The curtains were pale cream, a bad mistake. Anything pale is picked out by the moon’s special radiance, even a stone paler than its fellows being visible at a considerable distance. Were I to pull them back from the kitchen window the movement would be seen by even the most idle watcher. Still, it had to be risked.
I got the torch ready in my right hand and moved stealthily towards the window. Do everything slowly if you want your movements to be unnoticed, was what they used to tell us in the Forces. Not fast and slick, but silent and slow. Feeling a fool I tiptoed towards the sink. By reaching across I could pull the curtain aside. There was no way to step to one side close against the wall because of the clutter in the corner. A derelict ironing board stood their with other useless impedimenta. The slightest nudge would raise the roof.
Holding my breath I gently edged the curtain aside. The copse, set jet-black above a milky sheen of grass, seemed uncomfortably close. I hadn’t realized it was so short a gap, not even pacing it out the previous day. Nothing moved.
But I knew he was there.
Exactly in the way I was peering out at him, so he was staring at me. Could he see the curtain? I’d moved it without squeaking its noisy runners but their was the danger of the moonlight exposing a dark slit between pale material. I let the edges meet and exhaled noiselessly.
To my surprise I was damp with sweat. Peering eyeball-to-eyeball with a murderer was no job for a growing lad. Maybe the best course would be to telephone Old Bill. Then, what if Scotland Yard arrived in force only to discover an empty copse without any trace of a lurking murderer? Imagine their annoyance when discovering they’d been summoned by a nervous idiot with a recent history of a nervous breakdown. That would be crying wolf with a vengeance. I’d have to wait until I had proof he was there. Probably it would be up to me.
The view from the other windows was the same quiet, too quiet scene. No breeze moved the trees, and shadows stayed put. I began to feel somewhat better, a little more certain of myself. No matter what he tried I was certainly a match for him. He was only one bloke. If he had a gun along with him, well, I had a few too. On the other hand, if he was waiting for me to make another mistake, such as going out for a nocturnal car-ride without remembering to set the alarm or something making another burglary easier, he was going to be sadly disappointed.
I waited another thirty minutes. Let him think I was sound asleep. My one bonus was my conviction he was out there. He, on the contrary, knew I was in the cottage but he had no way of knowing I was certain he was sitting on the tree stump and waiting. Sweat broke over me like a wave. What the hell
was
he waiting for? What point was there in watching a silent cottage when I was supposed to have retired for the night? Nothing could possibly happen until dawn when I awoke – or could it? My increasing nervousness took hold. It was ridiculous to let it but I could not withstand the rush of adrenalin.
Shading the torch, I read the time on the wall clock. Ten minutes to twelve. A plan evolved in my mind. I would wait until dawn when he was probably dozing, then rush outside, down the path to the lane, sprint across into my neighbour’s drive and hide deep in the laurel hedge. Of course, I’d have a gun with me, maybe my Durs air-weapon, which could shoot three, possibly four, spherical bullets without needing a further pumping up. With that relatively silent weapon I could prevent him leaving the copse from the far side. His bike would be useless.
This cunning plan had an undoubted risk, but there were two advantages. One was that it postponed any action at all, true Lovejoy-style, so I needn’t do anything dangerous just yet and maybe by dawn, he would be gone. The second advantage was that, in rushing out, I’d set off the police alarm. He’d be trapped. All I’d have to do would be to sit tight and threaten him with the air-weapon. He’d recognize it, collector that he was, with its great bulbous copper ball dangling beneath the stock. No mistake about that. Unfortunately, though, he might guess I would try a morning sprint and simply move towards my path. I wouldn’t care to meet him face to face with him sitting ready and me disarrayed and running.
The front-door bell rang.
I dropped the torch from cold shock. A strange echo emitted from the walls about me, taking some seconds to the away. Fumbling along the carpet I found the torch again and dithered, really dithered. Holding it in fear now, I peered out of the dark living room towards the door. The moon was shading the front of the cottage. Anyone could be there. My heart seemed to boom at every beat. Why does sweat come when you are cold from terror? The shelling I’d endured years ago had been nothing to this. It was somehow worse because whoever waited now at my door was in a sense unknown.
It could be Margaret. She might have sensed my fright and come to make sure I was all right. Why not telephone instead? Surely she’d do that, a far more sensible approach. Maybe she’d wanted to see for herself. I was on my way down the hall towards the door when the obvious flaw came to my mind – the cottage had been still as death. I’d been listening for the slightest sound for nearly an hour now, and had not heard a thing. And the path outside was gravel. You could even hear a rabbit cross it. But not a clever, oh-so-clever, murderer. Nobody creeps up to a door then rings the bell.
Sweat trickled from my armpits. It dripped from my forehead and stung the corners of my eyes. Should I call out, asking who was there? Not if he had the Judas guns with him, which might be used to shoot me down as soon as he located me.
I didn’t dare creep closer to the door in case he fired through. And if I crept back to the telephone for the police he’d hear the receiver go and me dialling. Would he honestly dare to break in? Panicking now, I slithered out of the hall and pulled the carpet back from over the priest-hole. I needed no light to find the iron ring in its recess. Astride the flag I hauled it upwards and rested it against the armchair as I usually did. Cursing myself for a stupid unthinking fool I clambered down the steps into the chamber. By feel alone I found the Mortimer case and extracted the duellers. The Durs air-weapon might have been more useful, but I’d relied too much on having the upper hand. Positions were bitterly reversed now.
The slab lowered in place, I covered it with the carpet. Where was he now? Would he still be there at the front door, or was that a mere bluff to draw attention while he crept round the side and gained entrance there? I stood, armed but irresolute, in the living room. Waves of malevolence washed through me – all from the external source he represented. He was there outside, watching and waiting. It was all part of his game. His hate emanated towards me through the walls. I could practically touch it, feel it as a live, squirming tangible thing. The pathetic unpre-paredness of my position was apparent to him as well as to me.
Something drew me towards the kitchen window. Had he given up lurking by the front door and gone back to his place in the copse? I tried turning myself this way and that, stupidly hoping my mental receivers would act like a direction-finder and tell me exactly where he was. Perhaps my fear was blunting the effect. If he was in process of moving through the copse I might see his form. It seemed worth a try. If only it wasn’t so utterly dark in the shadows from that treacherous moon.
The difficulty was holding the torch and the Mortimers. I finally settled for gripping one dueller beneath my arm and holding the torch with my left hand. Leaning across the sink I slowly pulled the curtain aside.
For one instant, I stood there, stunned by sudden activity. The glass exploded before my eyes. A horrendous crackling sound from glass splinters all about held me frozen. Behind me inside the living-room a terrible thump sounded which made even the floor shudder. The curtain was snapped aside and upwards, flicked as if it had been whipped by some huge force. I stared for quite three or four seconds aghast at the immensity of this abrupt destruction before my early training pulled me to the floor. There was blood on my face, warm and salty.
Something dripped from my chin on to my hands as I crawled on all fours back to the living-room. I had lost one of the Mortimers but still held the torch. Broken glass shredded my hands and knees as I moved, a small incidental compared to the noise I was making. I rolled on to the divan to get my breath and see how much damage I’d sustained.
My face was bleeding from cuts, presumably due to the glass. They’d prove a handicap because they might dampen the black powder if I had to reload, but for the moment they were a detail. My handkerchief I tied round my left hand, which seemed in the gloom to look the darker of the two and was therefore probably bleeding more profusely. To my astonishment, I was becoming calmer every second. The situation was not in hand, but was at least clearly defined. Even a dullard like me could tell black from white. The issue couldn’t be clearer. He was outside shooting at me, and there was to be no quarter. Simple.
I crawled messily towards the telephone. Even as I jerked the receiver into my bandaged hand I knew it would be dead. The sod had somehow cut the wire. Okay, I told myself glibly, I’d wait until morning when the postgirl would happen by and bring help. She came every day, rain, snow, hail or blow.
Except Sunday, Lovejoy.
And tomorrow was Sunday. And my neighbours opposite drove to Walton-on-Sea every Saturday for the weekend.
Depressed by that, I set to working out the trajectory of his missile. Naturally, in my misconceived confidence I’d not drawn a plan snowing the position of his stump relative to the windows. That would have helped. Knowing it roughly, however, I peered through the gloom at the corner farthest from the kitchen alcove and finally found it, sticking half buried in the wall. A bolt, from an arbalest.
Bows and arrows are sophisticated engines, not the simple little toys we like to imagine. An arrow from a longbow can pierce armour at short distances, and Lovejoy at any distance you care to mention. But for real unsophisticated piercing power at short range you want that horrid weapon called the arbalest, the crossbow. Often wood, they were as often made of stone, complete with trigger beneath the stock. Their only drawback was comparative slowness of reloading. By now though he’d have it ready for a second go.
He was a bright lad. No flashes, no noise, no explosions even if they’d been audible to any neighbouring houses. And I was still no nearer guessing where he might be. My, assets were that I was still alive, was armed and had enough food to last out the weekend and more. But I’d need to keep awake whereas he could doze with impunity. I felt like shouting out that he could have the wretched turnkey.
At that moment I knew I was defeated. He had me trapped. And as far as I was concerned he could move about with impunity, even go home for a bath knowing I would be too scared to make a run for it in case he was still at his post. How the hell had I got into this mess? I questioned myself savagely.
Half-twelve, maybe something like five hours till daylight. Then what? I still wouldn’t be able to see into the copse. And I would be that much more at risk.
I sat upright on the divan in the living room. The side window was paler than the rest, showing the moon was shining from that direction. I opened the hall door wide and, keeping my head down, pulled back the kitchen alcove’s curtains as far as they would go. That way I’d be as central as I could possibly be and he’d get the Mortimer first twitch if he tried to break in.
My spirits were starting to rise when I heard a faint noise. It was practically constant, a shushing sound like a wind in trees, not at all resembling someone moving across a gravel path or wading through tall grass. Maybe, I thought hopefully, a breeze was springing up. If it started to rain he might just go home and leave me alone.
The noise increased, hooshing like a distant crowd. Perhaps the villagers had somehow become alarmed and were coming in a group to investigate. Even as the idea came I rejected it – people were not that concerned. Worried, I forgot caution and crept towards each of the windows to listen. The sound was as loud at each. I even risked approaching the front door, then the side door, but learned nothing except that the noise was ever so slightly intensifying as moments passed.
It was several puzzling minutes before I noticed the odd appearance of the side window. Shadows from it seemed to move in an odd way I hadn’t seen before. The other window, illuminated blandly by moonlight diffusing through the curtains, cast stationary shadows within the room. My sense of unknowing returned again to frighten me. I couldn’t even risk trying to glance out with that arbalest outside waiting’ to send another bolt trying for my brain.
Then I smelled smoke.
The shushing sound was the pooled noise of a million crackles. My thatched roof had been fired, probably by means of a lighted arrow. A kid could have done it. A hundred ways to have prevented all this rose to mind, all of them now useless. I was stuck in the cottage which was burning. Thatch and wattle-and-daub.
Madness came over me for a second. I actually ran about yelling, and dashed to the kitchen window. Recklessly, I pulled the curtain aside and fired into the darkness through the broken pane. I shouted derision and abuse. The copse, vaguely lit by a strangely erratic rose-coloured glow, remained silent. I heard the slap of the lead ball on its way among the leaves. Maddened, I tried filling a pan with water and throwing it upwards. It left a patch on the ceiling. Hopeless.
I had to think. Smoke was beginning to drift in ominous columns vertically downwards. Reflected firelight from each window showed me more of the living room than I’d seen for some time. I was going to choke to death before finally the flames got me. The beams would set alight, the walls would catch fire and the fire would extend downwards until the entire cottage was ablaze. I’d heard glass exploded in fires. There would be a cascade of glass fragments from every possible direction ricocheting about the place. Those, and the flames, but first the asphyxiating smoke, would do for me.