Theo was silent a long moment.'I've been asking myself that same question. The only answer I can come up with is one I don't even want to contemplate: that he has always been close at hand, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike; that he has been near enough to overhear conversation. Devil take the man! He may very well have been in the house!'
'My thoughts exactly,' the inspector said and sat back in his chair, tiredly. 'My men will escort you to your home, and we will set a twenty-four-hour watch. I honestly don't know what else to do.'
Theo shrugged. 'Do what you must. But I tell you this: Albert Askrigg is not inhuman. Don't allow yourself to be in awe of him, or he really will defeat you. He is a man like any other. It's just that he knows the moors, unlike any other. He has made them his home. Have you ever flown over the moors, inspector?'
Caught off-guard, the inspector said, 'No, can't say as I have.'
'Well I have. They are not as vast as the Brontë sister's overactive and inbred imaginations believed. But they are just large enough for one lone man, who knows them like the back of his hand, to evade a bunch of people who are stumbling blindly about looking for him. That is all there is to Albert Askrigg. So don't try frightening me with tales of ghosts and demons and vast expanses of wild, gorse-strewn moor when we both know the truth to be something a trifle more mundane.'
All the way back to Dewhurst Mansion, Pamela sat in the back seat with Theo, while Fred drove. Theo had wrapped Pamela in his warm overcoat and she now snuggled against him, half-asleep, head on his chest, he with his arm around her. How she had longed for such intimate contact with him, and how it was spoilt by not being real! He was here to comfort her because she had been traumatized, not because he loved her and wanted to take her in his strong arms and hold her to him, to protect her from life's dangers and unpredictability and uncertainty.
Ah, well, at least she could pretend for the time being. She could pretend that they were on their way home from an uneventful trip in the country, with just the two of them. Or- the thought made her smile- she could pretend that they had a little girl like Jennie, who was perhaps asleep on the seat beside them, curled up beneath a coat, features rendered angelic by slumber. If only she could simply lift her head and see love in Theo's eyes; if only he would kiss her now and take her to bed, where she would surrender to him, and he would promise to love and protect her, for ever and always.