No Love Lost (29 page)

‘I didn't know those blue flowers meant “success”, did you?' I demanded inconsequentially.

‘No, and I'm not at all sure of it now,' he observed promptly. ‘I challenged that when they produced it. It was only some tale of a char's. The copper didn't seem too sold on it himself. That was one of the things which made me feel that they had very little evidence against anybody. A perfectly idiotic story.' He glanced at me with abrupt directness. They told me you had done the shooting.'

‘Did you believe it?'

He appeared utterly scandalized. That was the best thing about Andy, he was the sanest thing on earth.

‘Hardly,' he said stiffly. ‘I assured them they could cross that idea off their list to start with. I said that the last time I'd seen you you were determined to keep your marriage going if it suffocated you. That's what made me so depressed.'

‘Did you say that in so many words?'

He nodded and grimaced at me. ‘That wasn't very clever. After that they started worrying about my movements. I'd met Victor Lane at the club bar.'

‘But only for five minutes,' I put in hastily.

He slid down into the chair and leaned back, his hands behind his wiry black head.

‘Long enough to take a dislike to him,' he said distinctly. ‘I was prejudiced, no doubt, but I did hate his guts. He wasn't our sort at all, Liz. That sort of sneery smart conceit always means a shallow chap. Oh well, that's over. Anyway, after I'd met him and loathed him I didn't feel like being sociable, so I went off for a walk. I got into a lane I found beside the course and after a while I sat down on the bank and tried to sort out what I'd better do. It was obvious that I couldn't avoid you if I stayed in the town, but on the other hand I thought it might prejudice me with the profession if I threw up the job and cleared out. I thought I might get a reputation for instability at the outset of my career. So all that had to be weighed up. There was quite a lot to be considered one way and another, and it took me the whole afternoon before I came to a decision.'

I watched him helplessly. ‘You thought you'd go.'

‘Yes,' he agreed briskly, ‘yes. It seemed the lesser of two evils. I knew I'd make love to you if ever I saw you again so I walked back to the club, picked up the car, and drove into town to fix up about leaving. Not much of an alibi, as it happens, because I've got no witnesses and I seem to have been only a quarter of a mile from the cottage all the time.'

‘Did you hear the shot?'

He frowned. ‘They asked me that. The trouble is I don't know. I was so preoccupied. As I was walking along just before I sat down I did think I heard something in the distance, but I'd only just left the clubhouse then and Lane went off only a few minutes before I did. If that
was
the shot, he must have been potted almost as soon as he stepped in the cottage, which doesn't seem feasible.'

I sat staring at him in undisguised dismay. ‘Didn't you see anybody at all? Didn't anyone pass you?' As an alibi it was worse than mine.

‘No one of any use,' he said. ‘One car went by, but it was blinding. I don't think the driver could have noticed me. I fancy it was a Morris Eight, but I didn't notice the colour or the number. They're going to broadcast for the driver, but I can't imagine there's any hope of him turning up or being any use if he does. The only other living soul who passed down the road
while I was there is now in hospital, unconscious, and is not expected to recover. He's one of the masters here, by the way.'

‘Mr Rorke?'

‘That's the man.' He seemed surprised. ‘You've heard about him, have you? He came down the lane while I was sitting there and he eyed me, but we didn't speak. I'd never seen him before and he was in a fine old state. I thought he was a tramp. When I described him, the police recognized him at once. He'd been to the club and they'd slung him out.'

‘I saw him start from the school,' I remarked. ‘He'd been trying to sober up under a shower, that's why he was so wet. What was he doing in the lane?'

Andy shrugged his shoulders. ‘The police say he was taking a short cut to the London Road. A lorry driver has reported giving him a lift as far as the northern suburbs. After that the poor beast seems to have had an argument with a double-decker bus, so he won't be able to help much. Not that it matters.'

I sat up at that ‘But it does matter,' I objected. ‘I don't think you understand. Uncle Fred South –'

‘Who's that? Old turnip-face, the Superintendent?'

‘Call him what you like,' I insisted, ‘but he's no fool. You imagine he's let you out to come up here because he hadn't any evidence to hold you. Well, my bet is that he did it on purpose. He's slippery, he's –'

‘My dear girl, he wasn't there,' he interjected. ‘For the final three hours or so I was interviewed by a mere Inspector and a brace of helmetless bobbies. The Inspector read a report which came in to him and let it out quite casually that you were up here alone. When I insisted that in that case I was coming up myself he tried to object. I called his bluff by pointing out that he must charge me if he was going to hold me, and after a bit he gave way. I wasn't followed here, Liz. The road was perfectly clear.'

I was not satisfied. ‘It's the gun,' I said, ‘that's what they're worrying about. It's because they can't connect you with Victor's gun that they haven't arrested you. They think I must have given it to you somehow.'

He thought that one over and I saw I'd got the point home.

‘I knew where it was kept, you see,' I added. ‘They found my fingerprints on the drawer, I expect.'

‘But that's ridiculous,' he protested. ‘What does that prove? I knew where the gun was kept for that matter.'

‘
You
did?'

‘Of course I did. In the top middle drawer of his desk. Everybody knew it. It was one of the first things I ever heard about Victor Lane when I first came to the town. “A colourful personality,” so I was told. “Kept a loaded revolver in the top middle drawer of his desk. So dashing and original.” I thought it sounded dangerous. Well, it's proved so, hasn't it?'

‘But, Andy,' I exclaimed, horror-stricken, ‘you didn't tell the police this, did you?'

‘No,' he admitted seriously. ‘Being cautious by nature, I forbore. But I assure you it was common knowledge. Provincial people like whispering things like that. It makes home sound like the movies. When did you look in the drawer? Yesterday?'

‘Yes,' I said slowly, trying to remember about a thing which was as remote as if it had happened ten years before. ‘I went into the study once the day before, when I first got in from the ride with you, but I didn't go up to the desk. I was looking for Victor, but the only person there was Bickky Seckker.'

‘Who's that?'

I told him and he listened with interest. ‘What was he doing there alone?'

‘He wasn't near the desk,' I assured him, smiling at the idea of the gentle Mr Seckker being in any way concerned with the theft of a revolver. ‘He was at the fireplace on the other side of the room, burning something, I think.'

Andy was puzzled. ‘Destroying the documents, as in a spy play?' he inquired politely.

‘No, only burning a sheet of paper. I think he said he'd been trying to light his pipe with it.'

‘Extraordinary.' Andy spoke without excitement. ‘An odd place, though. No place for you and me, Liz. To fit in with Tinworth we'd have to have been born here. We'll have to get out of it, and out of the country, just as soon as we can. I love you. I love you, darling, more than anything in the world.'

I leant across the table, my hand outstretched. ‘It's good to hear you say it, my dear.'

As Andy stumbled to his feet to come towards me the door behind me opened. I felt the draught on my neck and turned just in time to see a familiar clown's face looming in out of the shadow of the staircase. Uncle Fred South stepped lightly into the room and closed the door behind him.

‘Perhaps I ought to have knocked,' he said, and his country voice was broader and slyer than ever.

Andy turned on him savagely, his face dark with blood and his eyes furious.

‘Do you always walk into people's houses unannounced, Superintendent? The ordinary laws of the country don't affect the police down here, I suppose?'

Uncle was unabashed. ‘I haven't walked in because I ain't been out, Doctor,' he said pleasantly, favouring me with an alarming battery of confidential twinkles. ‘I changed my mind. I thought I wouldn't leave Mrs Lane in this great set of buildings all alone, so I went to the study, which we've made our headquarters, and sat there writing my report. Then, I don't know how it was, I must have fallen asleep in the chair.' He smiled at me, his face glowing with good temper. ‘I reckon it was that pudding that did it,' he said.

He did not expect to be believed, but it was impossible to be angry with him. He was so cheerful about it all.

‘I came up for some of my equipment,' he went on placidly. ‘I always carry it about with me because I don't like to see a constable scribbling in the corner whilst I'm conducting an interview. It doesn't seem friendly. This equipment is not official. I bought it meself. Out of the proceeds of the last Police Concert, as a matter of fact. I left it up here by mistake.'

Andy and I stood staring at him, mystified but with growing apprehension. As we watched he dived under the white-draped table and came up with a box which looked like a portable radio set. A flex which had been attached to the candle lamp which we used at the evening meal hung limply from its side. The Superintendent put it gently on the table.

‘Well, I never did!' he said calmly. ‘My little old tape recorder's been on all the time.'

There was a long and dreadful pause. We all three stood looking at the little machine, its turntables moving silently on the open top.

Andy sprang towards it and just as quickly a broad body inserted itself between him and the moving tape.

‘Wait a minute, son,' said Uncle Fred South. He edged himself round until he stood facing us, but still shielding the wicked little machine. ‘Now look here, you two,' he began, his round-eyed glance flickering from one to the other of us in shrewd appraisal, ‘I'm more than twice as old as either of you and that gives me the right to speak, policeman or not. What I want to tell you is this. I'm not against you and I'm not for you. In this business I've got just about as much heart as this table I'm sitting on, but I'm just as sound as it and just as useful as it too.' He was speaking with tremendous sincerity and managed to be strangely impressive. I know we both stepped back. ‘If you've killed a man between you I'll turn you in,' he went on. ‘I shan't hang you, because that ain't my business, but I'll hand you over to the law and the lawyers and I'll read about you in the papers and never give you another thought. But if you're innocent I'll get you out of this here business so fast you won't know you've ever been in it, and we shan't have a pack of London legal-eagles upsetting all our summer holidays and keeping us all standing about until Christmas.'

He paused and, after giving me a steady, not unfriendly stare, concentrated on Andy, whose dark face was unrevealing.

‘Now, I told this young woman in this very room not so long ago that if I once knew the footing you two were on I'd tell you things about yourselves you didn't even know,' he announced. ‘That is why I fitted up this here little arrangement and set it going as soon as I heard your car come up the Tortham Road. I'd sent word to my Inspector to let you go, and I figured out that you'd come straight up here if you heard that Mrs Lane had been left in the school alone. There's nothing against you in that. In your position I'd have done the same. Now I could have had a fellow listening and taking everything down in shorthand,
and that would have been in order. But I didn't do that because there's a great deal of difference between the spoken word and what's been taken down by a chap with a pencil, and I didn't just want to catch you out. I wanted the truth, and by gee I'm going to get it. Will you sit quiet while I play this through to the three of us? That's the honest way. If there's a bit I don't understand, then we'll take it back and listen again.'

There was silence for awhile. My mouth was dry and I felt sick with fear, not because I was guilty but because I couldn't remember anything we'd said and because he was going to find out that Andy and I were in love after all. I glanced at Andy, but he was watching the Superintendent, an odd, defiant expression on his face. Without looking at me he thrust an arm round my shoulders so that we stood together.

‘All right,' he said.

The old man sighed. ‘That's more like it,' he said. ‘Sit down. It'll make you shy, you know. Still, we can't help that. Now listen.'

The dreadful performance began. I had not dreamed that ordinary conversation went so slowly. It was terrible. Every word seemed to have twice its normal meaning, and the pauses to go on forever. Andy's voice I knew. It sounded exactly as it always did, very much alive and deeper in tone than most men's. But who the breathy young woman with the squeak in her voice was I could not believe until I heard her saying the things I'd said. Andy and I sat side by side at the table and stared down at our hands clenched on the cloth. But Uncle Fred South just watched the machine, his eyes half closed and his shining knobbly face quite expressionless.

It went on and on. The whole picture was there but it was magnified. We sounded as if we were overacting, and when I heard Andy admitting once again that he had known where Victor kept his gun my heart turned slowly over and I could scarcely breathe. I stole a glance at the Superintendent after that, but he had not moved.