Fog of Doubt (19 page)

She was putting the baby to bed that night when Cockrill arrived back, after an exhausting day. ‘Forgive me, pet, if I go on with this ghastly chore. Look, sit down there, out of the way, and for God's sake tell me what's happening.' Emma stood, slender and firm with her aureole of fiery hair, in a foam of white towel, as she dried her vigorously by the nursery fire. Cockie subsided into the rocking chair. ‘I suppose I can't smoke?'

‘Yes, yes, of course, smoke away. We'll fling open windows and things afterwards. Only do
tell
me.'

‘All I can hear about Thomas is that he hasn't said anything more. He's seeing Whosit to-morrow.'

‘Mr. Granger. I saw him yesterday; I've been dashing about like a lunatic, trying to get things fixed up. Our Mr. Burden said we ought to get a solicitor “more used to dealing with this kind of thing”. He's a nice man, this Granger. He's going to “try and get James Dragon”, whoever James Dragon may be: what a name!'

‘He's what's called an eminent K.C.'

‘He can't be too eminent for me.'

‘I hope he won't be too
expensive
for you.'

‘We can always sell the house,' said Matilda, dismissing it.

The nursery chair was damned uncomfortable. Cockie rocked backwards and forwards, his short legs almost leaving the ground each time. ‘Re. Tedward—they've had him at the station all day.'

‘What does that imply?'

‘Questions, questions, questions,' said Cockie. ‘A rest on one excuse or another, and then the same questions; different people putting the questions: different ways of putting the questions.…'

‘They haven't arrested him or anything?'

‘They already have a slight embarrassment of arrested persons,' said Cockie, dryly. ‘And I don't quite see what they can arrest him
on
. The trick with the telephone could have been played, but there's nothing at all to show that it was; no signs, apparently. Of course
he
says that it was—but we also have an embarrassment of confessions. You don't charge people on their own, unsupported admissions.'

‘Rosie's the only person who could confirm it; whether she came in with him, I mean, or waited outside in the car. It all hangs on that.'

‘She hasn't said anything?'

‘Not a sausage. She finally declared that she'd write to Tedward, and spent hours in her room, in the throes of composition, I suppose, because she's not exactly fluent with pen and ink. Now she's gone off in a huff at being caught with the lilies of purity down.' She enveloped the baby's pink body in a cloud of white powder. ‘All
I
can say is that when I got to the turn of the stair Rosie was certainly with Tedward—they were standing looking down at Raoul's body and she was close beside him. But of course that's not to say that she hadn't followed him in afterwards, or that he hadn't gone out to fetch her as he says.'

‘As Charlesworth says,' said Cockie.

‘Well, whichever way it was.' She knelt on the rug, staring into the fire. The baby, quiet for a moment, stood in the golden glow, in the curve of her arm. ‘Do you know, Cockie—the bare thought of him lying there used to turn me sick; I never could endure the sight of blood and accidents and things. I can't bear to see mice in traps and flies on sticky paper and cats catching birds.… But now—I seem to have got over that, it doesn't shake me any more. I can't even think of Raoul any more, alive or dead; only Thomas, Thomas, Thomas all the time, and this hideous muddle of Tedward and Melissa and Granny; and Rosie, damn her for a trouble-making little bitch!' She tied off the rope of Emma's white, spotted dressing-gown and gave her a pat on her tiny behind. ‘Well—poor little devil; she's got her troubles too—in all this hell and high water one's forgotten that; I mean the baby and everything.'

‘What on earth's to become of her?' said Cockie.

‘Oh, God only knows.'

‘I was thinking last night that Ted Edwards might have made an honest woman of her; but that was while he still thought she was a dove deceived by an elderly eagle with the aid of strong drink.'

‘He had no illusions by the time dear Melissa had finished,' said Tilda.

‘Green-eyed envy,' said Cockie, drawing on his cigarette.

‘Thank God Thomas wasn't there—it would have broken his heart.'

‘He'll have to know some time,' said Cockie.

‘Well, yes, it must all come out in the questions and things. Poor darling—one more horrible shock for him. But different from—last night; I mean, that was vile, that screaming little neurotic of a Melissa and Rosie rolling about in mock faints and things, and Tedward looking like death.…'

‘The little minx!' said Cockie.

‘Little nymphomaniac, more like.'

‘I meant all these stories: all true, Matilda, you see—but each one selected to suit the confidante of the moment; and most brilliantly.
You
might be expected to sympathize with an affair of first love, two young things in the grip of their emotions; Tedward got the betrayal by the experienced roué, the old lady got the story of the strong silent man, sweeping her lit. and fig. off her feet.' He shook his head, the smoke of his cigarette curling up thin and blue between his brown fingers. ‘She's a lot more shrewd than one gives her credit for. One's always noticing that.'

The baby had eaten its apple and had its teeth cleaned and now lay back in her arms and began its ritual goodnight crooning. ‘Sorry, Cockie, about this frightful row, and the awful part is that I have to join in too.' She sang rather tunelessly the first lines of a song called Three-mice-unable-to-see … ‘Now you sing, darling, so that mama can talk.'

‘More pleess,' said the baby.

‘No, no, you sing, baby sing.'

‘Potty, potty, pot-ty,' sang the baby.

‘Well, all right, though not quite the theme one might have chosen.' She shushed it for a moment at the sound of soft footsteps on the stairs outside and called out, ‘Rosie?'

‘I'm going to my room,' said Rosie's voice. ‘I don't want any supper.'

‘You needn't think I'm going to bring you any,' called Matilda, through the door, ‘because I'm not.'

Rosie was understood to reply that she didn't
want
any, thank you, she had just said so; and they needn't think they could treat her like Lady Godiva one minute and start bringing her supper and things the next! ‘She means send her to Coventry, I suppose,' said Matilda, shrugging. ‘Let her get on with it!'

‘Porty, porty, por-ty,' sang the baby, showing off; it looked at Cockrill shyly from the corners of its eyes but he disregarded it ruthlessly. ‘What on earth can Rosie have been writing to Tedward about?'

‘I suppose she wants to know whether or not to support him in this “confession” of his. It looked, last night, as if she'd agreed to, though she didn't actually say anything; still, she didn't deny it.'

‘She didn't show any great astonishment,' said Cockie. ‘They'd obviously discussed what he was going to say.'

‘It
must
be all a nonsense,' said Matilda uneasily. ‘I mean, sometimes I think I'd welcome anything that would set Thomas free, but to think that Tedward really was a murderer.…' She got up and the baby's singing increased in volume and silliness lest by any chance she should be imagining that it was ready for its bed. ‘You don't think, Cockie, that it could have been done that way? Or do you? It was
your
theory in the first place.'

Cockrill got up too and the chair rocked backwards and kicked him violently in the backs of his legs. ‘Damn this infernal thing! Oh, beg the child's pardon!' He jabbed out his cigarette on the nursery mantelpiece and hurriedly flapped away the ash with his cuff. He said: ‘I don't know what I believe, Matilda. There's no question of my having a theory—I saw that the thing with the telephone might have been cooked and I proved that it
could
have been cooked—that's all. As you say, it all rests with Rosie.'

‘And then who's to know whether Rosie's speaking the truth?' She plonked the baby down in its cot where it sang porty-porty-porty in a sillier voice than ever and went off into peals of self-conscious laughter; and said, wearily, tucking down its waving legs: ‘I wonder what my poor darling's doing now!'

Her poor darling was at that moment sitting very unhappily on the edge of the bed while the gentleman of the broken glass bottle, who had taken a fancy to him, sat very close beside him and poured out his confidences. ‘Schizophrenia, you see, Doc.—that's what's the trouble with me. You being a doctor, you'll understand better than what these louts of coppers seem to do. Schizophrenia—invalided out of the army with a touch of it, I was, and I daresay it's got a bit worse since then.' He seemed quite delighted about it. ‘Carve up the lot of you, I wouldn't be surprised, if I got into one of me moods.'

‘Good,' said Thomas. ‘That would save the hangman a lot of trouble.'

But they would never hang Thomas. They'll never hang
me
, thought Thomas. They could keep him here as long as they liked and meanwhile the truth was slipping away, slipping away with every hour that went by—little facts forgotten, little truths overlooked, conclusions confused, deductions made more uncertain: all silted over, hidden away, finally obliterated by the sands of all-concealing time. They can keep me here as long as they like and when it suits me to march out, I have only to say a word; and even then they can't do anything to me—
I
haven't confessed to the murder,
I
didn't tell any lies, or none that they can prove. Only about the car. And about the car, I can simply say that I'd forgotten; Tedward will bear me out, Tedward can prove that, though I never set eyes on Raoul Vernet till I came in and found them all standing over his dead body in the hall, I may still have got blood on my shoes and so into the car.… They would never hang Thomas; Tedward knew the truth about him, Tedward, in their own good time, would see to that.…

And they would never hang Tedward. They'll never hang
me
, thought Tedward, standing at the window of his lonely room, looking out at the leaden grey of the canal. They wouldn't charge him while they still held Thomas, and they wouldn't release Thomas until they were very certain that the case against him had collapsed or until the case against himself was proved beyond all possibility of doubt. They'd never hang Thomas and they'd never hang Tedward. When Thomas was good and ready, when he gave the sign that his willing self-sacrifice might now come to an end, then he, Tedward, had only to speak a word, to say that he'd forgotten about Thomas's car—and Thomas was free. That he himself had forgotten all about the car, had built up a case against himself to confuse the issue, to help Thomas, to delay things and muddle things up.… That now it was unnecessary because he had suddenly remembered—fool that he was!—about the car. As for himself—Rosie had no more waited in the car than he had. She had been close at his shoulder when they went together into the hall of the Maida Vale house and saw Raoul Vernet lying there dead on the floor. Whether they would have taken Rosie's word for it or not, that was the truth—and they could never prove otherwise; their case against him was just a nonsense; a desirable nonsense from all but the police point of view, since it confused the issue against Thomas, against the person that Thomas was trying to protect.…

But they would never hang old Mrs. Evans, anyway.

At home, in the house in Maida Vale, Mrs. Evans had decided to help out, during the utter demoralization of Melissa, by making a little something towards the evening meal: just some nice, simple Crèpes Suzettes. She had started very early in the afternoon so as to give the batter time to stand, but somehow it was all going rather slowly and the place seemed an absolute mass of flour. Flour was not what it had been in her day, thought Mrs. Evans, distractedly flapping clouds of it off the table with the skirt of her overall; it seemed to fly about most dreadfully. And there wasn't an orange in the place and not a drop of liqueur; and really Matilda had been unreasonable about her taking just a drop, just the merest half bottle of the baby's government orange juice. Muttering fretfully to herself, she trotted about the kitchen, plunging everything into ever worse confusion. The crèpes were little and round and wafer thin, but they did seem to be mainly composed of large holes which must surely be wrong? Struck by an idea, she went over to the kitchen looking-glass and, with a certain amount of manœuvring, removed the lace cap from her toupée and tried the effect of a pancake there instead. It was terrific: one would patent it at once, the advantages were indubitable—her mind played gaily with a whole series of brilliant advertisements: no outlay on costly Rose Point or Honiton, no washing, no ironing, easily disposed of (by inward consumption), invaluable if overcome by hunger on a long train journey or stranded in a desert, just the thing in time of famine.… One would make a whole stack of them on a Monday and work one's way through. ‘A pancake a day Keeps the laundress at bay!' thought Mrs. Evans and, enchanted by these flights of fancy, forgot all about her disablement and put up her right hand to take the pancake down from her head. But the hand fell back; and, as she jacked it up with the other and slowly scrabbled the lace cap back into position, the laughter died out of her bright old eyes. The police wouldn't be such fools as not to cotton on, sooner or later, to the fact that never for one moment, from the stairs or anywhere else, could she have lifted those feeble arms and felled a man to the ground. They would never hang old Mrs. Evans for this crime or put her in prison or even a loonie bin. I'll have to think up a better one than that, she thought, if I'm going to keep him safe.…

And they would never hang Melissa. Melissa crouching on her divan bed in her basement room, wept and gloomed and was sick with dismay and despair—but only because of the hideous things she had blurted out last night, only at the thought of her own betrayal of what, after all, had been sacred confidences, only because of the horrified, the incredulous, the sorrowful looks she had brought to the faces of those who had never been anything but kind to her. Not for any fear of herself, not for terror lest one day she must hang by the neck till she was dead. For, after all, she had only to say one word; had only to speak one name to clear herself—had only to blurt it out as last night she had blurted out the chronicle of Rosie's sins—had only to tell them the dreadful truth as the murderer had, in so many words, confessed it to her. Melissa could give the murderer away, confession and all: they would never hang
her
.