The Spider-Orchid (20 page)

So
this
was the wonderful, the incomparable “Mr Owen”! This shy, stooping, bespectacled youth without a word of say for himself, and who could not have been more than twenty-two!
This
was the being who had filled Amelia’s dreams for all these months, the sun and moon around which her whole existence had revolved…! Adrian shook his head in a sort of bemused wonderment. What a thing is love!

“And it’s no good shaking your head like that, Mr Langley!” the girl stormed on. “We
know
that you and your wife …”

*

It took till well after midnight to get it all sorted out, first in a stand-up row, and then, more calmly, over coffee; and finally, in a quite unforeseeable kind of intimacy, over white Cinzano. Gradually, between the three of them, they worked out what must have happened.

It had gone something like this.

Rita, true to her threats, had brought the diary to the school that afternoon and had presented herself at the headmistress’s office, giving (as a general precaution against consequences to herself) a name that was neither her own nor Adrian’s. But the subterfuge, as it turned out, defeated her whole purpose: the school secretary informed her, coldly, that in no circumstances could the
headmistress
discuss any child with anyone other than its own parent or guardian. Boiling over with frustration and anger, Rita had had to retire.

But there was still the unfortunate teacher himself. Maybe to confront him, personally, with the accusations would be an even better revenge, even more humiliating for the child whose very existence was wrecking Rita’s partnership with Adrian, and against whom, in his doting paternal blindness, he would hear no evil word spoken?

He would hear some evil words now, all right—that is, if only this Mr Owen was still somewhere about the school….

He was. Up in the art room by himself, as it happened, examining the preliminary sketches for the scenery of next term’s production of
The
Tempest
:
and this strange woman had barged in on him, waving an exercise-book—a diary, she called it—and jabbering threats … accusing him of having seduced some girl … of the evidence being right here, in writing … and something about
showing
it to the headmistress….

Young, inexperienced, in his very first job, Ronald Owen had panicked. He’d tried to snatch the book from Rita, to see what on earth was in it, but she was too quick for him; she had whipped it away, laughing, and darted through the door, still flinging threats and abuse over her shoulder … he had lunged after her, and in the brief and violent struggle at the head of the stairs, she had gone headlong down. He had heard from below the cries of all sorts of people rushing to her aid, and so had simply slunk away, hoping against hope that this might be the end of the matter.

But when, on the Friday, he saw that piece in the paper, all his fears returned. He did not doubt for one moment that the unnamed assailant to whom the victim so cryptically referred must be himself; and indeed, for all he knew, he
might
have pushed her. In that sort of struggle, there is no knowing who may have pushed whom.

At this point, not knowing which way to turn, he had confided in his wife, who (as Adrian had already noticed) was not one to let the grass grow under her feet.

Blackmail, Myra had diagnosed briskly; adding that now, after this unfortunate accident on the stairs, this evil woman would doubtless—as soon as she was well enough—be adding charges of attempted murder to her other threats; she would threaten to reveal that Ronald Owen had had, that afternoon, a most powerful motive for wanting to silence her.

But of course, all these threats and accusations would depend on one piece of evidence only—the diary, and whatever allegations it contained. Once get the diary out of her hands, and she wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.

From the piece in the paper they knew her address, and her real name too.

So what were they waiting for?

If ever there was a case for justifiable housebreaking, this was it.

And in fact, housebreaking in the strict sense didn’t come into it. Dorothy’s slap-happy way of running her establishment, with doors left unlocked at all hours, and strange characters on the stairs
gleefully
accounted for as being someone or other’s new boy friend or girl friend, would have been a boon to any intruder; and especially to these two, who had a long search ahead of them among all Adrian’s accumulated books and papers. To complete it, they had to come over and over again, at times when Myra wasn’t working, when Adrian wasn’t at home, and when Dorothy wasn’t up there gossiping with Rita. Rita herself wasn’t much of an obstacle; while she sat or lay immobilised in one room, they could be
concentrating
on the other.

A professional burglar would doubtless consider that they had it made; and indeed, there was only one small obstacle standing between them and ultimate success: the diary wasn’t in fact there.

*

By the time the whole story had been pieced together, and its various ramifications discussed at length between the three of them, it was very late indeed, and Adrian felt obliged to drive the young couple—they hadn’t their own car yet—back to Gunnersbury. And afterwards, driving home alone through the deserted streets, his immediate feeling was the satisfying one of an evening well spent; of a mystery solved, of an uncomfortable burden lifted.

But as he drove on through the darkness, almost the only car left on the roads at this dead hour of three in the morning, the newer, and perhaps more urgent, mystery began to push itself once more into the forefront of his mind.

*

Seaford. Nothing in tonight’s revelations had shed the smallest light on what was happening down there.

Or had happened. Or was about to happen.

*

Adrian clenched his teeth, and put his foot on the accelerator, hurtling through the quiet, suburban streets at a speed which must have roused to insomniac fury many an inoffensive citizen. Speed was necessary, he knew it, he could feel it in his bones. But speed where? In which direction? To what destination? And under pressure of what unimaginable deadline?

T
HE HEAD SILHOUETTED
against the pallid, rain-washed sky looked circular and quite featureless from down here, like a black melon. It was impossible to gauge its expression. And still the stick prodded, wavered, found its direction, lost it again, like the searching stick of a blind man. And still Amelia could not believe that Rita was doing anything other than trying, with great stupidity and ineptitude, to help her up. Indeed, from the
overhanging
black disk of the head, words to this effect kept emerging:

“Go on, Amelia! Take hold of it! Pull yourself up—I’ve got a good grip on it,” came the voice, full now of a strange urgency; and each time Amelia tried to brush the stick away, back it came … now in her face … now tapping quite sharply against her knuckles. If she tried edging her way along the cliff to her left, it followed; towards the right, and there it was waiting for her….

“Rita!”
she cried out, with desperation in her voice now; and even while she pleaded, there came upon her the symptom dreaded by all climbers everywhere: her knees began to tremble … her elbows too … an uncontrollable jerking took command of every muscle, and it was impossible for her to move an inch in any
direction.
She dared not look up; even to climb down to the safety of the ledge only a couple of feet below was now beyond her power.

And as she clung there, paralysed by wave after wave of uncontrollable terror, she became aware of some vast and
extraordinary
change coming over things: a sort of lurching of the air about her …a mighty surge of movement. She was scarcely aware of having glanced momentarily upward, but graven on her retina was a lightning glimpse of Rita leaning closer and closer … swooping towards her in a vast black curve, wings outspread, like the Angel of Death himself, blotting out the whole sky with darkness, and a mighty rush of wind.

*

For long, long seconds after Rita’s body had smashed to pieces on the rocks below, Amelia still could not realise what had happened. The air still seemed to sway and heave with the passage of such a
weight at such a speed, and she simply clung there, eyes tightly closed, unaware that the swooping as of great wings was over, that the huge shadow was no longer blotting out the light, and that the Angel of Death had gone on his way.

*

It must have been ten minutes or more before the shuddering of her limbs subsided sufficiently for her to climb down to the comparative safety of the ledge; and longer still before she found the strength to clamber up again, and heave herself over the cliff-edge to safety.

Of what followed afterwards, her memory was vague. She recalled looking wildly round for human help somewhere in the vast, darkening landscape of the Downs … and then she
remembered
running, running, her face soaked with rain or with tears … and then the cliff-road, and Derek waiting in the car, just as had been arranged….

*

To the kindly police officer who questioned her later that evening, Amelia explained as well as she could exactly what had happened. How Rita’s chain-belt had fallen over the cliff-edge … how she, Amelia, had climbed down to get it for her … and how Rita, leaning over to see how she was getting on, must have leaned a little too far. But about that stick, probing and jabbing, she could not bring herself to speak, or even to think. And why should she? Rita was dead now. It was all over.

It did not occur to her—after all, she was only thirteen—that when two people go off alone together on to a solitary cliff, and only one of them returns alive, there is bound to linger afterwards, in some minds, a tiny flicker of suspicion. Still less did it occur to her that one of those minds might be that of her own beloved father.

For he, and he alone, knew what cause she had to hate Rita.

“I
told
you so!” he might hear the dead Rita’s insidious voice whispering to him, in uneasy dreams, for many a year to come: “Didn’t I
warn
you …?”

*

Might
have heard it, that is, if it hadn’t so happened that Rita’s handbag had been found, more or less intact, not many yards from where she fell. In it were found four letters. Three of them were letters written by Amelia and Peggy to Adrian some days ago,
and intercepted by Rita, conveniently alone in the flat when the post came. The fourth one, also addressed to Adrian, had been written by Rita herself; it was stamped, sealed and addressed all ready for posting. If all had gone according to plan, he would have received it, probably, the following morning. As things were, the police handed it over to him some hours earlier, and this is what he read:

Although he already knew the true facts, Adrian, as he read, was nevertheless filled with a horrible fear—a sort of nightmare preview of how he would have felt if this letter had reached him
before
he knew that Amelia was safe;
before
Peggy had rung to say that they would be on their way back to London on the next train.

It was unendurable. It was beyond imagining. Adrian
deliberately
blotted it from his consciousness, and read the letter through a second time, more calmly.

In all this evil and malevolent farrago of treachery and lying, one sentence shone out as the truth, clear and unmistakable: “I love you”.

She had, too. That’s what it had all been about.

In her own, special way, she
had
loved him: and he had known it. But what could he have done?

A
MONTH HAD
passed, and it was May. The lilacs were out now in Dorothy’s bit of back garden, and with the scent of them floating through the open kitchen window, Dorothy sat polishing up the gilt clasps of her grandmother’s old diary in readiness for a very special session with it this evening.

Though she had tried not to show it too much at the time, Dorothy had been much disappointed by Amelia Summers’ reaction to the heirloom. Instead of showing a proper interest in all the titled persons therein mentioned—Lady Rochford, the Honourable Ralph and the rest—the child had simply kept asking question after question about that wretched curate who had married a Miss Overton—not an actual member of the family at all, but merely a governess. Most disappointing.

But this time, it was going to be different. In fact, life looked like being somewhat different altogether from now on, because this very week a new and most aristocratic lodger had arrived—a baronet, or so he said—who was willing to take over the Squatters’ Flat exactly as it was, and put it to rights himself. And though he was obviously quite elderly—his little pointed beard was almost white, and so was his sparse hair—it really looked as if he might be going to make good his promise. Already, he had fixed the dripping tap in Dorothy’s bathroom, and had nailed down a loose floorboard for her. Dorothy had had no idea that baronets could be so handy; or indeed, so willing to rent rooms with the plaster falling down and the window-frames splintered. But this particular baronet, it seemed, had fallen on hard times; and though, of course, most baronets these days have fallen on hard times, Sir Montague apparently laboured under the additional misfortune of having had a spell in a mental hospital, from which he had only recently been discharged. This was liable to put most landladies against him—but not, of course, Dorothy, who welcomed him with open arms. His little weakness (she explained, in strictest confidence, to anyone who would listen) was that every so often he would barricade himself into his room imagining that the Russians were after him:
but, as Dorothy pointed out to her less than enthusiastic household, it wasn’t really much of a problem: after all, either the Russians
were
after him or they weren’t; and if they weren’t, then there was nothing to worry about; and if they were, then it proved that he wasn’t mad after all; so either way it all worked out for the best. Against which unassailable logic, there seemed nothing more to be said.

Anyway, it was all very exciting, and, Dorothy reflected, Sir Montague
must
be a real baronet—or at least something of the sort—because he’d shown such a very intelligent interest in this Amelia Ponsonby diary—one of
the
Ponsonbys, you know—and had seemed to know of, or be descended from, or in some way connected with, almost every one of the august personages who featured in its pages. This very evening, he was going to go through it properly with her, and help her construct a family tree similar to his own.

Oh, Posterity, Posterity!

They
are
keeping faith with you, Amelia Caroline Ponsonby, after their fashion.

*

And what of Amelia Summers? The new term had begun now, of course—she’d been back at school nearly a fortnight—and right now her friends were condoling with her because, having been away at the end of last term, she’d failed to put her name down on the list for the Keats’s house trip with Mr Owen tomorrow.

Amelia was responding with the appropriate groans and despairs that were expected of her; but somehow, deep in her heart, she didn’t really mind all that much. She had decided this term that history, not English, was her favourite subject: only this morning, Mr Everard had read out her essay on “Education in the Victorian Era” to the whole class, pronouncing it “very thoughtful and well-written”, handing it back to her with one of those nice smiles that quite transformed his grave, rather stern features.

Of course, she didn’t reveal any of this to her companions. For one thing, it would have led to such a spate of questions and excited exclamations, and Amelia felt that she had had enough of questions and excited exclamations to last her a lifetime. Because, of course, for the first few days of term, everyone had been wild with curi
osity to hear about the “South Coast Cliff Tragedy” which had been in all the papers during the holidays; and Amelia, who usually so enjoyed being the centre of attention, had found that she hated having to talk about it, and was deeply thankful that the subject seemed at last to be closed.

*

The police enquiries down at Seaford were closed, too. Indeed, the discovery of Rita’s bag, with its irrefutable proof of her own intent to murder, had more or less put a stop to further speculation or suspicion.

Indeed, who was there to suspect? Amelia was obviously in the clear now, after the discovery of that carefully pre-arranged letter, and Rita was revealed as unquestionably the villain of the piece. The only remaining mystery concerned her precise motive.

Had she really been frightened of Amelia? Or had she merely been afraid of the consequences of her lying accusations when the time inevitably came for them to be compared with Amelia’s own account of what had happened? And if the latter, then had all those terrors and delusions about Amelia creeping around the flat been merely an elaborate bit of play-acting, designed to lend verisimilitude to the story she planned to tell about the murder itself?

Or had it, perhaps,
begun
as a bit of play-acting; but then, later, when she actually
did
hear furtive footsteps creeping around, while she lay there helpless and alone …?

*

There was only one person who might conceivably know the answers to these questions, and that was Derek. It was Derek who had been with Rita during the last days of her life, and it was just possible that, if she’d been genuinely frightened, she might have confided in him.

But Derek wasn’t talking. And indeed, why should he? After all, if he went around discussing his wife’s possible motives, it wouldn’t be long before someone, somewhere, began to wonder if he hadn’t perhaps guessed what was in her mind when she set off across the cliffs with Amelia that afternoon? And if he
had
guessed, then might it not further have occurred to him that anyone planning to push another person over a cliff will be obliged, at some point in the proceedings to come very, very near to the cliff-edge themselves; so near, indeed, and in such a preoccupied state of
mind, that a third party, who has been creeping along behind at a safe distance … dodging down among the blackberry clumps when necessary, and watching for his moment …?

But how
could
Derek have been following along behind? He’d been far below on the beach, strolling along
under
the cliffs, looking for that special seaweed whose name no one had bothered to remember. Not that anyone had actually
seen
him searching for the stuff, but half a dozen people at least had heard him declaring his intention to spend the afternoon thus—and anyway, it was so exactly what he
would
do, so completely in character. In addition to which, he’d actually had some specimens of seaweed in his
rucksack
when he got back, all ready to show to anyone who was interested, not excluding the police. As it happened, the one person who
might
have been interested—old Colonel That-Clock’s-Slow—was asleep in his chair throughout, and no one—least of all Derek—had any inclination to rouse him.

*

And it never occurred to the police—indeed, why should it?—to examine the film Derek brought back in his camera that afternoon, as well as the specimens he brought back in his rucksack. And even if they had—even if Derek had actually boasted to them about the marvellous shots he’d got of Ophrys sphegodes (the slides of which were destined to be his prize exhibit at the September meeting of the Dorset and Hampshire Botanical Society)—even if he’d expatiated at length on how uncommon it was, and how it had never been found in just this area before—even then, how likely was it that any of his hearers would have known that Ophrys sphegodes is the botanical name for the rare and beautiful Spider-Orchid? And that the Spider-Orchid couldn’t, by any possibility at all, have been found during a stroll along the base of the cliffs, but only on top, growing in the light, chalky turf, far, far above the sea?