She Died a Lady (12 page)

A faint moaning or whimpering came from up there.

‘That’s it,’ Craft said.

He switched on the electric torch and swung it round before we hurried up those stairs. The studio had a brick-paved floor like a farmhouse. The black throat of a big fireplace gaped against the right-hand wall. A few bits of broken furniture were scattered across the floor.

‘It’s all right!’ Craft shouted. ‘We’re coming!’

At the head of the stairs, the door was locked. But there was a (new) key in the door, and Craft turned it. That door opened without any squeaking. As it did so, we heard a moan of alarm from inside, and a rustle across the floor.

‘Who’s there?’ called a woman’s voice.

‘It’s all right,’ Craft repeated. ‘It’s all right, miss. I’m a police-officer.’

He sent the beam of his light inside. The transformation scene beyond made you blink. Between Craft’s torch and the chinks and glimmers of light through boarded windows, you could see that the room was not only furnished, but richly furnished.

Then the beam of the torch moved across and rested on the woman – or girl, rather – who was trying to shrink away from us by pressing against the wall round the corner of a Japanese cabinet. The lacquer-and-gilt-and-pearl design of the cabinet winked back at us. As the light rose to her face, the girl put her arms over her eyes and cried out.

Everything about her spoke of the town rather than the country. Her delicate high-heeled shoes, now crusted with grey dried mud. Her tan silk stockings, badly laddered. Her white-slashed green frock, also mud-spotted. She was very small, not more than five feet tall; but she had one of the most beautiful figures, on the plumpish side, it has been my good fortune to see. The phrase ‘pocket Venus’ occurred to me, but I put it away in remembrance of the state she was in.

What made her tremble so much, and as steadily as though it were convulsions, was not fear alone. It was physical weakness. Craft took a step forward, and she shrank away again. Putting up a hand to shade her eyes, she tried to peer at us.

‘Now steady!’ insisted Craft, who was getting rattled himself. ‘I tell you I’m a police officer! You’re perfectly safe; do you understand that? Who – who are you?’

The girl started to cry.

‘I’m Mrs Barry Sullivan,’ she answered.

I
F
this took Craft aback, he gave no sign of it.

‘How long have you been locked up in this place?’

‘I don’t know.’ She had a pleasant voice, with an American accent, now rendered into gulps by her trembling. ‘Las’ night, maybe. Mor’ing. For God’s sake ge’me out of here!’

‘You’re all right now, miss. Come along with us, and nothing’s going to hurt you. Just take my arm.’

She edged round the corner of the cabinet, took two steps, and went down flat on her knees. I picked her up and steadied her.

‘How long has it been,’ I asked, ‘since you’ve had anything to eat?’

She searched her mind. ‘Yes’erday morning. On the train. Where’s my husband. Where’s Barry?’

Craft and I exchanged a glance. I led her over and sat her down on an overcushioned ottoman.

‘She’s in no shape to walk just yet, Superintendent. Can’t we get any real light in here?’

‘Oil-lamps,’ said the girl. ‘Burnt out. No oil.’

I suggested to Craft that the only thing to do was to knock the boards off the windows. He declined firmly, with a true English horror of violating property rights. So I, always the goat, had a shot at it. It became clear why the girl had been unable to get out for herself; the window I attacked was as solidly nailed as a coffin. I finally managed it by getting up on a chair and kicking. It made some clatter; pieces and fragments of wood flew wide. As I emerged, I found myself looking down into the evilly-squinting face of Sir Henry Merrivale. He showed not the least surprise, but sat in the car and simply looked at me.

I said:

‘Got any brandy?’

It seemed to me, even at that distance, he turned slightly purple. But, still without saying anything, he reached into his hip pocket and took out an enormous silver flask, which he waggled slowly in the air like bait. When I went down to get it, signs of an explosion were as palpable as heat-waves.

‘There’s a girl upstairs,’ I said, ‘hysterical with fright and half dead from hunger. Somebody locked her in. She says she’s Mrs Barry Sullivan.’

All signs of an explosion died away.

‘Oh, lord love a duck!’ he muttered. ‘Does she know about … ?’

‘No. Apparently not.’

H.M. handed me the flask. ‘Then for the love of Esau get back up there before Craft tells her. Hop to it!’

Exertion is supposed to be bad, but I made it in a very short time. Twilight entered the garish room through one window. She was still sitting on the ottoman, in her stained clothes, with Craft showing surprising delicacy and tact. Though she still shook convulsively, she was now making some attempt to laugh at it.

Despite a drawn face, despite disarranged hair, despite the ravages of tears to make-up and eyebrow-pencil, she was a very pretty girl. This pocket Venus had dark brown hair done into the little curls which I believe were fashionable then. She had a small mouth, and large, grey, shining eyes just now blurred and puffed. Even looking as she did, she managed to retain some of that sleekness in which every accent is put on sex-appeal. She started to laugh again – showing fine teeth – when she saw the flask.

‘Boy,’ she said, ‘could I use a shot!’

I poured the flask-cup full. Though her hand shook, she drained it without winking, coughed, and held it out for more.

‘No. That’ll do for the moment.’

‘Maybe you’re right. I don’t want it to make me cockeyed. Sorry to be such a softie. Has anybody got a cigarette?’

Craft produced a packet, and lit one for her. Her hand trembled so much that several times she missed her mouth altogether, but the brandy was taking hold. What disturbed me most was the glaze of fright in her eyes.

‘Look,’ she began. ‘What
is
this? What’s going on here?’

‘That’s what we hoped you could tell us,’ said Craft, ‘Miss … Mrs… .’

‘Sullivan. Belle Sullivan. Look. Are you really a cop? No kidding?’

Craft produced his warrant-card.

‘And who’s the other guy?’

‘That’s Dr Croxley, from Lyncombe.’

‘Oh. A doctor. That’s all right, then.’ The hand with the cigarette wavered. ‘I want to tell you just about the most horrible –’

‘If you’d rather not talk now, Mrs Sullivan,’ I said, ‘we’ve got a car outside to take you to some place more comfortable.’

Craft looked stern. ‘
I
think, sir, it might be better to tell it now.’

‘Yes. I think so too.’ She shuddered again. ‘Look. My husband is a fellow named Sullivan, Barry Sullivan. I don’t suppose you know him.’

‘I’ve heard of him, ma’am. I take it you’re from the States too?’

The girl hesitated.

‘Well – no. As a matter of fact, I was born in Birmingham. But the customers seem to like it, so I keep it up.’

‘Customers?’

‘I’m a dance-hostess at the Piccadilly Hotel. In London.’

‘Then why are you down here?’

This young lady was very direct, and did not suffer from reticence. Her voice went up a little.

‘Because I was so God-damned jealous,’ she answered. ‘I couldn’t see straight. I knew he had a floosie down here, because I found one of the envelopes postmarked Lyncombe. But I don’t even know who the floosie is. Look!’

Tears came into her eyes, and her shaky voice grew firm.

‘I didn’t come down here to make trouble. I wouldn’t have started trouble anyway. I just wanted to
see
this floosie, that’s all. I wanted to see what she had that I didn’t have.’ Belle Sullivan paused, and held out the flask-cup with her left hand. ‘Pour me another drink, will you? I promise I won’t pass out on you, or start getting gabby. Please, just pour me another drink.’

I poured it.

Craft, though he concealed it well, was a little shocked by this forthrightness. But I wasn’t. Though it may show a certain lack of principle, I liked it and I liked her. She drained the second cup.

‘Barry left on Friday night. By Saturday night I’d got myself into such a state I couldn’t sit still. So on Sunday morning I just up and got on the train. Even before I started, I said to myself, “Belle, this is the craziest idea you ever had.” I mean, you can’t just walk up to somebody in a town and say, “Excuse me; do you know any woman who’s sleeping with my husband?”’

‘No, ma’am; I suppose you can’t.’

‘Besides, I didn’t even want Barry to know I was there. But that’s the kind of ideas you get when you feel the way I did.

‘The trip down was awful. First I found I had to change at Exeter, and go on to Barnstaple. When the train got to Barnstaple, I found Lyncombe was still thirteen miles or so farther on. There’s no train; and the buses don’t run on Sunday. I had to take a taxi, though I hadn’t a whole hell of a lot of money.

‘The taxi-driver asked me where I wanted to go in Lyncombe. By that time I was wishing to the sweet Christ I hadn’t come. Excuse my language; I’ll t-try to talk like a lady in a minute; but that’s how I felt. I said to drop me at the biggest pub, and please, please go by the shortest way. He said he knew a short-cut. And so he brought me past here.’

Twilight was deepening in this curious room. The air was utterly still, and her shaky voice had a high carrying pitch. Every word must be audible to H.M. sitting in the car outside.

Belle Sullivan bit at her under-lip.

‘That was
Sunday
evening, you say, ma’am?’ Craft prompted.

‘Yes. It was about half-past eight, and still light. We came along this road. The driver was practically crawling along. We passed this studio place’ – her eyes roved round – ‘and … you know those huge double-doors downstairs, that open on the road?’

‘Yes. Well?’

‘The doors were wide,’ Belle told us. ‘And Barry’s car was inside. I recognized the back number-plate.’

Craft’s bushy eyebrows went up.

‘Mr Sullivan’s
car
?’ he echoed in his sepulchral voice. ‘Mr Sullivan’s never had a car when he’s been down here, to my knowledge.’

‘Of course not. Anyway, where would he get the money to run a car? He’s an automobile salesman. That was his demonstration-model. They don’t let him take it out of London to go joy-riding, especially in times like these when he’s going to lose his job anyway because there aren’t any more cars to sell. Seeing the car there was what scared me.

‘But I thought, “Wherever Barry’s car is, that’s where he’ll be pretty soon, and very likely with his floosie too.” So I told the taxi-driver to let me out right there.

‘The driver, of course, thought I was nuts. He said nobody’d lived in this place for years and years, and that some artist guy cut his throat here once. But I paid him off, and sent him away, and then started to prowl around. Of course I didn’t know about
this
part of the joint.’ Her nod indicated the room. ‘All I found was a locked door at the top of the steps. And a dirty studio room with a brick floor. And Barry’s car in the studio.

‘Swell place for assignations, isn’t it? I mean, even aside from this over-decorated cat-house up here. You can come out here in a car. You can run the car straight into the studio like as if it was a garage. Then you close the doors; and who’s to know anybody’s here?’

I had been thinking the same thing.

‘Then,’ said Belle, ‘it started to get dark.’

Involuntarily her large, grey, shining eyes moved towards the window. Outside, the tops of the trees were thin green. She shook her mop of disarranged brown curls, and uncrossed her knees. Her cigarette had gone out; she dropped it on the deep crimson carpet.

‘I don’t like the country,’ she said. ‘It gives me the jim-jams. I like some
noise
, and people near me who could come if I called out. Everything was dead quiet here. It got darker and darker. And I ran out of cigarettes.

‘Then I started thinking how far away I was from anything or anybody. Not knowing any roads; not knowing anywhere to go even if I wanted. Stuck and stranded. Next I got to thinking about that damned artist who cut his throat here. That’s when you begin to imagine things, and think there might be somebody just round the corner. I couldn’t even turn on the lights of the car, much less use it, because there wasn’t any key in the ignition. I sat on the running-board, and kept walking up and down. It must have been pretty late – anyway, it was nearly pitch dark – when I heard someone coming along the road.’

Craft and I had stiffened to such attention that she must have noticed it if she had not been so preoccupied.

‘I thought it was Barry, naturally.’ She hesitated, biting at her under-lip. ‘And maybe it was. Or at least …’

Craft cleared his throat.

‘Couldn’t have been Mr Sullivan,’ he said. ‘Not on
Sunday
night.’

‘Why not?’

‘Never you mind that, miss.’ Craft had a tendency to call her ‘miss’; perhaps because she looked like one. ‘Just take my word for it, that’s all.’

‘You mean he’s gone away?’ asked the girl, and her pretty face hardened.

‘Well – yes. Just go on.’

Belle started to say something, but changed her mind.

‘First,’ she went on, ‘I was sore as hell at him for getting me scared like that. But I’ve got
some
pride, and I didn’t want him to find me there. And yet at the same time I didn’t want to lose him and leave me stranded there. All that time I’d been walking up and down, you see, I never once thought what I’d actually
do
when Barry got back to his car.

‘There was only one thing I could do. Barry’s car is – I mean, was – a Packard roadster with a big rumble-seat. I climbed up, and opened the rumble-seat, and got down inside, and closed the top of the rumble-seat after me. I’m a little half-pint’ – she held out her arms, inviting inspection – ‘and it was easy. Besides, there’s two little ventilators in those rumble-seats, and you get plenty of air. Then he came into the studio. That,’ she added, and drew the back of her hand across her forehead, ‘was when I heard him crying.’