'Nichole!' I yelled, coming to. She screamed again. 'Hang on. I'm coming, love,' I shouted, coughing from the acrid fumes of the gun's explosion.
I hauled myself back up the steps. She wasn't there, but a great torn hole let the crazy view in, the still wheel, the hurling water and the tumbling drenched rocks rising abruptly above the falls.
'Please, Lovejoy!' she was screaming. 'Darling!'
'Hold on!' I called. 'Hold on!' The force of the gun and the rotten platform giving under us had thrust her back against the wall and it had simply fallen away. I spread myself on the platform as quickly as I could and slid towards the gap. She was lodged between the wheel and the stone slabs, head mercifully out of the onrush.
I'd have to risk my arm and shoulder under the wheel. I examined the locking lever, in case. It looked exactly as I'd replaced it. One careless nudge against the peg could edge the cogs into place and the entire bloody waterwheel would turn, sweeping Nichole down and crushing her against the sliprace stone slabs. And I'd go too.
'Please, Lovejoy!' She was moving, becoming frantic now, in worse danger of slipping further under the wheel.
'Hold on!' I screeched. 'Hold on!'
'I can't!' she gasped. Water was pushing against her head.
'You must! One second!' I yelled into the roar. 'Drop the bloody gun!' She was holding mechanically on to the gun, for God's sake. As if it was any use. I turned aside to see if there was anything for me to hang on to. Not a bloody thing. Nichole must have feared I was going away because she screamed.
'Lovejoy!'
'I'm still here, darling.' I turned back to reach into the flood for her arm. I couldn't lose her now, not when I'd everything in my grasp. As long as I kept my legs clear of style='mso-spacerun:yes'> the gears and that huge ominous lever. 'Lift yourself,' I bawled, getting a mouthful of the water. 'Now.'
'I - I didn't mean to.' She was babbling incoherently as our hands met. I pulled. Nichole started to come free of the water. I gasped at the exertion. My side was hurting now, but we were clinging firmer. I began to wriggle slowly back along the wooden platform.
'I didn't want to kill your birds, Lovejoy darling,' she gasped.
'What?' I yelled. Her relieved smiling face was an inch from mine. We were both practically submerged, me dangling upside down, hanging on, and her draped on the wheel in the funnelled mountain water. She still clutched the shotgun. As if I hadn't enough to lift.
'I knew you'd forgive me, darling,' she said breathlessly. I still held her in an embrace.
'And the bike was a silly joke.'
'You?' I shrieked.
'And I just had to push Edward…'
I was still pulling her up but now I stared in horror. She must have seen my eyes change. Her lips stripped back off her teeth. Even in that position she struggled to lift the gun at me, screeching hatred. Hatred at me, who practically loved her. And honest to God it was an accident but my hands slipped. Her fingers unlatched or slipped or something, I don't really know any more. I couldn't help it. Everything happened in a split-second blur. I swear it was beyond my control. My side suddenly gave out and my hand jerked away. It just happened. She slid back down screaming, wedging with a burbled shrill squeal into the millrace. She was howling dementedly with outrage. Her eyes glared up with pure hatred as she dragged the shotgun up against the force of the water. I removed my arm and edged frantically away from the wheel on to the crumbling platform. I swear my hand just slipped. Honest to God. And in the suddenness of her weight vanishing my flailing foot clanked the lever. Before I knew what was going on I heard the gears engage. It was a pure accident. Maybe I was trying to scrabble away from the coming blast of the shotgun. She gave one screech and the wheel lurched round. I heard it. Then there was only the moaning and whining sound of the big wheel's slow turning and turning. I lay there, gasping. The paddles had blood on, but only the first time round.
I'd had to roll over. She'd been lifting the gun at me again. You can see that. If she hadn't been trying to pull the trigger I'd have reached for her again. Accidents always happen when you're in a hurry. Everybody knows that.
I don't know how long it was before I dared look out. She was crushed beneath the wheel, her corpse deformed and mangled on the rocks and washed quite free of blood.
The recesses between the boulders were covered with dark brown discs. I edged along the planking. The turning wheel had used Nichole to scrape the slab covering off the bed of the millrace. There were hundreds down on the river bed. I'd been right. Bexon had walled the lead coffin, now lying crumpled and exposed in the water, behind the millrace.
I could see Nichole's waxen head in the clear water. It took me an age to work up courage to lock the wheel again. Honestly, hand on my heart, it was accidental.
But as I climbed painfully down pity was alien to me. At that instant it was utterly unknowable. Her arm swayed like the limb of some obscene reptile as I splashed into the water below the waterfall. My side oozed blood.
I stood knee-deep in the millrace, the onrush thrusting against my legs. Looking around it became obvious most of the fortune was in copper and the occasional silver coins. I didn't blame Bexon, picking out the golds like he had and putting them in the Castle for bait. It was exactly the sort of thing I would have done. Anyway, the Romans considered copper the mediocre twin of gold itself. There was a small crusted bronze statue, a she-wolf suckling two infants.
I caught a glimpse of one dulled yellow. Her palm was tilted in the water, exposing a Roman gold between two fingers. I took it carefully from her.
'Hold them by the edge,' I said. I keep telling people this but they take no notice.
I thought of saying something else to her submerged face through the rippling water layer, but finally didn't speak.
CHAPTER XXII
Contents - Prev
JANIE WAS telling me off again.
'We didn't leave,' she was saying angrily, 'because a polite note from you was just too good to be true. You'd have just gone.'
'Charming.'
We'd all but packed. The bungalow stood clean and aired ready for more, for all the world like a runner on starting blocks before another race. I knew Janie was working up to something. She attacked suddenly in the lounge, unfairly bonny and colourful with white net gloves and pastel shades.
'Lovejoy.'
You can tell it's trouble from the way they say things.
'Yes, love?'
'Look at me.'
I'd been staring admiringly at the hillside. St Lonan's chapel with the valuable engravings was only two miles off and nobody would be there as early as this. I'd visited briefly. Some scoundrel would nick them one day. He could slip up the hedgerow, turn left at the road and cut through the sheepfold. Nobody'd see him.
People are rogues and can't be trusted.
'Yes, love?' I gazed innocently into her lovely eyes. They looked full of suspicion.
Women get like this.
'Lovejoy. The Roman coins.'
'Don't,' I got out brokenly.
'You didn't mention them very much to the police, did you?' She waited.
'They almost slipped my mind. When I heard how Nichole had been… well, ill for so long, in close care and all that…' I paused bravely. 'Still, I did own up. Eventually.'