He was huge, Louisa had said, all those years ago. He had great grinning teeth–like a giant’s teeth–and immense clutching hands.
The rotating millstones had caught the man a glancing blow that sent him reeling back against the wall. He was lying in an ungainly sprawl, and there was blood on the side of his head. He was breathing with an ugly harsh sound and a rim of white showed under his eyelids.
Trying not to look at what lay beneath the millstones, George went unsteadily across to the sluicewheel, and wrenched it around until he heard the groaning sound of the gates descending. The waterwheels slowed and shuddered to a stop, and the water drained away leaving silence. Except that Twygrist was never wholly silent; it was always filled with rustlings and creakings, and with its own strange murmuring voices just out of human hearing.
George stared down at the unconscious man. He was a great hulk of a creature: even in the dimness it was easy to see that standing up he would be much taller than even the tallest of men–quite frighteningly so. It was almost as if his bones had gone on growing after he reached adulthood, but had done so in a haphazard way. His jaw was massive and lumpen–as if a slab of clay had been slapped onto the lower half of his face and left there without being shaped, and his hands were gross and hugely disproportionate to his body. It was chillingly easy to imagine those hands reaching avidly out to a victim, and to visualize that great jaw grinning with evil intent. Against his will, George remembered the old biblical words: There were giants in the world in those days, and a shiver of atavistic fear trickled icily down his spine.
I don’t know what you are, he said, silently addressing the unconscious figure. I don’t know if you’re sick or only misshapen, or if you’re plain bad. I don’t know how you come to be here, either. But I’m as sure as I can be that you’re the man who attacked Louisa all those years ago, and if that’s so, I can see she didn’t exaggerate about you.
As if this last thought had penetrated the man’s mind, he opened his eyes and looked straight at George. With a dreadful grunting cry, half of pain, half of fury, he lurched upwards and came lumbering forward.
George did not stop to think. He snatched up an old cast-iron handle that had broken off a pulley, and as the massive hands lunged at his throat he brought the heavy lump of iron smashing against the side of the man’s head.
He fell back at once, and as he did so Twygrist’s greedy darkness picked up the sound of the blow and magnified it a hundred times over so that the terrible crunch of iron on bone echoed around and around the mill. George dropped the iron handle and forced himself to thrust one hand inside the man’s jacket, to feel for a heartbeat. Nothing. Absolute stillness. I’ve killed him. Don’t think about that though–not yet. Think about what’s ahead: there’ll be an inquiry into all this–Louisa’s death, and the man’s. Think what that inquiry might turn up.
It was unlikely that George would be suspected of killing Louisa, but it was not impossible that he would be suspected of killing the man. The earlier escape might be dredged up, and it might be realized what had happened all those years ago–eight years and nine months ago to be precise. Although George had acted in self-defence today, the police could argue that he had a long-standing grudge against the man, and the result might be that he would have to stand trial.
But if the man’s body was never found: if only Louisa’s body was found, it would be a different story. George might be considered guilty of neglecting his responsibilities at Twygrist–unsafe machinery, people might say–but nothing worse than that.
If the man’s body were never found…