She poured herself a cup of tea, hobbled back to her chair by the gas-fire with it. At least in this hot weather she didn't need to light the gas and that was a relief. After selling the cottage and buying this bungalow she had to rely solely on her pension.
Her thoughts turned to the snakes again. What a terrible thing to happen. PC Aylott had called round earlier in the day to warn her, warn everybody in Stainforth to stay indoors and keep the doors and windows shut. Well, you couldn't really do that this weather, the heat would suffocate you. Those snakes wouldn't be looking to enter houses, she told herself, they would be heading for the woods and the moors, as far from human habitation as they could get.
She dozed, aware of the flies buzzing on the windows, a kind of soothing summer sound, perhaps the only redeemable feature the filthy little insects had. Later on she would give them a squirt of fly-killer but she couldn't be bothered right now.
Footsteps. She opened her eyes, listened, tried to will them to turn in off the pavement and crunch their way up the short gravel path to the front door. But they carried on, faded away in the direction of the village, sank her hopes.
Goodness, it was almost dusk, she must have fallen asleep. Surely John wouldn't be long now. She began to worry, it was almost half past nine. If he wasn't home by ten then she would go to the fence and shout for the Howarths, ask them to phone the police station for news of her nephew. The Howarths were always very good about phoning for her; she really ought to get a telephone of her own put in before the winter in case of an emergency. She'd give John until ten o'clock, no longer.
The grandfather clock in the corner ticked loudly. Somehow it was out of place in this modern bungalow but she wouldn't get rid of it. You had to cling on to a few things that reminded you of happier days.
Ten to ten. Elsie Harrison sucked her lips, it really was getting quite dark outside now. She listened hard, but there did not seem to be anybody about outside at all. Probably the villagers had taken the policeman's advice literally and were all remaining indoors. She wondered if the Howarths might have their windows shut and be unable to hear her. She must do her best to rouse them.
She reached for her sticks, had to exert considerable effort to haul herself up out of the easy chair, felt a wave of slight dizziness as she came upright. That was her blood pressure but she wasn't going to tell the nurse about her dizzy turns; she knew too much about her already.
She felt for the light switch, pressed it down. The strip light in the ceiling flickered hesitantly, took a second or two before it gave off that dazzling white light that lit up every corner of the room. Elsie Harrison blinked, had to wait for her eyes to adjust. One unsteady step in the direction of the door and then she stopped, gave a little cry of fear.
The snake was lying on the mat just inside the slightly open back door. Motionless, it might have been dead, or a stuffed woollen draught-stopper like those they sold for 75p down at the church rummage sales; except that its eyes moved, glittered and winked evilly in the fluorescent lighting.
The reptile was three feet, maybe four feet long, olive coloured, tapering from the blunt squat snout down to a fine slender tail. Now it moved, almost a lazy stretching of its entire body. See just how long I am and I'm not dead or stuffed. I'm alive!
Elsie Harrison's dizziness returned causing her to sway unsteadily and then it passed. Her heart began to pound as though it were deliberately racing against the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner, triggering off her fear. She wanted to scream, a piercing cry that would fetch the Howarths round on the run, but her throat had gone dry and a kind of temporary seizure paralysed her vocal cords.
She glanced about her. The snake barred her escape via the door and she could not reach the window without going near the fearsome intruder. Just the corner behind the chair she had vacated, nowhere else. She was trapped.
Keeping her eyes firmly on the reptile she moved awkwardly, unsteadily backwards, until finally she had the chair between herself and her adversary. She was breathing heavily and there was a sharp pain in her chest.
She leaned on the upholstery, clasping a walking stick in either hand, wondering if she had the strength to strike a blow if the thing advanced. She'd darned well have a go if it came any nearer. Oh, please God, send John home soon.
She would have to shout out to warn him when she heard him coming or else he would walk right into it. And all she could manage at the moment was a hoarse whisper.
'Go away, you devil. Go away.'
The snake did not move, just lay there stretched out across the doormat, watching her. Waiting. She wondered what kind it was, some venomous viper from the swamps of somewhere-or-other, no doubt. Her flesh crawled and her heartbeat was speeding up even faster, hurting her with those fast little hammer blows inside her chest that she had felt this past six months but had kept to herself.
The light wasn't as bright as it usually was, quite dim in fact. Perhaps the fitting was going, due for replacement.
Elsie leaned her full weight on the back of the chair. She couldn't stand much longer. The pain in her hip had started up viciously but it wasn't as bad as the one in her chest. Oh Lord, she couldn't stand it much longer. 'Go away, you devil, and let me sit down. D'you hear me, go away?'
And then something inside her seemed to explode, an agonising pain as though she had been delivered a physical blow, throwing her back against the wall behind her. She cried out, a pathetic little shriek of terror and the dimness turned to blackness. She slumped forward and the chair rolled sideways on its flimsy castors, Elsie Harrison pitching headlong, unconscious before she hit the floor.
Even then the snake did not move. Possibly there was a slight change of reptilian expression on its blunt features. One of puzzlement.
It was after nine o'clock before the shotgun-carrying searchers had finished combing the moorland above Stainforth. Hot and weary, their feet painful after the necessity of wearing knee-length protective rubber boots, disillusioned. The dogs lay panting, licking at tufts of grass in the hope of obtaining a droplet of moisture but there was none. A barren wilderness where only the heather and bracken survived, bilberry bushes loaded with red fruit that would ripen in a month or so, the domain of the grouse and the buzzard, even the free-ranging sheep preferring the lower slopes where there were patches of shade to be found.
John Price had had his misgivings from the start, a feeling that one sometimes got that it was all going to be a waste of time. You sensed you were in the wrong place but with no alternative you had to start somewhere.
The snakes were definitely not on the moor unless they had gone to ground somewhere and it was unlikely that every one of the escaped eight reptiles would have done that. Of course, the dogs had no idea what they were hunting, they could not be expected to. They were the sacrificial victims; it was inevitable that should one of them come upon a reptile it would attack in ignorance and get bitten. There was no other way; canine lives were expendable, human lives were not.
They beat out the three-thousand-acre, triangular moorland from its apex, the furthermost point. John had to agree with Colonel Marks that that was the logical thing to do even though the slight breeze was blowing towards the ragged line of police and army. You knew then, when you finally arrived at the rocky outcrop overlooking Stainforth village, that the poisonous reptiles were not on the moor. A process of elimination. Tomorrow it would be the grassy slopes down to the arable land that would be thrashed out. On day three it would be the barley and oilseed rape fields. And after that...
Nightfall was the snakes' greatest ally. They could have been lying low further down by day and with the coming of darkness they might start to move. Upwards. So tomorrow whilst the searchers toiled down below, their prey could be safely ensconced several hundred feet above them up on the moorland.