She nodded.
‘I got Corentin’s mule. It’s in the shed. Can you manage to saddle it? Good. Hurry if you can. There’s a lantern out there.’
She turned to obey him, with a troubled look over her shoulder at Jennifer standing white-faced by the fire. ‘You’ll come soon?’
‘Yes, yes. Go now, quickly.’
The door slammed. The lamp fluttered in its globe, and was steady again. Jennifer said shakily across the table: ‘Monsieur Bussac, please listen to me – please, just for one moment …’
‘Eh bien?’ He had taken a coat down from a hook in the corner, and was hastily cramming the packages of food into the pockets, keeping all the while, between Jennifer and the door.
She forced herself to speak calmly. ‘Let’s be honest with one another, Monsieur Bussac – now that there’s nobody to listen. You were expecting Lally Dupré that night. Did you know her by sight?’
He hesitated, then said flatly: ‘No.’
‘Then you – and Doña Francisca – both thought that this girl you call Marie was Lally Dupré. But when I started asking questions Doña Francisca realized fast enough who it was you were keeping here. When I asked her to describe the woman who died she described Gillian – Marie. She’d guessed. And she came straight up here last night to tell you that whereas before it had been folly not to send your – guest – straight into Spain, now that “Marie” was certainly Madame Lamartine, keeping her was suicidal. I followed her here – you know that. I heard her. You must have known then, Monsieur Bussac, what had happened on the night of the storm.’
The black eyes held hers for a moment. ‘And if I did?’
‘Nothing,’ said Jennifer, ‘except that you know and I know that I’m telling the truth.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Pierre Bussac indifferently, ‘you’re telling the truth.’
‘Then for goodness’ sake believe me when I say that I’ll make no trouble for you! You know she’s hardly fit for this journey, whatever it is. Tell her some tale – you can do it – and let her come with me!’
His voice was rough. ‘Damn you, can’t you grasp what I tell you? I want her with me!’
‘You’ve no right!’
‘She’s my wife.’
‘Is she?’
He shot her a look under lowering eyes. ‘What d’you mean?’
‘She only came up here three weeks ago. I suppose she was hurt in the car crash, and lost her memory as a result. She tells me she has been married to you for a year. Why did you tell her that lie, Monsieur Bussac?’
There was a pause. Then he spoke quietly. ‘All right. You wanted it; you can have it. You’ve guessed the rest fairly enough. I was being paid by Marcel Dupré’s lot to smuggle Lally out into Spain. She was to have met me in the gorge below Gavarnie, at a place called Chaos. I’d been told she was getting a lift from a woman called Lamartine. I took the mule down that night, but she wasn’t there. After a while I went on along the river, and I came on the car, smashed up. She – Marie – was there. I must have missed the real Lally Dupré in the dark. Marie was lying near the car. I thought she was dead at first, then I found she was just unconscious. I looked for her papers, purse – anything that would identify her. I couldn’t find any, so I assumed this was Lally Dupré – the description I’d had fitted fairly enough – and that the Lamartine woman had picked up her own stuff and gone for help. I knew that Lally had got to be got away quickly before anyone came, and besides …’
He had thrust his way into his coat while he was talking. In it he looked bigger than ever. He took a step forward and put his fists on the table, leaning towards her with a dark look that blazed.
He said: ‘She was lying on the grass in the torchlight with her hair spread out and her clothes half torn off her. She was lovely, and I wanted her.’ His teeth showed. ‘Just – like – that. Do you understand that, you pale little English miss? I wanted her.’ The black gaze held hers. ‘So I picked her up and brought her here. And then in the morning I heard about the other woman at the convent. I’d been worried about her, because in the normal way I’d have had my passenger over the hills and far away before morning, and no evidence to prove she’d ever been near me, and here I was stuck with a girl who couldn’t be made to travel. But my luck held.’ He grinned briefly. ‘It always does. The woman at the convent held her tongue. Lally must have wondered why the police didn’t ask about the “passenger” she’d left for dead in the wreck, but she’d be too thankful for the ready-made alias to risk breaking it by asking questions. If she’d known that the señora was in with me … but, of course, no one knew that.’ He paused. ‘At any rate she played safe and kept quiet. I simply assumed she’d been too ill to recollect having a passenger – and then she died. More luck.’
‘And luck too,’ said Jennifer unpleasantly, ‘that my cousin had lost her memory?’
‘As you say. She wouldn’t have stayed with me else, would she? As it was, when I found she remembered nothing, I was only too pleased she wasn’t in a hurry to leave for Spain. I told her she was my wife – there may have been other tales in the village, but she never left the farm, and no one interferes with me.’
‘And you told her, I gather, that she’d been mixed up in the affair at the Bordeaux bank?’
‘Of course. I had to give her some reason for keeping her close. I thought it was true, anyway. I didn’t tell her it was murder; I told her just enough to keep her in hiding and not enough to make her anxious to leave … And when I found out who she really was, I saw no call to change my story. It came to the same thing in the end, didn’t it? She’d stayed here with me, though God knows she must have found the life up here hard and a bit strange, and me, perhaps, not exactly what she’d been used to …’
He smiled at her as he straightened up his big body. ‘I thought it would shake you, mademoiselle l’anglaise … you little Snow Queen of an English girl; you’re all the same. She has it too, that look … I find it – exciting.’ The smile widened. ‘No, don’t look at me like that. I’ve other things on my mind just now.’ And he turned aside to pull open the table drawer.
‘You’re – vile!’ said Jennifer shakily.
He had taken an electric torch out of the drawer, and thrust it into his pocket. He lifted an indifferent shoulder. ‘You think so? She seems to like me well enough.’
She said hoarsely: ‘Where are you taking her?’
‘Where you’ll not find her.’
‘They’ll follow you.’
‘They won’t, not the way I’m going.’ He gave a hard little laugh. ‘How d’you think I’ve evaded the frontier guards so long, my dear, if I hadn’t my own road into Spain?’
‘You fool!’ cried Jennifer. ‘Even if you do get away, you can’t hide for ever.’
‘No? Spain’s a big place. My money’s over there, and I have friends.’
‘She’ll recover,’ said Jennifer brutally. ‘She’ll remember. Do you imagine she’ll stay with you then?’
‘Why not? I’m good to her.’
She said desperately: ‘You’re crazy! You’ll never get clear!’
He snarled at her then, with something of a resumption of his old manner. ‘Shut your mouth, you little fool! D’you think I’ve run the risks I have, keeping her, to let her go now? You may as well save your breath, petite anglaise. She goes with me.’
‘And I?’ said Jenny quietly.
He eyed her. ‘You’ll stay here. But I’m not leaving you loose to spy on the way we go. I said I’d not hurt you, and I won’t. But I’ve got to put you out of action for a while, my dear. It might be quite some time before they think of looking for you in the outhouses, and by that time we should be well away.’
He lifted a coil of rope from the back of a chair, and moved towards her.
Before he had taken more than a step the cottage door opened again. Jennifer whirled towards it, hope widening her eyes and parting her lips. But it was only Gillian, breathless from the buffeting of the storm, which h
ad whipped colour into her pale cheeks, and set a sparkle in her eyes.
She said: ‘The mule’s ready, Pierre.’
‘Good. Get your coat. We’re going.’
Gillian ran into the inner room. Bussac came round the table towards Jennifer, rope in hand. She shrank back, and, as he grabbed for her, she dodged his hand, and ran round the table, facing him again breathlessly. He cursed, and lunged after her. His hand scraped her sleeve, but she ducked and ran, facing him again. It was like some dreadful nursery game, playing tag with terror round the lamplit table, dodging and panting on the edges of the little pool of light, while behind them their shadows danced and swelled, hugely, up wall and ceiling. There was no sound but the scrape of feet, and their quick, hard breathing, and the quiet voice of the clock in the corner ticking the seconds away … but to Jennifer that monstrous pouncing darkness was pierced with her own silent, frantic cry – Stephen! Stephen! Stephen! … He would come; he had to come; he had to come …
The terrible little game went on.
The shadow loomed, struck, as Bussac flung himself across the table, a long arm shooting out to grab. She jumped backwards from the clutching hand. He overbalanced, falling heavily forward. The lamp rocked. In the split second when his weight was on the table, she sprang through the reeling shadows towards the door. Her hand was on the latch when he caught her. His arms closed round her from behind in a powerful grip, and he dragged her back from the door. She struggled, wild now with terror, and lashed out with her feet, kicking him on the legs. He cursed again and shifted his grip. One arm was tight round her body; his other hand bit into her arm. Vaguely, through whirling panic, she heard Gillian’s voice say: ‘Pierre!’ and his breathless, almost savage reply: ‘Go on. I’ll catch you up in a minute. You know the way as far as the fall.’
‘But the girl?’
‘I can’t leave her to follow us, you know that. I’ve got to shut her up. Now for God’s sake, Marie—’
‘All right.’
The door opened. The wind whirled in. Jennifer screamed once: ‘Gillian! Don’t go!’
His hand clamped brutally over her mouth. The door banged. Seconds afterwards, surging back on the wind, came the beat of retreating hoofs.
She felt his muscles relax a little. She jerked her head sharply, and the hand loosened. She bit viciously, blindly, like a terrified animal, and felt the skin break under her teeth. He pulled his hand away with an oath, and his grip tightened fiercely. She was held helpless against him, his one arm round her, pinioning her, while with the other hand – the bitten one – he forced her head up till her eyes met his.
She saw through her sick terror that he was laughing.
‘Snow Queen, eh?’ he said, thickly. ‘So you bite, you little devil? Who’d have thought it? It’s a pity I’ve no time to teach you your manners.’
Before she realized what he meant to do, he bent his head and kissed her full on the mouth.
She made a tiny sound of protest, then the shadows whirled up to engulf her, and she went limp in his arms.
The gap in her consciousness cannot have lasted many seconds, but Bussac had moved fast. She found herself lying on her back on what appeared to be a bed, blinking up dazedly, half-sick, at the low ceiling where the lamplight swelled and dwindled in the draughts. The sound of the clock came unnaturally loud, distorted by her semi-conscious state into a hurrying rattle, like the faraway clicking of rapid little hoofs …
Gillian.
Memory flooded back. She moved sharply, only to find that something was gripping her hands, holding her down. Her whole body was weighted as if with lead … helpless, stifled … She realized, incredulously, that she was lying, bound and gagged, on the bed in the inner room of the cottage.
Her first feeling was one of pure rage that anyone should have handled her so. The rope was not cruelly tied, but the knots seemed to gnaw at her wrists and ankles, and the gag was sheer horror. Something had been stuffed into her mouth, and then a scarf tightly bound round the lower part of her face. It pressed on her tongue, drying her mouth painfully, and setting her teeth screamingly on edge. She made a frantic little sound of protest, and turned her head agonizingly to where the lamplight streamed in an oblique shaft through the half-open door.
Then shrank into herself, watching with wide open eyes and thudding heart.
Pierre Bussac was by the jamb of the door, his big body filling the wedge of light. He was not looking at Jennifer. He was standing very still; his whole attention riveted on something in his hand.
A letter? She thought she recognized the torn folds. He must have found it in her pocket … Yes, she knew it now …
It was Isaac Lenormand’s letter.
She thought wildly what this new discovery might mean. He now had part – half – of what must be Doña Francisca’s blackmailing lever in his hand. He would know that Jennifer, too, had read it. And he might think that she knew where the other half was still concealed. But if he was going away tonight, surely neither Jennifer’s knowledge nor Doña Francisca’s defeat could matter? And he had said he would not hurt her … The flesh seemed to flinch on her bones as she went small in her bonds, her dazed mind insisting, childishly, on that one brittle hope … He had said he would not hurt her … He was not all bad; his treatment of Gillian, self-interested though it was, surely showed that? True, he had compelled Gillian to accept him ruthlessly enough, but he was a creature of his passions, ferociously indifferent to any claims but his own, and driven by desires and hates equally compulsive and uncomplicated. Hates? She remembered the look in his face as he confronted Doña Francisca the night before, and, oddly enough, felt reassured. Pure hatred, banked and smouldering through long years of frustration towards some sudden and terrible explosion … compared with what she had seen in him then, his conduct to her tonight had been almost gentle. He wouldn’t hurt her. All he wanted was to put her out of action for a while. That was what he’d said. He wouldn’t hurt her. He wouldn’t …
He thrust the letter into his pocket and turned towards the bed. His shadow seemed to swell and darken all the room. He took a step towards her; the shadow reared up the wall, over the ceiling, and hung there, waiting.
He had stopped and turned his head to listen.
Outside, the wind whined down a petulant diminuendo scale. Feet clicked across the cobbles.
Stephen! … It was a soundless, mindless scream. It seemed to her to fill the night and drown the wind … At last! Stephen!
The outer door opened quickly. From her place in the shadowed corner Jennifer could not see it, but Bussac had stiffened like a pointer, and now he whipped out into the lamplight, pulling the door to behind him.
22
Danse Macabre
The door failed to shut, and swung back a little way, creaking, its wedge of light once more widening across the roughly boarded floor. She could see the corner of the table with the loaf still on it as Gillian had left it, the bottle of wine glowing like a ruby, the slim glitter of the knife under the lamp. Beyond the table-leg glimmered the dying logs of the fire.
Bussac had moved out of sight, towards the door. She saw the logs sputter sparks in the draught, then the outer door closed quietly.
She heard him say on a quick-drawn breath: ‘You! Already? How did you get away so early?’ Through the breathed words came soft footsteps and the whisper of silk.
Jenny stirred in her bonds. She had forgotten – unbelievably she had forgotten the other terror that stalked the stormy night. Doña Francisca’s voice came, pitched low; ‘You’ve let her go?’
The words were softly spoken, but it was apparent that she was furiously angry, and Bussac’s reply was automatically defensive. He hedged. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Don’t be a fool! I heard your beast! Where has she gone?’
‘Where you’ll not find her, my lady!’
There was a pause. ‘You’re going to do as I told you?’
‘I’m going to do as I please. And
now get out of here. I’m going too.’
‘I’ll wait. I’ll see you when you come back.’
He said deliberately: ‘Then you’ll wait a long time. I shan’t be back.’
‘What d’you mean? No, wait. Wait! Fool! What d’you intend to do? You can’t have thought—’
He interrupted roughly: ‘We’ll not start that again. There’s been enough talk of fools and folly, and this particular folly’s over for me. You can do as you like, but I’m going. Now get out of my way.’
‘Pierre Bussac! You don’t mean this?’
‘No? Will you get away from that door, or do I have to make you?’
Her voice blazed with fury and contempt: ‘Don’t dare lay a hand on me, you clod!’
He laughed, and there was a self-confidence, almost a triumph, in his voice that must have shaken her. He said: ‘Do you want to wait here with me for the police?’
‘The police? Here?’
‘Yes. Here.’
She said on a long-drawn breath of hatred: ‘The English girl …’
‘As you say.’ His feet scraped the floor, and Jennifer, rigid in her shadowed corner, waited for exposure. But he had only moved to the table. She saw his hand lift towards the lamp to turn it out. He said over his shoulder: ‘Now will you go?’
But she moved quickly to cross the room. Her long robes swished across the glow of the fire. She was in Jennifer’s field of vision now, as she leaned over the table towards Bussac. Her face, lit from below by the lamp, was like a mask thrown dramatically on a screen, a thing of sharp shadows and hard highlights, with great pits of darkness for eyes.
She said, almost breathlessly: ‘No. Wait. Has that girl really found anything out?’
‘Just about everything, I imagine,’ he said coolly.
‘About me?’
‘Oh, yes. She was up here last night and heard our conversation.’
Her hands went down flat on the table with an urgent little slapping sound. Beside them the knife-blade jumped and glittered.