By the time Mrs. Butcher was ready to leave, Elsa, strange to say, had not yet returned. ‘If I were you, Mr. Fletcher-Store, I’d be getting quite anxious. Won’t you run down to the cove and see that everything’s all right?’
‘Well, yes,’ he said, uncertainly, ‘I suppose I could.’
‘I mean, it’s getting very chilly. She can’t still be bathing.’
‘That’s just it,’ said Mr. Fletcher-Store.
‘You mean…? But, Mr. Fletcher-Store—oh, no! You can’t really mean…’
‘One doesn’t like to seem to be—well, spying.’
‘I could come with you,’ suggested Mrs. Butcher. ‘I would if you’d like me to. Then it wouldn’t look as if—’
‘Good heavens, no!’ said Gerald, violently. He covered up quickly: ‘I couldn’t let her have the humiliation of being—well, being found out—with a stranger present.’
‘But you don’t know. It may be all quite untrue. If we were to go down, talking quite loudly, so as to make ourselves heard… As you say, horrible if she were, well, quite innocent; and had to suspect you of creeping down, keeping a watch on her.’
He shook his head heavily. ‘I’m afraid, you know, it’s true enough. I’ve—well, to say it flat out, Mrs. Butcher—I’ve seen them.’ And in reverie, he saw them: strolling together across the wet sands. Elsa amorously gay, swinging the white cap in one hand, her rough brown hair all curls; he with his arm around her, a big chap, dark and good-looking. ‘A dark man, Mrs. Butcher, broad-shouldered, good-looking.’ He confessed, a bit shame-faced, ‘Actually, that’s why I was—sort of fishing about just now, asking you about the people round here.’
‘You actually saw her? With this man? But… It could have been just a chance meeting?’
‘Then why didn’t she tell me about it? And anyway, this wasn’t any chance meeting. One—well, one knows, doesn’t one?’
But Mrs. Butcher didn’t know and evidently didn’t want to know. ‘I’d better go,’ she said, ‘and leave you to deal with it. I think you should… Well, I don’t know what to advise, Mr. Fletcher-Store.’ And she got into her little Mini and wobbled off down the rutty lane towards Hartling. To suspect naughty assignations by moonlight was one thing, Mrs. Butcher’s departing rear-light seemed to say, winking in and out like a glowworm as she sped through the night; but to know—that was much too much like horrid real life.
He went back to the rhododendron bush. Elsa was still lying there as he had left her. He ran to the shed, rinsed out the bucket—no tell-tale salt there—caught up his jacket and returned to her again. As he had hoped, the thick, soft wool lining had prevented weals upon her body and arms from the struggle. He picked her up—strangely leaden, she was, who in life had been so small and energetic: he had to fight back nausea at the feel of her, hanging so limply, yet heavily in his arms—and carried her to the car.
It was not a very large boot but he had better put her there; not that there was the faintest chance of his meeting anyone, but—well, be on the safe side, leave nothing to chance. A bit of a joke if there really was a lover, waiting for her down at the bay! However, surely he’d have gone home, long ago? Better keep a look out for any footprints, just in case.
It was slow going, down to the cove. The moonlight obscured and distorted the ruts and holes in the rough cart-way, long unused: the car jerked and jolted—he was terrified of what might be happening to the curled-up body in the boot: what marks might be inflicted that could tell tales. But he got her there at last and parked the car in deep shadow, and got out and stood looking down at the bay.
He had not been able to spend much time in reconnoitring—she might have thought it suspicious; and now he must work out how best he might get her down to the water, without leaving traces whereby a keen-eyed policeman could observe that he had borne across the sand a burden as heavy as he had carried back. He must pick a way carefully through the rocks that ran down on either side of the cove; and hope that the fast in-coming tide would wash away even such traces as he might leave there.
First, however, he must run straight across the sand: straight across and then this way and that, a little, as though calling to her, searching for her. The sands would in time be covered by the tide but one might as well take no chances; and it would give him a legitimate reason, moreover, to look behind rocks and in the single small cave, just in case any observer might be lurking there.