“I’m doing you the favour of supposing that you never wanted him dead,” said Sergeant Moon reasonably.
“If I was desperate enough to want him knocked flat, I’d be desperate enough to prefer him dead rather than talking,” pointed out Brian, and smiled, a genuine if rather cagey smile.
The sergeant, unruffled, cast a glance at George. “You want him anymore, sir?”
“This figure you saw,” said George, thoughtfully, “could it possibly have been a woman?”
The boy, so little capable of surprise in other directions, was ingenuously astonished by this, a thought which had never for a moment occurred to him. Belligerent modern as he was, he had delightfully old-world ideas about women. He thought about it, and visibly the very possibility disturbed him. George put away for good the suspicion that there had been no elusive brown figure, and with it the faint reserve he might otherwise have felt about Brian himself.
“In a maxi, you mean?” He didn’t want to admit the idea at all. The broad, fair brow sweated for the first time. “I suppose it could have been, but honestly I don’t think so. She’d have to be as big as a man—I mean, well, lots of women are as big as some men, but this one—it’s hard to judge, but I’d say going on six feet if not over. Quite as tall as me. I wish now I’d gone after him, but there was this chap lying there, and I had to find out how bad he was, and do something about him…”
“All right,” said George mildly, “I think that’s all, thanks, Brian. You can push off to bed now.”
“Oh, and one thing,” supplemented Sergeant Moon pleasantly, “not a word about monks, brown robes and elusive figures. Not that it’ll make a blind bit of difference, they’ll be on to it before morning anyhow, but do me a favour, don’t you set it going.”
“No, Sergeant,” said Brian with unusual serenity and complacency, “I won’t.”
He departed, drained but satisfied. Looking back, he tried to fault his own performance, but not too enthusiastically, and wasn’t sure whether he could or not. These proficiency tests crop up at the most unexpected moments; you rise to them or you don’t. He had no special feeling of having fouled this one, as he crawled into bed and fell asleep.
“I just wanted to mention,” said Dave, “though you probably know it already, that apparently all the regulars in the bar of the ‘Duck’ were putting on their usual performance last night for this poor soul who got laid out. I wasn’t there myself, but Dinah told me. Ed Jennings was prophesying doom, and Saul was being the scoffer this time. Nearly everybody was in on the act. I don’t know if it may have suggested something to somebody—a joke that turned sour. I just mention it.”
“Perhaps,” George said, “we could have a quiet word with Miss Cressett tomorrow—very discreetly, and get the general tone. We shall have to talk to everyone who was present, eventually, but her account would certainly help us a lot. If a joke was intended, and got out of hand, somebody will cooperate. Thank you for your assistance. I’m sorry to have kept you so long. Good night!”
Good morning would have been more appropriate, although, this being Sunday, the village appeared to be still fast asleep. But as Sergeant Moon said, as soon as Dave had left them, the word would be going round any moment now that the monks of Mottisham Abbey had struck again.
“The boy won’t talk, once he’s said he won’t,” he said with certainty, “but the grapevine will have it before daylight. And by the way, young Brian could have, but didn’t. Don’t ask me how I know—simply I’d know if he had. In that case I might even have a glimmering why.”
“Don’t bother about him, he’s all right. He wasn’t just shocked when I suggested it might be a woman, he was genuinely afraid it might!”
“Hmmm, yes, I did wonder about that. And do you really think it might?” asked Sergeant Moon curiously.
“What, six feet high and a dead shot with a twelve-pound rock? Not a chance in a million! Women have the necessary capacity for malice, all right,” said George, “and the cold blood, and every other requisite—but not the accurate aim.” He settled down at the table to work out the best deployment of his available manpower for the next twenty-four hours, and only after some minutes of concentration reverted uneasily to his previous pronouncement. “I think!” he said dubiously; and with burgeoning alarm and slightly disoriented faith: “I hope!”
“Ha!” snorted Sergeant Moon tolerantly, “where women are concerned, you and young Brian are two for a pair!”
Sunday passed in a semi-daze after the police visit, which was discreetly timed and considerately conducted. They had let Dinah have her sleep out and, Dave catch up with his, and given him time, when he was in circulation again, to acquaint her with what had happened in the night. But all day long she kept saying helplessly: “I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it! They didn’t mean him any harm, not any of them. You know what they’re like, they just close up against the invader, and the more superior he is, the more they make him pay for it. But they never hurt anyone!” She said “they” only because she was referring in particular to the inner circle of the community, which was male; what she meant, what she would have said if she had stopped to think more deeply, was “we.”
Late in the evening Hugh telephoned, from one of the northern checkpoints on the circuit.
“I’ve got five minutes in hand, so I had to call you. Maybe there won’t be another chance till the finish. Everything’s going fine.” He told her, volubly, the clinical details, how the engine was running, how well he was doing on timing, and how few points they’d lost. “How are things with you?”
“Fine,” she said mendaciously. “Only it’s started raining again now.” She was sorry for the police, doggedly parting grass-blade from grass-blade round the churchyard, under the dripping trees. “What’s it like up there? Usually it rains far worse than here.”
“No, not bad at all. Nothing but an occasional shower all day. Ted sends his love. He’s just getting everything possible filled up again with coffee. I’m going to need it before the night’s out, but with a bit of luck we’re well in the running.”
“Take care of yourself. And call me after the finish, just to prove you’re in one piece still.”
“I will. Be good, girl!”
She came back into the living-room with a carefully bland face, and Dave knew that she hadn’t said a word about the night’s developments to Hugh. Why put him off his stroke when he was in the middle of something dear to his heart?
Sunday night in “The Sitting Duck” was like the sober phase of a wake. Even the jokes had gone into black, though they were still present. Eb Jennings never came in on a Sunday, preferring his pint at home after all the business of the day was over; and it was Brian who came to fetch it for him. He stayed long enough to consume half a pint on his own account, with his elbows spread comfortably across the corner of the bar counter.
“Still at it, are they?” asked Saul Trimble.
“No, called it off for the night. What can you do in the dark?”
“I swear there was more of ’em outside, picking bits of lint off the trees and scraping crumbs of earth into pillboxes, than there was of you lot inside singing ‘Through death’s dark vale I fear no ill.’ ”
“He isn’t dead,” said Brian practically.
“He would have been, from all accounts, if you hadn’t showed up.”