'Nothing like burning your bridges,' she said. 'Lead on, MacDuff.' And picking up her bag she followed Glodstone across the road and up the hillside. Behind them Peregrine had taken her words to heart and by the time they reached the ridge and paused for breath, smoke had begun to gather in the valley and there came the crackle of burning woodwork.
'That should keep them quiet for a bit,' he said as he joined them. Glodstone stared back with a fresh sense of despair. He knew what he was going to see. The Château looked deserted but the wooden bridge was ablaze.
'Quiet? Quiet? every bloody fire-engine and policeman from here to Boosat is going to be down there in twenty minutes and we've still to break camp. The idea was to get back to the car before the hunt was up.'
'Yes, but she said '
'Shut up and get moving,' snapped Glodstone and stumbled into the wood to change into his own clothes.
'I'll say this for you, boy,' said the Countess, 'when you do something you do it thoroughly. Still, he's right, you know. As the man said, the excreta is about to hit the fan.' She looked round the little camp. 'And if the snout-hounds get a whiff of this lot they be baying at our heels in no time.'
'Snout-hounds?' said Peregrine.
'Tracker dogs. The ones with noses the cops use. If you'll take my advice, you'll ditch every item back in the river.'
'Roger,' said Peregrine, and when Glodstone finally emerged from the undergrowth looking his dejected self it was to find Peregrine gone and the Countess sitting on her bag.
'He's just destroying the evidence,' she said, 'in the river. So now you can tell me what this caper is all about.'
Glodstone looked round the empty dell. 'But you must know,' he said. 'You wrote to me asking me to come down and rescue you.'
'I did? Well, for your information, I...' She stopped. If this madman though she'd written asking to be rescued, and it was quite obvious from his manner that he did, she wasn't going to argue the toss with him in the present fraught circumstances. 'Oh well, I guess this isn't the time for discussion. And we ought to do something with Alphonse's suit. It reeks of mothballs.'
Glodstone looked down at the clothes he was holding. 'Can't we just leave them?'
'I've just explained to young Lochinvar that if the police bring dogs they're going to track us down in no time.'
But it was Peregrine who came up with the solution when he returned from the river. 'You go on ahead and I'll lay a trail with them that'll lead in the wrong direction,' he said, 'I'll catch you up before you get to the sawmill.' And taking the suit from Glodstone he scrambled down to the road. Glodstone and the Countess trudged off and two hours later were on the plateau. They were too preoccupied with their own confused thoughts to talk. The sun was up now and they were sweating but for once Glodstone had no intention of stopping for a rest. The nightmare he had been through still haunted him, was still with him in the shape of the woman who quite evidently didn't know she had written to him for help. Even more evidently she didn't need helping and if anyone could be said to have been rescued Glodstone had to admit she'd saved him. Finally, as they reached the woods on the far side of the Causse de Boosat, he glanced back. A smudge of smoke drifted in the cloudless sky and for a moment he thought he caught the faint sounds of sirens. Then they were fighting their way through the scrub and trees and after another half an hour stumbled across the overgrown track to the sawmill.
The same atmosphere of loneliness and long disuse hung over the rusting machinery and the derelict buildings, but they no longer evoked a feeling of excitement and anticipation in Glodstone. Instead the place looked sinister and grim, infected with death and undiscovered crimes. Not that Glodstone had time to analyse his feelings. They rose within him automatically as he made his way across to the shed and thanked God the Bentley was still there. While he opened the doors the Countess dropped her suitcase and sat down on it. She had ignored the pain in her right arm and her sore feet, and she tried to ignore them now. At least they had a car, but what a car! Yeah, well, it fitted. A vintage Bentley. You couldn't beat that for easy identification. A one-eyed man in a Bentley. Even if they didn't have road-blocks up the cops would still stop them just to have a look at it. On the other hand, vintage car owners didn't usually go around knocking off Professors. And there was no going back now. She'd just have to say she'd been kidnapped and hope for the best.
In the shed, Glodstone replaced the plugs and started the car. He had just driven it out when Peregrine appeared, panting and dripping with sweat. 'Sorry I'm late,' he said, 'but I had to make sure they wouldn't come this way. Went down-river a couple of miles and found an old man who'd been fishing so I stuffed those clothes in the bag of his moped and waited until he rode off. That'll keep them busy for a couple of hours. Then I had to swim about a bit before doubling back. Didn't want to leave my own trail.'
'Go and shift those trees,' said Glodstone, getting out and shutting the shed doors. The countess climbed into the back seat and five minutes later they were on the road. On the wrong side.
'Drive on the right for Chrissake,' squawked the Countess. 'We aren't in England and at this rate we won't be. And where do you think you're going?'
'Back to Calais,' said Glodstone.
'So why are we on the road to Spain?'
'I just thought...' said Glodstone, who was too exhausted to.
'From now on, don't,' said the Countess. 'Leave the brainwork to me. Spain might not be such a bad idea, but the frontier's the first one they'll watch.'
'Why's that?' asked Peregrine.
'Because, dumkopf, it's the closest. So Calais makes a weird sort of sense. Only trouble is, can Old Father Time here last out that far without writing us all off?'
'Of course I can,' said Glodstone, stung into wakefulness by the insult.
'Then turn left at the next fork. And give me that map.'
For a few miles she pored over it while Glodstone concentrated on keeping to the right. 'Now then,' said the Countess, when they had swung onto a road that led through thick oak woods, 'the next question is, did anyone round here see this car when you came down?'
'I shouldn't have thought so. We did the last two hundred miles at night and we were on roads to the South.'
'Good. That's a bonus. So the car's not what they're going to be looking for. It's clean and it's too conspicuous to be likely for a getaway. But if they do stop us those guns are going to put you inside for a long, long time. So you'll ditch them, and not in any river. The flics have a penchant for looking under bridges.'
'What's a penchant?' asked Peregrine.
'What those gendarmes didn't have when you blew that van up. Now shut up,' said Glodstone.
'Yes, but if we get rid of the guns we won't have anything to defend ourselves with and anyway they're supposed to go back in the School Armoury.'
Glodstone's knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. 'Listen, you damned moron,' he snarled, 'hasn't it got through your thick skull yet that we aren't going to get back to the school unless we use our wits? We'll be doing life plus thirty year in some foul French jail for murder.'
'Murder?' said Peregrine, clearly puzzled. 'But we killed some swine and '
'And however many gendarmes you blew out of that truck. That's all! So keep your murderous little trap shut and do what the Countess tells you.'