come out with that bloody gun and yelled 'Freeze' she wouldn't have run off like that.'
'But I didn't know it was the Countess,' said Peregrine, 'I thought it was one of the swine trying to get round behind me. Anyway we rescued her and that's what she wanted, isn't it?'
'Without her suitcase with all her clothes in it?'
'Feels jolly heavy for clothes. She's probably waiting for you at the bridge and we can give it back to her.'
Glodstone snorted. 'Frighten the wits out of the poor woman and you expect her to hang around waiting for me. For all she knows I'm dead.'
They passed out of earshot. In the bushes the Countess was having difficulty understanding what she had just heard. Rescue her? And that was what she wanted? What she wanted was her suitcase and the madman with the gun had said they could give it back to her? The statements resolved themselves into insane questions in her mind.
'I must be going crazy,' she muttered as she disentangled herself from the brambles and stood in the roadway trying to decide what to do. It wasn't a difficult decision. The young lout had her suitcase and whether he like it or not she wasn't letting him disappear with it. As the pair rounded the bend she took off her shoes and holding them in one hand ran down the drive after them. By the time they reached the bridge she was twenty yards behind and hidden by the stonework above the river.
'What's that over there?' asked Glodstone, peering at the wreckage of the police van and the remains of the driver's seat which had burnt itself to a wire skeleton in the middle of the bridge.
'They had some guards there,' said Peregrine, 'but I soon put paid to them.'
'Dear God,' said Glodstone, 'when you say 'put paid to'...No, I don't think I want to hear.' He paused and looked warily around. 'All the same, I'd like to be certain there's no one about.'
'I shouldn't think so. The last I saw of them they were all in the river.'
'Probably the last thing anyone will see of them before they reach the sea, if my experience of that bloody torrent's anything to go by.'
'I'll go over and check just in case,' said Peregrine. 'If it is all clear I'll whistle.'
'And if it isn't I'll hear a shot I suppose,' muttered Glodstone but Peregrine was already striding nonchalantly across the bridge carrying the suitcase. A minute later he whistled but Glodstone didn't move. He was dismally aware that someone was standing behind him.
'It's me again, honey,' said the Countess. 'You don't get rid of me quite so easily.'
'Nobody wants to get rid of you. I certainly...'
'Skip the explanations for later. Now you and me are going to walk across together and just in case that delinquent gunslinger starts shooting remember I'm in back of you and he's got to drill you before he gets to me.'
'But he won't shoot. I mean, why should he?'
