Enquiry - By Dick Francis Page 0,71

do it.’

‘Shut up.’ I said. ‘Me or your father… which has more chance? And run, when you can.’

Grace wasn’t listening. Grace was grasping the essentials and deciding on a course of action.

There was a lot of white showing round her eyes.

‘I’ll kill you,’ she said. ‘I’ll kill you.’

I stood still. I waited. The seconds stretched like centuries.

‘Come here,’ she said. ‘Come here, or I’ll cut her throat.’

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I took myself crutch by crutch towards her. When I was half way there Mrs Cranfield gave a moaning sigh and fainted, falling awkwardly on the rug and scattering the brass fire irons with a nerve-shattering crash.

Grace jumped. The knife snicked into Roberta’s skin and she cried out. I stood half unbalanced, freezing into immobility, trying to will Grace not to disintegrate into panic, not to go over the edge, not to lose the last tiny grip she had on her reason. She wasn’t far off stabbing everything in sight.

‘Sit still,’ I said to Roberta with dreadful urgency and she gave me a terrified look and did her best not to move. She was trembling violently. I had never thought I could pray. I prayed.

Grace was moving her head in sharp birdlike jerks. The knife was still against Roberta’s neck. Grace’s other hand still grasped Roberta’s shoulder. A thread of blood trickled down Roberta’s skin and was blotted up in a scarlet patch by her white jersey.

No one went to help Roberta’s mother. I didn’t even dare to look at her, because it meant turning my eyes away from Grace.

‘Come here,’ Grace said. ‘Come here.’

Her voice was husky, little more than a loud whisper. And although she was watching me come with unswerving murder in her eyes, I was inexpressibly thankful that she could still speak at all, still think, still hold a purpose.

During the last few steps I wondered how I was going to dodge, since I couldn’t jump, couldn’t bend my knees, and hadn’t even my hands free. A bit late to start worrying. I took the last step short so that she would have to move to reach me and at the same time eased my elbow out of the right-hand crutch.

She was almost too fast. She struck at me instantly, in a flashing thrust directed at my throat, and although I managed to twist the two inches needed to avoid it, the hissing knife came close enough, through the collar of my coat. I brought my right arm up and across, crashing crutch against her as she prepared to try again.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Roberta wrench herself out of Grace’s clutching grasp, and half stumble, half fall as she got away from the chair.

‘Kill you,’ Grace said. The words were distorted. The meaning clear. She had no thought of self defence. No thought at all, as far as I could see. Just one single burning obsessive intention.

I brought up the left-hand crutch like a pole to push her away. She dived round it and tried to plunge her knife through my ribs, and in throwing myself away from that I overbalanced and half fell down, and she was standing over me with her arm raised like a priest at a human sacrifice.

I dropped one crutch altogether. Useless warding off a knife with a bare hand. I tried to shove the other crutch round into her face, but got it tangled up against an armchair.

Grace brought her arm down. I fell right to the floor as soon as I saw her move and the knife followed me harmlessly, all the impetus gone by the time it reached me. Another tear in my coat.

She came down on her knees beside me, her arm going up again.

From nowhere my lost crutch whistled through the air and smashed into the hand which held the knife. Grace hissed like a snake and dropped it, and it fell point down on to my plaster. She twisted round to see who had hit her and spread out her hands towards the crutch that Roberta was aiming at her again.

She caught hold of it and tugged. I wriggled round on the floor, stretched until I had my fingers round the handle of the knife, and threw it as hard as I could towards the open door into the hall.

Grace was too much for Roberta. Too much for me. She was appallingly, insanely, strong. I heaved myself up on to my left knee and clasped my arms tight round her chest from behind,