“No,” she said at once, “not that. Because I think murder was done that evening. But not by you.”
“I wish to God,” he said, trembling, “you could convince me.”
“Give me a chance to try. Let me look at that bump of yours, where you hit the table—if you did hit the table.”
He sat charmed into obedient stillness as she took his head in her hands and turned him a little to get the full light from the window on the place. She felt his lean cheeks, cold with his long weariness, flush into warmth and grow taut with awareness of her touch. His eyes, which he had closed at her approach, as a measure of his devoted docility, opened suddenly and looked up at her, moved and dazzled. For the first time she realised how young he was, surely three or four years short of thirty. She was looking at an over-wrought boy, who had delivered himself into her hands, now absolutely defenceless. And she had promised him a miracle! Miracles are not easy to deliver; she trembled with him as she thought of her responsibility.
“It’s crazy,” he said, shivering. “After all this, I don’t even know what to call you.”
“Most people call me Bunty. Bend your head forward… that’s it.”
The mark of the blow he had taken was there to be found without difficulty, a swollen, tender pear-shape, above and if anything slightly behind his right ear. The forward end of it was higher, and only there was the skin slightly broken in one spot. She parted the thick dark hair to examine the mark carefully.
“I’m not a doctor, or even a nurse. But unless you’ve got a table with padded edges, it certainly wasn’t the table that did this. If you’d hit any sharp edge you’d have had a considerable cut.”
“There’s an old wooden-framed chair with leather upholstery,” he said indistinctly from under the fall of tangled hair. “It was close by the table, on my right. Not the overstuffed kind, you’d feel the wood underneath, all right, if you fell on it. It could have been the back of that.”
“It could… but you’d have had to fall sideways… or else to turn your head sharply as you fell. You’ve got a diagonal welt, like this…” She drew her fingers along it, and their course ended decidedly behind his ear. “It looks to me much more the kind of mark you’d have if someone had come up behind you and hit you one nice, scientific tap to put you out for the count. And somebody who knew how to go about it, and had the right sort of tool for the job.” She smoothed back his hair over the tender place, and came round the arm of the couch to face him. “Maybe a piece of lead piping inside a sock,” she said. She was smiling, faintly but positively. “Or more likely the simplest thing of all, a rubber cosh.”
He fingered his bruise and gaped at her dazedly. “But it’s mad! If you’re thinking of a common burglary, there wasn’t a thing in the place worth a man’s while. Nobody’d be bothered burgling a cottage belonging to the likes of Bill and me, why should they? They always seem to know where the right stuff is. And if you mean something less accidental… if you’re thinking I might have some sort of connection with crooks… I swear I haven’t. I’ve never had anything to do with anybody like that. Not out of virtue, or anything, they just never came my way.”
“You’ve got something there,” she agreed. “The people who carry coshes are much the same sort of people who carry guns.” She added pointedly: “Pippa had a gun. You hadn’t any acquaintance among the pros., but how do you know she hadn’t?”
After a long moment of hurried calculation, swinging hurtfully between his anxiety to grasp at this life-line and his terror of finding it gossamer, he asked very quietly, his eyes clinging desperately to her face: “Bunty… do you really believe what you’re saying? You wouldn’t try to… soothe me, would you? Just out of kindness?”
“No,” she said sturdily, “I wouldn’t. I’m only saying what I mean.”
“Then… what do you think happened?”
“I think someone else walked into that room—and I’ll back my judgment by betting you what you like that you had your back to the door and Pippa was facing it— laid you out economically with a knock on the head, and then dealt with Pippa. For some reason of his own, which we don’t know. As evidence for her having got involved in something in which she was out of her depth, there’s the gun. As you say, what would such a girl as Pippa want with a gun? Where would she get one? It’s the pros, and the would-be pros, who carry them. So there was Pippa dead, and you beautifully set up to take the blame. So beautifully that you yourself believed you’d killed her. That’s the lines on which I’m thinking at this moment. But as yet we’ve hardly begun.”
“Then in any case it looks as if I’ve cut my own throat, doesn’t it?” he said with a lopsided grin. “I’ve run out and pointed the finger at myself. What do I do now? Who’s ever going to believe I can possibly be innocent?”
“They might,” said Bunty. “I believe it.”
“Ah, you!”
She saw it in his eyes then, though she was too intent on the matter in hand to pay much attention, that for him she had become a creature immeasurably marvellous and unforeseen. But he didn’t expect to find more than one of her.
“Bunty, what am I to do now? Go to the police and give myself up?”
“No,” said the law-abiding police wife without hesitation. “Not yet! I’ve burned my boats, too, remember? I bought a few hours for consideration by lying to the police and sending them away. I gave a false name. To them I’m an accessory after the fact. What we do now is make use of the short time we’ve got in hand. Before we go to the police, let’s see exactly what we have got, and have a go at making sense of it. The more evidence we can hand to them, the better prospects we’ve got.”
“We?” he said softly, and one black eyebrow went up unexpectedly in sympathy with the corner of his mouth. A slightly wry, slightly careworn smile, but nevertheless a smile, the first she had seen on this haggard face.
“We!” she repeated with emphasis. “And the very first thing you do is get a few hours’ sleep… and a bath, if it’ll help. You’ve had no sleep for two nights, and I haven’t had much, and we’re going to need our wits about us. I’ll tidy up this mess, and then I’ll snatch a sleep, too.”
“A bath!” His face brightened childishly. “I never thought I should be looking forward to anything again!”
“Go and get it, then. You’ll be more use when you’ve had a rest, and can think straight again.”
He rose and made for the door like a bidden child, dropping with sleep, but in the doorway he turned once again to look at her long and earnestly. His eyes had cleared into a pure, tired greyness, young and vulnerable and still heavy with trouble, but hesitant now on the edge of hope.
“Bunty…”
She was already gathering up the scattered dishes from the tea-stained cloth, and piling them on the tray. She looked up at him inquiringly across the table.
“… what’s the Bunty short for?”
She smiled. “Bernarda. But I don’t tell everybody that. They took to calling me Bunny, and I wasn’t having that, cuddly was the last thing I intended to be. So I twisted it into Bunty myself. At least that’s got one sharp angle to it. What can I call you?”
“Luke. My name’s Luke Tennant. All sharp angles. Bunty… Bernarda…” His voice touched the names with timid delicacy, like stepping-stones to what he wanted to say. “I’m sorry!” he blurted painfully. “Did I… hurt you very much…?”
“No!” she said quickly. “Hardly at all. It’s all right!” She had scarcely noticed the stiffness and soreness of her throat, and touched the bruises now with surprise.