“You’ll let us know,” Linda said. I realized she had moved out into the yard too. There was tension in her voice.
“Sure. We’ll let you know.”
“We’ll come on in the morning,” Jeff said.
“Folks down there’d give a lot to know how he got the hell out of a locked cell. The lock works fine. They been testing it and scratching their heads.”
“He was always clever with his hands,” Linda said. It gave me a strange feeling to hear her speak of me in the past tense. As if what they plotted for me had already happened. As if I were dead — a man she had once been married to.
A starter whined and the car motor caught and roared. The headlights swept across the boat as he backed out. I heard the car go on down the sand road. I listened for the sound of the screen door again to indicate they had gone back in. Linda said something I could not catch.
“I just don’t like it, that’s all!” Jeff said. “I don’t like any part of it.” His voice was pitched higher than usual. It was querulous. “As far as I’m concerned, I’d like to get in the car and go find a motel where—”
“Shut up! Shut up!” she said violently. “Good lord, do you think he’s going to pounce out from behind a bush or something?”
“No, but—”
“Will you please be quiet?”
“But we didn’t—”
“Come here,” she said. I heard the scuff of their feet on the grass as they came toward the overturned boat. They walked by the boat in silence. I heard the sound of their steps on the wooden boards of the dock. At the same time I heard the distant rumble as Matthews, on his way back, drove over the loose boards of the bridge a mile away.
They stopped so close to me that I could hear him sigh. I worked my way close to the edge of the boat, got my eye to the crack. They sat side by side on the dock, their legs hanging over the water. She wore her bulky white beach robe. The match flame illuminated their faces.
“Tomorrow,” she said in a low tone, “you’re going to move to Bosworth. It wasn’t smart to move back into that cottage. I’ll stay here. We were stupid to give anybody the chance to make any guesses about us.”
“He didn’t suspect anything. Why don’t we go up to the house? It’s too buggy out here.”
“We don’t go up to the house because I want to talk to you. I had to be away from the cottage several times. One of them, the young one named Hill, keeps starting the wrong kind of conversation. I don’t like the way he looks at me. And I’m playing this safe, Jeff. Terribly safe. He could have put something in the cottage, either cottage, so he could record what we said. That’s all right so long as we stick to our agreement always to talk about it as if Paul did it, but not now, not this way.”
“That Matthews didn’t suspect anything,” Jeff said sullenly.
“And if he didn’t, whose fault was that? I’m the one who heard him drive in. I’m the one who had to make the mad dash across the yard while you answered the door. You move into town tomorrow.”
“All right, all right. But I don’t like all this. Why did he break out?”
“Can’t you see it’s the best thing that could have happened? They’ll catch him and they’ll all think he escaped and tried to run because he’s guilty. He won’t have the ghost of a chance after this.”
“But I keep thinking that he thought of something we didn’t think of. Paul’s no dummy. You ought to know that. Suppose he came back here to check on something that we overlooked?”
“You kept telling me you had good nerves. Sure. Nothing could rattle you. Just plan it all out and then sit tight. No loose ends.”
“But—”
“But nothing. What could go wrong? Use your thick head. We even thought of putting cigarette butts down there with my lipstick on them proving that I spent time there with you. There was no one on the beach, no one out in a boat, who could possibly have seen what happened. If you could just see the way they treat me down there. I’m the loyal wife being brave about everything. I’m so demure it sickens me.”
There was a long silence. I heard a butt hiss as it was flipped into the water. He said, “I didn’t know it would be — the way it was. I guess I thought she’d just look as if she were asleep. But her eyes... and the blood...”
“Shut up!”
“Stop telling me to shut up!”
I sensed the effort behind her calm voice. “Jeff, darling, I’m sorry. I just don’t want you to think about that. I... I have to think about it too, you know.”
“Yes, you really have to think about it, don’t you?”
“Now don’t start that. From the point of view of the law, my friend, it was our finger on that trigger, not just mine. Ours. Please, Jeff. Try to take it easy. Nothing can happen to us. We planned it too carefully. And don’t fret about Paul. He hasn’t got the guts of a rabbit. All we have to do is wait and act sad and co-operate with them. When it’s all over, we’ll wait a reasonable period of time and then we can be together.”
“On her money.”
“Wasn’t that the object?”
“Hell, I don’t know. I don’t know anything any more. I just wish we hadn’t done it. I just wish I could turn some magic clock backwards and we’d all be there on the beach and—”
“You can’t.”
“I know.”
“It’s done and we have to do what we said we’d do and then we’ll be safe.”
“And all we have to do is live with it.”
“Honestly, I... You better go to bed. And lock all your doors and windows and put the pillow over your head.”
“That wasn’t necessary.”
“You make me so sick sometimes. Good night, Jeff.”
I heard him get up. “You better come and get your clothes,” he said.
“I’ll get them in the morning,” she said tonelessly.
He walked by the boat. I heard the screen door slam a few moments later. She lighted another cigarette. I wondered what she was thinking about, sitting there, looking out at the black water. Was she seeing Stella’s face too, as I was, as Jeff was? Or did it mean nothing to her? Was she ice all the way through, inhuman, inexplicable? This creature had shared my bed, and I thought I knew her better than any other person had ever known her. And yet I had known nothing about her.
The lights in the Jeffries’ cottage went out. I heard her walk by the boat. I could have reached out, caught her ankle, brought her down to where I could reach her throat. I could think of that, yet I could not do it. She knew about the rabbit in me. She was safe in the black night.
By gray dawn I had decided. The trap was too perfect. There was no flaw. They would punish themselves. Murder was the bond on which they were going to try to build a life. They were hostage to each other, and one day — perhaps inevitably — there would be murder again.
I did not know how far I could get. I did not care very much. With luck I could find a new place, work with my hands, try to forget all this. I lifted the boat, wriggled out, walked boldly between the two sleeping cottages out to the sand road. The big car sat heavy in the dawn light, windows misted. I looked down at the beach where Stella had died. Porpoise rolled a hundred yards offshore. I walked north to the bridge and crossed it. There were no cars. I decided to turn toward Hooker. I could cut across country behind the town and head on north.
I was fifty feet beyond the bridge when the harsh voice behind me said, “Cowley!”
I stopped. They told me to clasp my hands on top of my head. I did so. The one with the rifle was Dike Matthews. I did not know the other one. I found out later that they had been waiting below the bridge, out of sight. They had not stopped me on the bridge for fear I would leap the rail into the channel. The car was up on the shoulder of the main road. They manacled my hands and walked behind me. My shoes were still wet, and made squelching sounds. They would let me walk about four steps before they would shove me hard, so I would stumble forward. They shoved me into the car. Matthews called in to say he had picked me up. Then he drove at breakneck speed back to the cottages to see what harm I might have done Linda and Jeff. They came out, blinking with sleep and surprise. I saw the confidence flow back into Jeff’s face as he looked at me. I looked away.