To Love and Be Wise (18 page)

'Where do you get all this inside knowledge?'

'I haven't played parts for twenty-five years on just the producer's directions,' she said.

He looked across at her, elegant and handsome in the firelight, and thought of all the different parts that he had seen her play: courtesans and frustrated hags, careerists and domestic doormats. It was true that actors had a perception, an understanding of human motive, that normal people lacked. It had nothing to do with intelligence, and very little to do with education. In general knowledge Marta was as deficient as a not very bright child of eleven; her attention automatically slid off anything that was alien to her own immediate interests and the result was an almost infantine ignorance. He had seen the same thing in hospital nurses, and sometimes in overworked G.P.s. But put a script in her hands, and from a secret and native store of knowledge she drew the wherewithal to build her characterisation of the author's creation.

'Supposing that this really is a case of homicide,' he said. 'Judging entirely on looks and recent form, so to speak, who would you put your money on?'

She considered this for a little, turning her empty liqueur glass in the firelight.

'Emma Garrowby, I think,' she said at last. 'Could Emma have done it? Physically speaking, I mean.'

'Yes. She left Miss Easton-Dixon where their ways parted on Wednesday night, and after that time was her own. No one knows what time she came back to Trimmings. The others had gone to bed; or rather, to their rooms. It is Mrs Garrowby who locks up the front of the house, anyhow.'

'Yes. Ample time. It isn't so very far from Trimmings to that bend in the river. I do wonder what Emma's shoes were like on Thursday morning. Or did she clean them herself.'

'Believe me, if there was any unwonted mud on the shoes she cleaned them herself. Mrs Garrowby looks to me a very methodical person. Why do you pick on Emma Garrowby?'

'Well, I take it you commit murder because you are one-idead. Or have become one-idead. As long as you have a variety of interests you can't care about any one of them to the point of murder. It is when you have all your eggs in the same basket, or only one egg left in the basket, that you lose your sense of proportion. Do I make myself clear, Inspector Grant?'

'Perfectly.'

'Good. Have some more Chartreuse. Well, Emma seems to me the most concentrated of the possible suspects. No one could call Serge concentrated, except on the thing of the moment. Serge spends his life having flaring rows, and has never shown signs of killing anyone. The farthest he ever gets is to fling whatever happens to come handiest.'

'Lacking a whip,' Grant said; and told her of his interview with Serge. 'And Weekley?'

'On form, to use your own excellent metaphor, Silas is only a pound or two behind Emma; but quite definitely behind. Silas has his own success, his family, the books he is going to write in the future (even if they are just the same old ones over again in different words); Silas's interest isn't
channelled
the way Emma's is. Short of having a brain-storm, some unreasoning hatred, Silas would have no urge to get rid of Leslie. Nor would Toby. Toby's life simply corruscates with variety. Toby would never think of killing anyone. As I told you, he has too many other ways of making the score even. But Emma. Emma has nothing but Liz.'

She thought it over for a moment, and Grant let the silence lie uninterrupted.

'You should have seen Emma when Walter and Liz announced their engagement,' she said at last. 'She—she positively
glittered
. She was a walking Christmas tree. It was what she had always wanted, and against all probability it had happened. Walter, who met all the clever and beautiful women of this generation, had fallen in love with Liz and they were going to be married. Walter would get Trimmings one day, and Lavinia's fortune, so even if his vogue went they would have as much of this world's goods as anyone could possibly want or use. It was a fairy-tale come true. She was floating just an inch or two off the ground. Then Leslie Searle came.' Marta, the actress, let the silence come back. And being also an artist she left it unbroken.

The logs slipped and spluttered, sending up fresh jets of flame, and Grant lay still in his chair and thought about Emma Garrowby.

And about the two things that Marta did not know.

It was odd that Marta's chosen suspect should occupy the same area as the two unaccountables in this case: the glove in Searle's drawer, and the space in the photographic box.

Emma. Emma Garrowby. The woman who had brought up a younger sister and when that sister moved out from under her wing married a widower with a young child. She channelled her interest as naturally as Toby Tullis spread his wide, didn't she? She had been radiant—'a walking Christmas tree'—over the engagement; and in the period since that engagement (it was five months, he happened to know, not twelve) her initial delight must have spread and amplified to something much more formidable; an acceptance; a sense of achievement, of security. The engagement had stood whatever small shocks it had encountered in these five months, and Emma must have got used to thinking of it as safe and immutable.

And then, as Marta said, Leslie Searle.

Searle with his charm and his fly-by-night life. Searle with his air of being not quite of this world. No one could view this modern shower of gold with more instant distrust than Emma Garrowby.

'What would fit into a space 10½ inches, by 3½ by 4?' he asked.

'A hair brush,' said Marta.

There was a game played by psychologists, Grant remembered, where the victim said the first thing that occurred to him on hearing a given word. It must work out pretty well, all things considered. He had put this same proposition to Bill Maddox, and Maddox, as unhesitatingly as Marta had said 'A hairbrush', had said 'A spanner'. He remembered that Williams had proffered a bar of soap.

'Anything else?'

'A set of dominoes. A box of envelopes? No, a shade on the small side. Packs of cards? Enough cards to set up on a desert island! Table cutlery. The family spoons. Someone been secreting the family silver?'

'No. It is just something I wondered about.'

'If it's the Trimmings silver, just let it go, my dear. It wouldn't fetch thirty shillings the lot at an auction sale.' Her eye went in unconscious satisfaction to the Georgian simplicity of her own implements on the table behind her. 'Tell me, Alan, it wouldn't be indiscreet or unprofessional, would it, to tell me who is your own favourite for the part?'

'The part?'

'The killer.'

'It would be both unprofessional and indiscreet. But I don't think there is any wild indiscretion in telling you that I don't think there is one.'

'What! You really think Leslie Searle is still alive? Why?'

Why indeed, he asked himself. What was there in the set-up that gave him this feeling of being at a performance? Of being pushed into the stalls so that an orchestra pit intervened between him and reality. The Assistant Commissioner had once said to him in an unwonted moment of expansiveness that he had the most priceless of all attributes for his job: flair. 'But don't let it ride you, Grant,' he had said. 'Keep your eye on the evidence.' Was this a sample of letting his flair ride him? The chances were ninety-nine to one that Searle had fallen into the river. All the evidence pointed that way. If it hadn't been for the complication of the quarrel with Whitmore, he, Grant, would not have entered into the affair at all; it would have been a simple case of 'missing believed drowned'.

And yet. And yet. Now you see it, now you don't. That old conjurer's phrase. It haunted him.

Half consciously he said it aloud.

Marta stared and said: 'A conjuring trick? By whom? For what?'

'I don't know. I just have a strong feeling that I'm being taken for a ride!'

'You think that Leslie just walked away somehow?'

'Or someone planned it to look like that. Or something. I have a strong feeling of watching something being sawn in half.'

'You're overworking,' Marta said. 'Where do you think Leslie could have disappeared to? Unless he just came back to the village and lay doggo somewhere.'

Grant came wide awake and regarded her with admiration. 'Oddly enough,' he said, amused, 'I had never thought of that. Do you think Toby is hiding him to make things difficult for Walter?'

'No, I know it doesn't make sense. But neither does your idea about his walking away. Where would he walk to in the middle of the night in nothing but flannels and a raincoat?'

'I shall know more about that when I have seen his cousin tomorrow.'

'He has a cousin? How surprising. It's like finding Mercury with an in-law. Who is he?'

'It's a woman. A painter, I understand. A delightful creature who has given up an Albert Hall Sunday afternoon concert to be at home for me. I used your telephone to make an assignation with her.'

'And you expect her to know why Leslie walked away in the middle of the night in nothing but flannels and a raincoat?'

'I expect her to be able to suggest where Leslie might have been headed for.'

'To borrow the callboy's immortal phrase: I hope it keeps fine for you,' Marta said.

GRANT drove back to Wickham through the spring night, cheered in body and soul.

And Emma Garrowby sat beside him all the way.

Flair might whisper soft seductions to him, but Emma was there in the middle of the picture, where Marta had set her, and she was much too solid to be conjured away. Emma made sense. Emma was example and precedent. The classic samples of ruthlessness were domestic. The Lizzie Bordons. Emma, if it came to that, was primordial. A female creature protecting its young. It required immense ingenuity to find a reason why Leslie Searle should have chosen to disappear. It needed no ingenuity at all to suggest why Emma Garrowby should have killed him.

In fact, it was a sort of perversity to keep harking back to the idea that Searle might have ducked. He could just hear the A.C. if he ever came before him with a theory like that. Evidence, Grant, suggestive evidence. Common sense, Grant, common sense. Don't let your flair ride you, Grant, don't let your flair ride you. Disappear of his own accord? This happy young man who could pay his bills at the Westmorland, buy expensive clothes to wear and expensive sweets to give away, travel the world at other people's expense? This young man of such surprising good-looks that every head he encountered was turned either literally or metaphorically? This charming young man who liked plain little Liz so much that he kept a glove of hers? This professionally successful young man who was engaged in a deal that would bring him both money and kudos?

Common sense, Grant. Evidence, Grant. Don't let your flair ride you.

Consider Emma Garrowby, Grant. She had the opportunity. She had the motive. And, on form, she probably had the will. She knew where the camp was that night.

But she didn't know that they had come in to Salcott for a drink.

He wasn't drowned in Salcott.

She couldn't have known that she would find him alone. It was sheer chance that they separated that night.

Someone
found him alone. Why not Emma?

How could it happen?

Perhaps she arranged it.

Emma! How?

Has it struck you that Searle engineered that exit of Walter's?

No. How?

It was Searle who was provocative. He provoked Walter to the point where he couldn't stand it a minute longer, and had either to go or stay and have a row. Searle got rid of Walter that evening.

Why should he?

Because he had an appointment.

An appointment! With whom?

Liz Garrowby.

That is absurd. There is no evidence whatever that the Garrowby girl had any serious interest in——

Oh, it was not Liz who sent Searle the message to meet her.

No? Who then?

Emma.

You mean that Searle went to meet someone he thought was Liz?

Yes. He behaved like a lover, if you think about it.

How?

Do you remember how he took farewell of his acquaintances that night? The banter about going to their beds on so fine a spring night? The gaiety? The on-top-of-the-worldness?

He had just had several beers.

So had his companions. Some of them a great deal more than several. But were they singing metaphorical songs to the spring night? They were not. They were taking the shortest cut home to bed, even the youngest of them.

Well, it's a theory.

It is more than that. It is a theory in accordance with the evidence.

Evidence, Grant, evidence.

Don't let your flair ride you, Grant.

All the way along the dark lanes between Salcott St Mary and Wickham, Emma Garrowby sat beside him. And when he went to bed he took her with him.

Because he was tired, and had dined well, and had at last seen a path of some kind open in front of him, he slept well. And when his eyes opened in daylight on THE HOUR COMETH in purple wool cross-stitch, he regarded the text as a promise rather than a warning. He looked forward to going to town, if only as a mental bath after his plunge into Salcott St Mary. He could then come back and see it in proportion. You couldn't get the flavour of anything properly unless you cleaned your palate between times. He had wondered often how married men managed to combine their domestic lives with the absorbing demands of police work. It occurred to him now for the first time that married life must be the perfect palate-cleanser. There could be nothing like a spell of helping young Bobby with his algebra to bring you back with a fresh mind to the problem of the current crime.

At least he would be able to get some clean shirts, he thought. He put his things into his bag, and turned to go down to breakfast. It was Sunday and still early, but they would manage to give him something. As he opened the door of his room the telephone rang.

The White Hart's only concession to progress was to install bedside telephones. He crossed the room to the instrument and picked it up.

'Inspector Grant?' said the voice of the landlord. 'Just a minute please; you're wanted on the phone.' There was a moment's silence, and then he said: 'Go ahead, please; you're through.'