She shook her head, very slightly, her eyes wide and steady upon his face. She let him take her hands and hold them, tightly and warmly; her fingers even seemed to accept his clasp with more than a passive consent. But she said nothing.
‘Have I to tell it to you? I believe I can, and not be far out. You were coming past the shop together, maybe the old man was just putting the mesh gate across, ready to close. Your companion stopped suddenly, and told you to wait for him. Probably you were surprised, probably you wanted to go with him, but he wouldn’t let you. He stood you on the corner, well out of earshot of what he intended to do, and told you he was going to buy you something, and it was to be a surprise. And you did what he wanted, because you wanted nothing else in the world but to do everything he wanted, because all your will was never to deny him anything. And maybe what he intended, then, was only robbery, if he hadn’t hit too hard. Frightened boys turning violent for the first time frequently do.’
The hands imprisoned in his suddenly plunged and struggled in their confinement for an instant. Her face shook, and was still again.
‘I know,’ said George, sick with pity. ‘I told you, none of this goes with you, nothing except your loving him. That happens, who can blame you for that? Personally, I don’t think you knew a thing about either robbery or murder until I sprang it on you last night. He came back to you and gave you the ring, and so much of you was concentrated on that – as a gift and a promise, as a kind of private sacrament – that if he was agitated or uneasy you didn’t notice it. He hurried you away, and all you knew was that he’d bought you a wedding ring, on impulse, on a sentimental impulse at that, with money he couldn’t really afford. A sweet, silly thing to do. But he left Jacob Worral dead or dying in the back room, switched off the shop lights and drew the gate to across the doorway. And nobody saw him. Nobody knows who he is. Nobody but you, Annet.’
He had got so far when he saw that she was crying, with the extraordinary tranquillity of despair, her face motionless, the tears gathering heavily in her dilated eyes, and overflowing slowly down her cheeks. No convulsive struggle with her grief, she sat still and let it possess her, aware of the uselessness of all movement and all sound.
‘Surely you see that the best thing you can do, ultimately, even for him, is tell me the whole story. Who is he, this young man of yours? Oh, he loved you very much – I know! He wanted to be with you, to give you things, because he loved you. He wanted more than a stolen week-end, he wanted to take you away with him for good. But he had to have money to make that possible. A lot of money. And he took what he thought was a chance, when it offered. But think what his state must be now, Annet! Do you think it’s enviable to be a murderer? Even the kind that gets away with it? Think about it, Annet!’
And maybe she did think about it; she sat gazing at him great-eyed, perhaps unaware of the tears that coursed slowly down her face, but she never spoke. She listened, she understood, there was a communication, of that he had no doubt; but it was still one-sided. He could not make her speak.
‘If you love him,’ said George, very gently and simply, ‘and I think you do, you’ll want to do the best for him, and save him from the worst. And being convicted, even dying, isn’t necessarily the worst, you know.’
The word passed into her with a sharp little jerk and quiver, like a poisoned dart, but it did not startle her.
‘You see, I’m not lying to you. This is capital murder, and we both know it. It may not come to that extremity; but it could. But even so, Annet, if it were me, I’d rather pay than run. You can’t save him now from killing, but you can spare him the remembering and hiding and running, the lying down with his dead man every night, and getting up with him every morning—’
Still she kept her silence, all she had left; but she bowed forward suddenly out of her tranced grief, felt towards George’s shoulder with nuzzling cheek and brow, and let herself lie against him limp and weary, her closed eyelids hidden on his breast. He gathered both her hands into one of his, slipped the other arm round her gently, and held her as long as she cared to rest so. He made no use of the contact to persuade or move her; the compassion and respect he felt for her put it clean out of his power.
She drew away from him at last with a sigh that was dragged up from the roots of her body. She looked up, while his face was still out of focus to her, and in a soft, urgent voice she said: ‘Let me go! Don’t watch me! Take your man away from the house, and let me go.’
‘Annet, I can’t.’
‘Please! Please! Take him away and leave me free. Tell them not to watch me. You could if you would.’
‘No,’ said George heavily, ‘it’s impossible.’
She took her hands from him slowly, and turned her face away, and the silence was back upon her like an invisible armour through which he could not penetrate. He got up slowly, and stood looking down at her with a shadowed face.
‘You realise, Annet, that if you won’t give us the information we need, we must get it elsewhere. So far we’ve kept you from the Press, but if you won’t help us we shall have to make use of your name and photograph. There’ll be people who’ll remember having seen you during the week-end. There must be someone who knows where you spent those nights in Birmingham. Time is very important, and you can’t be spared beyond today. You understand that?’
She nodded. The averted face shivered once, but she made no protest.
‘I ask you again to make that unnecessary. Tell me, and we shan’t have to put you in the pillory.’
‘No,’ said Annet absolutely; and a moment later, in indifferent reassurance: ‘It doesn’t matter.’ He understood that she was disclaiming any consideration for herself, and acknowledging his right and duty to expend her if he must. More, after her fashion she was comforting him.
He turned his back on her wearily, and went out without a word more. He could get tears from her, he could get warmth from her, but he could not get words. What was the use of persisting in this impossible siege? But he knew he’d be back before the day was out. How could he leave her to destroy herself?
‘I’m leaving a man on guard,’ he said to Beck in the hall. ‘And I want you to let me place a policewoman in the house with Annet, as an additional precaution. It’s for her protection, you surely realise that. Make sure that somebody’s always with her, don’t let her out of your sight. And don’t let anyone in to her but the police.’
He wasn’t going to lose Annet if he could help it, however wantonly she was offering herself as a sacrificial victim. Let me go, indeed! George shrugged his way morosely into his coat, and went to report total failure to the Chief of the County CID.
‘Do you want her arrested, or don’t you?’ demanded Detective-Superintendent Duckett, before the tale was finished. ‘Seems to me you don’t know your own mind. If she was my girl, I’d hustle her behind bars and heave a sigh of relief. And I’d make sure of putting her out of reach before the evening paper rolls out on the streets at one o’clock. We’ve done it now.’
‘Had to,’ said George grimly. ‘There’s nothing to be got out of her, and we can’t afford to lose today. I warned her. She knows the odds. Not that that lets us out.’
‘Well, if you’ve put the brightest girl we’ve got in the house with her, and left Lockyer on guard outside, I don’t see what harm she can come to.’
All the same, they had crossed a Rubicon there was no re-crossing, and they knew it. Once the regional Evening News hit the streets all the world would know that Annet Beck was ‘expected to be able to help the police’ in their enquiries into the Bloome Street murder; that she had been identified by witnesses as having been in the district at the time; and that further witnesses to her movements in Birmingham were being sought, with a photograph of Annet to remind them in case they were in doubt of the face that went with the name.