The Collected Works. Josephine Tey
adieux to his hostess were cut short by the fear that Lamont would have disappeared, but he found him in the hall calmly hoisting himself into the trench-coat he had worn that morning. And then Miss Dinmont came out to join her uncle, who was seeing them off the premises, and Grant had a sudden fear that she was going to offer to accompany them. Perhaps the resolute way in which Lamont kept his back turned to her daunted her a little. It would have been so natural for him to say, “Won’t you come along too?” But he said nothing. Kept his back turned, though he knew she was there. That could only mean that he didn’t want her, and the suggestion she had been on the point of making died on her lips. Grant breathed again. He had no desire for a scene with a hysterical female, if it could be avoided. At the gate both men turned to acknowledge the presence of the two at the door. As Grant was replacing his battered hat he saw Lamont’s salutation. It was a mere doffing his cap and donning it again, but Grant had not known that any gesture could be so eloquent of farewell.
They walked in silence up the first slight ascent of road until they were well out of sight of the house, at the parting of the ways where the high road went up the hill and the track to the crofts branched off along the river. There Grant halted and said, “I think you know what I want you for, Lamont?”
“What exactly do you mean?” asked Lamont, facing him calmly.
“I am Inspector Grant from Scotland Yard, and I have a warrant for your arrest for the murder of Albert Sorrell in the Woffington queue on the night of the 13th. I must warn you that anything you say may be used in evidence against you. I want to see that you have nothing on you. Will you take your hands out of your pockets a moment and let me run you over?”
“You’ve made a mistake, Inspector,” the man said. “I said I’d go a bit of the way with you, but I didn’t say how far. This is where I get off.” His left hand shot out of his pocket, and Grant, expecting a revolver, knocked his hand up as it lifted, but, even as his eyes closed instinctively, he saw and recognized the blue pepper-pot from the manse tea-table. Helpless, half blind, coughing and sneezing, he heard the man’s flying feet on the moor-track, and desperately tried to control himself so that he could hear the direction of the retreating sounds. But it was at least two minutes before he could see well enough to be able to follow. A remembrance of that evening in the Strand came to him, and he decided to take his time. No man, even as lightly built as the Levantine was, could run for more than a limited time. There was a radius of possibility bounded by the circumstance of exhaustion point. And judging by the direction he had chosen, when he reached that exhaustion point, the Levantine would be in a country that offered him little means of escape. And, of course, he would be shrewd enough to recognize that. Therefore, the more likely procedure would be that he should repeat the tactics of the Strand evening: lie hidden, probably till darkness made it safe to move, and then return to a better means of escape.
Well, Grant thought, the man who has the higher ground commands the situation. A few yards farther on, a small trickle of water came down the hillside. The valley it made was not deep enough to afford him cover standing up, but, if he bent, it hid his progress up the hillside from any one farther along the moor-tract. With as keen a scrutiny round him as his still smarting eyes would permit, he took to the small gully and, bent double, scrambled up it, stopping every few yards to make sure that nothing was in sight and that he himself was still in adequate cover. Farther up, the gully was bordered by stunted birch, and still farther up it ran through a small plateau thinly wooded with larger birch. Birch in its first mist of green is not ideal cover, but the plateau afforded a first-rate outlook, so Grant decided to risk it. Circumspectly he raised himself from the sandy bank of the stream to the fine turf of the plateau, and crawled across it to the fringe of thick heather that bordered a drop of several feet in the face of the hillside. From this vantage he had the whole immediate sweep of the valley before him, with the exception of a slab to his right, which was hidden by one of the rectangular patches of firwood so typical of the country. The sight of the firwood reassured him. The firwood would be to Lamont what the door on the other side of Bedford Street had been. He had not the faintest doubt that Lamont was lying there now, waiting for him to declare himself on the road somewhere. What puzzled him was what Lamont thought was going to take the place of the busses and the taxis. What hope had he other than the darkness? And he must realize that, if he waited till dark, Grant would have given the alarm. Already the light was beginning to go. Should he abandon his hiding-place and give the alarm, or was that the very thing that Lamont wanted? Would he be playing into Lamont’s hands now if he abandoned the watch and went back to raise beaters? He wished he could make up his mind—could see Lamont’s play. The more he thought of it, the surer he felt that Lamont was counting on his going back to give the alarm. It was the obvious thing to do. He had given Lamont his chance of going quietly, and he had not taken it, even though his resistance had meant the publication of his true standing; most assuredly, then, he would expect the inspector to be squeamish no longer about his or other people’s feelings, and to go back for help in his capture. That being so, Grant would stay where he was and keep an eye on the country.
For a long time he lay there in the dampish, withered heather, looking through the parted fronds at a tranquil strath. Once the brakes of a car squealed away to his left, where the high road came down the hill, and later he saw the car cross the bridge before the village, run like a small black spider along the road at the back of Carninnish House, and disappear up the coast road to the north. A sheep bleated far away on the hill, and a late lark sang high in the air, where the sun still was. But nothing moved in the valley but the river, and the slow northern twilight began to settle on it. And then something moved. Down by the river it was. Nothing more definite than the sudden flash of water in the river itself, there and gone again. But it was not the river; something had moved. Breathlessly he waited, his heart, pressed against the turf, beating time with the blood in his ears. He had to wait awhile, but what he saw he saw distinctly this time. From behind a huge twelve-foot boulder by the river his quarry slid into sight and disappeared again under the bank. Grant waited again patiently. Was he going to ground there, or was he making for somewhere? Even in his anxiety he was conscious of that amused indulgence with which a human being watches an unconscious wild animal busy about its own affairs—that “tickled” feeling that all human beings have when they are spying. And presently a gentle movement farther downstream advertised the fact that Lamont was not stationary. He was heading somewhere. And for a townsman he was making a wonderful job of cover. But then, of course, there had been the War—Grant had forgotten that Lamont was old enough to have seen active service. He probably knew all that was to be known about the art of taking cover. Grant had seen nothing that second time—he had merely been conscious of movement. He would probably have seen nothing the first time if there had been a better method of getting from that rock to the shelter of the bank than coming into the open. There was no further sign of movement, and Grant remembered that the left bank of the river would afford good shelter nearly all the way. It was time that he abandoned his seat on the dais and went down into the arena. What could Lamont’s plan be? If he held to his present course, he would be back at the manse in a quarter of an hour. Was that where he was making for? Was he going to take advantage of the tenderness he had aroused so farseeingly in the Dinmont girl? A pretty enough plan. If he, Grant, had done as Lamont had suspected, and gone back for help, the last place any one would look for him would be in the manse itself.
Grant swore, and let himself down the gully again as quickly as the going and his desire to remain in cover would allow. He regained the moor-track and hesitated, wondering which was the better plan. Between him and the river stretched a piece of moor, boulder-strewn certainly, but without cover for anything bigger than a rabbit. Only the firwood farther on had enabled Lamont to reach the river unobserved by him. Well, what about going back now and giving the alarm? And catch the man being hidden by the minister’s niece? asked the looker-on in him. Well, why not? he demanded angrily of himself: If she hides him, she deserves all that’s coming to her. But there’s no need for publicity even yet, urged his other half. Make sure it is to the manse he has gone, and then follow and arrest him there.
That seemed sensible enough, and Grant, hoping that no one as far down the river as Lamont was could see him, crossed the little moor to the river at the double. What he wanted was to cross the river. To follow the man down the river-bed was to court certain discovery. He did not want the man to run; he wanted