Longshot. Part 41

I poured myself some wine and sat on an unoccupied footstool, feeling the oppression of their collective thoughts and guessing that they all now knew everything I did, and perhaps more.

'If Harry didn't do it, who did?' It was Lewis's question, which got no specific reply, as if it had been asked over and over before.

'Doone will find out,' I murmured.

Fiona said indignantly, 'He's not trying. He's not looking beyond Harry. It's disgraceful.'

Proof that Doone was still casting about, however, arrived noisily at that point in the shape of Sam Yaeger, who hooted his horn outside as a preliminary and swept into the house in a high state of indignation.

'Tremayne!' he said in the doorway, and then stopped abruptly at the sight of the gathered clan. 'Oh. You're all here.'

'You're supposed to be resting,' Tremayne said repressively.

'To h.e.l.l with b.l.o.o.d.y resting. There I was, quietly nursing my bruises according to orders, when this Policeman Plod turns up on my doorstep. Sunday afternoon! Doesn't the b.u.g.g.e.r ever sleep? And d'you know what little gem he tossed at me? Your b.l.o.o.d.y stable girls told him I'd had a bit of how's-your-father with Angela effing Brickell.'

The brief silence which greeted this announcement wasn't exactly packed with disbelief.

'Well, did you?' Tremayne asked.

'That's not the point. The point is that it wasn't any Tuesday last June. So this Doone fellow asks me what I was doing that day, as if I could remember. Working on my boat, I expect. He asked if I logged the hours I worked on it. Is this man for real? I said I hadn't a b.l.o.o.d.y clue what I was doing, maybe it was a couple of willing maidens, and he has no sense of humour, it's in a permanent state of collapse, he said it wasn't a joking matter.'

'He has three daughters,' I said. 'It worries him.'

'I can't help his effing hang-ups,' Sam said. 'He said he had to check every possibility, so I told him he'd have a long job considering old Angle's opportunities, not to mention willingness.' He paused. 'She was even making goo-goo eyes at Bob Watson at one time.'

'She wouldn't have got past Ingrid,' Mackie said. 'Ingrid looks meek and mild but you should see her angry. She keeps Bob in her sight. She doesn't trust any girl in the yard. I doubt if Angela got anywhere with Bob.'

'You never know,' Sam said darkly. 'Can I have a drink? c.o.ke?'

'In the fridge in the kitchen,' Perkin said, not stirring to fetch it.

Sam nodded, went out and came back carrying a gla.s.s, followed by Gareth and Coconut busily stoking their furnaces with pizza wedges.

Tremayne raised his eyebrows at the food. 'We're starving,' explained his younger son. 'We ate roots, and birch bark and dandelion leaves, and no one in their right mind would live in Sherwood Forest being chased by the Sheriff.'

Sam looked bewildered. 'What are you on about?' he demanded.

'Survival,' Gareth said. He marched over to a table, picked up Return Safe from the Wilderness and thrust it into Sam's hands. 'John wrote it,' he said, 'and five other books like it. So we built a shelter and made a fire and cooked roots and boiled water to drink-'

'What about Sherwood Forest?' Harry drawled, smiling but looking strained notwithstanding.

Coconut explained, 'We might be cold and hungry but there weren't any enemies lurking behind the apple trees.'

'Er...' Sam said.

Tremayne, amused, enlightened everyone about our day.

'Tell you what,' Gareth said thoughtfully, 'it makes you realise how lucky you are to have a bed and a pizza to come home to.'

Tremayne looked at me from under lowered lids, his mouth curving with contentment. 'Teach them they're lucky,' he'd said.

'Next time,' Coconut enquired, 'why don't we make some bows and arrows?' 'What for?' asked Perkin. 'To shoot the Sheriffs men, of course.'

'You'd wind up hanged in Nottingham,' Tremayne said. 'Better stick to dandelion leaves.' He looked at me. 'Is there going to be a next time?'

Before I could answer, Gareth said 'Yes.' He paused. 'Well, it wasn't all a laugh a minute, but we did do something. I could do it again. I could live out in the cold and the rain- I feel good about it, that's all.'

'Well done!' Fiona exclaimed sincerely. 'Gareth, you're a great boy.'

It embarra.s.sed him, of course, but I agreed with her. 'How about it?' Tremayne asked me. 'Next Sunday,' I said, 'we could go out again, do something else.'

'Do what?' Gareth demanded. 'Don't know yet.'

The vague promise seemed enough for both boys who drifted back to the kitchen for further supplies, and Sam, leafing through the book, remarked that some of my more ingenious traps looked as if they would kill actual people, not only big animals like deer.

'Eating venison in Sherwood Forest was a hanging matter too,' Harry observed.

I said, agreeing with Sam, 'Some traps aren't safe to set unless you know you're alone.'

'If Gareth's confident after one day,' Nolan said to me without much friendliness from the depths of an armchair, 'what does that make you? Superman?' 'Humble,' I said, with irony.

'How very goody-goody,' he said sarcastically, with added obscenities. 'I'd like to see you ride in a steeplechase.'

'So would I,' Tremayne said heartily, taking the sneering words at face value. 'We might apply for a permit for you, John.'

No one took him seriously. Nolan took offence. He didn't like even a semi-humorous suggestion that anyone else should muscle in on his territory.

Monday found Dee-Dee in tears over Angela Brickell's pregnancy test. Not tears of sympathy, it seemed, but of envy.

Monday also found Doone on our doorstep, wanting to check up on the dates when Chickweed had won and Harry had been there to watch.

'Mr Goodhaven?' Tremayne echoed. 'It's Mrs Goodhaven's horse.'

'Yes, sir, but it was Mr Goodhaven's photo the dead la.s.s was carrying.'

'It was the horse's photo,' Tremayne protested. 'I told you before.'

'Yes, sir,' Doone agreed blandly. 'Now, about those dates

In suppressed fury, Tremayne sorted the way through the form book and his memory, saying finally that there had been no occasion that he could think of when Harry had been at the races without Fiona.

'How about the fourth Sat.u.r.day in April?' Doone asked slyly.

'The what?' Tremayne looked it up again. 'What about it?'

'Your travelling head lad thinks Mrs Goodhaven had flu that day. He remembers her saying later at Stratford, when the horse won but failed the dope test later, that she was glad to be there, having missed his last win at Uttoxeter.'

Tremayne absorbed the information in silence.