Cat and Mouse (26 page)

How hideous! How
hideous
! And yet, what a relief if she, Katinka, might feel that it had been through no fault of her own that Angel had gone to her death, that it had not been suicide on account of that fatal photograph. “You think Miss Evans might have sent the assignation note?”

Carlyon shrugged hopelessly. “My dear, who else?” Across the valley the rainbow was fading, delicately withdrawing itself from the afternoon sky, leaving the mountain lying serenely stippled with opalescent sun and shade. Through the village rolled the fat buses, up and down the village street struggled the ants of people; down by the river bank… “Look, Carlyon! She must have gone safely over after all! There’s her boat moored up at the other side.”

“Well, thank God for that,” said Carlyon. “She’s not lurking in these caves somewhere, ready to throw herself over, perhaps listening to all we say. But the thing is—what in God’s name do we do now?”

“Now that we know—about Angel?”

“It was murder,” said Carlyon.

Her heart sank. “I suppose… I mean, Angel’s dead now, and perhaps it’s true that she was—better so. She wanted to die, she was always trying to kill herself. If—if you tell the police about Miss Evans, that won’t bring poor Angel back to life. And as you say, she did it for your sake, not for her own.” She looked at him wistfully. In her own deep happiness, she could not endure the thought of so much further tragedy for her odd little friend.

Carlyon was thinking deeply and he hardly seemed to hear her. “Did she realize that the woman in the photograph wasn’t Angel? She knew about Angel?”

“Yes, she knew, because you said it yesterday, in her house. And Mr. Chucky talked to us afterwards and asked us all not to say anything to other people. But the photograph…” She screwed her brows together in an effort of concentration. “When the photograph slid out of my bag—the wedding photograph—I did say, ‘That isn’t Angel Soone.’ She must have heard me, because at the same time the deaf woman said, quite loudly: ‘That isn’t my niece!’”

A long, long silence. “Carlyon—you were married to Angel Soone, but that wasn’t Angel in the photograph. And you were married to that woman’s niece—but it wasn’t her niece. Then, Carlyon,
who was that in the photograph
?”

“Ah!” said Carlyon. “I wondered when you would begin to ask yourself that question!” And she looked up into the beautiful pale blue eyes, like the eyes of the Siamese cat.

The eyes of a murderer.

S
HE BACKED AWAY FROM
him. “Carlyon! Don’t look at me like that! Don’t… Carlyon, what’s the matter?”

“What
is
the matter?” said Carlyon.

Smooth brown face, silvery fair hair, clear blue eyes, lips drawn back a little over white teeth. “You look like…” He dropped his eyes from hers for a moment, and she gave a little shudder of relief. “You looked so odd for a moment. It was the sun in your eyes or something, I suppose. You looked like a—like a huge, hungry, angry Siamese cat!”

“Oddly enough,” said Carlyon, “you look to me just like a tasty little mouse!” And he turned on her a smile of indescribable evil and shot out one brown hand and grasped hold of her wrist.

She began to struggle, blindly, half terrified, half in doubt. “Carlyon, you’re playing, you’re having some joke! But don’t, please don’t! It’s horrid, you’re frightening me!” She looked up into the glaring eyes again and gave one shrill, short, broken-off little shriek. “Scream away!” he said. “There’s nobody to hear you. Your boyfriend the Inspector has gone off into Neath with Mrs. Love, Dai Trouble’s in Swansea by now, and you yourself have just seen Miss Evans’s boat safely across the river. I was waiting for that. We’re alone on the mountain now, all alone.” And he shook her till the teeth seemed to rattle in her mouth, and said: “You goddamned bitch! Spoiling my plans, mucking up everything, endangering the whole affair! My God, women!” he said. “Preserve me from women—except rich ones, of course! Drooling over me, slavering over me with your sickening infatuations—I bury myself fathoms deep in mountains and mist and no less than two of you have to seek me out and dog my footsteps night and day, not to mention that poor half-wit monster drooling after me. As if murder wasn’t a tricky enough business without my having to keep half a dozen doting women at bay!”

“Carlyon, for God’s sake…”

But he gathered her two wrists in one hand and with his free hand closed his thin fingers round her throat, forcing her head back, staring down into her starting eyes, like a hypnotist. “Oh, yes, I’ve played cat and mouse with
you
, my dear! Played it for my life’s sake—keeping you always at arm’s length, luring you back with pretended fits of anger, dotted in between little half-hints of passion to keep you going, all full of phony symbolism. …” He imitated his own half-brusque, half-tender voice. “‘It’s like the rainbow—too perfect, too soon!’ What woman could resist hanging on to see what happened at the rainbow’s end?” He released her suddenly and, unbelievably free, she fought with all her strength to dart away from him, to scramble up off the little ledge to where, from the precipice edge, the broad mountain rolled back. He let her go; then in three strides caught her again, caught at her skirt and dragged her back by the wrist and flung her to the ground.

“A Siamese cat, am I? Well, here’s one Siamese cat that does like to torture its prey.” He stood over her and, when she struggled to rise, put the arch of one shoe across her narrow wrist. “Stay there, you infernal bitch, and listen to me! And drink your fill, Miss Jones, look your last upon dear Carlyon—for you will not see my like again, nor the like of any man.”

He bowed over her, the instep of his shoe crunching horribly over the delicate bones. “You see before you, my dear, a professional charmer, a man endowed with the dangerous gift of being able to look sad. You don’t know what a fatal fascination that has for women, any women, all women. And to be able to look at the same time very sad, and very young…” He shrugged. “Irresistible! A kitchen-maid at my public school taught me that. A delicious slut she was, too!” He seemed to fall into a pleasant reverie, contemplating the half-forgotten charms of seducer or seduced of long ago.

Katinka wrenched frantically at the captive wrist, fighting to get up to her feet before sick horror overwhelmed her, robbing her of strength to make the final effort. “Let me up, you fiend, you devil, let me get up…!”

He raised her to her feet immediately, with an air of solicitude. “Always the gentleman, you see. Always the charmer.” And he laughed and quoted, once again horribly mimicking his own words: “But beware of charm, Miss Jones! Charm takes all sorts of guises, it isn’t just being gushing or brilliant or gay, or looking nice. The dangerous part about it is that, whatever form it takes, it always seems sincere. In some mysterious way your professional charmer always is sincere—even when he least means it.” He gave her his mirthless, glittering smile. “I’ve said that to you before, my dear—haven’t I?”

“Yes,” whispered Tinka, hypnotized by the glare in the pale blue eyes.

“Yes. I’ve got it by heart, you see. I’ve said it to so many women, and laughed to see them goggle-eyed at me!”

She began to fight again, wrenching frantically at her captive wrists. “Let me go, let me go!”

“Oh, I’ll let you go soon enough,” he said. “And then you’ll be ready to give your immortal soul for a handclasp, even mine. But too late—because you’ll be falling through space like that other idiot girl with her ghastly face, and like the lady whose photograph you so inconveniently discovered, and another young woman still, that you’ve never even heard of—neither you nor the police. Poor young husband! Wasn’t he heart-broken? Every time!”

“Let me go!” screamed Katinka, blind with terror, wrenching at his wrists.

“In a minute, in a minute. You must let the cat have his fun first with the mouse. And pay you out for all the nuisance you’ve been to me—not to say danger. Letting on to the police about Angel! They’ve never been really satisfied about that so-called motor-smash in the South of France. In fact, I’ve a shrewd suspicion that Chucky was sent down here in the first place to keep an eye on me. Much good may it do him!”

Red mist rose before her eyeballs, she swayed and struggled and nothing was real but the iron ring of his fingers round her wrists, and the ghastly cold voice going on and on and on. “Talk about cats! I thought the damn girl had nine lives; I couldn’t get her to die. Acres and acres of rocks, and she has to fall on grass! I lugged her up, unconscious, and heaved her further over the edge to where the car had gone; but does she fall into the flames—not she! Catches her dress on a rock. I took up her head and bashed it against the rock and bashed and bashed and bashed…” He went off into peals of incredible laughter. “And had to fork out two thousand of her hard-earned pounds afterwards, to repair the results of my handiwork! Some damned French nosey-parker has to come motor-biking along before she’s dead. I was a bit dazed by then—things had gone so wrong; it seems I kept saying I wished she was dead, but mercifully they took it the right way, and only poked their damn French noses in a bit and went away shaking their heads and saying how sad it was. But they murmured a gentle word to the police over here, just the same. No false sentimentality about the French. But I could see I would have to be careful, so I hawked her around and lashed out a lot of money on her, and finally brought her down here. I kept her under drugs as much as I could, only that bloody old woman was so keen on her duty. I nearly managed it once when she’d gone off for a day or two, but it didn’t come off and I had to go more carefully than ever. I was playing up the idea of suicide as much as I could. But not she—she clung to life, with her dear, loving Carlyon.” He broke off. “It’s fun to be telling you all this. Murder’s a lonely business: there’s never anyone to talk to.”

She hung, cold and sick, across his arm, gathering strength for one last struggle to get away.

“And then, fool that I was, hoping that you’d be filled with a beautiful pity and keep your dirty little journalistic trap shut, I let you in to see her. And she sees
you
.”

Cool movement of the pointed finger-nail, whispering in her palm; dry rustle of scarred skin, forcing the jade ring over the broken knuckles…

“She recognized you, of course, and the moment you’d gone she gets the whole story out, thrilled to pieces—wants me to explain to you where you met before, arrange another meeting. I had to refuse, and there seemed no very reasonable excuse. Perhaps she began to smell the faintest possible niff of a rat about then, but anyway she always wanted her own way; she was an obstinate, spoilt little bitch. She was determined to see you again—if not in the house, then somewhere else; so she writes the note asking you to meet her in the caves, and tries to give it to you before you leave. …”

Katinka covered her face with her hands, to shut out the horror of his face, gloating down into hers: blue eyes, brown skin, silver hair—the once-beloved face compared with which poor Angel’s monstrous ruin would now have seemed beauty beyond compare. “She wrote that note? But it said…”

“Oh, I topped and tailed it,” he said airily. “She’d had the ring wrapped up in it, trying to give you the ring and the message before you left the house. It must have come unstuck when you were fussing about with the handbag. Anyway, when you’d gone I picked it up off the floor. By then, of course, she’d seen the photograph, and I decided that this would have to be the end. The note came in very useful. I gave it back to her with a gentle word or two and—well, perhaps I looked at her too much like a cat with its prey.

“Anyway, she runs off shrieking out of the house, and obligingly makes for the chosen spot. I suppose she’d have chucked herself over anyway, if I’d only left well alone, but after what had happened in the hall, I couldn’t risk her not killing herself for sure. So I took the snare out of my pocket as I ran, and just chucked it neatly at her feet when she came up out of the cave. It was never set at all and as it happened it wasn’t needed, because over she went. I was a damn fool to just chuck it down like that, but I lost my head, I suppose, a thing I’m a little too much inclined to do, like saying after the car smash that I wished she’d been killed. Anyway, it would have been risky to have been found with it in my pocket. I often carried one; they come in unexpectedly useful sometimes. I did the first girl in with a snare—round her throat, you know.”

But Katinka was no longer listening, she was not taking in a word. She looked down over the sickening height of the precipice. “Carlyon, for God’s sake, I don’t know anything, I’ve never seen anything, I never for one moment really suspected you! Carlyon, for God’s sake let me go! Let me go, and I won’t…”

If I’m dead, she thought, what good will that do? He’ll go on murdering other women just the same—if I’m dead or if I keep silence, it’ll all be the same.

“Carlyon, if you’ll spare me, I’ll swear, I’ll swear by everything I hold sacred, I’ll swear never to tell this to anyone!” But his eyes were blank blue stones. “Then, Carlyon, kill me some other way! But not this—don’t send me hurtling over the edge of this ghastly precipice into space.”

Poor mutilated Angela, legs ludicrously uppermost, tumbling through the empty air to fall, smashed and horrible, on the rocks below. “Carlyon, for God’s sake—I saw her fall; for God’s sake, don’t throw me down!”

But she knew it was in vain. Her head was muffled in veils of horror and fear, her mind was blank, there was a dank red mist before her eyes, but through it pierced one thought—nothing would help her, to beg for mercy was in vain. In a moment, I am going to die. A minute, perhaps two minutes, five minutes, but when he has finished talking at me, when he’s tired of it, I am going to die. When he’s tired of showing off to me! She knew that they were alone upon the mountain, by no sort of calculation could Dai be back from Swansea or Miss Evans across the river again and up the steep mountainside, or Chucky returned from Neath. She was alone. Nothing, nothing was to be gained by argument or pleading but a further moment or two of life. Yet even that was dear.