‘Well, now I’ve seen everything! I’ve known kids driven in here in a state of mutiny, but I’ve never before known one come back for more out of hours. You’ve made my day. But I shudder to think what you’re laying up for yourself. Do you realise it’s getting on for ten? Your parents must be worried sick about you. Whatever possessed you to hide away in here like this?’
He sounded just as he had sounded in the afternoon, patient, tolerant and amused, and that gave him every right to take the mickey, in his airy way. Bossie drew a little nearer, cautiously but placatingly.
‘I wasn’t going to steal anything, or do any damage. But did you know there are stories that the last prior buried the church plate and treasures somewhere here? I wanted to try and find them, make some fabulous discovery and get to be famous. But if I’d found anything, I should have told!’
‘I’m sure you would,’ agreed the guide with amusement, and studying him very attentively. ‘Well, that’s all very nice, I dare say, and no doubt places like this ought to be bulging with buried treasure all over the shop. But we’ve exhausted the possibilities in this part, you know, and you are rather wasting your time. As well as frightening your folks half to death, I should think. And just as well for you it happens to be me making the rounds tonight, and not the warden, he’d have you frog-marched up to the police station in no time flat. You be thankful he wanted to go out tonight, and I volunteered to do the locking up for him.’
‘Oh, I am!’ agreed Bossie fervently. ‘But I didn’t mean to do anything wrong, really, and I didn’t realise it was as late as all that.’
‘I should think not! Do you realise you could have got yourself locked in here overnight? That would have scared them even worse, and I don’t suppose you’d have been feeling quite so cocky yourself when it got really cold. So now hadn’t you better tell me where you live, and let me drive you safely home? And don’t blame me if you get your behind tanned when you get there!’
That was when Bossie made his great mistake, and after that there was no salvaging it. Obviously he couldn’t let himself be driven home, having accounted for a night’s absence, or in the stress of the moment he had no time to realise that that would now have been his safest and sanest course, however many awkward explanations it might involve. He never gave up his enterprises easily; and before he had time to think he heard himself politely declining this fair offer.
‘That’s awfully kind of you, really, but you see I’m staying with some friends for tonight, here in Mottisham. So my people won’t be worrying about me. But thank you, all the same. It’s only five minutes’ walk.’
There was a brief and deep silence. The guide did not move from his position with his back against the door, and his eyes narrowed thoughtfully upon the small, stolid figure before him, though he continued to smile and speak with amused resignation.
‘It is, is it? And home, I suppose, is somewhere a good deal further away. But surely somebody must be wanting to know where you’re prowling at ten o’clock at night? What sort of friends do your parents have, if they let you run wild to this hour?’
Bossie floundered in deeper in his haste, and felt the morass of all too detectable fibs tugging at his feet, but it was too late to draw back. ‘Oh, they weren’t expecting me very early, because I told them I should be coming late from my music lesson.’
‘About three hours late, I imagine,’ said the young man drily.
He ought to have known. He could see all the flaws himself. A twelve-year-old’s music lesson would be arranged for a civilised hour like half past six or seven. He’d given himself away completely. It wouldn’t take a genius to conclude that he was lying about his night’s lodging, and it wasn’t a long step from that to concluding positively that he had so played off the two ends against each other as to leave his parents convinced he was safe with a known host in Mottisham, while the supposed host had no notion whatever that he was anywhere but in his own bed at home. In short, nobody knew where he was, or what he was doing…
The fair young man heaved a philosophical sigh, smiled at him even more benevolently, and reaching a hand into his pocket, drew out a bunch of keys, and selected the right one with a flick of long fingers. Silently he closed the door, and moving aside for the first time, turned the key, and locked them in together.
Perhaps the act in itself would have been enough, but it was what the act revealed that hit Bossie like a lightning-stroke. For a moment he stopped breathing, frozen with shock. The flooding light that had blazed down on them all this while now fell for the first time directly on the right hand that was so deliberately turning the key. and on the third finger of that hand was a large, flattish seal-ring made from a black stone like an onyx or a very dark moss agate. He had seen just that motion and just that flat flash from the polished blackness once before, and had failed to remember and identify it. Among the tangle of tombs under the church tower that same hand, wearing the same ring, had turned up Rainbow’s limp head to the light of a torch No other part of the nocturnal marauder had been lit like that. Now the turn of the long muscular hand echoed the same gesture, and memory recovered from the paralysis of shock. He didn’t know who this man was, but he knew all too well what he was. He was Rainbow’s murderer.
And he, Bossie, was locked in with him, and like a fool he had brought it on himself. If only he’d jumped at the offer to drive him home, maybe snivelled a little and repented of his adventure, this man might have been reassured that he knew nothing, had nothing to tell, could never identify him; and he might have done just what he had offered, driven him home and stopped worrying about him. Which would have been his mistake. But now Bossie was the one who’d made the mistake. There was only one thing he hadn’t betrayed, and that was that all five of his companions of the afternoon knew very well where he was, and could tell the police as soon as it dawned on somebody that something was wrong. If he dropped that out now, casually, or deliberately and with obvious intent, would he be believed? And would it make any difference now? No, it was too late. If he’d blabbed all that like a scared kid right at the beginning, it might have worked, his captor might have decided it was too dangerous to make away with him, and returned to his role of tolerant Dutch-uncle. Not now! He’d watched the door being closed, and the murderer had watched his face as he took in the significance of the act. It would take more than a sudden story of five potential witnesses to undo that. Even if he was believed, it would only hasten whatever was going to happen, to get him out of the way at once, and Bossie was pretty sure he was in no hurry to get on with it.
Which left only the delaying tactics of gormless, childish stupidity, innocence almost incredible. Notice nothing, admit nothing, remain trustingly ingenuous, not to say imbecile.
He shuffled his feet uneasily, and crossed his eyes, as he could do at will, though he never knew when he did it involuntarily. ‘I’m sorry, it wasn’t really true, that stuff I told you. I shouldn’t have tried to fool my parents like that. Maybe I ought to go home, after all. I only wanted to explore… I did tell them I was going to stay with Philip Mason, I’ve often done it before, so they won’t be anxious. But it wasn’t right, was it? You know, I’m ever so glad you came. I don’t really like this place, after all, not now it’s dark…’ Bossie could raise a tear just as nimbly as he could raise a fist, and produced a heart-rending contortion of a face never notable for beauty, as well as a genuine trickle down his cheek. And all the while he knew it wasn’t any good. His brains did show so plainly!
They were working frantically now. He was sure this man knew the name James Jarvis, and his address, from the Locke anthem he had lost in the churchyard, but did he know what James Jarvis looked like? At least he’d gone to the trouble to find out Bossie’s routine, enough to hunt him down on his way home from the music lesson. But there might still be room for confusion. To some people all kids of about the same age looked alike. Who else of comparable age lived up that same road?