Free No Way Of Telling by Emma Smith

them to cross the stream and her wish, like a wish in a fairy-story, had been granted: they were here. They were actually here, and Amy had an overwhelming desire to be allowed to keep them, to make friends with them—with this one anyway, the one with the soft pleasant voice and the dazzling eyes who was saying to Mrs Bowen:
    “Is there somebody else we can speak to—your son, perhaps?”
    “Well, no—so far as speaking goes I’m the one for that,” said Mrs Bowen, not troubling to add that her son was in Australia.
    Amy heard her with dismay. Why was she being so rude, so unlike herself? He would be bound to take offence and go. She watched his face anxiously. But no!—he was still smiling, his voice remained agreeable. Indeed, he almost sounded as though he were amused by what Mrs Bowen had said.
    “You mean to tell me you live here alone?”
    “There’s the two of us,” said Mrs Bowen.
    Again Amy felt those extraordinary eyes turned on her like lamps, and said eagerly, wanting to speak to him herself:
    “She’s my granny.”
    “I see! Do you hear that?” he called out, laughing. “Nobody here but an old woman and a child. We thought it must be a shepherd’s cottage,” he said to Mrs Bowen, “right up here in the hills like this, on its own.”
    Amy could tell from the way her grandmother pulled the shawl tighter round her arms that she was angered by his words. But it was true, after all—she was an old woman. He had not meant to annoy her.
    “You must find it very isolated—no neighbours. Don’t you get lonely?” he went on.
    Mrs Bowen made no reply.
    “You won’t mind, I suppose, if we take a look round?” he said, and to Amy it seemed that his voice had become a degree colder: it was hardly surprising.
    “Oh?—and what for?” said Mrs Bowen.
    A look round! Amy knew what for at once, and knew that her grandmother knew—had known it all the time. So they were not just holiday-makers, out on their skis for the fun of it. They were the police, and they were looking for that man. How dull she had been not to have realised it straight away when she first saw them. But it was their clothes that had misled her. In Amy’s experience policemen could be seen to be policemen by the uniform they wore, as in the case of Mr Pugh down in Melin-y-Groes.
    The tall man, instead of answering Mrs Bowen, had walked across to the one supporting the skis and ski-sticks. Whatever he said was spoken too low for Amy to hear but the other man, who was short and dark and wore a green knitted cap with a bobble on top, immediately propped his burden against the porch and tramped off round the side of the cottage in the direction of the shed. Amy could see that he was holding something and for one confused moment she imagined it was a black torch, unlit, before understanding that it must be a revolver. She had seen plenty of guns in her life but they had always been shot-guns with long barrels, the kind that farmers used for shooting rabbits. It was no rabbit this man was after. Amy felt a curious gap in her breathing.
    His tall companion strolled back to the porch where he rested one foot nonchalantly on the step Mrs Bowen had cleared of snow that afternoon. Mrs Bowen stood, adamant, in front of the door. Why? Amy wondered.
    “Are there any other houses near here?” he asked conversationally. “Or any buildings, for that matter—outhouses, barns—that sort of thing?”
    “No, there’s not,” she answered curtly, “no buildings at all. The nearest farmhouse to us would be Dintirion, Mr Protheroe’s place, and that’s some miles off.”
    “I see. So there’s nothing over the brow of this hill, then? When we were further up the valley we rather thought we could see another roof, but we must have been mistaken.”
    Amy could bear her grandmother’s inexplicable taciturnity no longer.
    “It’s Mr Protheroe’s haystack they’d have seen, Granny,” she broke in. “That’s what it was—sure to have been.