‘We was playing on the swing,’ said Gwennie with the easy untruth of small-childhood.
‘What, the whole afternoon?’
‘True it is, sergeant, they’ll play on that swing all day.’
‘All right, Mrs. Jones, I understand that. But you might have gone down to the trees a bit, Gwennie, when it got too hot? Nothing wrong with that?’ he suggested, an eye turned to the mother. She shrugged and shook her head. Nothing to tell fibs about in that.
But, ‘No, sir, never, sir,’ insisted Gwennie, small fat hands now beginning to tremble. (If they’d known she’d been down to the cave to show Boyo her chest!)
‘Not by the river? There’s cool on a hot day, the river! Down by that old cave, perhaps?’ suggested the constable, temptingly.
Mad Megan, Boyo’s sister Megan, lying on her front out beyond the cave by the river’s edge. Drinking they’d thought she was but now it seemed that she’d been dead, been drownded. And the Hippy had come, running and calling, and gone at last into the cave where she was lying, and they’d scampered away. ‘No, sir, we was on the swing,’ insisted Gwennie, growing a little tearful.
Idris spoke for the first time; idly, casually but looking up shiftily from under his eyebrows. ‘That’s right. I was working in the yard. They was playing on the swing.’
‘All afternoon?’ said the sergeant, sharply: this was an alibi that might too conveniently break both ways.
‘From dinner time,’ said Idris, hardly able now to keep the insolent challenge from his voice.
The little ones had turned upon him large round eyes of astonished gratitude. Had Idris guessed? Was he protecting them? Idris himself was ‘dirty’—dirty old pictures he kept hidden in the barn, Blod had told Ianto so, and Gwennie had heard. He wouldn’t give them away. And this must be it—for after all, they hadn’t been in the yard. First they’d been quite a long time up on the mountain; and then by the river.
The sergeant turned slowly. Beside him, the constable said: ‘Idris—Mr. Jones’ eldest son.’
‘You had nothing to do with this business, Idris?’
‘Me? I told you, I told the man last night. I was here, working in the yard.’
‘You have a bit of a name round here, I believe?’
The constable looked wretchedly, anywhere but at Mr. and Mrs. Jones. Got to do your duty, there you are!—but these were his friends. The sergeant observed his expression and interpreted it. ‘Everyone knows it,’ he said.
‘I never touched the girl,’ said Idris. ‘Not in the way of—of killing her, or any other way.’ He added in a voice of contemptuous dismissal: ‘She was mental.’
‘That would make her easy,’ said the sergeant. ‘Easy to kill—and easy “any other way”.’
‘I was in the yard,’ repeated Idris, sullenly. ‘From dinner time on.’
Here was some capital to be made for Ianto and Llewellyn. If Idris said that he and the little ones had been in the yard at Penbryn all the time—then it would be safe to have seen them there; and if they had not been in the woods after kites’ eggs. Ianto gave the touching hand a warning twitch. ‘We could see them in the yard, sergeant. We was up on the mountain across the valley.’
‘Could you see the Hippies’ place?’
‘Not from there, sergeant. Only Penbryn. We could see Penbryn all the time, sir,’ said Llewellyn, officiously, ‘and the little ones swinging.’
‘And Idris?’
‘Yes, sir, Idris doing the silage and then the hay and then clearing up the yard….’
‘Nancy and me could see them too, sergeant,’ said Blodwen. ‘In the fields we was, reading our books, but we could see Penbryn, and Gwennie and Boyo Thomas on the swing.’
‘And Idris?’
‘Yes, sir, Idris starting with the silage.’ When Idris had started on the silage, Blodwen and Nancy had been in Llangwyn. ‘But we never saw no Hippies, sir: only over to Penbryn.’
‘All right,’ said the sergeant. He had been keeping Idris Jones in reserve but here were three separate alibis which seemed to have no reason behind them but simple fact. ‘All the other boys round here have been eliminated,’ he said to Christo—and surely the man must be guilty, just standing there, dumbly. The sergeant averted his gaze from the horrible shaking of the thin hands. ‘Now this one, too. So what about it, then?’
Christo stood utterly immobile but for the terrible trembling; paralyzed with a black, an animal fear. If they should arrest him! Shut him up in a cell! I should go mad, he thought: and knew that, literally, it was true. I should go mad. Shut up there, closed in, helpless, in the dark, alone… He would go mad and he knew that he must pray for nothing less: that madness would be best for him then.