It was chaos then. Something in the crash had hit me on the temple, a great glancing blow. But I was still conscious as I went under the water, struggling for what seemed like minutes in the depths, with Clare gone from me now as well. And when I reached the surface I could barely see a thing through the white shroud that lay all about me.
Someone was screaming. It was Clare: I knew that thin voice. And finally I saw her, bobbing up and down in the mist a few yards from me. She seemed unharmed. We swam towards each other. But there was no sign of Alice.
I looked round for her wildly. The roof of the mausoleum had fallen right in, and the basket had come to rest on its side in the water several yards away with the squashed gold fabric of the balloon itself just visible in the mist beyond. The water had begun to calm all around us and I heard shouts from invisible people on the shore. But Alice?
I shouted for her as I reached Clare, holding her up in my arms, treading water.
‘Alice!’ I screamed. But my voice seemed faint, choked. And I realised it was from the blood that had trickled down my cheek and into my mouth. I would have dived for Alice then. Perhaps she was trapped beneath the basket or the crumbling shroud of the balloon. But I couldn’t leave Clare.
Eventually I turned, making for the shore. But as I did so I heard a splash behind me and looked back. Over by the balloon, ten yards away, I saw Alice’s head rise for an instant in the water, a sudden dark, glistening sheen of hair. Was it a trick in the deceptive misty light? No, it was her, that head and naked shoulders, half her body rising sheer from the depths for a moment with an arm raised high, like a missile, just as she had risen from this same water three months before when I’d swum with her here after we’d first met. I turned back, swimming towards the rippling circles. But I was weak now and Clare was struggling. It was no use, we would all of us drown.
I tried to dive back into the water when we got to the shore by the old boathouse and I had handed Clare over to the police who had arrived all along the banks now. But that was no use either, for the men held me there against my will and I finally hadn’t the strength to resist.
Several police swam out into the lake themselves, looking for Alice, as the mist began to clear, and I sat shivering on the stone pier, the remains of my Albanian costume in damp shreds all about me.
Someone came up to me and put a coat round my shoulders. I looked up. It was Ross: Ross — who had stalked me through this same valley months before and through the hospital corridors in Banbury. He had got me at last.
‘There,’ he said. ‘You’ll be all right now.’
‘What did you want with me, Ross?’ I said to him eventually.
‘To save you — from yourself, Marlow,’ he replied at once. ‘Rushing off like that from your wife. You see, I knew you hadn’t killed her. And I knew you were holed up somewhere in these woods, you see. I just wanted to save you … all this trouble.’ He looked round him, at the debris on the lake.
‘But I left Intelligence years ago,’ I said. ‘Why should you bother with me?’
‘We always look after our own, Marlow.’
I knew Ross was lying then. He had wanted rid of me — under lock and key at the very least — when my old department had got wind of my memoirs. He would have his way now, but I hardly cared.
I still had Clare in my arms. I was stroking her wet hair, holding her to me. Ross tried to take her from me then. But my strength came back and I resisted fiercely.
‘It’s all right,’ he reassured me again. ‘Her grandfather’s here.’
I saw the little procession of people arriving then, sliding down between the burnt beech trees into the valley: Captain Warren, sprightly as ever with his boot-black hair, being helped down the treacherous slope by a group of police officers.
Clare saw him as he walked up to us: and there was a flicker of recognition in her eyes. But she pushed herself deeper into my embrace and stayed there, crushed against me like a threatened wild animal again. When the Captain came clearly into view, standing above me, I looked up at him coldly.
‘It was never going to be any good,’ he said, shaking his neat head. ‘I couldn’t have got you out on the boat, all the way here and back to Lisbon. It would never have worked.’
I didn’t say anything. But then something struck me, as it had so often struck Alice. ‘You could have tried,’ I said with annoyance. ‘You might have trusted me. Nothing venture —’
‘But why should I?’ the Captain interrupted, his own anger suddenly rising. ‘Why should I have done anything for you — after what you did to Laura.’
He saw me as a murderer too. He was wrong. They were all wrong. They lacked faith. And I remembered Alice’s shouts, as we fell to earth in the balloon. ‘Why us? We’ve done nothing wrong! It was the others …’ And I believed her then, all right.
I turned away from the Captain, and found myself rocking Clare in my arms, looking out over the lake where some of the police were still diving about, vainly searching for Alice as the mist finally cleared and the sun rose high enough above the trees to dip in over the copper-coloured water, fingering the valley with gold. I had lived for months, I thought, in this burnt-out Arcadia — and that, at least, would always count …
Months before, a body had risen like a sword, sheer from the lake, happy in the sun — and the same body had appeared for an instant in just the same way, minutes ago, desperate for survival. Alice had disappeared. But wherever she was in the water she remained a promise I might one day redeem. Ross joined me again and we both looked out on the fruitless search.
‘Of course, she was so much her own worst enemy, too,’ he said. ‘Inventing things all the time. Crying wolf.’
‘What do you mean?’ I had hardly any anger left, even for Ross. But I did my best.
‘She wouldn’t be drowned out there somewhere, Marlow, if she hadn’t been such a storyteller —’
‘You’re the liar, Ross —’
‘Oh yes, the local police would have believed her then — when she phoned them two nights ago, saying you were with her, right there in the house with her, she said, in the next bedroom in fact. But they didn’t believe her. Just thought it was another of her fantasies. It wasn’t the first time she’d taken them for a ride, you see. Ever since she first came here, apparently — she’s had them on the hop over something or other, calling them all hours of the day and night: she was being raped or the Martians were landing out on the cricket pitch. That sort of joke. Besides, they’d been through the whole house and the estate with a fine comb, twice before, looking for you. So they didn’t believe her when she called them late the other night, after that fancy dress ball. They did nothing about it — till that nurse of hers called them yesterday afternoon. Saved a lot of trouble, wouldn’t it, if she’d been the sort of woman you could believe. But she was crazy. And that’s that.’
Ross looked grimly over the sun-streaked water.
‘You’re lying, Ross,’ I told him confidently again. ‘You’re the storyteller.’
He turned and smiled. ‘So she fooled you too, did she?’
And I couldn’t answer him then.
They took me to the police station in Stow first, where they charged me with Laura’s murder, and then to the cells and the court in Oxford the following day, where I was more formally charged: and afterwards held in custody, pending trial. That was over six weeks ago.