Black money (29 page)

"This is making fun?"

She turned to me. "The real reason was very simple. You guessed it last night. I'd been pregnant by him and Roy found out somehow that Taps was the father."

"You let me think it was Peter."

"I know I did. I'm not covering up for Taps any longer."

He gasped as if he had been holding his breath. "You mustn't talk like that. Someone might hear you. Why don't we go inside?"

"I like it here." She planted herself more firmly in the doorway. He was afraid to leave her. He had to hear what she might say.

"What were you doing at the Tennis Club that night, professor?"

His eyes veered and then held steady. "I went there for purely professional reasons. Miss Fablon had been my student since February. I counseled her, and she confided in me."

"Did I not," she said.

He went on spinning out his string of words, as if it was his only support in a void: "She confided that her father, with the aid of a scholarship from Mr. Ketchel, was going to send her to a school in Switzerland. I felt that my advice as an educator would be useful to them, and I went to the club to offer it.

"I got there rather too late to be of use. I saw Mr. Fablon staggering across the lawn, and when I spoke to him he didn't know me. He stumbled into the pool enclosure, apparently with some idea of washing his face, which was bleeding, and before I knew it he had fallen in. I'm not a swimmer myself, but I tried to fish him out with a pole they keep for that purpose, with a paddle hook on the end " "You mean," she said, "you used it to hold him under water."

"That's a ridiculous accusation. Why do you keep repeating it?"

"Francis gave me an eyewitness account the other night. I didn't believe him then - I thought he was making it up out of jealousy. But I believe him now. He saw you push Roy in and hold him under with the pole."

"Why didn't he interfere if he was there?"

Tappinger said pedantically. "Why didn't he report it?"

"I don't know."

She peered up past me at the declining sun, as if it might abandon her, leave her in cold darkness. "There are a lot of things I don't understand."

"Did you take them up with your mother Monday night?" I said.

"Some of them. I asked her if it could be true that Taps drowned Roy in the swimming pool. I shouldn't have, I suppose. The idea seemed to throw her."

"I know it did. I talked to her after you left. And after that she talked to Tappinger on the phone. That was her last talk. He came here and shot her."

He said without conviction: "I did not."

"Yes you did, Taps."

Her voice was grave. "You killed her, and then the next day you came to Brentwood and killed Francis."

"But I had no reason to kill either of them."

There was a questioning note in his denial.

"You had plenty of reasons."

"What were they?" I said to both of them.

They turned and looked at each other as if each felt the other possessed the answer, the multiple answer. I was struck by the curious resemblance between them, in spite of their differences in sex and age. They were very nearly the same height and weight, and they had the same fine regular features. They could have been brother and sister. I wished they had been.

"What were the reasons for killing Martel?" I said.

They went on looking into each other's faces, as if each were a dream figure in the other's dream which had to be interpreted.

"You were jealous of Francis, weren't you?" Ginny finally said.

"That's nonsensical."

"Then you're nonsensical, because you're the one who said it in the first place. You wanted me to call the whole thing off:" I said: "What whole thing was that?"

Neither of them spoke. They looked at me with a kind of dimly comprehended shame, like children caught in forbidden play. I said: "You were going to kill him and inherit his money, weren't you? But it's always the con artist who gets conned. You were so full of your own wild dreams that you believed his stories. You didn't know or care that his money was embezzled from an income-tax evader."

"That's not true," Ginny said. "Francis told me the whole story of his life last weekend. It's true he started out as a poor boy in Panama. But he was a direct descendant of Sir Francis Drake through his mother, and he had a parchment map, which was handed down in the family, showing the location of Drake's buried treasure. Francis found the treasure, over a million dollars' worth of Peruvian gold, on the coast of Panama near Nombre de Dios."

I didn't argue with her. It no longer mattered what she believed, or said that she believed.

"And it isn't true," she went on, "that we planned to kill him, or anybody. The original plan was for me to marry Peter. I was simply to divorce him and get a settlement, so that Taps and I could go away " He shook his head at her in quick short arcs. His hair frizzed out like a woman's.

"Go away and study in Europe?" I said.

"Yes. Taps thought if he could get back to France that he could write his book. He'd been trying to get it started for years. I was getting desperate, too. It got so shabby, making love in the backs of cars, or in his office, or in a public motel. Sometimes I felt as if everyone on the campus, everyone in town, must know about us. But nobody ever said a word."

"You mustn't tell him all this," Tappinger said. "Don't admit anything."

She shrugged. "What difference does it make now?"

I said: "You originally planned to marry Peter and divorce him, is that right?"

"Yes, but I hated to do it to him. I only agreed because we were desperate for money. I've always liked Peter. When Francis came here and asked me to marry him, I switched the plan. I didn't owe Francis anything."

"You were attracted to him."

The words seemed to come out of Tappinger's mouth involuntarily, as if a ventriloquist was using him as a dummy.

"I said you were jealous of him, didn't I?"

He sputtered. "Jealous? How could I be jealous? I never even saw the man, until-" He shut his mouth, biting back the words.

"Until you shot him," she said.

"I tell you I didn't shoot him. How would I know where to find him?"

"I gave you the address. I shouldn't have. Francis told me after you shot him that it was you. He said it was the same man who killed Roy."

"He said that because he hated me."

"Why would that be?" I said.

"Because Ginny and I were lovers."

"You admit it, do you?"

His mouth worked, trying to produce the words that would support him over the void. "We were lovers in the Platonic sense, I mean to say."

She looked at him scornfully. "You're not even a man. I'm sorry I ever let you touch me."

He was trembling, as if her shivering chill had infected him. "You mustn't talk like that, Ginny."

"Because you're so sensitif? You're about as sensitive as a mad dog. I doubt that you know any more about what you're doing than a mad dog does."

He cried out: "How dare you treat me with disrespect? You were an ignorant girl. I made a woman of you. I admitted you to the intimacy of my mind -"

"I know, the luminous city. Only it isn't so luminous. The last dim little light went out Monday night, when you shot Marietta."

His whole body leaned toward her suddenly, as if he was going to attack her. But the movement was inhibited. I was there.

"I can't stand this." He turned away abruptly and almost ran into the sitting room.

"Be careful of him," Ginny said. "He has a gun in there. He was trying to talk me into a suicide pact."

The gun coughed apologetically. We found Tappinger lying on the floor of the room where he had shot Marietta. The revolver he had used on her and Martel had left a dark hole in his own temple. The briefcase of money stood behind the door, as if he hadn't dared to let it out of his sight.

I took the revolver, which still had three rounds in the chambers, and went next door to telephone the county police. Peter became very excited. He wanted to come back to the Fablon house and look after Ginny. He was the one who needed looking after. I ordered him to stay home.

I was just as well I did. She was lying on the sitting room floor face to face with Tappinger, their profiles interlocking like complementary shapes cut from a single piece of metal. She lay there with him, silent and unmoving, until the noise of the sirens was heard along the road. Then she got up and washed her face and composed herself.

The next FatBastard release will be next Saturday 24th March 2001. It will be either Luke Reinhart's  'The Dice Man' or Louis De Bernier's Capt Corelli's Mandolin. Possibly both. The Dice Man is old and is scanning poorly so out of boredom I turned to Corelli, which although long is scanning beautifully. It all depends on whether I get the time to sort out dicey before next week. Thanks to Rene and Nathan for the reposts and everyone who has responded.  'BTW' Bigmart - I'll get round to 'The Number of the Beast' but I'm just not feeling masochistic enough for the Rushdie. I don't have 'Tales from the White Hart - would like to though... Algernon

A FatBastard production. Scanned with Omnipage Pro 10. Completed and Posted 17th March 2001. Proofed (in US English!) in Word 97.. Some formatting may be altered slightly. If you find any other errors, either let me know at [email protected] or update the version no and repost. Not to be reposted without the FatBastard 'Logo' below.

FATBASTARD PRODUCTIONS 2001 - Quality as well as Quantity. Good Books, Properly Scanned, Carefully Proofed, Simply Formatted, Available to all! For personal use only. Not to be sold or used for personal profit.

-------------------------------

Qvadis

Express Reader Edition

www.qvadis.com

-------------------------------