Skinner, dismantling the drawers of the writing-desk one by one, giggled on his unnerving high note. “Get that! He knows nothing about any money. What money!”
“All right,” said Blackie, sighing. “You want it the hard way, you can have it. We’ve got time. But don’t say I didn’t ask you nicely. If you think better of it, just say, any time. We’re going to find it in the end.”
And they set to work to find it, emptying books from the shelves, letters from the bureau, rolling back the rugs for loose blocks in the parquet, but discovering none. They took the living-room to pieces and put it together again, neatly and rapidly but without haste, with the thoroughness of long practice. But they found nothing of interest. And Bunty and Luke, so close to each other that their arms brushed at every slight movement, sat and watched the search with narrow attention, and kept silent. They had nothing to say in these circumstances, even to each other. They hardly ventured to look at each other, for fear even that exchange should give something away. Yet something had passed between them, tacitly and finally. Neither of them would dream of giving in, unless or until the case was beyond hope. Perhaps not even then; they were both stubborn people. He didn’t know what Bunty had done with the parcel of notes, but if she’d had the presence of mind to hide it even out there in the dark, pursued and ambushed as they’d been, then she certainly wasn’t going to give away its whereabouts now without the toughest of struggles. And Luke couldn’t because he didn’t know.
“Clean as wax-polish in here,” concluded Blackie, looking round the room. “Let’s have a go at the kitchen.”
The kitchen, compact though it was, was full of fitments that would keep them busy for quite a while. Blackie sized up the job in one frowning stare, and jerked his head at the youth guarding the prisoners.
“Hey, you, Con… hand over to Quilley and come and give us a hand here.”
“What, and leave nobody but him between this lot and the front door?” Con said disrespectfully. “With the lock broke? Or did you forget?”
With impassive faces and strained senses Bunty and Luke filed away for reference one more scrap of information that might, just might, with a lot of luck, be relevant and useful. They’d had to break the lock to get in. The bolts hadn’t been shot, so there might still be those to contend with, supposing a chance ever offered; but on the whole it was unlikely that they would have bothered to shoot them home now. They were expecting the boss; and the boss sounded the sort of man who would expect all doors to open before him without delay.
“Watch it!” said Blackie, without personal animosity. “You’re nearly too fly to live with, these days, you are. So if he can’t sprint, he’ll still have a gun, won’t he?”
“Yes, and instructions not to do any real damage with it!”
Con talked too much for his own good. That little weakness might have been there to be discovered in any case, but there’d been no need to spell it out and underline it. For the sake of the information they—or one of them— held, Bunty and Luke must at all costs be preserved alive until they had confided it. Once the secret had been prised out of them, of course, they were expendable enough.
“What if they jump him? So he plugs one of ’em in the leg, and the other’s out of the room and out the front door, and us all back there in the kitchen. And that’ll sound good when you make your report, Blackie, me old Crowe.”
“All right, then, we’ll make dead sure. Bring ’em in here with you, and lock ’em in the store. There’s no window in there, and only one door, and that’s into the kitchen. That’ll make four of us between them and any way out. Satisfied?”
“Whatever you say.” Con rose, unfolding his long legs and arms with the stiffly articulated movements of a grasshopper. He made a brisk upward gesture with the gun. “Come on, then, let’s have the pair of you. You heard the gentleman. You want showing the way to the store? Hey, Blackie, there’s nothing useful in there, is there? Garden shears or sécateurs, or like that?”
“Nah, nothing, we done in there. Bring ’em along!”
“After you, lady!” said Con with a whinnying laugh, and ground the barrel of his revolver hard into Luke’s ribs out of sheer exuberance. From his chair Quilley watched them go with harassed, apathetic eyes, as if he had resigned perforce from the whole business, and was waiting with apprehension for someone to decide what was to be done with him now.
All Mrs. Alport’s primrose-coloured kitchen fitments stood open, and the giggler was grubbing among the taps under the sink. The store measured only three feet by two, and some of that was taken up by shallow shelves at the back, where Reggie Alport kept his electrical spares, bulbs, fuse-wire, plugs and adaptor. Luke had to stoop to enter it; even Bunty’s hair brushed the roof.
Con watched them fold themselves uncomfortably and closely together in this upright coffin, and shrilled with horse-laughter as he closed and locked the door on them.
“Nice and cosy for two… I call that just the job. Hey, Blackie, I hope you know what you’re doing. I can’t see ’em wanting to come out o’ there.” He thumped the locked door just once with the flat of his hand. “Have fun!” he called, and went off to sack Louise Alport’s cupboards.
In the darkness, smelling of timber and fine dust, Luke shifted gently to make more room for her, and drew her closely into his arms; there was no other way of finding adequate space. Her head fitted into the hollow of his shoulder and neck; she felt his cheek pressed against her hair, and his lips close to her ear.
“Bunty…” The finest ardent thread of a whisper. “Did you understand? They can’t lock the front door, they had to break the lock. Bunty, I’m going to try to start something… the first chance I get, when they fetch us out of here…”
“No,” she breathed into his ear as softly and us urgently, “you mustn’t. They’ll shoot you…”
“Not until they’ve found out what they want. They don’t want to go to extremes until he gets here. You heard them. They as good as said he’s already rubbed out one person too soon, before he got his questions answered. Bunty, I’m going to try it. What else is there for us? I’ll try to give you the item, but when I cut loose, you run.. . .”
“No!” she said, an almost soundless protest.
“Yes. I’ll cover you… somehow I will. You go straight for the front door and out. And, Bunty… don’t stay on the road, get into the trees… This lot are car men, cross-country you can leave them standing…”
“I’m not going,” she said.
“Yes . . . you’ve got to go. You can go to the police, then, you can tell them. I’ll stick it out here till they come.”
“In what sort of shape?” she whispered bitterly.
“Alive… and not a murderer. Better shape than I was in this time last night.”
“But Luke, listen… the police have had time by now to check up on that name and address I gave them. Suppose they do? Suppose they find out your friends have never heard of me, and the address I gave doesn’t exist? They’ll be back to find out what I’m up to, what’s going on here. This is the one place they’ll make for—they’ll come to us. They could be back any moment,” she said, and her breath was warm on his cheek, turning his heart faint and crazed with love.
“Yes, they could,” he said, and his whispering voice trembled with the effort it put into being convincing; but she knew he didn’t believe in it.
Neither did she, altogether, but it was at least a possibility. Especially if, by any remote chance, someone had brought in that purse with Bunty Felse’s name on it, and tried to return it, and so set the Midshire police hunting for a missing woman, whose description would fit the totally unexpected woman in the Alports’ cottage here in Angus. Such a long and complicated “if ”; but no one is more likely to fit diverse pieces of a puzzle patiently together than the police, whose job it is. And no one has better communications.