Ellis Peters - George Felse 07 - The Grass Widow's Tale by Ellis Peters Read Free Book Online

her, he didn’t look aside into the grass. And now it was up to fate. If an honest person found what she had left behind, he would try to return it, and failing to find her at the address given, take it to the police, who would most surely wonder at her absence. If a dishonest person—or even a humanly fallible one—found it… well, so much the worse.
    He stepped past her at the appropriate moment, and held the door open for her. As soon as she was inside he slammed the door upon her and darted round to the driver’s door; and as soon as he took his hand from her own door, she reached for it again, wrenched at the handle and flung her weight against it in a sudden passion of realisation that it was now or never. Leap out and run for it, back towards the cross… The car’s bulk would cover her for the first few moments, he would have to take aim afresh and in a hurry, she might get clean away.
    The door held fast, the handle moved only part-way, and the thrust of her body was spent vainly. There was a safety catch with which she wasn’t familiar, and she hadn’t seen him set it before he slammed the door. By the time she had found it and was clawing at it frantically, he was in the driving seat beside her, and the car was in motion.
    The door catch gave, the safety catch held. He reached a long arm across her and slammed the door to again, and she had lost her only chance, if it had ever been a chance. The impetus of their take-off flung her back in the seat, hard against his shoulder. The trees hissed by on either side at speed. To attempt to jump out now would be as good a way as any of committing suicide.
    She sat with her hands clenched together in her lap, confronting the truth fully for the first time, and so closely that she saw nothing else. What difference could it possibly make who found her purse, or whether it was ever found at all, or how many police they turned out to look for her to-morrow? Nobody could get to her in time to be of any use; she was absolutely on her own, and her time must be short.
    What could this man do now, except get rid of the witness?
     
    He took the turn into the main street fast and expertly, and at such an angle that her mind, working with frosty clarity somewhere within the shell of shock, registered the certainty that he knew this town very well. Then she remembered the traffic lights. There was no way of evading that crossing in the middle of Comerford; and she knew, if he did not, that on Saturday nights there was usually a police constable keeping an eye unobtrusively on affairs there, at least until all the Espresso bar and motorbike brigade had gone home to bed, which they seldom did until after midnight. Now if the lights should be against them there…
    There were still several groups of young people conducting their leisurely and noisy farewells along the pavement when the car drew near to the crossroads. The dance at the Regal wasn’t over yet, and there was P.C. Peter Hillard standing by the window of the jeweller’s shop looking at nothing and watching everything, with his hands linked behind him, and the usual deceptive expression of benign idiocy on his face. Now if the lights were at red, surely she dared… He wouldn’t shoot here, he’d run. Remember the safety gadget on the door this time…
    The amber changed to red before them. A convulsion of hope ran through her, she sat forward very slightly, bracing herself, as the car slowed and rolled up to the lights. And suddenly there was the stab in her side, the blunt black barrel reminding her, and the blue-ringed eyes more chilling than the gun.
    “
Don’t
!” he said, his right hand still gently manipulating the wheel. “You might do for me, but I should do for you first.”
    He had known exactly what was in her mind. Either he had foreseen it all the time, or else the slight tension of joy had communicated itself to him as clearly as if she had declared her intent aloud. And all she had out of it was