She went out. Paulet gave us a nod and followed. The door was locked and bolted from the outside. I looked at the tray. There was a plate of cold meats and some salad stuff. I suddenly remembered that I had not eaten since early that morning and, instinctively, I said, ‘Lord, am I hungry.’
Wilkins gave me a disapproving look.
*
The first part was easy. We waited until about half past four in the morning. In another hour it would begin to be light. During the night there had been a lot of movement and voices from the room below us. But now everything had been quiet for over an hour.
We pulled the rug back and Dawson and I between us carefully and quietly lifted out the first board. In our room we had put out the lamps so that no light would shine through into the room below. I put my head into the board space and looked down. The room below was in darkness.
We lifted out three more boards and then I went through, hanging by my hands and then dropping little more than a couple of feet to the floor below. Wilkins came next. I reached up and got her by the waist and eased her gently to the ground. Dawson followed.
We all three stood there in the darkness, listening.
There was no need for talk because we knew exactly what we were going to do. It was too risky to go out through the front of the house into the courtyard. We were going to climb out of the room window, circle around the house towards the headland and come down to the back of the garage. There was a longish slope down the entrance road from the garage until it started to rise towards the bluff where I had hidden. Dawson was to ride the scooter, Wilkins on the back, and free wheel away down the slope, not starting the engine until he was almost at the bottom. Once they were away I was going to take off into the scrub and pine woods and make my way back, staying clear of the road. But first of all I was going to climb one of the short telegraph poles and cut the line so that the party in the house could not get in touch with Peter Brown if he were still in the cottage on watch. Simple, straightforward, and it should have worked. Would have done with most people, even with someone like Aunt Saraband—if it had not been for the beer-bottle episode. They had slipped up on that one. Aunt Saraband and Duchêne never made the same kind of mistake twice. From that moment they had upped Wilkins’s I.Q. rating to a level which would have made her president of Mensa for life.
I went towards the window, Wilkins and Dawson following. I was still four feet from it when two torches came on, pinning us where we stood.
Aunt Saraband’s voice said quietly, ‘Please don’t move.’
For a moment I was tempted to ignore this and rush the window. But another voice, Paulet’s, said, ‘If you do, mon ami, Miss Wilkins will get the first shot.’
We stayed where we were. There was movement at the far end of the room, a match was struck, and suddenly the oil lamp flared. I saw that it was Duchêne lighting it. He turned away from the lamp after adjusting the wick and made a motion with his hand to us. ‘Just come back into the centre of the room.’
We moved back, controlled by his hand which had a gun in it, shepherded, too, by the automatics that Aunt Saraband and Paulet held.
Aunt Saraband shook her head sadly at Wilkins.
‘If we could have had you ten years ago, Miss Wilkins, and you’d been willing, we could have made you a great operator.’
I began to reach for my cigarettes.
‘No, Mr Carver,’ she went on, ‘just keep your hands where we can see them.’
Paulet winked an eye at me over his big de Gaulle nose. ‘You had a treasure there, Monsieur Carvay. Not until yesterday did it strike us. A woman, an ordinary woman, hits a man with a rock and runs . . . just runs.’
‘But Miss Wilkins ran into the garage,’ said Aunt Saraband. ‘Why?’
‘The answer comes,’ said Paulet, ‘when there is wood dust on the table there each morning, fallen from ceiling boards. Thérèse, you know, is good housewife and very observant. So.’
Duchêne, who had been standing by almost, I thought from his face, disapproving of this exchange, said sharply, ‘I think I hear it.’ They were all silent, listening. Far away I thought I could hear the sound of an engine.
‘If it is,’ said Aunt Saraband, ‘Peter will put on the car lights.’ The noise grew louder, and then unmistakable. The helicopter was coming, coming in at the first faint streak of morning light. Another day was beginning—badly. I looked at Wilkins. Her face was expressionless. I wondered what she was thinking about? Her father in Greenwich, the socks she would not darn any more? Olaf, wanting to marry her, and she reluctant to leave her father? I knew what I was thinking . . . not of a hundred lost opportunities, the small, but bright change of life . . . not of never again the amber circle of whisky in a glass and the comforting hiss of the first siphon squirt of the day . . . no, I was just wondering how the hell I could get something into my hands that I could sling at the oil lamp. How do you get something into your hands when you have to keep them still and in the open?
Outside the helicopter racket increased. It was overhead now, circling. Peter Brown would have the
