Rose in Darkness (27 page)

Crudely drawn. A child, a boy, one leg at an unnatural angle, with smudged-in, witless face: holding a dagger in its little hand.

T
HERE WAS SOMETHING IN
the post for Mr Charlesworth also, that came like a great gust of wind, blowing away a thousand obliterating feathers, leaving the collage clear of all but patches of harder and sounder materials, beginning to jiggle themselves at last into some sort of form. ‘And by God, Ginger, they’re all going to be there this evening, Master Devigne and even that kid that went on this famous picnic; and here’s the perfect excuse to visit them!’ He peered for the hundredth time at the seal on the envelope. ‘You’re certain it’s the same?’

‘You’ve only to compare them. This ridge here, this roughening. Tomaso di Goya—’

‘OK, OK, I’m sorry I asked. No handwriting on the first to be compared; but, spare me the National Gallery and just answer in one word, you agree these drawings are by the same hand?’ He repeated threateningly: ‘One—word.’

‘D’accord,’ said Ginger, falling back upon the last line of offence.

‘If you mean yes, say yes.’

‘Yes,’ said Ginger.

‘And on the same paper?’

‘Yes,’ said Ginger.

‘But the envelope is different?’

‘Yes,’ said Ginger. Without actually saying it aloud he asked: ‘Permission to speak, sir?’ and taking it as granted, added, ‘But that you’d expect, sir,
wouldn’t
you?’ Mummy had been suffering less, of late, from the nutmeg-grated skin and was beginning to be afraid of losing grip, and assiduous in blandishments. ‘I know what a bore it is, Ronnie dear, and lord knows I have her here as little as I can. If I’d known you were going to be at home today... Another time, I’ll just take her out somewhere, only it’s so dreary, hanging about, what shall we do next Mummy?—all those ghastly cinemas and if I ever again hear the word ice-cream—! You must say, darling, I’m a bit of a heroine?’

‘Nothing in the world is such a bore’, said Ronnie, adopting without too much difficulty a Cockney accent, ‘as yer actural heroine.’

Typically she transferred the onus to the child. ‘You’re so tiresome and silly, you get on Uncle Ron’s nerves; if you go on like this, you won’t be able to come here any more.’

‘I don’t care,’ said Ena Mee, rudely. ‘I didn’t want to come anyway, I wanted to stay with Sari.’

‘That woman!’ Unfortunately, That Woman appeared not to be a patient; a very positive threat. ‘And letting you eat such a lunch! No wonder you were sick; all that disgusting mess...’

‘It didn’t worry
you,’
said Ena Mee resentfully, having in fact sicked up very neatly into the loo and been left to do any clearing up by her small self. ‘And don’t call her That Woman!’

‘How dare you speak to me, Ena Mee, like that? I’ll call her what I damn well please. And one thing more, my child, if you think I’m going to allow you to keep a pig—a pig, Ronnie, can you believe it?—
in my house—
’

‘It isn’t your house any more,’ said Ena Mee. ‘You went away so it’s my house now and Daddy’s. And if I say so, it could be Sari’s too.’ She assumed the Nanny voice and added, cockily: ‘And if you don’t behave yourself, my dear, I might.’

All the more soul-stirring then, the reunion with the piglet. Sari, alive to the passion in human beings for stuffing food down the throats of dumb animals, had considerately prepared it a supper which remained as yet uneaten. Rufie was shocked by her resistance to its pitiful squeaks of protest; the creature was obviously at starvation level. ‘Well, a couple of drags then, just to jolly him up till she gets here?’ He himself was more than a couple in advance; the episode of the Juanese letter had terrified him anew—he could not understand Sari’s comparative calm. ‘Rufie darling, if you knew the ordeal I’ve been through today, you’d know that the Grand Duke in person, scimitar in hand, couldn’t shake me.’

But he knew her too well. ‘It’s because of Phin, Sari, isn’t it? Because of what Sofy said about Phin doing the murder? While we know, and the police know, that the Followers really are around, then they can’t get on to Phin. And you’d rather have them after you, than the police after Phin.’

‘But then I’ve always known they were around, so it’s no great shock to me.’

‘It must have been, if you passed out.’

‘Well, the sketch, so disgusting, my poor little orphling with this huge, big knife dripping blood!’

He had contacted Etho meanwhile and informed him, but warned him to know nothing until after Phin’s departure. Phin must leave fairly early to get the child home to bed. ‘Well, Rufie, a quick wee and a new face on, and Luigi will have to appear, so I hope she loves me now enough to accept him.’ And she departed, reappearing duly aflame, in the Garden of Eden pants and a bra painted with two apples, the whole half-concealed by a long, palely shimmering kaftan. ‘I thought she’d adore Adam and Eve; and of course Phin’s never seen it.’

‘Just the job, he’ll think, for shopping with the other medical wives in the Wren’s Hill High Street.’

‘Oh, Rufie!—you don’t know how wonderful—yes, shopping-lists and knowing what you’re going to eat, right up till the day after tomorrow. The
plans,
my dear, and all worked out, everything so convenient, we’ll bring Ena Mee here, we’ll go to lunch there, everything booked in advance, no having to flash one’s teeth and eyelashes to get a banquette table. It’s like Bernhardt said—the deep, deep peace of the feather bed.’

‘I’m happy for you, darling,’ said Rufie, who had no idea what his own next bed would be or where; on to what pillow he would lay his cuckoo head.

Excited squeakings outside the door, the extraordinary idea apparently prevailing in Phin’s mind that it would be locked, one wouldn’t just push it open and walk in. Luigi and the Biblicals were lost in the rapture of huggings and kissings for Ronald Pig. ‘God knows what Nanny is going to say,’ said Phin, in mock despair.

‘Sack the old bag,’ said Sari, ‘because I promise you
I
shall, anyway, on Day
One
.’

His heart shook a little, My God he wondered, have I gone mad?—have I gone mad mad or have I gone mad sane? ‘Dearest, darling, what do you know about bringing up children?’

‘Nothing at all,’ agreed Sari. ‘But just look at her now.’

And Etho arrived with a bottle of champagne straight off the ice and it was all tremendously civilised in a weird sort of way; as Etho had said to Sari in another context, there was more than one answer and to Phin, as once it had to Nan, a new light began to shine upon one’s way of life; the excellent restaurants robbed by familiarity of any excitement, the agreeable friends with not a new thought in their heads, the exactly right clothes... That his lady should open the hospital bazaar in her present costume, was clearly not on; on the other hand, what fun, what charm, a bit of foolishness in the privacy of one’s home.... And Etho was delightful in his cool amusability and the little queer was a little queer but so vital and original and one could always choose carefully and explain first, when one had people to dinner. And his little girl was not mopily whining; and what was wrong with a pig? confined of course to rather less vulnerable quarters. And his love was so sweet and so funny and so beautiful and kind....

There was someone else, evidently, who paused for doors to be opened to them. For there came a knock and the police, suitably apologetic, were waiting to invite themselves in.

Among these four, thought Chief Inspector Charlesworth, unctuously proffering regrets at having been obliged to arrive earlier than expected—among these four people is a murderer.

Or two murderers in collusion? Or three in collusion? Among the Eight Best Friends there had been, always, an underlying sense of all for one and one for all, which had by no means escaped him—and the combinations and computations were endless. But one pair of hands had strangled the woman, and he was looking for that one pair of hands.

Pale hands, lovely hands, narrow, with long, oval palely varnished nails—which yet with sufficient strength might fasten upon a scrawny throat. White hands, wristed with a tinkle of gold bracelets, as capable of the same. Fine hands, well-shaped, well cared for with a man’s simple, casual care; and the hands of a surgeon, long in the palm with short blunt fingers trained to the mind’s will, and very strong.

Sari, Rufie, Etho, Phineas Devigne. He had boiled it down to these four.

And here present also, a stout little girl whose innocent head might well, all unknowingly, hold the secret of which pair of hands had killed.

He civilly brushed aside all repudiations, and simply walked into the room. Just a matter, he explained, of the extraordinary communications that had come through Miss Morne’s letterbox. The first on the Tuesday after the murder—which had been committed, as they were hardly likely to forget, on the previous Saturday night; the second today, Friday, almost a fortnight after the woman had died. ‘Sergeant Ellis will pass them round among you; it’s OK to handle them now.’ The envelopes, one blank except for the seal, the second addressed in a hand which so far nobody claimed to recognise; but anyway a not very easily recognisable hand, a copy-book, sloping script without much exposition of character. Thought by the experts to be certainly not any attempt at disguise. To ‘Miss Sari Morne’, at this address. The envelope bearing stamps of the island of San Juan el Pirata, with the island’s postmark and a legible date and the ordinary London postmarks, confirming date of arrival.

And if they would care to compare the seals... And the sketches...

Curled up in a chair, Ena Mee sat blissful and unaware in her absorption with Ronald Pig.

With the trump-card he now held in his hand Mr Charlesworth had prepared himself very carefully for the interviews to come.

Accept once and for all that Vi Feather had been a blackmailer. Blackmailers come in many shapes and forms and in the vast number of cases are merely opportunists. And blackmail itself comes in many forms; from knowledge of some secret so trivial as to seem nothing in any eyes but the eyes of those who hold it -—to discovery of a secret that may cost a man all that is dear to him even to his very life.

Phineas Devigne had a secret that was new; but Vi Feather had known the three others long ago and might have held secrets that were old. For the moment it was academic, what secrets she might have known.

The case against Sari Morne was—to Mr Charlesworth’s infinite regret—the most obvious of all.

She leaves the cinema, she calls in at the pub, she passes before the tree falls, she drives straight home. Somewhere along the way she kills the woman and leaves the body in the back of her car.

Objections. At the time she left the pub the body was not in the back of the car. In the boot? But why then transfer it to the place where it was found? And the experts are sure that nothing, let alone a dead body, very difficult to lift and handle, in wet clothes, with bedraggled wet hair—has ever been in the boot of that brand new car. Picked up somewhere along the way, then, between pub and home? But where? And why not simply bundle the body out by the lonely roadside in the heart of the storm? Or Vi Feather was waiting for her in the garage shed, when she arrived home? But how did the woman get there?—the police had long ago eliminated all but some manner of transport deliberately being kept secret. And killing her there, why heave the body into the car and leave it there? Objections; but minor objections—all explicable by collusion, by knowledge and assistance before or after the fact.

Only one great objection: impossible if there had been an exchange of cars when the tree fell.

The case against Ethelbert Wendover. Had known the woman in Rome. Had possible reasons for going to the cinema, and for going secretly since Sari had insisted that all her friends stay away.

Objections. An alibi but an alibi covering a time which would
 
still have allowed him, having left the cinema early (and he must have done so, to have avoided the fall of the tree) to be at home with an appearance of having been there all along.

The case against Rupert Soames—more or less identical. Objections identical also. It must however be observed that there might be mutual advantages in these alibis, offered by a couple of close friends.

Come then to the far more complicated case of Phineas Devigne. Had Phineas Devigne, or had he not, exchanged cars with Sari Morne at the fallen tree?

No such exchange took place? The story was made up by Sari Morne inspired by her recognition of a car identical with her own, passing her on the road just before the fall of the tree?

No exchange then: and the case against Phineas Devigne.

Motive very strong: blackmailed on account of an affair, which could have cost him the custody of his child, to an unfit mother.

He meets Vi Feather outside the cinema or picks her up along the way, kills her and conceals her body in the back of the car, drives on and dines with his mistress; drives home, calling in on his patient at the pub, The Fox.

Objections. No sign that the body had ever lain in the back of his car. But the car had been into the garage for an all-over servicing, would have been thoroughly hoovered, polished, cleaned out. A young lout at the garage had been entrusted with this service but, similarly employed day in and day out on other cars, could remember nothing particular about any of them.

The same, when one came to the boot, must apply to the boot.

But—would he leave the body in the back of the car anyway, rather than hide it in the boot? Answer: if he had killed her in the car, it might well be less dangerous than stopping by the roadside or wherever else, and lugging the body into the boot.

Very well then—he drives home alone toward’s Wren’s Hill passing before the fall of the tree; picks up the woman along the way or even finds her waiting for him, when, having visited his patient, he comes out of the pub; strangles her and drives straight on home. (The time element allows for no diversion between his leaving The Fox and arriving home.)

Objection: no opportunity to leave the house between the time he gets home that night and starts off again the next morning with the nurse and child; and at that time, most certainly the body was not lying behind the driving seat in the back of the car.