The Scarecrow (18 page)

‘Darling, darling,’ said Len, as he hacked through the sash-cord with which her arms and legs were trussed. She was scratched and bruised and all her front teeth were missing. She must have fought like a wounded bear. For all the beating she had taken and the hell she had been through, she was still alive and even dressed. Herbert had struck Salter down just in time to prevent his returning, fortified with brandy, to finish off his fell work.

It is ironical that the best thing Herbert ever did in his life has to be kept as dark as a black pudding. Prudence knows, of course, but, girl in a million she is, it has gone no further. Even after all these years, the hunt goes on for Salter the Sensational. I know this is wrong, but what can we do? All I can say is that
there could be no more fitting tombstone for that fiend than the rotten, tottering notice board at the Borough Tip.

Klynham has a bush telegraph that made anything in ‘The Fire God’s Treasure’ look ridiculous. It was hard to credit the news could have circulated so quickly. Even Les Wilson was in the crowd that had gathered outside Dabney’s shop.

‘Well, Neddy,’ he said to me after we had watched Len Ramsbottom carrying my sister away with her arms around his neck, ‘I love Prudence so much that I’d uv died if anything had happened to her, but after Marjorie Headly last night sticking her tongue down muh throat and everything, I can’t help feeling maybe yuh sister is too old for me. Thas zactly what I thought, Neddy, as soon as Marjorie started this tongue business. I thought, well, Prudence Poindexter is certainly the prettiest girl in town, but I guess she’s just too old for me and too dern set in her ways.’

I lacked the energy to make a suitable reply. My stomach was too empty to tolerate such feeble chatter.

Len Ramsbottom put Prudence gently into his little car and tucked an overcoat around her. He kissed her tenderly on the forehead and cheeks. She seemed reluctant to take her arms away from around his neck.

There was a noise like a concrete mixer starting up and I saw our old Dennis pull away from the kerb with Herbert crouched over the wheel.

The downpour had spent itself, but it was easy to see that the rain was not over, not by a long chalk. The sky was low and thunderous. Only one yellow gleam had penetrated the scowling pile of cloud and it lay like a path along the glistening, black bitumen of the main street right from the misty, dripping elm
tree clear along to the band rotunda. The people moved away in groups from under the shop verandah, and began to cross the street.

I watched a wet-through Uncle Athol wander into the Federal Hotel grinning all over his chops. The thing that made me so mad was that I knew what he was thinking. He was thinking it was going to be to his advantage to have a cop in the family. I despised that man so much it went against the grain to even think of him as my uncle. In fact I decided never to address him as ‘Uncle’ any more. He was Ma’s brother, but there, as far as I was concerned, the relationship ended.

‘Athol,’ a voice called plaintively and Charlie Dabney waddled past. A man was plucking at his sleeve, detaining him, asking him what he was going to do about people breaking in the front door of the shop like that, but Charlie just waved him away and said something. I am not sure what he said exactly, but it sounded like ‘Episode closed!’

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