Judy found herself slowing down a little, her eyes following the line where the ditch would be-if there was a ditch- she couldn’t be sure. And then all at once a rabbit came scuttering out of the shadows and across the front of the car. The fork of the road was just ahead. She thought the rabbit came out of a ditch on the right. She slowed down a little more and took the left-hand fork. At once the voice behind her said,
“Stop-stop-that’s wrong! I told you to keep to the right.”
The pistol pressed so close that it hurt.
Judy stopped dead. In spite of the cold a wave of heat went over her and her hands were sticky with sweat, because she hadn’t been sure whether Lona would shoot her when she took the wrong turn. She had to chance it, but she hadn’t been sure. She thought it would all depend upon where they were and how much farther the car was meant to go. She said,
“I’m sorry. I’ll back to the fork-it won’t take a moment.”
The last words seemed to ring a warning bell. There was only a moment now-perhaps only a moment to live. The thought was in her mind as she put the car into reverse and pushed her foot down on the accelerator. She couldn’t feel the pistol. Lona must have moved it.
The car ran back evenly, and then she jammed her foot right down. There was just time to feel a sudden exhilaration as they shot back, before the hind wheels bumped and came down hard in the ditch.
Something smashed at the impact with the bank-a bumper, glass, perhaps both, she didn’t know. High above everything Lona’s scream-a sound of rage, not fear. In the instant before the crash Judy’s hand had gone out to the catch of the door. The next thing she knew, she was slipping down over the running-board on to the road with a deafening noise in her ears and the glass of the windscreen broken. She thought there were two shots, and one of them very near. The car was all slumped and tilted up.
She ran for the ditch-any wild thing making for shelter. It must have been deeper than she thought, and there was a bank beyond it. She scrambled down one side and up the other, and heard another shot go off behind her. She didn’t know where it went but the next might find her.
There was a hedge on the top of the bank. If she had been less desperate she wouldn’t have got through-thorn, and holly, and something that smelled rank as she bruised it. Her dress tore, and her flesh, but she got clear as another shot came past her. It was so close that she felt it go by her left cheek, and with it there came the most horrible sound she had ever heard from a human being, the sound of a snarling fury which wasn’t human at all. If it had words, no sense of them reached her. And all at once she felt that it didn’t matter about being shot, but if this ravening creature were to touch her something would happen-she wouldn’t be Judy any more. She put out her hands to shield her face and ran into the wood.
There were no big trees, just light growth of hazel or alder, with a tangle of ivy under foot, and here and there a black mass which was holly. She stubbed her foot in its thin house-shoe and came down, her hands flung out-catching at last year’s leaves, wet moss, a fallen branch. She held on to this as she got up. It was short and heavy. It wouldn’t be any use at all against a pistol, but there is an old, old instinct to have something in your hand when you turn to face an enemy.
She had to stand for a moment to take her breath, to check the panic which would have sent her running wild-perhaps to fall again and be taken-helpless-
Something was coming through the hedge. The knowledge came to her through her ears and spread tingling over her whole body, every sound sharpened, every panting breath almost as close as her own. The horror came down on her again. If the hands which were forcing a way through the hedge were to touch her…
She was gripping the stick she had picked up. She flung it now as hard as she could to the left of where Lona was coming through the hedge. She could see her just clear of it, a shadow to be distinguished from the other shadows only because it moved. Quick on the sound of the thrown stick striking some bush or tree came the crack of another shot. That made five. Judy didn’t know how many more there would be.
The shadow began to move in the direction from which the noise of the falling stick had come. As it moved, Judy moved too-towards the hole in the hedge. If she could get back on to the road whilst Lona thought she was still in the wood, she would really have a chance. You can’t move amongst undergrowth without being heard. She set down each foot as if she were treading on egg-shells. A snapped stick would give her away-
Lona was calling to her now. The snarling animal sound had gone out of her voice.
“Don’t be such a fool, Judy! You might have killed us both. But perhaps it was an accident. If it was, we won’t say any more about it. Come along back and see if you can get the car out of the ditch. You’re so clever with cars-I’ve never had enough practice. You needn’t be afraid of the pistol-I’ve fired my last shot. You’re not hurt, are you? It would be rather funny if you were dead. It would be a marvellous shot if I had really hit you in the dark. I’m afraid I lost my temper, and that’s a thing I very seldom do. It doesn’t pay, you know- one must always keep control. But I’d been hung against the back window, and if the glass had broken, I might have been most seriously hurt. Now, Judy, don’t be stupid! Where are you?”
Judy had reached the hedge. She began to crawl backwards through the hole she had made. As she did so she was wondering what Lona had done with the torch, because she had had a torch in the car. She must have dropped it, lost it- something, or the beam would be stabbing to and fro in the wood looking for Judy Elliot.
She was through the hedge now. She slipped on the bank and came down into slime just covered with water-not enough of it to make a splash, but enough to mire her to the ankles. She stumbled up on to the road. No good to go back by the way they had come. No help in all those miles of heath and country lane. No use to take the way which Lona had meant to take, because it was a lonely road that she would choose.
She skirted the car. The torch was still in her mind, but she didn’t dare to stop and look for it. And then her foot touched it, there in the dark on the road. She felt it roll, and knew what it was before she bent to pick it up. Odd that it should give her the first real feeling of hope. She didn’t know how it was going to help her, but something deep inside her said, “It’s all right now.”
On muddy, halting feet she began to run along the left-hand fork.
chapter 43
Frank Abbott went out of the room and shut the door. There was no sound after that. Miss Silver had laid her knitting on her knee. Mabel Robbins, who was Mabel Macdonald, leaned back against the hard wood of her chair. But she didn’t feel that it was hard, she didn’t feel anything. Her mind was empty and released. The years had given up their burden. She had done what John wanted her to do and she was free of it.
March had leaned back too. His right hand reached the table and stayed there, clenched into a fist. When he became aware of this tension he made a deliberate effort and relaxed. He looked across the papers which lay in front of him to the clear, colourless face of the woman who had just told this amazing story. It would knock the bottom out of his case against Alfred Robbins. As a theory it was practicable to suppose that she might be putting it forward to shield her father’s name. But in practice you could pick a dozen juries a dozen times over, and every man jack of them would believe her. She was a witness who compelled belief. With his case toppled in ruins, he believed her himself.