The lights of an approaching car swept an arc above him, rounding a curve still some hundred yards back, darkened momentarily, and returned in a steady glow, though still with the bulk of a hedge between. Seconds, and they would be here, and the car by Bessie’s side had not yet cleared his body, and had no time now to straighten out behind him. The engine throbbed, the forward leap at speed tore the long twigs of the hedge swishing after it, and the long grass surged and strained forward to follow. The rear lights reappeared large and bright, and soared away, diminishing, until they vanished in red pin-points round the next corner, accelerating all the way.
Bossie let his breath spill out of him like blood, rested his grazed cheek in his arm, and waited trustingly to be salvaged. He was barely half-conscious when the approaching car, travelling with the timeless benignity of the happy and well-disposed, braked sharply and drew up well short of the spot where he lay, and two people came tumbling out, concerned and competent, to pick up the pieces.
CHAPTER FIVE
« ^ »
The telephone rang just as George was clearing up for the evening, with every intention of putting his feet up for the few hours remaining, and renewing his perspective on the case by seeing it at greater distance and through Bunty’s eyes. He should have known better than to expect anything so pleasurable.
‘Glad you’re still there, sir.’ It was Barnes on the line. ‘I thought I might catch the sergeant, at any rate. We’ve got a rather rum thing here, hit-and-run, up in the southerly road, where the Lyons drive comes in. People in a following car picked up the victim, and the lady’s gone in with the kid to the hospital, called the ambulance and all. Reason I thought it just might be something for you, the lad who got knocked down is one of the choirboys, and it was Mrs Rainbow who came along in the Aston Martin and salvaged him. Maybe I’m reaching rather far, but unless coincidence is working overtime, there ought to be some connection. Anyhow, I thought you should know, right away. It’s Sam Jarvis’s lad. Not to worry too much, from all I gather he just got knocked sideways and shocked and grazed, no serious injuries, he’ll be all right.’
‘Thank God for that!’ said George. ‘Have his people been notified? Where have they taken him? Comerbourne General?’
‘That’s right. Mrs Rainbow said she’d call them from the hospital as soon as they got there.’
‘Good, but I’ll have a word with Sam, too. Who was it travelling with Mrs Rainbow? People, you said. ’
‘That’s right. Mr Swayne was with her. He stood by and took care of the boy while she went to call the ambulance. Now the lads are on the spot he’s taken the Aston Martin and followed on down to the hospital to collect her.’
Well, well! Not Colin Barron, not John Stubbs, none of her old circle, but our own Willie the Twig, thought George. Heading out, not homeward, with Barbara, after nine o’clock at night. That little flame of interest at the house-warming didn’t just flicker out when they were apart. Two people worse-suited, on the face of it, it would be hard to find. Willie the impervious and self-sufficient recluse, married to a forest and never likely to want a divorce, and Barbara the sophisticate and hostess, out of her world when out of the city. On the face of it!
‘Right, we’ll be out there and have a look.’ George hung up, and reached for his coat. ‘Come on, Jack, we seem to have what may or may not be a further development.’
He told him about it in the car, on the way to the quiet stretch of road where the farm drive swept down into the highway. It was considerably less dark now, with a policeman standing by to flag down any stray traffic, and lights surrounding the area where the approximate position of Bessie’s form had been chalked out on the tarmac. After fine, dry weather the surface showed nothing of wheel-tracks.
‘But the hedges in the lane want brushing back,’ said the uniformed sergeant in charge, turning his lights on the thick greenery. ‘There’s been a car backed in there on to the edge of the grass, see, backed in just far enough to be out of sight, the tracks go no further. Courting couple, most likely, finding a nice private place and reckoning there isn’t going to be much farm traffic this late. It looks as if that was the car that came out and hit him, luckily the knock just threw him clear. There might be traces on the wing, if ever we find the right car, but they could be very slight, nothing to attract attention.’ There were ends of grasses and a few small twigs brushed out from the hedge where the car had stood, and scattered a yard or two after its progress, obviously freshly severed.
‘Won’t get any tyre-marks out of that lot,’ said Sergeant Moon thoughtfully. ‘In the grass it’s just a furrow, and as soon as it touches the lane surface it vanishes. Too hard and too dry.’
‘And the other car? Mrs Rainbow’s? I hear she went with the boy in the ambulance.’ That was nice of her, and for some reason not at all surprising.
‘Yes, sir. That one was standing back here ten yards short of where the boy was lying, when we got here, heading away from Abbot’s Bale, over the ridge. Mr Swayne stayed to give us a statement, and then followed down to the hospital. Everything bears out their account. They heard a car start up, fast, before they came into this stretch. By the time they did, all they saw were the rear-lights just vanishing at the end of this longish straight. They were driving quite slowly themselves, and have first-rate headlights, or they might have driven over the boy, he was in dark school clothes, and this surface eats light.’
‘Thanks,’ said George, ‘we’ll get to them as soon as we’ve checked how Bessie’s doing.’
‘Accident?’ wondered Moon, as they drove down the valley towards Comerford.
‘Apparently. Even probably. But there’s always the odd possibility…’
‘She’ll have contacted his parents,’ said Moon comfortably, ‘the minute she had something officially reassuring to say. And ten to one she’ll stay around until the docs have been over him and voted him sound as a bell.’
His view of the alien female was illuminating, as though some false outlines in the portrait of Barbara were beginning to melt and run, and reassemble into a different pattern. ‘And if she’s still there,’ he went on positively, ‘you’ll find Willie the Twig sitting waiting for her, with all the patience in the world.’
Barbara’s Aston Martin was standing alone in the public car park attached to one flank of the Comerbourne General Hospital, when they reached it just before ten o’clock, and Willie the Twig, in his normal leather-elbowed, thorny tweeds and creaseless, comfortable slacks, was sitting on one of the synthetic hide benches in the reception area, one long leg crossed over the other, and a very old Country Life in his lap, exchanging occasional sallies with the nurse at the reception desk and the aide on the switchboard, but for the most part turning the pages of his magazine with imperturbable patience and a certain startled interest, perhaps viewing the prices of houses at five years’ remove, and wondering at the way they had ballooned since. His spiky fair hair was on end in all directions, which was normality itself, and the elongated, fleshless image he projected, from natural-Shetland, polo-collared throat to narrow classical brogues, was, if one stood back and took a fresh look at the whole, elegant in the extreme. Elegance of body and mind might well count with Barbara. Money could not match it, as money could not provide it.
He looked up when George entered, with Sergeant Moon at his elbow. His thick, reddish-blond brows shot up, and his bright grey eyes radiated mild surprise and pleasure.