“You’re coming,” said Hugh very softly, “whether you choose to or not.”
“How far?” said Dinah. “Where will you ditch me, Hugh? And how far do you think you’ll get, afterwards? How’s your passport, Hugh? Where will you get passage out? You don’t know the professional routes, do you?”
“Dinah,” he said, moving gently in upon the table that stood between me, “you used to love me—I know you loved me…”
“God!” she said, sick and furious with revulsion, “if you could only know how I despise you now! It isn’t even the killing—it’s the treachery—the cowardice...”
“Shut up!” he said in a muted scream that rasped his throat raw. “Shut up, or I’ll kill you here and now…”
“Kill me, then! Fetch them in running! What will that do for you?”
He came on quietly, in cold control of himself again after that brief outburst. His thigh touched the rim of the table. Without taking his eyes from her or relaxing for an instant the steadiness of his aim at her body, he lowered his free hand, took the rim of his palm and hoisted the table on one leg, wheeling it aside from between them. She moved promptly to circle with it as it swung, but he had manoeuvred her into a corner, and now she had nowhere to retreat from him.
She waited for him to move slowly round the rim towards her, and then suddenly she gripped the edge of the table with both hands and heaved it upright, aiming the coffee-pot at him. China and sugar and sandwiches went flying, the brass table-top struck him on the hip, but he stepped sharply back, hardly spattered, and the gun steadied again upon her. Hugh planted a foot deliberately in the wreckage and walked through it, crushing and breaking, his eyes never deflected from their aim.
“You’re coming with me, Dinah, love, whether you want to or not. You’re coming with me a little way…”
Her shoulders were flattened against the wall; she could not move any farther. His free hand came out, carefully, smoothly, and gripped her by the wrist.
The door opened, a small, prosaic, normal sound. Robert came quietly into the room and closed the door after him.
He looked as he always looked, pallid, colourless, calm, the very fibre of his clan, worn down to the essential substance but made to last for ever. He paused in the doorway to set his course, and after a moment of taking stock he began to move forward into the room. And everything went into slow motion and synchronised with his advancing steps.
Hugh dropped Dinah as if she counted for nothing; perhaps now she did. She squared her shoulders against the wall, and watched, helpless to do more. Everything had been taken out of her hands. Even the gun ignored her now, its minute, steely eye trained upon Robert.
But she was not quite forgotten, after all. Suddenly Hugh had remembered her mettle and taken her back into account. She saw that he was moving gradually aside, the gun never wavering, to work himself into a position where he could cover both of them, and no one could get behind him. Dinah moved, too, abruptly aware of the possibilities, stooping in one flashing movement to scoop up a knife from the wreckage of the table, and slide along the wall. But she had moved too late; she could not get out of his vision again, and he knew too much to shift his aim even for an instant, but still he was aware of what she did.
“Drop it, Dinah! On the tray, where I can hear!”
She could not risk the shot that would not even be fired at her. The knife tinkled back harmlessly among the fragments of china.
“Robert,” said Hugh, softly and earnestly, “it isn’t much I’m asking you for, this time. Not even to lie. Only a head start, that’s all, just time to get away. Nothing new has happened—there needn’t be any alarm. Just give me tonight, that’s all I want. Just tonight—and your silence…”
Robert had halted, only a few steps into the room, when Hugh moved to put a wall at his back. Slowly he turned to face him directly again.
“Robert, I’m not asking you to do it for me. But won’t you, for Mother’s sake…?”
It had been his trump card for years, but this time it fluttered ineffectively to the ground, and Robert’s first advancing step trod it underfoot. The pale, calm face did not change at all.
“It won’t work any more, Hugh. She’s safe enough from you now. She’s dead.”
He halted for a moment, and looked at Dinah, and the fixed lines of his long, tired features softened briefly.
“Go home, Dinah. Just walk out now and take the car, and go. Leave me with him. He won’t try to stop you.” Hugh didn’t move, didn’t make a sound; for suddenly the only weapon he had was the tiny, deadly weapon in his hand, and for all its deadliness, suddenly it was not enough. It seemed to Dinah that she could indeed have walked straight out at the door then, between the two brothers, and got into the Mini and driven away. But she didn’t move, either.
“Go, please, Dinah,” said Robert gently. “I tried to tell you yesterday that you shouldn’t so much as come near us, let alone ever think of tying yourself to one of us for life.”
Hugh drew a long, careful breath. “I don’t believe you. You’re lying to me. She isn’t dead, you’re only trying to kid me into giving up…”
“She’s dead, Hugh. Five or six minutes ago. I came down to telephone Braby. And I heard the table go over. Don’t bet on her any more, Hugh. She’s dead—it’s finished.”
He was walking forward slowly, measured step by step, and his eyes were fixed on Hugh’s face with an unwavering purpose that matched the fixity of the gun’s one minute black eye. And as he came he talked, quietly, coherently, without passion.
“Bad enough that I covered up one murder for you, and kept you fed and indulged with money ever since, so that you’d never feel the need to kill again. Bad enough that I’ve acted as your grave-digger and watchman and nurse all this time, and caused another death, all to keep her from ever knowing what you and he between you have done to her name and her life—the only two people she ever cared about in the world. That’s enough. It’s all over now,” said Robert clearly, “I can call things by their proper names now. You’re a murderer and I’m an accessory. And we’re both bastards. And she’s dead! Thank God!”
Only a few feet separated them now, and still Hugh had not moved. Robert held out his hand with authority for the gun.
“Give that thing to me!”
“Keep off!” said Hugh loudly and violently. “Keep off and let me by, or I’ll fire. I’m clearing out!”
“No, Hugh, you’re not going anywhere. It’s finished.”
Dinah was distantly aware of a loud knocking that seemed to be within her head, for no one else heard it. Then she knew it for the knocker on the front door. The night nurse arriving? The police returning? Dave coming to fetch her home?
“Keep off, I warn you, or I’ll kill you!”
And Robert smiled at him and came on, his hand extended. Dinah understood, a fraction of a second too late, that Robert had his own inviolable reason for moving in like this on an armed and desperate man, a proffered target closing to pointblank range. All he wanted, at least in that moment, was to be dead and done with it, all that long purgatory of horror and disgust. Out in the hall there were men entering, the front door stood open; they would have seen this one subdued light, and it was here they were coming. But Robert did not want them to arrive in time.
Dinah saw the slight convulsion pass through Hugh’s forearm and hand. She shrieked: “Hugh—no!” And perhaps it was her scream that diverted his attention at the very instant of firing, or perhaps in this face-to-face confrontation his hand shook in superstitious dread, and some last instinct in him tried subconsciously to turn the shot aside, for after all, this was his brother. The report of the shot closed with the echo of Dinah’s scream, and Robert’s tall body jerked a little backwards, folded slowly at the knees, and collapsed in an angular heap. And suddenly the room was full of men, Chief Inspector Felse and Sergeant Moon and half a dozen others, and Dave hard on their heels.