The Long Kill. Reginald Hill
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have a drink. Come into the garden.’
He followed her out. Another deck chair had appeared alongside Annie’s.
‘It’ll be whisky to seal a bargain,’ said Miss Wilson, returning to the house. ‘Sit down.’
She went back inside. Annie opened her eyes.
‘You’ve bought it then,’ she said neutrally.
‘It is irresistible,’ he said.
‘Did you knock her down?’
‘Only as far as she had decided to go. Probably not as far as that,’ he said ruefully. ‘I think she was very gentle with me. If she’d really tried her hardest, I suspect I’d have been raising her price. She’s rather formidable, isn’t she?’
He had struck the right note. She smiled at him now and nodded.
‘When she came out to see you just now, what did she say?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘She just came out, got that deck chair you’re sitting on from the shed and set it up, then she went back inside. Why?’
‘She told me she was coming to consult with you,’ he said.
Slowly she began to laugh and he laughed with her. It felt like a long time since there had been such a moment of shared pleasure in his life.
‘You two sound very jolly, I must say,’ said Miss Wilson, returning with a tray on which stood a decanter and three glasses.
Jaysmith struggled to his feet to offer her the deck chair but she said, ‘No, I find them things too awkward for me nowadays. I’ll sit on the wall here if you’ll shift your feet.’
Obediently Annie removed her feet from the ornamental wall and her aunt sat down.
‘Take your jacket off, man, and enjoy the sun,’ exhorted the old lady.
Obedient in his turn, Jaysmith removed his jacket. As he draped it over the back of the deck chair, the Wainwright guide fell out of his pocket. Quickly he picked it up and replaced it, wondering if Annie Wilson’s expression of amusement only existed in his mind.
He stayed for half an hour, deftly fielding questions about his background. At the end of this time the younger woman said, ‘I really must be off now, Aunt Muriel. I promised I’d pick Jimmy up from school.’
‘You’ll spoil him.’
‘First day back. After this, it’s the bus and a nice healthy walk. I’ll bring him round this weekend.’
‘Make sure you do.’
Jaysmith rose too.
‘You can get in touch with me at the hotel when your solicitor’s ready,’ he told Miss Wilson.
‘You’re staying on then?’
‘A few more days.’
He was wondering how to keep contact with Annie Wilson when she said, ‘Like a lift down into the village, Mr Hutton? I can’t see your car.’
‘No. I walked up this afternoon.’
‘Spoken like a real enthusiast. Of course, if you want to walk back …’
‘No. Uphill was enough. Downhill’s often much harder.’
‘There speaks an expert.’
He folded himself into the tiny car, leaving the two women to take their farewells. A moment of panic hit him as he waited.
What am I doing? he asked himself. I’ve promised to buy a house just so that I can talk a little longer with a woman I’ve only just met who may turn out to be dull as ditchwater, or reckon that I’m even duller!
But the panic vanished like morning mist when she climbed into the driver’s seat.
They hardly spoke on the short descent into Grasmere. She dropped him at his hotel. To invite her in for tea or a drink was manifestly absurd when he knew she was going to pick up her son.
He held the car door open and said, ‘Thank you.’
‘A pleasure,’ she said, putting the car into gear.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’d like to see you again.’
‘If you’re coming to live up here, I daresay we’ll bump into each other,’ she said with a smile.
‘No. I mean sooner. What about tomorrow? Lunch, say.’
She stopped smiling and studied him closely.
‘I don’t often eat lunch,’ she said. ‘Except when I go to auntie’s. Otherwise I just grab a snack.’
‘Me too,’ he said. ‘So why don’t we eat our snacks together?’
She thought for a moment then nodded gravely.
‘All right. Why not? Half past twelve suit you?’
‘Fine. But where? What’s the best place round here? You’re the local. You name it.’
‘Best place?’ she echoed, letting in the clutch and beginning to move gently away. ‘Well, one of my favourites is the Lion and the Lamb. Let’s meet there, shall we? Twelve-thirty prompt. ‘Bye!’
She smiled at him, her face suddenly alive with humour and mischief, and then she was gone.
That night before dinner Jaysmith studied the Cumbrian telephone directory in the bar. There were only two Lion and Lambs listed. One was in Gosforth which a glance at his map told him was about fifteen miles to the west as the crow flew but a long drive along high, narrow winding roads as the car went. The other was in Wigton, thirty odd miles north and almost at Carlisle. Neither was what he would call local.
‘Can I help?’ enquired Parker who’d been observing his search from the bar.
‘It’s nothing really,’ said Jaysmith. ‘I just made a casual arrangement to meet a friend in a pub locally and I can’t remember its name. I thought it was the Lion and the Lamb, but I see there’s nothing nearer than Gosforth.’
‘I don’t know a pub of that name round here,’ said Parker. ‘What about you, dear?’
His wife had just come into the bar to get some drinks. She shook her head when the problem was explained and said, ‘No, there’s only one Lion and Lamb round here that I know of.’
After she’d gone, Jaysmith said casually, ‘What did she mean?’
Parker gave him the same look of surprise he’d shown at his ignorance of Wainwright.
‘Up there, of course,’ he said.
He pointed at the window. Evening was well advanced but there was still light enough in the sky to provide a foil for the massive outlines of the nearer fells. One in particular seemed to loom over the hotel.
‘Helm Crag,’ said Parker. ‘Home of Grasmere’s tutelary deities.’
‘Of course. I’m sorry, my mind was too much on pubs,’ smiled Jaysmith, not having the faintest idea what was being said to him.
Later in his bedroom he made sense of it by looking up Helm Crag in his newly purchased guide book. He found it described as possibly the best-known hill in the country because of the rock formation on the summit whose silhouette was said to resemble a lion couchant and a lamb. The Lion and the Lamb!
He cursed himself mildly. Such ignorance displayed a week ago when he was still planning the kill would have been a real error of security. It would have been too large a task for the police to interrogate every hotelier and guest house proprietor in the Lakes, but there would certainly have been media exhortations for them to report any oddities in their recent guests. Parker was just the man to volunteer his services.
But now it