Edward’s demeanour, when she joined him in the lane, quite failed to reassure her. His air of serious concentration, his vigilant peering ahead and around, showed her again that he was doing no more than humouring her and was perhaps already rehearsing his indulgent rebuke of her overheated imagination, fondness for sensational fiction and more. So what actually happened when they got to the cottage came as a surprise as well as a shock to them both.
Before Lucy had had time to do more than wonder what Edward had in mind, someone indoors gave a loud scream. It was a different sort of sound from anything she had heard as part of any film or imagined from reading any book; it might have come from a man or a woman or even an animal, and it set up a violent tingling at the back of Lucy’s neck, hot or cold, she could not tell which. There were other noises too that might have been bodies striking against furniture. Somewhere at the back a door opened. Edward caught her arm and led her a few yards in that direction before dropping into a crouch behind an evergreen bush and pulling her down beside him. They heard a shout or two, not nearly as loud as the scream, and then a man unknown to them came out through the doorway in an irregular walk, very much like somebody trying to make his way along the deck of a ship in rough weather. He had not gone far when he collapsed on the ground near a water butt, though his arms and legs still moved.
So far, things had seemed to happen slowly, but now they greatly speeded up. Another man, one with blood on his forehead, one recognizable as Colonel Procope, came running out of the cottage and flung himself on top of the man on the ground. It was hard to follow details, but soon a voice said or called something and the first man no longer moved. The colonel got to his feet and stood for a moment, swaying slightly and panting and looking down at the other, who was dead; Lucy had never seen death before, but she found she knew it when she saw it. Then the colonel took the corpse’s wrists in a businesslike way and started to drag it face upwards towards the shed.
‘That’s Green,’ Edward muttered to Lucy and at once sprang up and ran towards the two figures. She followed. Procope turned and saw Edward and gave him a blow that sent him down into an all-fours position. Lucy went for the colonel, who hit her on the side of the jaw with his fist. She too went down, afraid she might be sick, able to see but not very well, as if through a flyscreen. By the time she was fully herself again, Colonel Procope had shut the door of his expensive car and was driving off, scattering gravel from under his tyres as he turned into the lane. Edward followed, but some distance behind, and when Lucy reached him he had already given up the chase.
‘Damn,’ he said. ‘He can’t get far, but he might—’
‘You never know. Come on,’ she said, running past him.
He came up with her. ‘I’ll never catch him in my car.’
‘I’ve got another idea’ — one she thought was hopeless but was going to try.
‘It’s no good.’
‘Just run.’
Lucy soon forged ahead. She had won both the 100 yards and the 220 in her last year at school, but she had run no faster then than now, despite her riding clothes. Her speed may even have increased when she saw ahead of her that, in his haste, Colonel Procope had overshot the bridge and was now backing and trying to turn his car. At one point he must have stalled, for she heard the high rattle of the starter. Then she had run far enough, and at her best speed hurried to Boris, unhitched him and got him back to the lane in time to meet a flushed and gasping Edward.
‘Get up behind me,’ she said from the saddle. She could see the colonel’s car crossing the bridge.
‘What are you—’
‘Do as I say.’
He managed it somehow. Apparently unaffected by the double load, Boris made good time down to the river and stoutly set about carrying them across the ten-yard stream. The water, so cold it burned, reached her knees. That was the end of her remaining sandwiches. Edward’s arms were fast round her middle. She heard the approaching sound of the car. Then they were across and Edward swung himself clear and scrambled up the short slope to the edge of the road, putting his hand inside his jacket as he moved. He turned and faced the oncoming car and what happened next seemed to happen all at once. Lucy heard a loud noise between a pop and a sort of sharp crash and again, although she had never heard a revolver fired before, she recognized it. The car swerved away from her, then towards her, narrowly missing her before it ran on to the verge on the river side and stopped there as suddenly as if it had run into a brick wall.
Boris, who had endured the events of the last minute with the calm of a police horse, blew down his nostrils. Edward turned to Lucy and took her hands more tightly than before. His look just then reminded her of the Edward of years before, when he had been a noted cricketer with, she remembered hearing, an aggressive batting style. For no reason she was aware of, tears sprang to her eyes.
‘I’m not thinking of him,’ she said, not knowing whether she meant Green or Colonel Procope or the two together.
‘Neither am I,’ said Edward.
Near them, Boris contentedly stamped and snorted.
III
‘One bit of news,’ said Edward. ‘The bullet missed not only him but his car. Some shooting, what? I never could learn even how to hold one of those things.’
‘Just as well. But what happened?’
‘Well, let’s say he spun the wheel round with some idea of spoiling my aim, saw he’d swung too far, went the other way, also too far, and drove straight into a hunk of stone he probably never even saw, fast enough to cause him to bash his head in on the inside of his car. Not a man to react coolly to sudden difficulty or danger, the late colonel. As earlier actions of his had suggested.’
Lucy looked out of the pub window towards the green hedgerow, more brightly sunlit now than when she had last seen it. ‘I suppose we’ll never know what Green had on him that made him worth the colonel’s while to dispose of.’
‘In the colonel’s own far from infallible estimation. What a silly fellow, as well as a thundering nasty one. Our friends in the, er, our competitors were well advised not to trust him with anything of great importance. No, I think you and I probably wouldn’t say thank you for being told the secret of Colonel Procope. What a damn silly name. Can I tempt you to another of those?’
‘Thank you, Edward, in a moment.’ She went on in bit-by-bit style, ‘You know… when I telephoned you that evening, and got you to come out and meet me, I realize now it was all fantasy, really. I just wanted to have a lovely storybook adventure, with you in it. Schoolgirl stuff.’
Edward said quickly, before he could think better of doing so, ‘I wondered whether it might be something like that, but it didn’t bother me at all. I wanted to see you. That was enough.’
‘Oh. But you brought your pistol with you.’
‘So I did.’ He laughed. ‘Just company training. Motto, better safe than sorry. Well, your adventure duly turned up, didn’t it?’
‘It certainly did. That was just as well too.’