“To check it doesn’t come off on your fingers?” she mocked. “’Tis in grain, sir. ’Twill endure wind and weather.”
“I never doubted it,” he said. And now he let his gaze slip down to her bosom.
He said, “Rye …”
She said, “Yes?”
He said, “Rye?”
She said, “Yes.”
It was that easy.
He stood up so suddenly, one of his feet jolted the Paronomania board, shuffling the letters from the places so that now they made no sense.
He said, “I’ll just get …I’ve got …excuse me …”
He turned and went out of the room.
Smiling, she now rose and undid her bra, letting it fall to the floor as she slipped out of her jeans and pants.
She went to the window. It took an effort of focus to get her gaze beyond the patina of rain stains and lichen which darkened the glass, but finally the grey mysterious surface of the tarn trembled into view.
Nothing moved. No wind crimpled the water. Not a bird in sight.
Birds made her think of Hat again. Dear sweet Hat, so knowingly innocent so innocently knowing. He need never know about Dick. Except, of course, that some men had an instinct for such things as sensitive as some women’s. And in any case, she suspected Charley Penn, if he found out, would make sure Hat did so too.
Was it still too late to say no to Dick? Depended on your point of view. A woman has the right to say no at any time, at any stage; that was right, that was how it should be. But to be standing here, naked, when Dick came back into the room was to shout a YES! at him which she guessed for many men might drown out a simple spoken no.
For God’s sake, if you’re going to say no, put your clothes back on, woman, she urged herself.
Too late. She heard the door open behind her.
So be it, she thought, with hardly a pang of regret. Enjoy!
As if in affirmation of her decision she now saw a faint effulgence lighten the murky air which obscured the furthermost bank of the tarn. The setting sun breaking through to bless this union, she told herself only half-mockingly.
Except, of course, it was still mid-afternoon and she was looking east not west.
Also the sun sank, it didn’t come rushing towards you!
So much for free will and independent decision. Just when you made up your mind to one course, fate coughed in your ear and set you on another.
For now it was clear the effulgence was in fact caused by the headlights of a car bowling merrily along the track which ran round the tarn towards the cottage. And there was sound too, a horn blaring as if the newcomer were desperate to announce his coming. And finally even at this distance she recognized the vehicle as Hat’s sports car and smiled at the aptness of thinking of it as bowling along. Except now it was no longer bowling, it was bouncing and bumping over the potholed and rock-strewn track without diminution of speed. What desperate errand did Hat imagine he was on so to abuse his beloved MG?
Whatever it was it meant the end or at least the postponement of promised joy.
Preparing a rueful grimace, she turned to retrieve her clothes and get dressed.
But what she saw froze her in place.
Dee was standing there. He’d come forward so that his feet were on the game board. He too was stark naked, his arms held wide, with something in his left hand, she didn’t work out what, for in his right hand he held a long thin knife. And she felt her gaze drawn down across his belly towards his crotch where his cock steepled out of a tangle of blond hair.
The car horn was blaring more loudly now, the headlights must be visible through the dirty glass behind her, Hat was almost here, but he was going to be too late. As she stared fixedly at the rampant figure before her, she knew beyond all doubt that he was going to be too late.
The MG got within fifty yards of the cottage before it hit a pothole too deep for even its sturdy suspension to bounce out of. The engine gave one last gasp and died. But it didn’t give way to silence.
Hat heard the screams as he vaulted out of his seat.
Shouting something, he had no idea what, he sprinted towards the cottage whose windows glowed with a dull flickering red like Hellmouth in a Miracle play.
Behind him, approaching the tarn, there were other lights and the screech owl wail of a siren. Help was on its way, but to Hat it was help as meaningless as prayers for the dead and the comforts of religion. Keep screaming! he thought. Keep on screaming. The screams were the most dreadful sounds he’d ever heard, but as long as he could hear them he knew that Rye was alive.
Through the grubby window he glimpsed two figures grappling, a hand held high, in it a long thin knife, glistening red …
He ran down the side of the cottage, smashed through the door as if it were plywood, and plunged into Hellmouth.
Lurid in the shifting light of a high-leaping fire, the two naked figures wrestled in the middle of the room, close locked above the Paronomania board as if this defined the area of their struggle like a wrestling mat. The lion chair had been knocked over into the grate and already its back was beginning to char. But Hat had no eyes for this. All he saw was the knife raised high …the knife already dripping with blood …
He hurled himself forward and seized Dick Dee from behind, one arm round his neck, the other grappling the knife arm, and tried to drag him away from Rye. He came with such ease that Hat was taken by surprise and fell backwards. But he didn’t release his grip and without the use of his arms to break his fall, he crashed heavily to the ground, his head whiplashing against the crystal tile dish. The flames of the fire seemed to dance into his mind, filling it with smoke and shifting shadow. He felt a gush of liquid over his already misting eyes, blood, tears, he didn’t know what except that it stung and blinded. The weight of Dee was pressing down upon him. He threw it off and as he tried to sit up, he felt something run like a soldering iron along his left ribcage. Rye was screaming again. Not for herself this time, because he could still feel Dee’s body close by his side. It must be for him, and the thought gave him strength. He tried to rise again. Something smashed against the side of his head. He flailed out blindly, his fingers touched metal-grasped-straightened as a blade cut into flesh-adjusted.
And now they tightened around a bone handle.
He had the knife.
But his assailant had something almost as lethal in its place which came crashing once more against the side of the detective’s head.
Minimum force. For some reason this phrase came into Hat’s mind from his not so distant training days. Force may be used to effect an arrest, but it must always be the minimum force commensurate with the lawful restraint of a suspect.
When you were on your back, and blind, and wounded, and losing consciousness, and grappling with a homicidal maniac, minimum was hard to define.
He swung his arm up high then drove the knife down hard. That felt like minimum. And again. Still felt like minimum. And again …yes, still well within the limits …and again …if this were minimum, what in this case would be maximum…?
The question danced in and out of the flickering flames and shifting shadows in his mind, pursuing an elusive answer among broken definitions and the shards of words. Then the rising ululation of what he knew was a siren but still sounded to him like that ill-omened bird of night rose to a climax.
Then stopped.
And darkness fell.
47
The darkness lasted a long time.
Or perhaps a short time. He couldn’t know. It was punctuated by flashes of cognition in which his senses worked but in a mixed-up way. He smelt movement, felt colours, saw sounds. None of these impressions made any sense or seemed related to any other. Whether they belonged to real time or to that dream-time which can pack infinity into a grain of sand, he didn’t know.