AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Michael Robb was sitting alone in the room where until recently his grandfather had spent his days. The big chair was still there, as if the old man might come back to it one day, and there was a startling emptiness without him.
"Mrs. Monk," Robb said with surprise. "What is it? Is something wrong?"
"Everything is wrong," she answered, remaining standing in spite of his invitation to sit. "Cleo is going to be convicted unless we can find some sort of evidence that Miriam also is innocent, and our only chance of that is to find the body of the woman..."
"What woman? Just a minute!" He held up his hand. "What has happened in court? I wasn’t there."
With words falling over each other, she told him about Rathbone’s calling Cleo to the stand and her story of how she had first met Miriam, and then Aiden Campbell’s denial and explanation.
"We’ve got to find the woman that Miriam said was murdered," she finished desperately. "That would prove what she said was true! At least they would have to investigate."
"She’s been out there for twenty-two years," he protested. "If she exists at all!"
"Can you think of anything better?" she demanded.
"No—but..."
"Then, help me! We’ve got to go and look!"
He hesitated only a moment. She could see in his face that he considered it hopeless, but he was feeling lonely and guilty because Cleo had helped him in the way he valued the most and he could do nothing for her. Silently, he picked up his bull’s-eye lantern and followed her out into the gathering dusk.
Side by side they walked towards Green Man Hill and the row of cottages where Cleo Anderson had lived until her arrest. They stopped outside, facing the Heath. It was now almost dark; only the heavy outlines of the trees showed black against the sky.
"Where do you think we should start?" Robb asked.
She was grateful he had spoken of them as together, not relegating the search to her idea in which he was merely obliging her.
She had been thinking about it as they had traveled in silence.
"It cannot have been very far," she said, staring across the grass. "She was not in a state to run a distance. If the poor woman really was murdered—beaten to death, as Miriam apparently said—then whoever did so would not have committed such an act close to the road." She pushed away the thought, refusing to allow the pictures into her mind. "Even if it was a single blow—and please God it was—it cannot have been silent. There must have been a quarrel, an accusation or something. Miriam was there; she saw it. She, at least, must have cried out—and then fled."
He was staring at her, and in the light of the lantern she saw him nodding slowly, his face showing his revulsion at what she described.
"Whoever it was could not follow her," she went on relentlessly. "Because he was afraid of being caught. First he had to get rid of the body of the woman—"
"Mrs. Monk... are you sure you believe this is possible?" he interrupted.
She was beginning to doubt it herself, but she refused to give up.
"Of course!" she said sharply. "We are going to prove it. If you had just killed someone, and you knew a girl had seen you, and she had run away, perhaps screaming, how would you hide a body so quickly that if anyone heard and came to see, they would not find anything at all?"
His eyes widened. He opened his lips to argue, then began to think. He walked across the grass towards the first trees and stared around him.
"Well, I wouldn’t have time to dig a grave," he said slowly. "The ground is hard and full of roots. And anyway, someone would very quickly notice disturbed earth."
He walked a little farther, and she followed after him quickly.
Above them something swooped in the darkness on broad wings. Involuntarily, she gave a little shriek.
"It’s only an owl," he said reassuringly.
She swung around. "Where did it go?"
"One of the trees," he replied. He lifted the lantern and began shining it around, lighting the trunks one after another. They looked pale gray against the darkness, and the shadows seemed to move beyond them as the lantern waved.
She was acutely glad she was not alone. She imagined what Miriam must have felt like, her child lost, a woman she loved killed in front of her, and herself pursued and hunted, bleeding, terrified. No wonder she was all but out of her mind when Cleo found her.
"We’ve got to keep on looking," she said fiercely. "We must exhaust every possibility. If the body is here, we are going to find it!" She strode forward, hitching up her skirts so as not to fall over them. "You said he wouldn’t have buried it. He couldn’t leave it in plain sight, or it would have been found. And it wasn’t. So he hid it so successfully it never was found. Where?"
