Beginner's Luck by Paul Somers

Author:Paul Somers [Somers, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781447216353
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

Chapter Twelve

I crossed the courtyard in a kind of daze. I locked the castle door behind me mechanically. I walked down the field path in revolt against the facts. The whole affair was too gangsterish, too utterly melodramatic to be credible. This sort of thing, I told myself, just didn’t happen in England. It was going to take a lot of getting used to.

I felt ghastly. Not physically, though I had plenty of bruises and aches. Mentally. I’d behaved like a damned fool. It had been crazy to go spying on a murderer virtually single-handed. It had been crazy to get wedged on those stairs. I’d certainly asked for trouble. And then I’d bungled the fight. I ought to have thought about a gun while there was still time. I oughn’t to have given Smith a chance to pull it on me.… Worst of all, I’d stood by and watched Mollie being savagely ill-treated. It was no good telling myself that if I hadn’t she’d have been dead by now. I felt a louse.

There was only one consolation—and I didn’t know how long it would remain one. If I hadn’t followed Mollie to the castle, if she’d stumbled alone upon the man, he’d almost certainly have killed her out of hand.

I was still pretty dazed when I reached the hotel. I still hadn’t come to terms with the situation. I still couldn’t quite believe it. But I knew I’d got to act as though I did. I slipped into the lobby and turned the key behind me and stole silently upstairs. My room came first, then Lawson’s, then Mollie’s. There was only a feeble light in the corridor, and outside Lawson’s door I stumbled over his shoes. They made a hell of a clatter, but no one stirred. I opened Mollie’s door and went in and closed it behind me. The curtains were already drawn across the window, and I switched on the light. At that dead hour of the morning the switch made a frightful row, too, but I had to have a light. There was a fragrance in the room that took me straight back to Mollie, and I felt worse than ever. Heaven alone knew what sort of a sadist Smith might be—and she was utterly in his power. But I couldn’t help her, and I put the thought out of my mind and concentrated on the job. I had to make the scene convincing. I loosened the pillows, and made a dent in one of them with my fist, and mussed up the bedclothes. I damped one of the towels and threw it carelessly over the towel rail. I moistened the soap. I put a little tooth-paste in one of the tumblers and swilled it around with some water. Then I gathered up a few things that Mollie would certainly have taken with her—her nylon nightie from the bed, a thin silk dressing-gown from the wardrobe, her hairbrush and toothbrush and a few other toilet things from the shelf above the basin and from the dressing-table.

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