I had to fetch these damn contracts. She’s taken my car.”
There was a brief silence. “She will be in no condition to drive. Do you know where she might have gone?”
“Corfe.” Nick’s fingers drummed on the phone. “That’s down in Dorset on the coast somewhere, I think. I’ve never been there. But it must be three or four hours’ drive at least.”
“I’ll bring my car and come and collect you,” Bennet said briefly. “How much start has she got?”
“It can’t be more than half an hour.”
“Another half hour before I pick you up. That makes her an hour ahead of us. Be ready!” Bennet slammed down the phone.
In her hotel room just outside Frome Ann Clements stared out at the rain and groaned. She hated driving in bad weather. It took all the joy out of it. She looked at the boxes of pamphlets on the bed. She had been a fool to unload them from the van the night before. She had been so afraid they might be stolen from the parking lot, but now she was going to have to carry them back through the rain. She had collected them the day before from the printer, now she had to get them to London. She made a face. London in wet weather was worse, if possible, than London in the sun, and she didn’t even know anyone to go to the theater with.
She stopped in her tracks. Jo.
The phone was answered after just one ring. She grinned, sitting down on the bed as she inserted her diary, with Jo’s number, back into its place in the huge straw tote bag. “Well, hi, Nick. How are you both?”
His reaction was less than reassuring. “Ann. It’s not good. Jo’s in a bad way.”
“I’m sorry.” Ann could hear the depression in his voice as she slumped back onto the bed. “I was calling to say I’d be in London this afternoon. I wondered if I could come over and see you both. I’ll still come if I can help. I came down to Frome last night and now I’m-”
“Did you say Frome?” Nick’s voice cut through hers. “Frome in Somerset?”
“Well, I’m just outside the town actually-”
“Ann. Please, you’ve got to help. Jo is on her way to Corfe. You know what that means. She mustn’t be there on her own, Ann. I’m leaving now to follow her but she’s got my car and it’s fast. Can you get there? Please?”
“Why, sure.” Ann stood up anxiously. “But where is Corfe?”
“It’s in Dorset. Nearly on the coast. It can’t be more than an hour from where you are. Have you got a good map?”
“Yes, but the old van doesn’t go very fast.”
“Ann, I don’t care how fast it goes. You can be there before us. Please.”
Ann took a deep breath. “Okay, Nick, I’m on my way.”
She slammed down the phone and turned to look at the boxes. Damn the things! They would take at least ten minutes to load.
Jo peered through the windshield, fighting the heaviness in her eyelids as the long wipers drew great arcs on the rainswept glass. Back and forth. Back and forth. The road stretched out endlessly, the verges beyond the windows blurred gold and mauve with wet ragwort and rosebay, the visibility ahead cut to nothing by the heavy spray thrown up by trucks as they thundered westward.
Once she pulled in at a service station and filled the car with gas. In the bright garish cafe next door she ordered a cup of black coffee and sat at the plastic-covered table, staring at a jam jar full of ox-eye daisies. She ached with fatigue. The long drive through the heavy Saturday morning traffic, the strange muzzy feeling in her head, above all the knowledge, unquestioning and certain, that she had to make the journey, overwhelmed her. She did not think of the future, or of the past. Her mind was drained and empty. She drank the coffee quickly, barely tasting it, and stood up. There was still a long way to go. Wearily she climbed back into the car and headed once more toward the southwest.
The traffic slowed, crawling past some roadworks, then on again, plunging into the New Forest, speeding up as it swept on, then abruptly the highway ended and she found herself impatiently driving down narrowed roads, her speed held in check by the double white line. The rain was still heavy, the windshield wipers endlessly working. On and on. Back and forth. With a sudden shot of adrenaline in her stomach she realized the Porsche had drifted toward the opposite side of the road. She dragged it back as an oncoming car, its lights blazing, blasted her with its horn.
Keep awake. She must keep awake.
She peered at a signpost as it flashed toward her out of the silver streaks of rain and vanished before her eyes had time to focus.
Through Wareham, where she was forced to stop three times at traffic lights, chewing her nails, as the car stood waiting its turn to move, then at last on up the last miles of narrow road.
Corfe Castle loomed on a hill in a gap among the Purbeck Hills, the high fingers of its broken towers reaching up toward the sky, stark sentinels, visible a mile away above the trees, on the narrow, winding road. Jo slowed the car with a jolt of fear. The rain had stopped at last and streaks of vivid blue were showing in the sky to the south. In the rays of sunlight the colors were vivid. Dazzling white convolvulus trailing through the hedges, heather on the sandy verges a brilliant purple, and everywhere the trees washed to deep emerald by the glitter of the sun. Within minutes steam was rising from the tarmac and strings of mist were spiraling up from the trees.
She drove, slowly now, around the foot of the castle hill, staring up with a dry throat at the towering white ruins above her, then she drew up in the center of the old stone village south of the castle and, pushing open the car door, climbed out in a daze.
Slowly she walked toward the ruins, her eyes fixed on the walls ahead of her, and over the bridge and beneath the shadow of the entrance gatehouse. There she was brought up short by the ticket kiosk and a turnstile. A man was staring at her and dimly she realized he wanted some money. She had to pay to get in! A wave of hysterical laughter swept through her and was gone as soon as it had come, as, still in a daze, she groped in the pocket of her jeans and found a pound coin. Then at last she was inside the walls, walking up the steep, narrow tarmac path toward the grotesquely broken towers of the Martyr’s Gate.
The castle was still comparatively deserted after the rain, but she noticed little. She did not see the ancient stones, reduced by Cromwell’s sappers to their present state of ruin, nor see the wildflowers, the thistles, the yarrow, the ragwort, the wild marjoram, or the festoons of clinging ivy. She did not see the blue sky, or the white Purbeck stone with its gray shadow of lichen. Her eyes were growing dark.
Carl Bennet swore roundly as he stamped his foot down on the accelerator and threw the blue Mercedes at a gap in the traffic. It roared past two trucks, cutting in with only inches to spare in front of the line of oncoming traffic. Unconsciously Nick was clutching the sides of his seat. He closed his eyes briefly, but said nothing. When he opened them again it was to see the streak of blue in the leaden sky. He glanced down at the road map on his knee.
“Ten miles to go,” he said tautly.
Bennet nodded. His tongue showed briefly at the corner of his mouth as he negotiated a tight bend in the narrow road, then he allowed himself a quick smile. “The rain has stopped, at least,” he said.
The constable was waiting for them, his face set grimly in the flickering light. The king’s orders were still in his hand. As the horses drew to an exhausted standstill before him, he read them silently once again, still not wanting to believe. Then slowly he reached for one of the flaring torches and held the parchment in the flame until it blackened and curled.
The oubliette lay beneath the floor of the western tower. Will fell heavily as they pushed him through the
