The Lily Hand and Other Stories by Ellis Peters Page A

shattering him, tearing out of him with such violence I was afraid he might die under my hands.
    I imagined him feeling his way up the stairs in the half darkness, trembling with despair, and love, and hate, lightheaded with hunger, for he’d surely never thought to eat anything all day. How could he know what he was saying or doing? It would have to wait until he was rested, and fed, and calm, and by then we should know well enough that Eileen Willard was alive and venomous as ever, and all he’d suffered was a crazy hallucination.
    I filled him up with sedative tablets, and got him into my own bed, which I certainly wouldn’t need myself that night. After some time the tablets worked, and he passed out. He still had the gun clutched in his hand, determined that no print should ever connect me with it, and I hadn’t cared to distress him further by forcing it away from him. Now that he was fast asleep at last I was afraid to try to break the death grip he had on it, but even more afraid to leave it where it was.
    I got it away from him gradually, gently working his fingers loose, one by one. And just as I was going downstairs to examine it somewhere well away from him, the telephone rang.
    It was the police. They wanted to know if Frank Willard was safely with me, where they understood he was supposed to be. I said he was, and asleep in bed. My heart was pumping so, I thought the Inspector couldn’t help hearing, but my voice sounded all right, and I was encouraged to ask, ‘Why? What’s it all about?’ Only checking up, I thought. Knowing the state he’s been in.
    â€˜Just wanted to make sure he was safe in your hands,’ said the Inspector. ‘Lucky for him! Constable on the beat by his wife’s place spotted the side door was ajar about half an hour ago, couldn’t rouse anybody with the knocker, so he went in. Found the woman dead in her bedroom – murdered. Glad your man’s well out of it. What time did he turn up?’
    How fast can you sort out all the pitfalls, and present an impregnable lie, without even knowing you’re going to do it? I did it – so far as the circumstances could be reckoned up on the known facts – in half a second flat.
    They would easily find out he’d given us the slip this morning. They might find out about the gun, but that could be disposed of, he could have repented and thrown it in the river. Then, my housekeeper knew he was still missing when she went home at something after six. Had he been seen by anyone during the last hour or so before he came to me? There was no way of knowing, I could only make a guess.
    How much time could I give back to him without risking a host of witnesses against us? What time had she been killed? Late? Lovers steal in by unlocked side doors only after dark, and after the crowds have gone home from the cinemas.
    â€˜About ten o’clock,’ I said. ‘Not in very good condition. He’s up against a tremendous readjustment, and it’s all rather too much for him. I’ve given him a sedative, and he’s dead to the world. Anything I can do?’
    â€˜This won’t exactly help the poor devil,’ said the Inspector sympathetically.
    â€˜You’re right, it won’t. Maybe I can keep him from hearing about it for a day or two. Try not to ring me here, in case he’s around. Any idea who did it?’
    â€˜No statement yet,’ he said, and rang off.
    When I put down the telephone I was shaking like a leaf. The gun had gone clean out of my mind, and lay forgotten in the desk drawer all night. I felt sick. I couldn’t believe it was myself I’d heard, lying, calculating, obstructing the police, aiding and abetting a possible murderer. I couldn’t grasp it. I felt caught like a fly in a web. So that’s how these things begin, as smoothly as that, out of pity and rage, out of a sense of an injustice which was certainly not the fault of