A Splash of Red (15 page)

Time to sleep. Jemima supposed that she must soon retire to the so-called office bedroom suite, where Sir Richard had displayed, without comment, an Empire bed, imperial eagles on the bedhead, upholstered in rich dark green; the walls were hung with the same material. The room seemed to show yet another decorative hand at work - a far more successful one. Its atmosphere was deliberately grand as well as masculine; Jemima felt her own intrusion into this room to be exotic enough as to be exciting - Chloe, had she too felt that?

Jemima yawned again and wondered which of the three rooms if any represented Sir Richard's own taste; she hoped it was not the modern horror on the third floor.

Here the balcony onto the square had a high concrete edge, making the front area of it dark and cavernous. It was time to push Tiger off her lap - he had endured the long telephone conversation without movement - and retire. The balcony windows were wide open, and for Tiger's sake, Jemima decided to leave them that way. She knew that a policeman was posted at the entrance to the building; Pompey had taken away the keys to Chloe's flat in his pocket.

Tiger stretched, that long lazy movement which completely altered the shape of his cosy domestic body into that of a hunting animal, and then vanished into the shadows of the scaffolding, lit up from place to place by the street lights. Jemima heard the cat scurrying about making little sounds, scratching.

For a moment she stood looking at the square, listening to the faint rustle of the wind in the trees. Then she leant over the concrete parapet. It was a comparatively short drop into the square itself; she could not actually sec the police sentinel, perhaps he was under the eave of the porch. It was typical of the meaningless modernity of this building that whereas the parapet of the penthouse was too low for absolute security, here on the first floor it was too high for comfort.

Jemima looked idly into the shadows. The proximity of the scaffolding would have made a lesser woman nervous, but she herself had never been frightened of the dark, or indeed of solitude. She thought of her more highly strung friends - poor Chloe, for instance, had always been intolerably nervous when alone: perhaps that was the true explanation of her amazing promiscuity
...
Chloe would have made anxious patterns out of these shadows and backed hastily away from the balcony for the safety of the lighted flat. In particular the shadows threw into relief one patch of greyness amid the scaffolding, very close to Jemima, which an over-imaginative person could well have fashioned into some lurking face.

Jemima's own eye travelled casually downwards. On the floor of the balcony was a pair of shoes. They looked like white gym shoes. So convinced was she still that this was purely a trick of the light, that it took her several seconds to take in that she was actually gazing at a pair of white shoes, shoes with real feet inside them, with bare ankles rising from them into the darkness above. And it was several seconds more before she finally realized that someone was actually standing in those shadows, motionless, staring at her, face almost touching hers, and had been standing there all the time, face a grey moon, face level with her own.

Jemima stood absolutely still in her turn. It was as though their two figures were engaged in playing a game of statues with each other. The hidden figure was the first to move.

'How amusing it is meeting like this,' said Adam Adamson, stepping out into the light. 'You've seen me at last. I was wondering how long I could hold my breath. My heart was beating like a mad gong, I'm amazed you didn't hear it. I seem destined to give you delicious shocks, don't I? Now, goddess, we can have a good talk, without interruptions.'

He bent down and patted Tiger.

'You, me and, of course, Puss. Goddess as you may be, you have a great deal of explaining to do to a mere mortal like myself. Never mind, the night is young.'

Putting a courteous but firm hand across Jemima's shoulder, Adam Adamson wheeled her into the lighted drawing room of the first-floor fiat.

'You fool!' Jemima's momentary panic made her sound both crosser and more intimate than she intended. 'Don't you know that the police are here?'

'Raffles the Gentleman Cracksman at your service.' Adam Adamson drew off an imaginary hat with a flourish. 'I did see a stalwart bobby standing at the front door of the concrete prison; nevertheless it proved the work of a moment for your humble servant to elude his stern but straight-forward gaze and shin up the ever-convenient scaffolding. Courtesy of the Lion of Bloomsbury. Then, lo and behold, what do I see, illuminated in the first-floor window, like the goddess you are, fit for worship, but Pallas Athena herself. Ho ho, thinks I, has our fair goddess set the sleuths upon me? And for that matter what might she be doing in the Lion's official den? So I decided to pay a call—'

His grip on her shoulder remained firm.

'Let me go.' But Adam Adamson didn't let her go. Instead he guided her further into the room and sat her down on the deep comfortable tawny sofa. Then he sat down beside her, quite close. She could have touched the golden down on his freckled cheeks and stroked the curly chestnut-coloured beard had she so wished.

'First question, why did you shop me to the police? I had quite an unpleasant moment seeing yon arm of the law standing there.'

'You fool,' Jemima repeated. 'I didn't shop you. Don't you
know
why the police are here?' Jemima felt herself breathing heavily, even panting; Adam Adamson's physical presence, which once she had found oddly attractive, now seemed to threaten her. Perhaps it was the late hour, the tantalizing and rather sinister circumstances of his arrival.

'I rather imagined that they had rumbled the salubrious presence of the Friends of the House, as symbolized by your humble servant and were e'en now making sure that he did not effect any further revivifying entrances.' He put his hand on hers; she noted the golden hairs on the back of it. It was a strong hand with a spatulate thumb.

'My dear Adam—' Jemima stopped. Both their intimacy and the situation itself were developing too rapidly for caution. Jemima Shore, Investigator, was in danger of losing a key opportunity of making a few pertinent enquiries of her own, before Pompey reached Adamson.

'Where have you been, then?' She tried to stop her voice sounding too brisk. 'I saw you leave the house about half-past five just as I was coming back.'

'I like to walk round London at night. Like Puss here I see the sights and smell the smells. Especially this part when it's empty. A little spying perhaps for the organization. Some beautiful empty houses doomed for demolition, no lights on, no security. We reconnoitre them at night.'

'A long walk. But then I suppose you'd been cooped up in that terrible flat all day. You must have enjoyed the change of scene.'

Adam did not answer the implied question. His expression was hard to read. Jemima feared that hers must be more open. She remembered Adam's apparent ability to read thoughts.

'So what are the police doing here?' He spoke more abruptly.

Jemima balanced the advantages of telling him - and thus proceeding further in her enquiries in a straightforward way - against the advantage she still possessed of surprise. While she still hesitated, Adam moved even closer to her:

'No, don't tell me, you're going to lie to me, goddess, I can see it in your green eyes. And your archaic smile. Let me do this instead.' Adam Adamson, putting one hand on her breast, pinched the nipple quite hard. Before Jemima could cry out, she felt her lips impressed by his and he half kissed, half bit her.

'No,' she panted when at last she had freed herself.

'Why not? I rather thought you might like that kind of thing,' replied Adam coolly. 'More fun for us both than your telling me lying stories about the police. I hate being lied to, don't you? In fact I take very great exception to it. It's the one area where I generally take my revenge.'

'I've no intention of lying to you." Jemima carefully checked the collar of her dress as though it was that not her breast which had suffered the assault of his hand. 'Someone was killed here today, killed, murdered. In the upstairs flat. The police are guarding the building.'

'No chance of its being Sir Richard Lionnel, I suppose?' Adamson sounded extraordinarily composed; of the two of them, she was the agitated one.

'It was Chloe Fontaine, as a matter of fact. The owner of the top-floor flat. My friend.'

He stared at her in silence.

'Ah. I'm sorry. I'm sorry your friend died.'

After a long pause, Adamson sounded conventionally sad, no more than that. 'Chloe the Tragic Nymph. There's probably a curse on this building you know, since I tried to put one on it myself. I'm sorry it was a nymph that died and not a villain. She should never have come here.'

'You didn't know her?'

'I didn't say that. I didn't know her real name until you told me yourself this morning. Dollie, she called herself to me, Dollie Stover. Then I saw her photograph on the back of a book you were carrying and recognized it. Dollie - Chloe - you see, was a nymph by nature, a Nymph Errant, and I - sometimes - am a Knight Errant. We met, as such characters are prone to do, somewhere in the mazy land of the Errant where the most wayward one is king.'

Memories of Chloe's breathless words came back to Jemima - 'A little, a very little, adventure
...
a casual encounter you might say, a carnal encounter perhaps.' Was this little adventure then shared with Adam Adamson? If so, Jemima had filled in two names out of the three she had listed as the most recent admirers of Chloe Fontaine.

'A casual encounter?' she asked. She tried to make her tones sound equally offhand.

'I like them, don't you?' Adamson had in the meantime placed his arm along her shoulders; it was a more overtly friendly gesture than the fierce advance he had just made. Nevertheless Jemima still felt threatened; she could not deny that she also felt increasingly excited by his presence, his proximity.

Jemima Shore returned to business.

'So you had a carnal encounter with Chloe?' She stopped, slightly embarrassed by the Freudian mistake. It was all very well for Chloe. Jemima proceeded more firmly. 'Did you meet in the gardens, by any chance? She was locked out, she told me. Forgot her key. Climbed into the gardens and had what she called a
casual
encounter.'

Adam smiled. 'Ah. An indiscreet girl, my Dollie, or at any rate it appears that your Chloe was indiscreet. I didn't know that she was in the habit of confiding her errantry. Yes, if you want me to say so, I'll say I met her in the gardens. I'll tell you something else about my Dollie which may or may not apply to your Chloe. It was she who told me about the empty flats here. Slipped me the key. Said she got it from a friend who was a decorator. Said she was living here as a kind of superior squatter. So it was you, Jemima Shore, goddess of wisdom, who informed me not only of the rather surprising news that my Dollie was your Chloe - literature's Chloe so far as I can make out - but also even less pleasingly that she was a lawful tenant in this concrete prison.'

'Did you see her after that?' Jemima persisted. 'Your Dollie?'

'A goddess of wisdom should know everything without needing to ask.' His hand was placed on her thigh, where it rested; with his other hand, he touched her cheek. 'No, I never saw her again. I don't think I would have been interested to do so. It wasn't, you know, a great romance. Only what you so aptly called it just now, a carnal encounter. A pleasant phrase that, by the way.'

'It's hers, Chloe's. It
was
hers.'

'Ah. Pleasant phrase all the same, pleasant phrase and pleasant activity. No, I didn't see her again. But I can see that your sleuth-like instincts are aroused and as I'd rather like to arouse a different set of instincts in you, I'll begin by setting your curiosity at rest. Here goes. I stayed in the upstairs flat all day, I slept, I read Dante - it seemed appropriate to the inferno in which I found myself - also some Petrarch, but that was for a different reason, and went out about five-thirty to get something to eat. When you, I gather, saw me. No, I heard nothing. Enough?'

'You'll have to tell this to the police,' began Jemima. A terrible feeling - or was it so terrible? Merely exciting or, in dead Chloe's own phrase, carnal? - was stealing over her that the conclusion of the evening was going to be exactly as Adam Adamson planned, and not as Jemima Shore intended.

A little later she made no protest when Adam took her by the hand and led her into the dark green Empire bedroom. He stripped off the heavy rustling bedspread, and the soft white bedclothes tumbled out.

His slight body - the hips round which she could have put both hands - looked quite different naked; not vulnerable as so many naked bodies did, especially those of the young, but powerful and triumphant.

'Goddess,' he said facing her, 'it's your turn to worship me.'

11

Curiouser and curiouser