Read Online The Pool of St. Branok by Philippa Carr - Free Book Online Page B

said.
    “What, Ben?”
    “We’re going to throw him into the pool. Nobody will find him there.” He seemed to regain his old fire. “Come on. Help me, Angel. We’ll get him to the pool.”
    I thought wildly: It’s the answer. He’ll disappear. No one will think of looking for him there.
    He was heavy. We pulled him across the grass leaving a trail of blood. We had him right to the edge of the pool. I noticed that his eyes were open; he seemed to be staring at me. I thought: I shall never be able to forget him.
    I turned away and as I did so I caught sight of something glittering near the water’s edge. It was a ring. I picked it up and slipped it into the pocket of my skirt. I don’t know why I bothered to do that at such a time. I supposed because I had to stop looking at that man and thinking of him, even for a split second.
    “What are you doing?” asked Ben. “Here. Help me get him into the water.”
    He put some stones into the man’s pockets to weigh him down, and we pushed the body into the pool, but it was shallow and we had to wade in so that we were sure of getting him to the deeper part.
    The water was cold. I was shivering. He slipped out of our grasp. For a moment I saw his head with the dark wet hair, the odd pallor of the skin, the open accusing eyes.
    As I turned away I fell. I was completely immersed. Ben picked me up and said: “It’s over. We’ve done it.”
    We stood on the edge of the pool, Ben’s arm about me.
    “Stop shaking, Angel,” he said. “He’s gone. No one will ever find him. There are no tides in the pool to wash his body ashore. He’s gone forever. Let’s get away from here.”
    He held me close to him as we walked to the horses. His, fortunately, had remained waiting. I could not stop looking at the trail of blood on the grass.
    Ben looked up at the sky. “There’ll be rain tonight. That will wash it all away.”
    “Suppose someone sees it before?”
    “No one will. Few come here. Besides, you’d have to look for it to find it … and nobody could be sure that it was blood.”
    “It’s a terrible thing to kill a man,” I said.
    “We didn’t kill him. It was an accident. And, remember, he would have done to you what he did to that other girl. It was justice. If we are sensible we shall feel no regret about him. He deserved to die. He would have been hanged when he was tried and found guilty which he obviously was. We’ve got to be sensible about this. Oh God, Angel, you are so young.”
    “I … I don’t feel young,” I told him.
    He took my face in his hands and kissed it.
    “It’s our secret, Angel.”
    “But he’s dead, Ben, and it was because of us that he died.”
    “No, it was because of himself. It was justice. I feel no remorse.”
    “But when they know …”
    “They are not going to know. Why should they ever know? If they found out there would be a fuss. They would say we killed a man. We disposed of his body.”
    “We shouldn’t have done that, Ben. We should have gone and found them and told them …”
    “There would have been such a fuss. They would have accused us. They might even call it murder. They did with your grandfather, didn’t they? It’s a similar case.”
    “But the man he killed was not a murderer.”
    “It makes no difference. Listen to me. We are in this together. It is our secret. We can’t bring all the scandal there would be on our families. There would be endless gossip. You know how people exaggerate. Imagine the press getting hold of it. No, as far as we are concerned it is over.”
    “How can it ever be over?”
    “It will be … if we don’t let anyone know. They will hunt for him and they won’t find him. They’ll think he has escaped. There’ll be questions and more questions. They’ll never let us rest. They’ll say I killed him and you were an accessory after the fact … that’s how they talk. We don’t want a great fuss. It would be exaggerated and remembered for the rest of our lives. It