Her thumbs pricked then. She let him accompany her into the small lounge where the set was kept in segregation from the vocal and gregarious fishermen, and settle her in a comfortable chair, cheek by jowl with a single elderly lady, who seemed pleased to have company, and disposed to conversation. That suited him very well. Charlotte was counting the seconds until he should extricate himself, and he did it in less time than she had expected, and without even the pretence of sitting down with her.
‘You won’t mind if I leave you to watch this without me? There’s a letter I really ought to get written tonight—I hadn’t realised it was quite so late, and I can get it off by first post if I do it now.’
‘Of course!’ she said. ‘In any case, I shall be going to bed very soon, I am rather tired.’
‘I’ll say goodnight, then, if you’ll excuse me.’
‘Goodnight, Mr Hambro.’
It sounded absurdly false to her, as though they were playing a rather bald comedy for the benefit of the elderly lady, who was dividing her benign attention between them and a quivering travel film. He withdrew quickly and quietly, closing the door carefully after him. Charlotte strained her ears to hear whether he would slip out by the side door and make straight for the garage at the rear of the house for his car, but instead she heard the crisp, light rapping of his heels on the oak staircase. Room 12 was on the first floor. Arguably he must be bound there now, but almost certainly he had no intention of staying there.
‘Oh, dear!’ said Charlotte, groping in the depths of her handbag, ‘I seem to have left my lighter in the dining-room. So sorry to keep disturbing you like this, I must go and get it.’
She closed the door after her no less gently and purposefully than he had done, and snatching off her shoes, ran silently up the two flights of stairs to her own room. It was a risk, for she might well have run headlong into him on the first floor landing, but she had luck, and was round the next turn of the stairs when she checked and froze against the wall, hearing his rapid steps on the oak treads below her. Very light, very hurried steps, but the bare, glossy wood turned them into a muffled drum-roll. Down to the hall again, and across it to the front door. She had made no mistake; he had an errand somewhere that would not wait.
She ran to her own room, plunged frantically into her walking shoes, and dragged on a black coat. She had a small torch in her case, and spared the extra minute to find it and thrust it into her pocket. Even this brief delay meant that he would be out of sight and out of earshot, but did that matter at this stage? She knew, or she was persuaded that she knew, where he was bound. And he had gone out by the front door, presumably to present an appearance of normality if he should be seen by any of the family—a late evening stroll before bed being a simple enough amusement—while she could save the whole circuit of the house by using the back door close to the kitchen. At this moment she did not care at all whether she was observed, or what the observer might think of her. The curiosity which was quick in her had now a personal urgency about it. He had picked her up of intent, had followed her into this inn for some purpose of his own. And now for some purpose of his own he shook her off, and with almost insulting lack of finesse. Charlotte was not a commodity to be picked up and put down at will, and so he would find.
She saw no sequence in what was happening, and no coherence, but she knew it was there to be seen, if only she could achieve the right angle of vision.
Her walking shoes had formidable soles of thick, springy rubber composition, remarkably silent even on the staircase, and gifted with a firm grip even in wet river mud. The right footwear for venturing the riverside path, short of gumboots. She let herself out softly by the family door, and made for the silver glimmer of water in haste. The trees that sheltered the inn fell back from her gradually, and the vast, chill darkness of the sky mellowed by degrees into a soft, lambent un-darkness, moonless but starry, in which shapes existed, though without precision. By early habit she was a countrywoman, she could orientate herself by barely visible bulks and air currents and scents in the night, and she was not afraid to trust her feet in the irregularities of an unknown path. The torch she hardly used at all; only once or twice, shading it within her palm, she let it flash upon the paler gravel of the path, to align her passage alongside the faintly glowing water, and then snapped it out again quickly, to avoid reliance upon its light as much as to conceal her presence here.
She walked steadily, using all her senses to set her course accurately. And it was several minutes before her quick ears picked up, from somewhere well ahead of her, the snap of a broken branch under a trampling foot. A sharp, dry crack. Dead wood, brought down in the flood water and cast ashore perhaps two days ago. She eased her pace then, knowing he was there in front of her. She had no wish to overtake him, only to maintain her distance, and keep track of his movements if she could. He was on his way down-river, by the waterside path that enjoyed right of way through the enclosure at Aurae Phiala. Ten minutes’ walk at most, by this route.
After that, she did not know. All she had to do was follow, and find out.
She knew, by the looming bulk of the bank on her right hand, when she reached the perimeter of the enclosure. To make sure, she risked using her torch, shielded by her body, and saw the single strand of wire, a mere symbol, that separated the path from the city site. Then, distant beyond the broad bowl full of skeleton walls, she saw the headlights of a car pass on the road to Silcaster, sweeping eerily across the filigree of stonework and grass, and vanishing again at the turn of the highway. Twice this random searchlight lit and abandoned the past, all in marvellous silence, for the trick of the ground siphoned off all sound. After every such lightning, darkness closed in more weightily. Then she went cautiously, losing ground but keeping her bearings. The river was dangerous here, still gnawing at the rim of the path. In the night its silence and its matt, pewter gleam were alike deceptive, suggesting languor and sleep, while she knew from her memories of day that it was rushing down its bed with a tigerish fury and force, so concentrated that it generated no ripples and no sibilance. One slip, and it would sweep you away without a murmur or a cry.
She had lost track of the movement ahead of her. It was vital here to pay proper attention to every step, or the river would claim forfeit. A mysterious line of pallor, the nearest thing here to a ripple, outlined the rim of the Comer as it lipped the gravel. She judged that she was somewhere very near to where the bank on her right had subsided, shattering the outer corner of the hypocaust. But so much of her attention was now centred on her own immediate steps that she had no leisure to orientate herself in a wider field. Curiously the darkness seemed to have become more dark. When she lifted her eyes, she was blind. Only when she looked down, fixing upon her own feet, had she at least the illusion of vision. A degree of light emanated from the silently hurtling water, which she felt as a force urging her forward, as though she were in its grip and swept along with it.
She was concentrating with exaggerated passion upon her own blind, sensitive footsteps when her instep caught in some solid, clinging mass, and threw her forward in a clumsy, crippling stumble, from which she recovered strongly, and kept her balance.
The block, whatever it was, lay still before her, lipped by the faintly phosphorescent rim of shallow water. All she saw was a rippling edge of pallor, but she felt the barrier as a solid ridge barricading the path. She fumbled for the torch, and thumbed over the button with a chilly hand, and the cone of light spilled over a man’s body, face-down in the shallow water, glistening under the abrupt brightness in violent projections of black and white.