Fog of Doubt (8 page)

‘You mean as if he'd dropped the receiver?'

‘Well,
I
don't know; just a bonk and then nothing.'

A bumper scraped against wood as the car crept out of the gate and into the street that ran along the side of the canal. He said: ‘My God, this fog's worse than I thought. I wonder if we ought to ring up the house, first, and see.'

‘Well, it did come into my head but then I thought that if he'd dropped the receiver, it wouldn't be any good.'

‘Well, I think we'd just better get there as quick as we can.'

But as quick as they could was still not very quick. Muttering curses, he steered the car through the network of streets that in the daytime he knew so well. Rosie sat huddled beside him in the scarlet coat.
Could
it be Raoul, Tedward.…? But Tedward, how could Raoul have known to ring up your number.…? And what about Tilda.…? And what about Granny …? And why didn't Tilda ring up? and, don't you think that surely Thomas would be back by now.…? ‘Rosie, darling, how on earth can
I
know?' he said, nervously irritable; making good headway here, creeping at snail's pace there, finally giving up and confessing that he had hopelessly lost the way, climbing out to reconnoitre, coming back, shivering—for he had not waited even to snatch up his overcoat—having discovered that they were in Sutherland Avenue after all. ‘Won't be long now, chicken. I know exactly where we are, don't worry.'

‘That's what you said before.…'

‘Yes, but this time I really do.…'

Until at last he said: ‘This is Maida Vale now—we shan't be long,' and edged the car round a corner, hugging the kerb, and crept along the broad, straight level of the main road, and, after a little while, pulled up. ‘It must be somewhere just here, Rosie; I'll edge her across the road.' She got out and stood on the step, directing him, looking over the roof of the car at the row of houses on the other side of the street. Not even an outline, not even the outline of the familiar, rather lumpy gateposts, but—dimly, dimly glowing through the thick veils of the fog, lights where lights should be at this hour if this was home: a light in the ground-floor right-hand window, a light in the hall, a light on the first floor, in the nursery.… (Goodness knew, Tilda was a maniac about the baby's routine, but surely to heavens she wasn't serenely potting Emma while Raoul lay slain with a mastoid mallet on the floor below?)

The gateposts loomed suddenly up before them. ‘Yes, this is us—whoa! Well, you've overshot it a bit, but never mind.…' She leapt off the running-board and scrambled round, with a hand for a moment on the warm bonnet, fumbling, almost before the car had stopped, at the handle of his door. He got out, thrusting the ignition key into his pocket. ‘Steady on now!' He held her for a moment, quietening her; and up in the nursery, the light went out.

Up in the nursery, the light went out. By the little car at the gates, Tedward held Rosie, for a brief second, trembling in his arms; half a mile away, Thomas Evans crawled homewards again, blear-eyed and sick at heart, a moment away Damien Jones leaned against the solid comfort of a rough brick wall and vomited up his panic-stricken little soul; down in her basement room, Melissa stared into a mirror that reflected back a terrified, sick white face, and, up on the first floor, old Mrs. Evans leaned back panting against her pillows, her wig awry. In the nursery, Matilda Evans put out the light and went softly out and started down the stairs.

At the turn, she stopped. Ted Edwards was standing in the open doorway, staring up at her, Rosie at his shoulder, the curls of the grey fog eddying about them, like smoke. And, between stairs and door, pitched face-downwards on the floor of the hall, lay Raoul—Raoul Vernet who, two brief hours before, had arrived with his bouquets and his speeches at her door; lying there on the floor of the hall one hand still clutching the receiver of the telephone, with the sloping, round bald patch at the back of his head, smashed in. No little black dots now, but a lake of hideous red.…

CHAPTER SIX

S
O
Rosie told Inspector Cockrill.

Cockie was sitting with his feet up on the mantelpiece—which fortunately was a low one, or his short legs would have been practically vertical and his behind in the fire—languidly reading the
Kentish Mercury
. It was a strange occupation for the Inspector at ten o'clock in the morning; but Cockie was on a holiday-at-home—and all he could say was that if this were a foretaste of what retirement was going to be like, he had better invest in a couple of disguises forthwith and set up in a private detective agency, to give himself something to do. Not that, down here in Heronsford, concealment would be of much use: no density of beard and whisker could long conceal
him
from the sheep, black and white, among whom he had moved, the Terror of Kent, for so long; no upturned collar and down-pulled hat disguise the sparse grey hair, the splendid head, the beaky nose, the bird-like bright brown eye. He would have to set up somewhere else, and London, of course, was the place. But Cockie had had his bellyful of London, last time he came up. That Jezebel case—and that maddening young, cock-a-hoop chap, Detective Inspector Charlesworth, forsooth, of Scotland Yard.… Oh, well, he thought; no more of
him!

The telephone rang. A feminine voice concluded what had evidently been a mildly flirtatious skirmish with the male voice of TOL., and asked for Inspector Cockrill. ‘Cockie? Oh, Cockie, it's Rosie—
you
know, Rosie Evans. Cockie, we're in such a
thing
up here, do come and get us all out of it, I can't tell you how awful it is.'

‘What are you talking about?'

‘Well, I'm just telling you. Cockie, dear, I'm most terribly sorry to bother you about it, and especially when you're so busy and terrifically important and everything, but you're the only person in the police that we can turn to.…'

Cockie reflected briefly that a great many people prefaced an appeal for help with the not very flattering confession that he was the only person they were able to turn to; still, Rosie at any rate added that he was terrifically important—and, what was more, confidently believed it. ‘Now start at the beginning, my dear child. What's happened?'

‘Well, Cockie, it seems quite incredible but a chap's been killed, I mean a friend of ours, killed here in our house. I mean murdered. Some horrible burglar or somebody came in and blipped him on the head and killed him.'

‘You've called in the police?' said Cockrill, quickly.

‘Oh, good lord yes, at least they've called themselves in, hundreds of them, milling all over the place. But they're no good, they're only making it worse. I mean, Cockie, it's too incredible for words, but I don't believe they think it was a burglar at all. They think it was one of us.'

‘Oh, dear!' said Cockie. That was different.

‘I mean, Cockie,
you
know Thomas, you've known him for ever,
can
you imagine him hitting somebody over the head and killing them?'

‘They suspect
Thomas?
' Cockie, as it happened, could well imagine Thomas hitting somebody over the head and killing them. He was a quiet man: a man of few words, but those words pungent and to the point; he looked frail but he had been a great little fly-half in his day. Yes, Thomas might kill a man: not impulsively, not in a fit of temper, not, as it were, “lightly”—but in a cold, white, deep, indignant rage. Because of injustice, because of cruelty, because of betrayal of the innocent.… ‘Who was this man, Rosie?'

‘He was a Frenchman.…'

‘Oh, a Frenchman,' said Cockie. Really then, it hardly counted, after all.

‘He came from Geneva; you know I've just come back from Geneva, Cockie? I was at a sort of frightful school there, only I simply never went near the school and I'm afraid I was a bit of a basket. But anyway, he came over here and he came to dinner and Thomas went out and got lost in the fog and the police think he came back and came into the house and killed Raoul while Tilda was upstairs in the nursery. You know what she is about “routine”, Cockie, I mean if the
Queen
came to dinner, she'd still walk out backwards or whatever it is you have to do, at exactly half-past nine, and go up and do the baby.…'

Cockie gave it as his opinion that the Queen, being a mother herself, would perfectly understand Matilda's walking out backwards at half-past nine to do the baby. ‘Well, then?'

‘Well, then, they just think he killed Raoul and then went away and drove about in the fog again and only pretended to be surprised. At least we're sure they do.'

‘They haven't charged him yet, then?'

‘Charged him? Good lord, no, Cockie, what for? They only sort of hint and ask peculiar questions and don't believe a word any of us says.'

Cockie considered. ‘Well, Rosie my dear, I'm very sorry about it, very sorry indeed, and you must tell Matilda and Thomas that I said so. But
I
can't do anything about it, my dear child, can I?
I
can't come up interfering with Scotland Yard. They have to ask questions, but if Thomas is innocent the whole thing will fizzle out—you needn't be frightened, the police don't make mistakes.'

‘But suppose they did? Matilda's simply petrified—you know what she is about Thomas; and I do sort of vaguely feel that it's all my fault—so I thought I ought to try and do something, so that's why I rang you up. No one else dared.'

‘Well, you must just trust the police that's all; they don't make mistakes.'

‘They seem very nice,' admitted Rosie, doubtfully. ‘There's a young man called Charlesworth who I must say is perfect heaven.…'

‘Called what?' said Cockie.

‘Called Detective Inspector Charlesworth.'

‘Oh, well,' said Cockie. ‘That's different. I'll be up this afternoon.'

And that afternoon he arrived (Detective Inspector Charlesworth, indeed!), a small, shabby country sparrow, come to visit his cousins caged up in their terrible town; cheap suitcase in hand, mackintosh trailing over one shoulder (yesterday's fog had gone, leaving a bright, warm day), battered felt hat perched all anyhow on his fine head with its halo of prematurely whitening hair. ‘Excuse the hat,' he said to Rosie, who was hanging about waiting to meet him at the gate. ‘I can't think whose it is. I must have picked it up somewhere. However, exchange is no robbery and it's quite a good fit.' Anything which did not actually deafen and blind him was quite a good fit to Inspector Cockrill.

‘I was waiting here to try and catch you before you went in, Cockie,' said Rosie, hooking a hand into his arm in her own confiding, absurdly endearing way, urging him a little way down the road past the gate. ‘I wanted to say something to you before you saw Thomas.'

‘Well, say it,' said Cockie.

Practice had made Rosie fairly fluent in her recitation. ‘Well, Cockie, I told you I'd been a bit of a basket in Geneva, and the truth is, I'm afraid I was. And buns in the oven is the net result.' She looked at him in bright-eyed expectancy.

‘Baskets? Buns? What are you talking about?'

‘Well, I mean I'm going to have a baby. I suppose now,' said Rosie, ‘you'll be shocked?'

‘My dear child, you should come to the Heronsford police court some time. I'm sorry it should be you, but that's all. Then this dead man …?'

She poured it all out to him and it was worse, much worse, than he had supposed. If Thomas knew that Rosie had been seduced, deserted, with a baby on the way … ‘Well, but Cockie, Thomas didn't know. He knows now and he's a bit sick about it, only nobody can think of anything but the murder; but up till then we'd all been working like mad to keep it from him.'

‘He's a doctor. And he was here in the house with you.'

‘But then, wouldn't he have said?'

‘Who—Thomas?' said Cockie. How much more likely that Thomas, heart hot, head icy cold, would not have ‘said'; would have bided his time, saying nothing, and when the opportunity suddenly presented itself, struck and struck hard, in two senses at once, and so dealt with a vile offender, unpunishable by law. ‘But anyway, why should he have thought it was Raoul?' said Rosie. ‘He didn't know anything about him.'

‘You say it quite definitely wasn't this Raoul?'

‘What,
Raoul?
' Rosie spewed up laughter into her hand. ‘That stuffy old thing! He was as bald as a coot.'

‘Why else should he have come over here?'

‘Well, you know what these businessmen are, they fly all over the place at the drop of a hat. It all goes down in expenses, so what do they care? He probably had to come, anyway. Not just because of me.'

The rest of the family were waiting for them in the house, gathered unhappily about the office fire. Mrs. Evans seemed quite restored to her predominant mood which was one of mischievous sanity, Thomas had retreated into the inarticulate resentment which was his customary defence against the intrusions of personal drama into his busy, anxious professional life; Tedward was civilly striving to disguise the fact that he had returned, perennially resilient, to his everyday buoyancy; Melissa sat looking very white in a big armchair, her lock of hair dangling, as usual, over her eyes; Matilda—Matilda was cold with horror, sick and cold with the horror of it all, the ugliness and the dread, the memory of Raoul lying there in the hall, in their own, dear, shabby, untidy, familiar hall—Raoul, the too-suave, the invulnerable, the didactic, the smug, who now had been hauled off to lie among strangers here in this strange land, until his poor, dissected, degutted, cobbled-up body could be shipped home to the very few people who had loved him there.… ‘Oh, Cockie—it was naughty of Rosie, but I
am
so glad you've come!'

Inspector Cockrill dutifully embarked upon a speech about the impossibility of interfering with the activities of the police on the spot, but she did not listen to him, she did not care. She poured it all out to him, heaped facts and figures at his feet. ‘So there you are, Cockie, how could it have been anybody but a burglar, how could Thomas have had anything to do with it.…?'