Dark Threat (31 page)

Judy heard the rustle of paper behind her. A map was being unfolded and hung over the back of her seat. A flash reflected from the windscreen disclosed the presence of a torch. A little flicker of hope sprang up. If Lona Day had to manage a map and a torch, would she be able to keep the pistol aimed? ... The hope flickered out. She felt the pistol again, pressing steadily against her spine. The map hung over the back of the seat, and that left a hand for the torch.

They came off the heath down a short, steep lane that ran between hedges. Judy found herself wondering whether there was a ditch under the hedge. If there was—suppose she ditched the car ... The answer to that one was easy, Lona would shoot her out of hand. She simply couldn’t afford to let her go—not after all the things she had said. But suppose she could back into a ditch—there might be a chance that way. If she could do it quickly enough—if she could make an excuse for reversing and do it then, Lona might be knocked off her balance and there would be just a chance of getting away. It was the only chance she could think of.

There was a click behind her and the torch went out. Lona said in a satisfied voice, ‘Yes—that will be all right. I hope you see how stupid it would be to try any tricks with me—you simply wouldn’t have a chance. I have everything planned. I’ve known for three years that I might have to get away in a hurry, though I didn’t expect to be quite so rushed as this. I didn’t think that Mabel Robbins would have been in such a hurry to give her evidence. After all, she doesn’t come out of it particularly well. I meant to get away later on tonight, but as you see, I can meet an emergency, and now it is going to be quite all right. The police will never find me, because I shall just become someone else. I have my ration-book and my identity-card—and I am sure you would like to know how I got them, but I shan’t tell you. Well, perhaps it doesn’t matter if I just give you a hint, because you’ll never be able to tell anyone, will you? You see, Lona Day isn’t my real name, and there was nothing to prevent my getting my ration-book and identity-card in my own name, was there? And I banked Henry’s fifty pounds in that name too, so you see I thought of everything ... Now this is where the road forks.’

Judy found herself slowing down a little, her eyes following the line where the ditch would be—if there was a ditch—she couldn’t be sure. And then all at once a rabbit came scuttering out of the shadows and across the front of the car. The fork of the road was just ahead. She thought the rabbit came out of a ditch on the right. She slowed down a little more and took the left-hand fork. At once the voice behind her said, ‘Stop—stop—that’s wrong! I told you to keep to the right.’

The pistol pressed so close that it hurt.

Judy stopped dead. In spite of the cold a wave of heat went over her and her hands were sticky with sweat, because she hadn’t been sure whether Lona would shoot her when she took the wrong turn. She had to chance it, but she hadn’t been sure. She thought it would all depend upon where they were and how much farther the car was meant to go. She said, ‘I’m sorry. I’ll back to the fork—it won’t take a moment.’

The last words seemed to ring a warning bell. There was only a moment now—perhaps only a moment to live. The thought was in her mind as she put the car into reverse and pushed her foot down on the accelerator. She couldn’t feel the pistol—Lona must have moved it—

The car ran back evenly, and then she jammed her foot right down. There was just time to feel a sudden exhilaration as they shot back, before the hind wheels bumped and came down hard in the ditch.

Something smashed at the impact with the bank—a bumper, glass, perhaps both, she didn’t know. High above everything Lona’s scream—a sound of rage, not fear. In the instant before the crash Judy’s hand had gone out to the catch of the door. The next thing she knew, she was slipping down over the running-board on to the road with a deafening noise in her ears and the glass of the windscreen broken. She thought there were two shots, and one of them very near. The car was all slumped and tilted up.

She ran for the ditch—any wild thing making for shelter. It must have been deeper than she thought, and there was a bank beyond it. She scrambled down one side and up the other, and heard another shot go off behind her. She didn’t know where it went but the next might find her.

There was a hedge on the top of the bank. If she had been less desperate she wouldn’t have got through—thorn, and holly, and something that smelled rank as she bruised it. Her dress tore, and her flesh, but she got clear as another shot came past her. It was so close that she felt it go by her left cheek, and with it there came the most horrible sound she had ever heard from a human being, the sound of a snarling fury which wasn’t human at all. If it had words, no sense of them reached her. And all at once she felt that it didn’t matter about being shot, but if this ravening creature were to touch her something would happen—she wouldn’t be Judy any more. She put out her hands to shield her face and ran into the wood.

There were no big trees, just light growth of hazel or alder, with a tangle of ivy under foot, and here and there a black mass which was holly. She stubbed her foot in its thin house-shoe and came down, her hands flung out—catching at last year’s leaves, wet moss, a fallen branch. She held on to this as she got up. It was short and heavy. It wouldn’t be any use at all against a pistol, but there is an old, old instinct to have something in your hand when you turn to face an enemy.

She had to stand for a moment to take her breath, to check the panic which would have sent her running wild—perhaps to fall again and be taken—helpless—

Something was coming through the hedge. The knowledge came to her through her ears and spread tingling over her whole body, every sound sharpened, every panting breath almost as close as her own. The horror came down on her again. If the hands which were forcing a way through the hedge were to touch her—

She was gripping the stick she had picked up. She flung it now as hard as she could to the left of where Lona was coming through the hedge. She could see her just clear of it, a shadow to be distinguished from the other shadows only because it moved. Quick on the sound of the thrown stick striking some bush or tree came the crack of another shot. That made five. Judy didn’t know how many more there would be.

The shadow began to move in the direction from which the noise of the falling stick had come. As it moved, Judy moved too—towards the hole in the hedge. If she could get back on to the road whilst Lona thought she was still in the wood, she would really have a chance. You can’t move amongst undergrowth without being heard. She set down each foot as if she were treading on eggshells. A snapped stick would give her away—

Lona was calling to her now. The snarling animal-sound had gone out of her voice.

‘Don’t be such a fool, Judy. You might have killed us both. But perhaps it was an accident. If it was, we won’t say any more about it. Come along back and see if you can get the car out of the ditch. You’re so clever with cars—I’ve never had enough practice. You needn’t be afraid of the pistol—I’ve fired my last shot. You’re not hurt, are you? It would be rather funny if you were dead. It would be a marvellous shot if I had really hit you in the dark. I’m afraid I lost my temper, and that’s a thing I very seldom do. It doesn’t pay, you know—one must always keep control. But I’d been flung against the back window, and if the glass had broken, I might have been most seriously hurt. Now, Judy, don’t be stupid! Where are you?’

Judy had reached the hedge. She began to crawl backwards through the hole she had made. As she did so she was wondering what Lona had done with the torch, because she had had a torch in the car. She must have dropped it, lost it—something, or the beam would be stabbing to and fro in the wood looking for Judy Elliot.

She was through the hedge now. She slipped on the bank and came down into slime just covered with water—not enough of it to make a splash, but enough to mire her to the ankles. She stumbled up on to the road. No good to go back by the way they had come. No help in all those miles of heath and country lane. No use to take the way which Lona had meant to take, because it was a lonely road that she would choose.

She skirted the car. The torch was still in her mind, but she didn’t dare to stop and look for it. And then her foot touched it, there in the dark on the road. She felt it roll, and knew what it was before she bent to pick it up. Odd that it should give her the first real feeling of hope. She didn’t know how it was going to help her, but something deep inside her said, ‘It’s all right now.’

On muddy, halting feet she began to run along the left-hand fork.

F
RANK
A
BBOTT WENT
out of the room and shut the door. There was no sound after that. Miss Silver had laid her knitting on her knee. Mabel Robbins, who was Mabel Macdonald, leaned back against the hard wood of her chair. But she didn’t feel that it was hard, she didn’t feel anything. Her mind was empty and released. The years had given up their burden. She had done what John wanted her to do and she was free of it.

March had leaned back too. His right hand reached the table and stayed there, clenched into a fist. When he became aware of this tension he made a deliberate effort and relaxed. He looked across the papers which lay in front of him to the clear, colourless face of the woman who had just told this amazing story. It would knock the bottom out of his case against Alfred Robbins. As a theory it was practicable to suppose that she might be putting it forward to shield her father’s name. But in practice you could pick a dozen juries a dozen times over, and every man jack of them would believe her. She was a witness who compelled belief. With his case toppled in ruins, he believed her himself.

His thoughts swung to Miss Maud Silver who had done the trick again. ‘She knows people. She starts where we leave off. Sees something—discerns some motive, some mainspring, and then starts looking for the evidence. I suppose that’s the way it works, but I don’t know. She had nothing to go on here that I can see, and yet it all fits in. Well, I suppose we must be thankful this girl turned up before the inquest. We’d have made a holy show if she’d come along afterwards!’

He turned to look at Miss Silver, and met her warm and friendly smile. They sat on in silence, each with his own thoughts, until the door opened a little more quickly than it had closed. Frank Abbott, extraordinarily pale, halted upon the threshold and said in a hard, controlled voice,

‘She isn’t in the house. Judy’s gone too. And the car—they’ve taken your car.’

March pushed back his chair and got up.

‘Did anyone see them go?’

Frank shook his head.

‘It must have been just after Mabel came. I heard a car go down the road. Jerome doesn’t know anything—hasn’t seen Lona since we had her down. We put the wind up her and she’s bolted. But Judy—how did she get Judy to go?’

Miss Silver said calmly, ‘Judy may have gone to see Penny.’

Frank turned stony eyes on her.

‘She hasn’t. Lesley Freyne is here with Jerome—I waited whilst she rang up her house. Penny is asleep. Judy hasn’t been over.’ He turned to March. ‘Look here, we’ll have to take Daly’s car—it’s the nearest. Will you ring him up? God knows what’s happening—and how she got Judy to go. Jerome says she’s no hand with a car. That’s why she’s taken Judy.’

Judy had stopped running. She didn’t know where she was, or where she was going. The sweat of terror had dried on her and left her chilled beyond belief. When she stood still and listened she might have been the only living person in the world. Of all the sounds which man makes not one reached her—no faintest droning of a distant plane, no noise of wheels on road or rail, no sound of human foot, no sound of human speech. Into this vacuum there crowded all the sounds which man banishes with his loud dominance—the light air moving in the leafless trees, the stir of a waking bird, the cry of the owl, and all the small shadowy noises of all the creatures that are abroad in the dark with their living to get.

She went on walking and wondered where she was, and whether there was any end to this long, empty lane. It wasn’t dark any longer. The clouds had rifted and the moon shone bright and cold. The over-arching trees were left behind. There was only an endless low hedge on either side, broken here and there by some sentinel holly. Shock, fatigue, and the moonlight made the whole scene unreal. The moon plays tricks with us, touching the commonest scene with enchantment—or horror—according to what has tinged our thoughts. It played now upon Judy’s senses and caught them away into a haunted world full of shadows of evil. The most dreadful part of it was that she was alone there. There were no people any more, no habitable shelter.

When she heard the car behind her it seemed like something which breaks violently in upon a dream. She was shocked awake, and uncertain what to do. If it was Lona—how could it be Lona? The car was ditched and she could never have got it out. The word ‘alone’ slipped into her mind—Lona could never have got it out alone. Supposing someone had come by and helped her—

She shrank back into the hedge, and saw twin lights come sliding down the lane.

Her mind was violently wrenched. She had the torch, and she could signal to the car. If she signalled, and it was Lona—if she didn’t signal, and let help go by ... In a moment it would be too late. She must make up her mind—now—

But it was made up for her. Afterwards she didn’t know whether she had tried to move her hand—to find the switch of the torch. She only knew that she had no power to do so. She felt the cold metal against her palm, but her fingers had no power to move. She stood frozen in the shadow of the hedge and saw the car go by.

It was the car she had driven and left in the ditch. Lona was driving it at a slow, careful pace. She went by. The glow of the lights held Judy’s horrified gaze. There was no tail-light. She watched the glow until it was out of sight. Then she turned back along the way by which she had come.

Frank Abbott, driving Dr. Daly’s car, had turned off the Ledlington road where Judy had turned.