Everyone was being so sympathetic that Caroline felt sick.
As this was the condition which everyone seemed bent on assuming she was in, all that happened was more sympathy. The store manager fetched glasses of water and the police. The police asked if she had been unwell recently, slanderously hinting at the imminence of her menopause. Her uncle, Professor Nevis, appeared after half an hour and offered to summon her doctor.
All present nodded their heads sagely at the mention of the doctor.
‘I am not ill !’ snapped Caroline. ‘Listen, you Lieutenant or whatever you are …’
‘Inspector Servis, miss.’
‘… all right, Inspector, I don’t know who and I don’t know why, but someone planted that thing in my bag.’
She pointed dramatically at the silver bracelet which gleamed accusingly on the manager’s desk.
‘You were in the jewellery department?’ said the Inspector.
‘No! Well, I may have passed through on my way somewhere else.’
The tall woman spoke. Her name was Miss Park and she was a store detective.
‘A young man informed one of the assistants that he believed he had observed a woman removing a bracelet from a display in Jewellery. The description he gave fitted Miss Nevis, whom I observed sitting at a table in our restaurant. I left someone to watch her and checked her movements in the store. This proved fairly easy, as her behaviour had drawn some attention. She was going around with old receipts checking on the items represented by the stock numbers entered there.’
‘So what?’ said Caroline. ‘Why should I draw attention to myself? And where’s this young man who put the finger on me?’
‘As you will know from your work, Inspector, witnesses are frequently reluctant to become involved. The young man did not leave his name. However, I felt I had sufficient to work on, a check with Jewellery having revealed a bracelet to be missing, so I went to the main entrance and apprehended Miss Nevis as she tried to leave.’
‘Tried to leave!’ exploded Caroline. ‘You make it sound like a break-out!’
In one corner of the room Professor Nevis was talking persuasively to the manager. Caroline subsided in time to get the tail-end of their conversation.
‘It’s not up to me, sir,’ said the manager. ‘Our general policy is to prosecute. I’ll have to consult the chairman.’
‘Please do that,’ said Nevis. ‘I’ll have a word with him myself. Now I wonder if I could take my niece home?’
‘Well, sir?’ said the inspector to the manager.
‘Look, I’m not sure whether we’ll want to prosecute or not. I’d like time to talk to my employers.’
Servis looked doubtful.
‘It’s not usual,’ he mused. ‘Still, in the circumstances, and as Miss Nevis is a foreign national, perhaps we could leave the decision in abeyance for a while. Miss Nevis, you must understand that this investigation is still proceeding and you must make yourself available for further questioning. You will be remaining in Lincoln for the next few days?’
‘Yes. I’ll vouch for that,’ answered Nevis, shaking his head sternly at Caroline’s attempted protest.
‘In that case,’ said the inspector, opening the door, ‘I would have that word with the young lady’s doctor, sir. A professional opinion’s always worth while.’
With difficulty Caroline restrained herself from striking him. Shaking with anger, she stuffed her belongings back in her bag.
‘I can still walk by myself, James,’ she snapped at the professor, who offered her the support of his arm as they left the shop.
‘Of course, my dear,’ he answered. ‘My car’s over the road. Let’s go home and have a couple of stiff ones, shall we?’
She glared at him in exasperation and wondered if anyone had ever been driven to murder by a surfeit of kindness.
‘No, you go on,’ she answered. ‘I’ve got some books to pick up at the university library. I’ll probably work there for a couple of hours.’
She walked quickly away before he could raise any objections. When she glanced back after fifty yards or so he was still standing on the pavement, tall, distinguished and worried, gazing after her. It made her feel guilty and she almost went back to him. Instead she raised a hand in greeting and went on her way. So busy were her thoughts that it did not occur to her to wonder as she glanced back why the flaxen-haired man with the newspaper protruding from his pocket should have felt it necessary to halt and purchase another from the kerb-side vendor.
Hazlitt managed to get himself back within a yard of the shore, but with Tom (Mark II) standing there it might as well have been a mile. There is a limit to the amount of time even an expert swimmer can keep afloat with his arms and legs securely bound. Paradoxically the experience of being drowned tends to stretch out this time rather than shorten it. Seconds swell to minutes and a minute can hold enough pain and fear to curdle a lifetime.
Traditionally a man’s whole past flashes across the inward eye in such circumstances. Hazlitt kept the past out, refused to look, tried instead to reach for a future which included him alive and well and living in Leamington Spa. Or Luton. Or even Llandudno. Yes, he would willingly accept such dreadful exile. But God was in no mood for making bargains and at last the pictures started to flicker. Mercifully they were all good pictures—himself aged nine reading Wind in the Willows for the first time; the letter bearing news of his university scholarship; the exquisite niggle with which he won the JCR shove-half-penny competition; the bottle of Château Pavie ’55 which he had thought of keeping for another year but which, God be praised, he had drunk on his last birthday; and, last of all, the face of a girl, in theory all he hated most in women, young, bright, pert, voluble, American, but now last and best in his mind before the lights went out and all pictures faded into utter darkness.
Stewart Stuart, the university Registrar, was a large man, quite impassable when he stood as he did now in the centre of one of the aisles in the library.
Caroline’s claimed destination had merely been a lie to get herself away from Professor Nevis, but on further reflection if had appeared a good place to go and have a quiet brood on recent events.
‘Well, Miss Nevis, hello!’
His voice had the volume of a large man’s but none of the jolliness. The Scottishness suggested by his name was completely absent. Caroline supposed the name itself was some ghastly parental practical joke. A female dwarf librarian appeared at the end of the aisle and looked at them reprovingly.
‘Well hello !’ repeated Stuart. Repetition was a feature of his public oratorical style. And of his work methods, so his underlings asserted. ‘Where’s Hazlitt? Eh? That’s the question. Where’s Hazlitt?’
‘Sh!’ said the dwarf librarian. ‘Over there. 820.4, Literary Criticism, English.’
‘No. Not that Hazlitt. Not that Hazlitt. William Blake Hazlitt, I mean. Foolish woman!’
He shook his head ferociously at the dwarf librarian, who retreated saying, ‘Blake 821, English Poets. To your left,’ till she and her voice disappeared at the same time.
‘I’m afraid I don’t know,’ said Caroline.
‘Don’t know? Don’t know?’ said Stuart, varying the stress meaninglessly. ‘What I think is, what I think is … not possible. No.’
‘What do you think?’
‘What I think is … Poulson! What do you think?’
A rather grey young man who had appeared momentarily at some distance looked round in surprise at being hailed as though on the open sea. He was Thomas Poulson, lecturer in the Law Department, and Hazlitt’s favourite squash opponent, as his tendency to sudden fits of abstraction made him easily beatable.
He approached cautiously.
‘Yes?’ he said. ‘What is it you want, Stuart?’
Caroline tried to work out whether the Registrar was being addressed familiarly by his Christian name or formally by his surname.
‘Have you heard from Hazlitt?’
Poulson ingested the question slowly.
‘No,’ he said finally.
‘There!’ said Stuart triumphantly. ‘There! And Africa are on the phone all the time.’
‘Oh, are it?’ said Poulson. Caroline giggled.
‘Someone’s got to work,’ said Stuart, and strode purposefully away.
‘What’s he doing in the library?’ wondered Poulson.
‘You’re a bit off the beaten track yourself,’ said Caroline.
‘Oh, hello, Caroline,’ said Poulson, as though noticing her for the first time. ‘I’m after thrillers. Do you have thrillers?’
‘From time to time,’ said Caroline. ‘You mean books?’
‘Yes. They always get their law wrong, you see. I thought they might provide some interesting seminar problems.’
‘Thomas,’ said Caroline, ‘do you have a moment? I have an interesting seminar problem.’
She drew him into a working alcove and they sat down. At first her intention was merely to pour her worries about Hazlitt into a friendly ear, but it struck her suddenly that only fools and saints didn’t abuse their friendship with lawyers. Quickly she told him what had happened in Enoch Arden’s that day.
‘An inspector, you say?’ said Poulson.
‘That’s right.’
‘It was a valuable bracelet?’
‘Hell no! I mean, not your Liz Taylor bit. Twenty, maybe twenty-five dollars. Sorry, ten pounds at the most.’
‘And no charge. Not yet. But this inspector told you to keep yourself available for the next few days. Did he take a statement?’
‘If you mean, did I sign anything, the answer’s no. Just told me not to leave town.’
‘Odd,’ said Poulson, and, bending his head, seemed to concentrate all his attention on the words Shakespeare was a nut which some earnest student had inscribed in pencil on the table-top. Caroline recognised the fit of abstraction, sighed, rose, made her way to the nearest shelves, and selected a book at random. It was wedged firmly between its two neighbours and she had to pull hard to get it out. Too hard. A large tome of Coleridge’s activities as a French agent came with it and hit the ground explosively. The dwarf librarian appeared instantly and glared down the aisle. Behind her, legs aggessively astride like a marshal in a Western, was a blond young man with a newspaper in either jacket pocket and his hand reaching for his wallet.
Caroline shrugged expressively, replaced the book and, noticing signs of revival in Poulson, returned to the table.
‘What’s odd?’ she asked.
‘Presumably,’ he said, ‘you are even more ignorant of the workings of our legal system than most native citizens? So the oddities may have escaped you … It’s odd that you were not charged, odd that this young man should have disappeared, it’s odd that no other witness to your presence in the jewellery department was produced, it’s odd that a man of the rank of inspector should investigate such a trifling matter, it’s odd that you were not taken to the station, and it’s odd that in the midst of all this solicitude which was coming your way no one thought to suggest you might send for a solicitor.’
‘I see,’ said Caroline. ‘So all that’s odd, huh?’
‘No single matter is excessively odd, perhaps,’ said Poulson. ‘But the sum of effects is one of oddity.’
‘And your explanation?’
He smiled and rose.
‘Lawyers don’t explain. They merely demonstrate. I must go now. Should you catch up with Hazlitt, ask him if our game is on next Wednesday. He didn’t turn up last week. Goodbye, Caroline.’
He disappeared into the maze of shelves. After a moment Caroline rose too and made for the exit where the dwarf librarian scanned her closely, as though suspecting she had the complete works of Dickens concealed beneath her sun-top.
‘Ciao!’ said Caroline with a smile.
‘636.71, Dogs,’ the dwarf librarian called after her.
Hazlitt opened his eyes a few moments before breaking the surface skin of full consciousness. There was a heavy weight on his chest and he was surrounded by a dim religious light. The two things together made him wonder nightmarishly if he might be lying in state somewhere, with a heavy catafalque lid drawn back to reveal his farewell face. He was at a loss as to which country might have accorded him this honour, then his mind thrust up violently through the surface skin and he was awake.
He was in the land of the living and the dim religious light was merely sunshine filtered through the nylon eaves of his tent.
Without his spectacles, everything was very hazy. Somewhere close in the tent something grunted, an angry animal grunt, and the weight on his chest shifted slightly.
It was alive! He stiffened in panic, uncertain whether rapid movement or complete stillness were called for. Snake? Not in Skye, not this heavy. What then? Fox? Surely not. Wildcat? They still survived in Scotland, didn’t they? Or perhaps it was merely a sociable sheep.
Slowly he raised an exploratory hand. He found himself grasping something round and warm and soft, pressure on which increased the creature’s agitation tenfold.
He sat up abruptly and as he did so his glasses fell down from his forehead on to his nose. Someone had been very thoughtful.
Thoughtful indeed, he realised. Almost Oriental in thought, having left him a half-naked woman conveniently bound and gagged.
She stared at him with antagonism and fear in her eyes. He smiled reassuringly at her, wondering whether he should apologise for his recent accidental attack on her scantily covered bosom. But then it dawned on him that perhaps even more reassuring to her would be the covering of his own naked frailties.
As he pulled on his spare trousers, he took stock of the situation.
The woman, he now realised, was Cherry. The reason for her lack of clothing above the waist was that someone had removed her tartan shirt and torn it into strips wherewith to gag and bind her.
He looked around the tent but could see no sign of her gun. Not that he would have very much idea what to do with a gun even if he found one. But Cherry in here did not necessarily mean that Tom (Mark II) was not out there and some form of defence would be a comfort.
Still, it was pointless delaying investigation any longer, so with another apologetic smile for the woman as he rolled her to one side, he opened the tent flap and cautiously poked his head out into the open air.
He instantly wished he hadn’t.
Inside the tent had been the world of the living to which he had been miraculously returned.
Out here it was the world of the dead. Sprawled out on the heathery slope before him, as though taking his ease in the sun, was Tom. Only it was an eternal ease. All life must have instantly spilled through the large hole in his chest.
Hazlitt sat down heavily and assessed the situation. At least he put on the assessing-the-situation face he normally saved for those moments in Senate meetings when he was unexpectedly invited to comment on some matter of which he was completely ignorant. Inside there was nothing but confusion, centred upon a small but growing area of nausea in the pit of his stomach.
Outwardly, very little had changed. The loch, the mountains, and the sky were all in place. The sun scarcely seemed to have shifted its position. Not many minutes could have elapsed since Tom had hurled him into the water.
Tom. He raised his reluctant eyes and looked at him again. Things had certainly changed for Tom, the biggest change of all.
It was time for rational thought. His mind considered the possibilities and came up grasping the nub of the situation, the first and essential course of action.
He must finish getting dressed.
Whatever lay ahead of him, he would at least face it like an English gentleman.
The thought cheered him, but as he pulled on his tee-shirt and woolly socks other thoughts soon dispelled the cheer. For a start, whoever shot Tom was still around, alive and potentially lethal.
But, he assured himself, whoever shot Tom saved my life, is therefore my friend.
On the other hand, he answered, lacing up his walking boots, this ‘friend’ has left me with a corpse to explain. Not to mention a captive woman in my tent!
He crawled back inside and removed her gag. She breathed deeply but said nothing.
‘You know he’s dead?’ he asked, reluctant to let her experience the same shock as he had done. She nodded.
‘Who did it?’ he asked.
She laughed scornfully.
‘Someone up there loves you,’ she said.
‘That’s nice. But why? And you. What have I done to you?’
‘Me? Nothing. All I want to do is get back home. Look, won’t you loosen these bonds a bit? They’re killing me.’
He looked thoughtfully at her. She was hog-tied, wrists and ankles pulled close together. Someone had been very efficient. But he did nothing and instead started packing.
Danger felt very close. Skye had seemed the ideal refuge in time of trouble, but now he was very aware that despite the lonely vastness of the mountains which lay about him, Skye was only a very small island, which could serve just as easily for a trap as a haven.
He pulled the woman out of the tent and noticed that she kept her eyes averted from the corpse. Quickly he struck camp, eager to be on his way now. At one point he paused, imagining he could hear the faint sea-changed chatter of an outboard motor, but decided it was probably just the distant call of a ptarmigan.
His last act was to take a small knife out of his camper’s canteen and lay it on a stone some twenty yards downhill from the woman. He then released the piece of binding which held her ankles and her wrists together.
‘Now,’ he told her, ‘you should be able to move pretty easily. Down there’s a knife. A good half-hour’s effort should get you to it and you can start cutting. I’d let you loose now, only you’d probably knock me down or give me a karate chop or something.’
‘Thanks,’ she said. He could not gauge the degree of her sincerity.
‘I’m sorry. It’s the best I can do. What you do with … him … well, that’s up to you.’
‘They’ll get you in the end. You know that?’ she said.
He shrugged but did not answer, hoisted his rucksack on his shoulders and set off up the lochside away from the sea.