“Because of the competitions,” Harley said. “That's mostly what long bows are used for these days.”
There were, he explained, two types of competitions that long bow archers engaged in: tournament shooting and field shooting. With the former, they shot at traditional targets: twelve dozen arrows fired at bull's-eyes from varying distances. For the latter, they shot in wooded areas or on hillsides: arrows fired at animals whose images were depicted on paper. But in either case, the only way a winner could be determined was by the individual identification marks that were made upon the arrow that was fired. And every competitive archer in England would be certain that his arrows could be distinguished from the arrows of every other archer who also competed. “How else could they tell whose arrow hit the target?” Harley asked reasonably.
“Right,” Barbara said. “How else.”
She'd read the post-mortem report on Terry Cole. She knew from her conversation with St. James that Lynley had been told of a third weapon beyond the knife and the stone they'd already identified as having been used on the victims. Now, with that third weapon as good as identified, she began to see how the crime had occurred.
She said, “Tell me, Mr. Harley, how fast can a good archer—with a decade or more of experience, let's say—get off successive arrows at a target? Using a long bow, that is.”
He considered the question thoughtfully, fingers pulling at his lower lip. “Ten seconds, I'd guess. At the most.”
“As long as that?”
“Let me show you.”
She thought Harley intended to demonstrate for her himself. But instead, he fetched a quiver from the display rack, slid six arrows into it, and motioned Barbara to come to his chair. “Right-handed or left?” he asked her.
“Right.”
“Okay. Turn around.”
Feeling a little foolish, she allowed him to slide the quiver onto her body and adjust the strap across her torso. “Suppose the bow's in your left hand,” he explained when he had the quiver in place. “Now reach back for the arrow. Only one.” When she had it—and not without a bit of unfamiliar groping—he pointed out that she would next have to position it on the Dacron string of the bow. Then she would have to draw the string back and take aim. “It's not like a gun,” he reminded her. “You have to reload and re-aim after every shot. A good archer can do it in just under ten seconds. But for someone like you—no offence—”
Barbara laughed. “Give me twenty minutes.”
She looked at herself in the mirror that hung on the door through which Jason had earlier rolled himself into the shop. Standing there, she practised reaching back for the arrow. She imagined herself with a bow, and she tried to picture the target in front of her: not a bull's-eye or a paper animal, but a living human being. Two of them, in fact, sitting next to a fire. That would have been the only light.
He didn't shoot the girl because he wasn't after the girl, she thought. But he had no other weapon with him, and he was desperate to kill the boy, so he had to use what he'd brought and hope the shot would kill him because—with another person present—he wasn't going to have the chance to fire off another at Cole.
So what had happened? The shot hadn't gone true. Perhaps the boy had moved at the last moment. Perhaps, aiming for the neck, he'd hit lower, on the back instead. The girl, realising someone in the darkness was trying to harm them, would have jumped to her feet and tried to flee. And since she was running and since it was dark, the bow and arrow were useless against her. So he'd have chased her down. He'd have dispatched her and gone back for the boy.
Barbara said, “Jason, if you were shot in the back with one of these arrows, what would you feel? Would you know you'd been hit? By an arrow, I mean.”
Harley gave his attention to the rack of bows as if the answers were hidden among them. “I expect you'd feel a terrific blow at first,” he said slowly. “Rather like you'd been hit with a hammer.”
“Could you move? Stand?”
“I don't see why not. Until you realised what had happened to you, of course. And then you'd probably go into shock. Especially if you reached back and felt the shaft sticking out of you. God, that would be grim. That would be enough to make you—”
“Faint,” Barbara said. “Pass out. Fall over.”
“Right,” he agreed.
“And then the arrow would break off, wouldn't it?”
“Depending on the way you fell, it might do.”