‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ he stammered.
‘It was too good to miss.’
There were tears on his cheeks. ‘We aren’t so poor that we have to come poaching.’
‘You don’t like seeing animals killed,’ Handley scoffed, ‘is that it? They all are, you know. I’ve seen you clearing your plateful of meat three times a day for months on end, and you don’t blubber about it then.’
Ralph’s look of bewilderment and pity for all human and animal kind changed to one of horror at the justice of the argument. Handley softened at his distress: ‘Don’t worry. It didn’t know what got it. If we all die as quick there’ll be nothing to complain about. And to tell you the truth, I didn’t think I had a chance in hell of hitting it.’
‘But you threw the stone.
‘By instinct. I didn’t mean to kill.’
They walked back the way they had come. ‘I hate violence.’
Handley stopped, gripped Ralph’s arm, and stared directly into his yellowy-brown eyes. He eats so much he’s turning liverish. ‘Do you? Are you sure you do?’
‘I do,’ Ralph said, so that anyone but Handley would believe him.
‘What have you done with that Smith and Wesson peashooter that you took from the cigar box in John’s room?’
Ralph did not know whether to feel relieved that he wasn’t being questioned about Shelley’s paper, or shocked at being accused not only of what he hadn’t stolen but of something that he might have laid hands on had he known about it. The resulting fusion of expressions puzzled Handley, who nevertheless repeated his question in blunter terms: ‘Where’s that gun, you thieving magpie?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he protested, to the jutting face smelling of aftershave and strong cigars.
‘You’d better get it back, or it’ll come up at the next meeting, and you’ll be thrown out of the community. You’ll starve then.’
‘I haven’t got it,’ Ralph shouted, so that Handley began to think he really hadn’t, though he knew better than to trust his cries of innocence. Neither of them noticed Mr Gould, the owner of the land on which they were trespassing, come up till he was barely a hundred yards away. He was a tall spare fair-haired man of sixty with a small mouth, narrow watery blue eyes, and a long chin. Ralph was embarrassed and wanted to walk away, but couldn’t because he didn’t care to be impolite.
‘Good morning, Handley,’ Gould said sharply.
‘Morning, Gould,’ Handley said.
He knocked a briar aside with his stick. ‘Out for a stroll on such a fine day?’
Handley looked him in the eye. ‘Who can say it’ll last?’
‘Still painting pictures?’ Gould had heard about him from his butler, but hadn’t met him before, though he’d seen him several times from a distance. It was good to have an artist in the village.
‘They keep rolling off,’ Handley said amiably. ‘Do you want to buy one? It’s a good hedge against inflation, though I can see you wouldn’t want one for that reason with such a nice slice of good old England under your heels.’
Gould laughed in a relaxed manner. ‘I’ll call in one day to have a look.’
‘Any time,’ Handley said. ‘You might see something you like. Drop by. No formality — really.’
‘I see you have one of my rabbits?’
‘Knocked it down with a stone. It tried to eat my bootlaces, and I couldn’t have that.’
‘They’re vermin. Impossible to get rid of. The farmers complain and try to exterminate them.’
‘Rabbits are a multiplication table.’ Handley turned to Ralph: ‘This is my son-in-law. I was showing him the landscape. Very pretty around here.’
Gould nodded to Ralph, as if thinking he was hardly worth it. ‘Still, must get back,’ Handley said.
‘Close the gate then, there’s a good man.’
Handley and Ralph went on. ‘Not a bad stick,’ Handley said. ‘He did well in the War, so I hear. Lost his whole battalion at Cassino. There were only sixty of ’em, though. The other five hundred went sick the day before the attack.’
Ralph spoke bitterly, and the serious tone of it surprised Handley. ‘You’ve no respect for anybody.’
‘That’s as maybe,’ Handley snapped back, ‘but you can tell me where that gun is. Remember?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ralph wailed, and before he could dodge it Handley felt a hard blow on the shoulder which almost pushed him down.
I should have known better, he thought later, than trust a man who has the doctrine of non-violence festering away in his heart. Timid and mild, he had a gorilla lurking inside, and not very deep in at that.
Ralph came up for a second lunge, but Handley had steadied himself, and dodged it easily, so that his large form lumbered by. In self-defence, though he wasn’t hurt, Handley thought he’d better do something, so put his foot in a sort of kick, and caused him to trip in his clumsy Wellingtons. Ralph didn’t fall at once, only ran more quickly because of it, which took him towards the bank of the lake. Handley saw what would happen and, with swift and compassionate energy, leapt at his flailing arm, and pulled him round, so that he fell into the grass only a foot short of the water.
Ralph brushed mud and grass from his trousers. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said morosely.
‘So you didn’t take that gun?’
‘No.’
‘That leaves only one person.’
‘I expect it’s Cuthbert,’ Ralph said when they reached the gate. He held it, and closed it after they had passed.
‘What makes you say so?’ If Ralph didn’t claim the credit for a robbery, his suspicions as to who had done it could be worth something.
‘I’m not sure. I’ll find out, if you like.’
‘Can I trust you?’ Handley said, feeling a new respect for his erring son-in-law because he wasn’t shy of a fight if driven too far.
‘I won’t mention it to the others. I’ll see what I can do.’
Handley, though uneasy, would take on any ally to help him find that wandering firearm. When danger threatened he was a man who still had the ability to trust his senses.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Handley went into the paddock for a stroll because he didn’t know where to put the next stroke of paint. The mass, the shape, the theme and the colour were slipping out of his hindsight.
It was no simple situation, he knew — padding through the thistles smoking a cigar. If somebody had told him a month ago he’d be worrying about John’s missing side-arm it would have been laughable, but right now he wanted to get far from the house because, being the prime voice and mover in it, it seemed that whoever had the gun was only waiting for an opportunity to level it at his head and splash his brains against the nearest wall.
He’d always believed it good and necessary to live with his own full-blown unique ideas, and fatal to go by anybody else’s. Yet this limitation had made him rancorous and self-opinionated, and showed off notions that he did have in a poor light, at the moment curtailing any imaginative ideas as to where the stolen gun might be.
It was like living in a state of war, and no artist (nor any man, either) could give of his talented best in such conditions. Only he, and whoever had the gun, knew that this war existed. The others still lived in a blessed zone of peace, and while he wished them luck for it, knew it couldn’t last much longer.
He walked along the paddock hedge. Brambles sent tentacles into the grass and thistles, so he thought he’d come with the clippers later and rake them back. Such work kept his muscles hard at a time when they might be of use.
Regretting his scarcity of ideas at how to get the gun from Cuthbert, or discover who otherwise had it, he knew at the same time that hugging things to himself might not be the wrong tack for him. His instinct hadn’t let him down yet. He needed infinite patience, and to keep his nerve while the peril developed, so as to wander slowly around the house and grounds, mulling over everything in the surety that some clue or solution would come to him. He was old enough and sly enough to try this way, though he was far from easy living under the menace of it.