“I don’t like sitting here – with him,” Louise said. “Couldn’t we move somewhere else?”
George looked at Niles. With the Esse stove turned up the sittingroom had become very warm. He thought Niles’ eyelids were beginning to drop.
“I think he’s going to sleep,” he said. “I don’t like the idea of moving him, we don’t know what might have been injured –”
“Oh my God, George – it’s Niles – you’d think he was some kind of innocent victim.”
He looked at his wife in surprise. Louise moved over to the sittingroom window.
“Close the curtains, honey,” he said. “You can’t see anything out there.”
“We could put him upstairs in the spare bedroom, it’s got a key.”
“I said I don’t think we should move him.”
“For God’s sake, George!”
“You don’t need to shout. I’m –”
“I’ll scream the roof off in a minute! I’m not staying in the room with that man.”
George Magruder was not a real coward, he was sure of that. The academic, sedentary life didn’t give a man much chance to prove himself in physical challenge, but he was sure he could face danger as well as most men. No, it wasn’t cowardice that normally let Louise get her own way. He loved her. These were modern times, men no longer ruled with an iron hand. They were equals. And there was no point to rows between equals, they were a pointless waste of energy.
“Look, Louise, do you really want him upstairs – with Karen just along the landing?”
Louise shut her eyes, clenching her lower lip between her teeth. Damn George, damn him, always so bloody sensible!
“We could lock him in,” she said, less angrily.
“Well I guess we could but he was supposed to be locked up in a lunatic asylum, wasn’t he? Maximum security? If he could escape from them I don’t imagine any old latch would hold him. Of course, you could sit with Karen and I could stay with him.”
“In films they handcuff them to bedposts... and things. Oh well, let him stay there.” They both looked at Niles. His eyes had closed. “I’d better take Karen her hot drink. Thank goodness she had all that cake and stuff at the party, I don’t think I could have cooked anything tonight.”
On her way from the kitchen through the dining-room and then up the stairs she felt ashamed of herself – although this didn’t improve her temper. She knew she was behaving badly. She couldn’t help it.
Despite the hot-water radiator, Karen’s room was cold. She put the tray on the bed and went to the curtains to check that the window hadn’t been left open. Down below she saw a patch of light on snow in front of the study window. Wind drove big flakes against the glass. She could hear the movement of the trees across the track.
As she made to pull the curtains her eye seemed to catch a dark movement down below. She put her face close to the pane, but there was nothing to be seen.
“You’d better put a cardigan over your pyjamas,” she said to Karen. “Here’s some Horlicks – I could warm up a mince pie if you’re hungry.”
“I’m not hungry. Who is that man downstairs? Why did you and Daddy shout at each other? I feel awful.”
“Now now, darling, we were a bit upset, that’s all. He’s just a man who was out in the snow, he’s almost frozen to death, poor chap.”
Karen had her father’s habit of staring blankly at you, as though you had just told an obvious lie and she was giving you a chance to recant. It was a common characteristic in America. She’d never discovered whether the dead-pan face was meant to express contempt, or was a sign of incomprehension.
“Why are you staring at me like that, Karen?”
“I don’t like that man. Why did Daddy lock my door, Mummy?”
“Did he, dear? You probably just imagined it.”
“No, I heard him. He locked the door. You unlocked it when you came up.”
Louise heard a noise down below – from outside. She stared at the curtains, a Brer Rabbit pattern on yellow. The walls of the room were white. She listened.
“What is it, Mummy?”
“Nothing, dear. You drink your Horlicks before it gets cold.” She tried to be casual about walking to the window and lifting the corner of the curtain. Again there was nothing to be seen, just snow cascading through light thrown from the downstairs window. She felt terrified.
“I’ll be back up in a minute or two, Karen. You finish your Horlicks.”
“But Mother –”
“Do as you’re told, Karen.”
She tried to turn the key at the same time as she clicked the latch. She put the big key in the pocket of her sheepskin jacket. She walked along the corridor, past the door of their bedroom, past the door of the store-room, past the spare bedroom. The upstairs corridor was just wide enough for one person to walk along with both shoulders almost touching the walls. Off the small, square landing there was the two steps that led to the bathroom and lavatory, and the well of the stairs down to the sitting-room.
Normally, when she went downstairs, she switched off the corridor light. She’d learned to take care of light bulbs. Twice she’d had to drive the eight miles to Compton Wakley when a bulb failed. That was the nearest hardware shop. Her fingers rested on the switch. Then she decided to leave the light on. Somehow it made her feel safer.
“Did you hear something outside, George?”
He was standing by the sitting-room window, his head turning towards her as though she’d caught him doing something secretive.
“Outside? There’s nothing outside. On a night like this? It must have been the wind.”
“You did hear it then?”
“It was the wind. Calm down, Louise, nothing’s going to happen. The police will be here shortly.”
“Yes? Walking all the way from Compton Wakley? They might never get here.” She didn’t like the nasty, brittle tone in her voice, but there was nothing she could do about it. “God, why did we have to run into him?”
“Maybe we saved his life. You wouldn’t want him out there, would you? He’d freeze to death.”
“I wish he bloody had.”
“More convenient than hanging him, huh?”
“There isn’t any hanging now.”
“There was when he –”
Somebody knocked on the front door. A heavy, impatient knock. They looked at each other. Relief came into their faces. George went to the sitting-room door. Louise followed, standing in the entrance to the hall, looking back to make sure Niles was still asleep.
George opened the front door. A cold blast of wind rushed round the hall. It was dark outside. He stepped back to the switch which worked the outside porch light.
Three men stood in the shelter of the porch, bulky figures in heavy coats and rubber boots, caps shading their faces.
“You got Niles here?” said one.
“Yeah. Come in.”
George fumbled for the door chain.
“We rang the police,” he said, slipping the chain from its slide. “Come in. They said they’ll be here as fast as they can make it.”
“Us don’t want no police,” said another man. George didn’t pay much attention. The thought of having the responsibility for Niles taken off his shoulders made him excited. He let the first two men go into the sitting-room. The third hung back in the porch.
“Come in, won’t you? That’s some weather out there.”
The man came in. George closed the front door. It took a few seconds for the three men to get into the sitting-room, their bulk jamming in the narrow doorway. When they saw Louise they took off their caps. George recognised two of them. They’d been in the bar that night he’d gone down to the Inn. A very big man with a red face and a younger guy with dark hair and long sideboards. He didn’t know if he’d seen the third man before or not. A shifty sort of man with a weaselly face.
“That’s him,” he said, pointing to Niles, who was still asleep. “We hit him in the snow, I was on him before I could see him.”
The men looked like farm-workers. The one with the sideboards looked at Niles and said something to the other two, George didn’t catch what he said, the local dialect was beyond him. He could smell liquor.
“You haven’t brought the doctor, have you?” he asked, uncertainly. “I think we might have injured him –”
“Not bloody hard enough,” said the young man. Norman Scutt had been over-awed for a moment or two, in the strange room, with the woman there. “What’s he done with Janice Hedden, that’s what us want to know.”
Suddenly he went past Louise and bent over Niles, shoving his fingers into the sleeping man’s chest. “Wake up, Niles, what’ve you done wi’ Janice Hedden then? Don’t kid on you’re sleeping.”
“Hey, don’t push him,” said George. “He might have a broken rib or something.”
“He’ll have worse if he don’t tell us where Janice Hedden is. Wake up, you, bloody madman. Where’s the little girl?”
Again he shoved hard into Niles’ chest. Henry opened his eyes. He made as though to say something, then closed his mouth. He tried to twist over on to his side, drawing his knees up under the blankets. Norman Scutt grabbed his shoulder and pressed him back against the couch.
“Tell us where the girl is, you bloody pervert!”
Henry blinked rapidly.
George frowned. He didn’t understand why these men had come.
“Look, don’t push him,” he said, his voice still polite and reasoning. “If he’s got a broken rib you could push it into his lungs. Are you one of the search parties? Look, I don’t think he could have had anything to do with Janice Hedden, he was pretty well helpless when we found him, he was walking down the hill, she couldn’t have run all the way –”
“He got her, course he did,” said Norman Scutt. “Who else’d do it? He’s a bloody child murderer, where is she you –”
He raised his right arm as though to punch Niles on the face. George felt he had to do something. Janice Hedden was their business, but he had a responsibility for Niles. He went over to the couch, catching Norman Scutt’s raised arm.
“Look, friend, I know you’re worried, but –”
“Let goa me, you ain’t got nothing to do wi’ it.”
Norman Scutt tried to shrug his arm free. George tightened his grip. Norman straightened up. They were face to face, George the taller. “You can’t hit him,” George said, frowning. “I’m as worried about the girl as you are but –”
“Oh yeah? You’re worried, are you? Then what if she’s lying out in the snow? You don’t want him to tell us where? Maybe he didn’t get time to do her in, maybe he just did his bloody tricks on her –”
“I’m telling you, we met him about a mile and a half up the road from the school. She’d only just run away. He was in a bad way then. How could he have done anything to her?”
Norman Scutt didn’t like to hear these things. It was obvious, Niles must have got her. Where was she otherwise? He didn’t like the yank holding him. He looked at Phillip Riddaway. Big Phil could take care of the yank. He looked at Louise.
George stood between Norman Scutt and the couch. He tried to remember what he’d been taught about unarmed combat in the army, during advanced training, before he’d become an education officer. He recalled vague fragments – hands smashing into throats, fingers going for eyes. He hadn’t taken it very seriously then. None of it was appropriate now. He felt embarrassed more than anything else.
“Look, I don’t think your friend should stay in the room with Niles,” he said to the two other men. Phil Riddaway stared back. Norman had said they’d force Niles to tell them about Janice. Norman hadn’t said there would be trouble. Phil didn’t know what to think.
The third man – Bert Voizey – never felt comfortable in this kind of fancy house. Like one of his own ferrets, he had a natural instinct for creeping about in darker corners. He was not at ease with loud, confident people who stared you straight in the eye when they talked to you.
“You’d better calm down like, Norman,” he said, smirking apologetically at Louise.
“Us come here to get that bloody pervert,” said Norman.
Louise took it for granted that there was nothing to fear from three local men, however angry they were. In fact, she was just a little bit pleased to see a man ruffle George’s pomposity. She wondered what he would do.
“Well nobody’s getting him,” said George. “Look, if it makes you any happier I’ll ask him. I don’t believe he’s capable of speaking.” He went over to the couch. “Hey, you awake, Niles?”
Henry seemed to cower, his eyes blinking even more rapidly than before.
“Nobody’s going to hurt you. Did you see a little girl tonight? Before the car hit you?”
Henry opened his mouth several times. He was still shivering, although it was very warm in the sitting-room and he must have been even warmer under the thick blankets.
“Come on, try and tell us, did you meet a little girl? A girl?”
Henry seemed to shake his head. Then tears came into his big, wide eyes. George felt embarrassed. He turned to the three men.
“You see? He’s just a helpless mess. I think you guys would be better employed looking for Janice instead of standing here. I’d go with you but I’m not leaving him here with my wife.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” said Norman Scutt. “That’s different, ain’t it, your kid.”
Unsure as he was in dealing with these strangely spoken Englishmen, George resented the imputation.
“I said to the police I’d keep him right here till they arrive,” he said. “They made me responsible for him.”
“Come on, Norman, us are supposed to be doin’ a search,” said Bert Voizey.
With another two drinks in him Norman would have refused to go, but he was just on the right side of caution. A well-lit sittingroom, with a respectable woman present, wasn’t the kind of place you could start trouble. Not unless you had a good excuse. And the bloody American hadn’t given him an excuse. Phil Riddaway was used to obeying men who spoke with authority.
Grumbling, Norman Scutt allowed himself to be shown to the door.
“If he says anything I’ll let you know,” George said, holding the front door open. They crowded into the porch. “Honestly, I don’t think he could’ve done anything to her.”
“Bugger you an’ what you think,” Norman snarled, but Bert Voizey pulled him away. Phillip followed, not sure what he was expected to do.
“I hope you find her,” George shouted, but they were already moving off into the blizzard. He shut the door.
“God, you really excelled yourself there,” said Louise. “Did it make you feel like a hero, protecting that poor innocent man? I’d have let them tear him from limb to limb if there was the slightest chance he knew where she was.”
“Don’t be stupid, Louise. You know as well as I do he couldn’t have.”
“I don’t know anything. It would be us, wouldn’t it? We’ve got to protect that – that animal.”
“Why don’t you make some coffee, honey? I know it’s been a helluva thing to happen but –”
When the window smashed they both jerked round. A stone fell on the floor underneath the curtains.
“Jesus Christ!”
George went to the window and pulled back the curtain. One of the four panes was punctured by a ragged hole. He could see nobody outside. He went quickly to the front door, but Bert Voizey had already pulled Norman Scutt out of sight down the lane, followed by Phil Riddaway. He locked the door and slipped the chain into its slide.
“Oh George, I’m scared,” said Louise, her hands across her throat, her forearms covering her breasts as though she were naked. For a moment he was glad they’d thrown the stone, it had taken the anger out of Louise.
“Oh don’t worry, they’re only silly bastards. Still, I suppose you can understand how they feel. We’re lucky they went so peacefully.”
It had been no easy business to get Mrs. Hedden up the stairs and into bed, with Tom Hedden interfering rather than helping. Doctor Gregory Allsopp waited in the bedroom, which was as dirty and untidy as the rest of the house, until the sedation pills began to take effect. He was tired. His car had stopped in the snow about half a mile from the Hedden farm and he and Tom – who was half-drunk and full of self-pity – had carried her the rest of the way in a fireman’s lift, Tom stumbling and cursing, his wife hysterical. Eventually it was Bobby Hedden who had helped him up the stairs with his mother, Tom being at that annoying stage of drink where everything he said and did only added to the general confusion.
If he had not long ago disciplined himself in the ways of these Dando people, Gregory Allsopp would have felt angry at Tom. Mrs. Hedden was anaemic and should have been under treatment for months. Having five children between the ages of fifteen and three, as well as doing the woman’s work about the farm, would have been taxing enough for any woman, but add to that her anaemia and the strain of looking after Janice and you had one of those cases that made a doctor’s logical mind fume. But a doctor’s logic came from another world. Doctors could see what was wrong with people’s lives – but society wasn’t interested in doctors’ views. It wanted the doctors to patch people up after the damage had been done. Any attempt to prevent the damage was either Utopian nonsense or patronising interference. He talked to Tom Hedden in what he knew were the only terms he’d understand. He made sure Bobby was listening, for it was really up to the boy.
“You must understand what the position will be if she has any more strain,” he said. “She may have a breakdown and you’ll be on your own for a long time. Do you understand that?”
“Oh aye,” said Tom Hedden, “her’ll stay in bed. It’s not her us are worried about, it’s Janice, where is she, what’s happened to her?”
“She’ll turn up, don’t worry,” said the doctor. “I’m going back to the Inn, they’ll take her there when they find her. She’s probably gone to somebody else’s house, somebody without a telephone. The important thing is to keep Mrs. Hedden in bed.”
Father and son both nodded, but he wondered. People presented one face to a doctor – as they did to a policeman or a priest or a landlord – and kept their real thoughts until they were on their own. He knew well enough what would happen – Mrs. Hedden would wake up in the morning and they’d tell her she was supposed to stay in bed and she’d get up anyway and they would let her. And perhaps she wouldn’t have a breakdown this time... he suppressed a flicker of anger. No doctor could afford to become emotionally involved with his patients’ troubles, for there were too many troubles. People like the Heddens could not be helped.
He was about to leave, fastening up his coat for the long walk back to his car, when they heard a motor outside. Gregory Allsopp thought it might be somebody come from the village to help look after the Hedden children. The three younger boys had been fed and put to bed by Bobby, but they were making a lot of noise.
It was Chris Cawsey who came out of the snow that blew round the yard. Gregory Allsopp saw people not as farmers or mechanics but in the light of what he knew of their medical history. He hadn’t treated Cawsey since he’d left school yet from what he had heard and seen he had always felt there was something not quite right about Chris Cawsey. As a boy the kind of trouble he’d got into was not the ordinary sort of trouble boys get into.
“Here, Dr. Allsopp, they’m got Henry Niles up at Trencher’s Farm,” Cawsey blurted out before he was actually inside the house. “They’m want you up there, that yankee fella run him down on the road.”
“Niles?” said Tom Hedden, his brain and his voice thick with drink. “Niles the looney?”
“Yeah. The doctor’s wife phoned the Inn, like, Harry Ware asked me to come up here and fetch the doctor.”
“Can you get up that road?” Gregory Allsopp asked. Even as he tried to think of what he’d have to deal with at Trencher’s he was subconsciously noting something peculiar about Chris Cawsey. He was excited, but there seemed to be more to it than the news of Niles.
“I reckon so.”
“You can drive me up there then,” he said. “Did they say how badly hurt he was?”
“I dunno.”
Tom Hedden seemed to be hit by a sudden idea. He turned without speaking and left the kitchen.
“Remember, Bobby,” said Gregory Allsopp, “keep your mother in bed, you’d better stay with her, your father seems a bit upset.”
“He’s pissed drunk,” said Bobby.
“And I should try and quieten the other boys, they sound as if they’re fighting.”
“Always are,” said Bobby.
“I’ll be back tomorrow.”
He was following Chris Cawsey across the yard, the beam of his heavy torch giving little light in the heavy, slanting snow, when Tom Hedden came floundering up behind them.
“You stay at home, man,” said Gregory Allsopp. “Look after your kids.”
“They’ll be all right,” said Hedden, walking on. “If they’m got that looney bugger kids’ll be all right.”
It was then Gregory Allsopp noticed that Tom Hedden was carrying something. A stick, he thought. He lifted the torch. Cradled in his right arm Tom Hedden was carrying a shotgun.
“Hey, Tom, what’s that you’ve got?”
“Where’s the Land-Rover, Chris?” Hedden shouted.
“Up past the barn, couldn’t risk bringin’ her down the hill.”
‘Tom!” Gregory Allsopp had to run to catch up with Hedden. He grabbed at the sleeve of his black donkey-jacket. “What are you carrying that gun for?”
“That’s for him, Niles!”
“What do you mean? Are you bloody mad, man? Get back inside, you’re drunk.”
“That’s what happened to my Janice. That looney got her. Well I’ll get him.”
“You certainly will not.”
Hedden ignored him.
“He’s got a shot-gun, Chris,” he shouted ahead. Cawsey made no reply. They were on the short slope up past the barn. Gregory Allsopp knew Tom had been drinking at lunchtime and then again at night. There was no knowing what he would do with the gun if he got near Niles. Allsopp ran forward, grabbing the barrel of the shotgun.
“Give that to me, Tom.”
“I need it for him. That’s who had our Janice, that Niles.”
“I said give me that.”
They swayed as the doctor tried to pull the shotgun out of Tom Hedden’s hands.
“Help me, Chris,” he called, but again there was no answer. The torch fell into the snow, its beam diffusing into a soft glow. The doctor slipped. Tom Hedden pushed his face and jerked the gun free. The doctor grabbed at Tom Hedden’s knees. The farmer tried to pull himself away but the doctor held on. Tom Hedden jabbed the butt of the shotgun into the doctor’s face.
“What the hell –”
He grabbed at the butt, but this time Tom Hedden swung hard. The stock crashed down on the doctor’s head. Gregory Allsopp went down face first.
“Let me alone,” Tom Hedden shouted. He raised the shotgun again and stabbed the butt down. Then he turned to Chris Cawsey, the gun raised ready to strike again. “I’m goin’ up there to that Niles,” he said. “You goin’ wi’ me?”
“Come on.” Chris Cawsey giggled. “You’m hit the doctor then,” he said. “Hit him real hard like.”
“I don’t want no interferin’.”
They got into the Land-Rover. Snowflakes began to stick to Gregory Allsopp’s hair like metal filings to a magnet...
* * *
The wind cut into their faces and hard-driven snow was blinding them, but the three policemen, Sergeant Wills and Constables Picken and Davies, pushed on as fast as they were able to plunge through the drifts. Their three torches made little impression on curtains of snow. When they spoke they had to shout at each other’s ears, so loud was the howl of the wind.
“We still on the bloody road?” yelled Davies.
“Look out for the big oak,” Wills yelled back. The big oak stood on the road to Fourways Cross, just before it sloped down between high banks to Drabble Ford. He estimated they had come a mile. It was two and a half miles from the main road at Compton Wakley to Fourways Cross, where roads led to Compton Fitzpaine, South Compton, Beal Bishop and Dando Monachorum. From the cross it was four miles to Dando and then they had about two miles to the farm where Niles was.
Before they reached the oak tree they had been off the road twice, the wind-packed drifts having reached the level of low banking.
On the down slope to Drabble Ford they made no faster time, for between the high banks the drifts were deeper, sometimes waist-high. They were slowed up again when they came to Drabble Ford and found it flooded up on to the road on either side. They waded gingerly across the dark rush of water, hand in hand, icy water pouring over the tops of their thighlength rubbers. Sergeant Wills looked at his watch, holding his torch across his chest. It had taken them just under an hour to come a mile and a half.
“We’d been better off in the bloody Canadian mounties,” shouted Davies.
“Keep going, lads,” said Wills. “God knows what them Dando buggers’ll be getting up to.”
He decided that they would have every reason for stopping at the first farm they came to. It wasn’t the first time men had died of cold and exposure in weather like this. At least they could be sure Henry Niles wouldn’t be travelling far...
“Us’ll have to walk her,” said Chris Cawsey. “She won’t go up the hill.”
“I’d walk a hundred miles for that bugger,” said Tom Hedden. They got out of the Land-Rover and started up the hill on the road from Dando Monachorum to Trencher’s Farm. On the way up they met Voizey and Norman Scutt and Phil Riddaway.
“They’m got Niles up there?” asked Hedden.
“Yeah, an’ I’d have got from him where your Janice is but for that yank,” said Norman Scutt. “Still, I had a stone into his window, bigmouth bugger.”
“Tom’s got a gun for Niles,” said Chris Cawsey, giggling again. “That right, Tom, you’m goin’ to show him?”
“He knows where my Janice is,” said Tom Hedden. “A devil like that – with my little girl!”
He started off up the road.
“You comin’?” Chris Cawsey said to the others. “I reckons Tom’ll create a bit of havoc.”
“It ain’t right, that pervert,” said Phil Riddaway. Norman had told him about perverts. They did terrible things to little girls.
“Come on, then,” said Norman Scutt. “We’ll show that yank he ain’t going to let a bloody kid get murdered just because he thinks he’s Mr. Big.”
They hurried to catch up with Tom Hedden. Chris Cawsey almost skipped with excitement. He put his right hand under his heavy jacket, pushing his fingers into the warmth of his belly. He felt the hard length of the knife down his thigh. It made him feel like giggling out loud.
Louise Magruder was standing at the Aga waiting for the coffee to boil when she heard the noise. She thought it must be George slamming a door. She heard it again. She went through the diningroom into the sitting-room. George was standing in the doorway to the hall.
“What is it?” she asked.
“There’s somebody kicking the door,” he said.
“Maybe it’s the doctor?”
“Does it sound like the doctor?”
It sounded like a gang of wild, shouting men trying to batter the door down.