The Dying of the Light: A Mystery (5 page)

She held out the brown bottle to Dorothy, who shook her head.

‘It’s eased again.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’ll keep it until I really need it. What were you saying about being wrong?’

Rosemary leant forward and regarded Dorothy earnestly.

‘Our fundamental mistake all along has been to assume that there was a logical motive for each of the murders which have taken place so far,’ she said. ‘We’ve taken it for granted that Roland Ayres and Hilary Bryant were killed for revenge, or for their money, or to silence them. Now a third member of our little group, George Channing, has become the target of a seemingly senseless act of …’

Dorothy twisted impatiently in her chair.

‘Why is Dr Morel taking so long, Rose?’ she broke out. ‘Don’t they know how hard this is for me? Why can’t they just tell me and have done?’

‘Pull yourself together, Dorothy Davenport!’ snapped Rosemary. ‘We’re facing a ruthless and cunning killer who has already struck three times, and while I don’t yet know who he – or she – may be, I
do
know the identity of his – or her – next victim.’

Dorothy smiled wanly.

‘Can you save him, Rose?’

‘Her.’

‘Who?’

‘You.’

Dorothy’s eyes widened.

‘Me?’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Rosemary sighed. ‘Try and be brave.’

‘But …’

‘It came to me in a flash while I was upstairs. I was thinking of what happened when we had tea. Do you remember? Belinda Scott was annoyed because of something that happened when you were outside the room, so she insisted on serving the tea in strict alphabetical order …’

‘But you had to wait until the end, even though you were getting my tea too. I didn’t think that was fair, Rose. You shouldn’t have stood for it! If I’d been you, I’d have …’

‘That isn’t the point!’ hissed Rosemary. ‘The names of the victims so far are Ayres, Bryant and Channing. Now do you understand? The killer is eliminating the residents in alphabetical order.
Which means that you will be the next victim!’

Dorothy tut-tutted.

‘Come on, Rose!’ she exclaimed with a toss of the head. ‘This simply won’t do. It sounds like one of those awful American books about some maniac who goes about chopping up total strangers with an axe because he had an unhappy childhood. Not my cup of tea at all, I’m afraid. Life is quite horrible enough as it is, I should have thought, without scaring oneself silly with such rubbish.’

Rosemary smiled in a superior way.

‘That’s precisely what the killer wants us to believe. The plan – and I’m bound to say it’s a very clever one – is to create the impression that these killings are indeed the work of some distasteful psychopath such as you describe, whereas in reality all
except one
are simply red herrings designed to obscure the identity of the murderer’s true target.’

Dorothy’s eyes narrowed. She gave her friend a suspicious look.

‘Wait a minute,’ she said. ‘This has been used before, hasn’t it?’

‘Are you accusing me of plagiarism?’ snapped Rosemary.

‘Of course not, Rose. It’s just that, well, it has a familiar ring to it.’

‘This is no time to discuss the finer points of the genre, Dot! Every minute you remain here you are in the most terrible danger. This very night might be your last! We must get you out of here at all costs.’

‘Don’t be silly! No one’s ever managed that. Look what happened to Channing.’

Rosemary clasped her friend’s hand and smiled confidently.

‘We’ll think of a way.’

Dorothy shook her head.

‘Anyway, why should anyone want to kill me? It doesn’t make sense. I don’t like it when things don’t make sense, Rose. And I don’t want to go. I want to stay here with you. I’m sure you must be mistaken about this. After all, we’re the detectives. The detectives never come to any harm, do they?’

The door banged open and the woman in the stained blue overalls swept into the lounge again. She looked round the room with a contemptuous sniff and then made for the corner where Rosemary and Dorothy sat talking. When she reached the centre of the room, however, she stopped and sniffed the air again, more deliberately this time. Then she turned round slowly, inspecting the residents, each of whom looked away as the beam of scrutiny passed. Eventually it came to rest on the pair still bent over their jigsaw puzzle. The woman hitched up the straps of her overalls. A feral grin convulsed her features.

‘Symes!’

Charles Symes quivered slightly but did not look up. The woman walked slowly towards him, swaying her hips in a slow sinuous rhythm.

‘To let the punishment fit the crime,’
she crooned softly.

She stood over Charles Symes and Grace Lebon, sniffing loudly. With a violent movement of one hand she swept the completed section of the jigsaw off the edge of the table. It broke up and fell to the floor in pieces.

‘Look at me, Symes!’ she howled.

Slowly, painfully, the man turned his head.

‘My nostrils suggest that you’ve beshat yourself,’ the woman remarked conversationally.

Charles Symes stared up at her without moving.

‘Do they deceive me?’ she inquired.

There was no sound in the room. The woman bent closer.

‘Well, Symes?’ she demanded in a stage whisper. ‘Which of us is at fault, my nose or your bum?’

She straightened up abruptly.

‘On your feet and let’s have a gander.’

A high-pitched keening made itself heard in the room. Swivelling on her heels, the woman slapped Grace Lebon hard with the back of her hand. The sound abruptly ceased. The woman sniffed her fingers briefly, then crooked one at Symes.

‘Make yourself erect, man!’

Symes rose from his chair, his face a mask.

‘Drop ’em!’ commanded his tormentor.

With trembling fingers, Charles Symes struggled to undo the buttons of his trousers. The last one wouldn’t come free of the hole. After watching him fiddle with it in vain for some time, the woman reached across and tore the fastening loose. The trousers fell heavily to the man’s ankles, revealing the wrinkled, sheeny expanse of his buttocks smeared with a brown glutinous mess.

‘Oh my Christ!’ the woman exclaimed.

She gazed at the spectacle in disgust for some time, wiping her hands on the front of her overalls.

‘What I ought to do,’ she remarked at length, ‘is make you lick it up and then cauterize your arse with a red-hot poker. But seeing as my hands are full with Channing I’ll settle for a cold shower and Dettol rub followed by a night locked naked in the outside loo to remind you what that facility is for. Now fuck off out of here before I puke, you filthy old bastard.’

Holding his trousers loosely round his hips, Symes hobbled towards the door. The woman turned expressionlessly to the others. She walked over to Belinda Scott and plucked the paper poppy from her dress.

‘Remembrance Day’s long past, Lindy. Not that you have anyone to remember, do you? Or anyone to remember you.’

She tore the flower apart, petal by petal, and let the pieces fall to the floor.

‘Do you?’
she insisted.

‘No, Miss Davis. Sorry, Miss Davis.’

The woman nodded.

‘Still, look on the bright side, eh? At least you might still be in the land of the living come next Poppy Day, unlike some people I could mention.’

She shot out a finger at Dorothy, who got to her feet. Rosemary also stood up. Miss Davis raised her eyebrows at her.

‘No one rang for you, Travis.’

Rosemary squeezed her friend’s hand.

‘I’ll wait for you here, Dot. Don’t worry, it’ll be all right.’

Miss Davis sauntered over to them. She leaned very close to Dorothy, searching her face.

‘Yes, it’ll be all right,’ she said. ‘Just as long as you keep your trap shut, don’t fidget, shoulders back, tummy in and knickers clean. Otherwise you know what’ll happen, don’t you?’

Miss Davis stared at her intensely, her face a couple of inches from Dorothy’s. She leaned forward suddenly and kissed her on the mouth. Dorothy gave a muffled cry. When Miss Davis drew back, there was blood on her lips.

‘Yes, you know,’ she said. ‘You’ve dreamed about it, more than once. Only this won’t be a dream, my poppet. This will be real.’

She snatched Dorothy’s hand and led her to the door while Rosemary looked on in helpless anguish.

CHAPTER 4

As dusk gathered beyond the plastic-shrouded windows, the light in the lounge imperceptibly faded, until the residents were no more than insubstantial shapes merging into the outlines of the furniture. For the most part they were silent, but from time to time one would suddenly burst into speech. This set others off, until soon the whole group was yattering inconsequentially away, all talking, none listening. Then as suddenly as it had begun it would stop, each speaker breaking off in mid-sentence until the final voice ceased and silence resumed once more.

This time it was Samuel Rosenstein who started it. His name was actually Rossiter, but Rosemary and Dorothy had needed a Jew to complete their cast of suspects.

‘Hello? Hello?’ he shouted into the telephone. ‘Operator? Connect me to the police immediately!’

Next Jack Weatherby chipped in with a few stray phrases from the news bulletins he had once read on the BBC World Service.

‘… on the clear understanding that the respect of such demagogues can only be won by a show of force, thus enabling any eventual negotiations to proceed from a position of …’

‘… turned my back for a single instant,’ cried Grace Lebon, whose real name was Higginbottom or something equally unthinkable, ‘to look at something which had caught my eye in a shop window, and when I looked round again the pram was empty!’

‘… can’t say when I’ve enjoyed myself so much,’ broke out Purvey, a retired accountant who had no more connection with the Church than Weatherby with the Army. ‘Unfortunately the last train seems to have gone, so if it wouldn’t inconvenience you too terribly I wonder if …’

This brought Belinda Scott to her feet.

‘We’ve got to take under our wings, tra-la!’
she bawled at the top of her voice.
‘These perfectly loathsome old things, tra-la!’

As the tumult rose about her, Rosemary gave a panicky glance at the clock, which of course still stood at ten past four. How long had Dorothy been gone? Rosemary had said she would wait for her, but how long would that be? Would she return at all? They might already have dragged her off to hospital, trussed and gagged on a stretcher like Channing on his bed.

As the realization of what her friend’s absence was going to mean came home to Rosemary for the first time, she felt her control begin to slip away. For years now they had been at each other’s side night and day. It was always Rosemary who had taken the initiative. It was she who introduced new twists and turns in the story which they had elaborated together, she who kept all the strands of the plot in play while still managing to accommodate – and thus to some extent control – the real horrors which surrounded them.

In contrast, Dorothy’s had been the subordinate role. Her task had been to fill in the gaps which Rosemary left blank for her, to spot the errors which Rosemary had deliberately planted for just that reason, to approve and criticize, suggest and reject. Thus when Rosemary had allowed herself to consider the possibility of Dorothy being sent away to hospital, she had seen it in terms of her friend being cut off from
her
, and hence from the source of the comforting narrative which had sustained them both for so long. Now she was forced to acknowledge that her own position would be little better, in that respect at least.

The stories were a collaboration, she realized now, and although Rosemary had always been the dominant partner she could no more keep them going by herself than one player, however brilliant, could have a game of tennis with no one on the other side of the net. A sense of panic gripped her at the thought of her coming isolation, of the fear and uncertainty and loneliness she was going to have to endure, night and day, without respite or relief. She would end like the others, just another voice in that chorus of manic despair.

She felt someone touch her arm and looked round to find Mrs Hargreaves gazing down at her with an expression of concern. Hargreaves was in fact the woman’s real name, although Rosemary had tacked on the ‘Hiram’ and ‘III’ to make her sound more like a rich American widow. By now she had grown so accustomed to thinking of Mrs Hargreaves as a petulant, cold, selfish hypochondriac that she was initially shocked rather than comforted to hear her say kindly, ‘You look just about at the end of your feathers, Miss Travis.’

‘I’m fine!’ Rosemary rapped back in a manner which challenged the woman to deny it.

‘You’re sure there’s nothing I can do you for?’

‘I can manage perfectly well on my own, thank you,’ Rosemary shouted, only to find that the tumult of competing voices had died away. To make amends for her rather aggressive tone, she added, ‘I felt a bit giddy for a moment, but it’s passed.’

‘I’ll just come and sit with you until she gets back,’ said the woman, taking Dorothy’s place.

‘There’s no call for that, Mrs Hargreaves. I’ll be quite all right now.’

‘Call me Mavis.’

Rosemary, who had no intention of ever calling anyone Mavis if such a thing could possibly be avoided, smiled remotely.

‘Terribly kind of you, I’m sure, but …’

‘Two hands are better than one, I always say.’

Rosemary’s smile became still more distant.

‘You and Mrs D,’ ventured the other woman cautiously, ‘you’re very … very
close
, aren’t you?’

Sitting in Dorothy’s chair, Mrs Hargreaves had her back to the window. In the gathering darkness, it was impossible to make out the expression on her face.

‘We’re friends,’ said Rosemary.

‘Oh I didn’t mean there was anything, well, you know …’

Rosemary kept silent.

‘Not that I’d mind one way or the other,’ Mrs Hargreaves went on breezily. ‘I used to be quite partial to a touch myself at one time.’

Rosemary decided it was time to regain the initiative.