He looked up at her, and his face warmed into a faint smile. “That’s quite a lot of supposing.”
“I know it is, but it adds up. And in that case we can be certain of one thing, the anonymous caller who alerted the police to come and fetch you didn’t identify the corpse. They’d want the police busy round your place with everything they had. They wouldn’t want any premature clue to send the investigation over to Pippa’s flat, because they had a longish job of searching to do there themselves. And did you notice, none of these things in her bag has her name on it—not even in the purse, now I come to think of it.”
“And now I come to think of it,” he said, suddenly rearing his head like a hound pricking his ears at the distant sounds of the hunt, “they’d be expecting sensational news by this morning, a broadcast item about the murder at the least, police activity all round our quarter. And there wouldn’t be any! They’d know it had gone wrong. They’d know I’d somehow managed to dispose of the body and get clean away.”
Bunty made a soft, smothered sound of dismay. She got up quickly, beginning to thrust the bundles of notes together and fold the paper round them. “Yes… Luke, I hadn’t thought… I didn’t realise…”
“And as they wouldn’t find anything at Pippa’s place,” he said, “not even a left-luggage ticket, the next thought that would occur to them would be that I must have got away not only with Pippa and all the evidence, but also with their fifteen thousand pounds.”
CHAPTER IX
« ^ »
They stared at each other across the table, across those absurd trivialities for which murder had been done, and the small, vicious personal treasons that make love unlovely; and each of them was furiously reckoning the risk to the other, and beginning to erect barricades.
“They’d be on the alert to-day,” said Bunty, “for any police news from yesterday. There’ll be nothing about murder, but they won’t miss the significance of a car that went through a red light, and then nearly ran down a constable, because it was in such a guilty hurry to get away from Comerbourne.”
“No,” he agreed grimly, “they surely won’t. The police up here were alerted, so there’ll be something to give them the tip down there, even if it isn’t exactly public yet. They’ll know which way the police hunt has come. Within limits, they’ll know where to look for me…”
“For us,” she said instantly.
“For me! Oh, Bunty… Oh, God, I ought to have sent you home!”
“You did try. Don’t think of it, it isn’t your fault that I wouldn’t go. I wouldn’t go even now,” she said stubbornly.
“Then let’s take all this stuff and get out of here, while the going’s good. I want to get you to the police. I’ve never wanted the police so much,” he said, and laughed rather breathlessly, tying the pink tape hurriedly round the parcel of notes. “Put your coat on,” he said. “Never mind anything else, we’ll bring them back here. I’ll bring them back here. You’ll stay where you’re safe.”
Yes, she thought, just get yourself and me into police hands, and I might even sit back and leave the rest to them, and to you.
“But we still have to avoid notice. The car…”
“It doesn’t matter now,” he said with decision. “If the police are on the look-out for me, so much the better, I’ll gladly pull in and hand over to them. The others won’t know details like our registration… or will they?” he wondered blankly, pulled up short at the thought of their complete isolation all day from the bulletins of the B.B.C. “Oh, lord, why doesn’t Reggie put a proper radio in here? They bring the transistor, of course, damn the thing! We haven’t a clue what they’ve been putting out all day, but I'll bet the gang have had a constant radio watch operating. You can pick up the police broadcasts, too, if you hunt round the wave bands. Many a time I’ve listened in to their two-way conversations about stolen cars. Ours is just the sort of item they’d be batting back and forth all day long.”
“Those people may not be all that efficient,” said Bunty scornfully, shrugging into her coat. She stooped to unplug the electric fire. “Don’t forget the main switch, you know where it is, I don’t. Look what a bad blunder they made, killing her…”
He said: “Yes…” in so low and bitter a voice that she was suddenly visited by a private revelation of the love he had felt for that wretched girl upstairs, and the hooks it still had in his deepest sensitivities.
“Here, you have this!” He thrust the parcel of money upon her. “I’d rather… You found it. And you wouldn’t believe,” he said, “what a bad moment it gives you to have several thousand pounds of someone else’s money in your hands, when you’re broke every month-end without fail.”
“It sticks to my fingers, too,” she said, shaken by the knowledge that she was uttering no more than the truth. “Poor Pippa! ” she added, and the connection was clear enough. “But we’re luckier. It’s better than fifteen thousand pounds to us, it’s evidence for you.”
The room looked as they had found it. When he threw the main switch there would be nothing but the tins and the broken china in the bin to show they had ever been here. Luke looked round him alertly, approved what he saw, and thrust the gun carefully into his right coat pocket, barrel foremost, a dormant devil. There remained, of course, out of sight but not out of mind, that pale blonde girl upstairs, impenetrably asleep in the pale blond room.
Outside the windows the world already looked dark; in reality it was no more than dusk. When they put out the lights within, the light without would revive and blossom almost into day.
Luke leaned into the broom cupboard, “Ready? I should get out to the front door, it’ll seem dark at first. I’ll bring a torch, there’s one they keep in the store here.”
She didn’t move. She knew the geography of this house now rather better than that of her own. And she was going nowhere without him. Her honour was involved. What you pick up of your own will you can’t in decency lay down. You must carry it as long as there’s need, until it can stand alone, and walk alone, and not be challenged by anyone.
The light went out, and the window bloomed gradually into greenish, bluish pallor, lambent and enchanted, casting a faint gleam upon shapes inside the room. She waited with the flat packet under her arm, clutched tightly against her heart; and in a moment light, assured steps brought him to her side. A hand felt delicately in the gloom after her free hand, and found and clasped it.
And in that moment they heard it, the engine of the car that was winding its way cautiously along the sunken lane towards the house. A slow, sly, casing note, moving in methodically and without haste by the only approach, sure of closing the box on whatever was within. They heard it stop, somewhere round the curve of the grassland, beyond the trees. They stretched taller in the brief silence, waiting for it to start up again; and faithfully it throbbed into life and came on, with the deliberation of fate itself. Nearer now, but still with swelling ground between. But for the twilight silence it might have passed for traffic somewhere on the road, innocent and absorbed, not touching them.