Cover Her Face (25 page)

“About half a minute after Mrs. Bultitaft, I suppose. I got out of bed as soon as Mrs. Riscoe called out.”

“And neither you nor Mrs. Bultitaft saw the intruder?”

“No. I presume he was down the stairs before we came out of our rooms. Naturally I made no search as I wasn’t told until this afternoon what had happened. I’ve looked since, but there’s no trace of anyone.”

“Have you any idea how this person got in, Mrs. Riscoe?”

“It could have been through one of the drawing-room windows. We went into the garden last night and must have forgotten to lock it. Martha mentioned that she found it open this morning.”

“By ‘we’ do you mean yourself and Mr. Hearne?”

“Yes.”

“Were you wearing your dressing-gown by the time your maid arrived in your room?”

“Yes. I had just put it on.”

“And Mrs. Bultitaft accepted your story of a nightmare and suggested that you should spend the remainder of the night by the electric fire in her room?”

“Yes. She didn’t want to go back to bed herself, but I made her. First of all we had a pot of tea together by her fire.”

“So it comes to this,” said Dalgliesh. “You and Mr. Hearne take an evening walk in the garden of a house where there has recently been a murder and leave a French window open when you come in. In the night some unspecified man comes to your room, makes an inexpert attempt at strangling you for no motive which you or anyone else can suggest and then vanishes, leaving no trace. Your throat is so little affected that you are able to scream with enough force to attract the people sleeping in nearby rooms yet, by the time they arrive in a matter of minutes, you have recovered from your fright sufficiently to lie about what has happened, a lie made more effective by the fact that you have taken the trouble to get out of bed and put on your dressing-gown with its concealing collar. Does that strike you as rational behaviour, Mrs. Riscoe?”

“Of course it doesn’t,” said Felix roughly. “Nothing that has happened in this house since last Saturday has been rational. But even you can hardly suppose that Mrs. Riscoe tried to strangle herself. Those bruises can’t have been self-inflicted, and if they weren’t, who inflicted them? Do you really suppose that a jury wouldn’t believe the two crimes to be related?”

“I don’t think a jury will be asked to consider that possibility,” said Dalgliesh evenly. “I have nearly completed my investigation into Miss Jupp’s death. What happened last night isn’t likely to affect my conclusions. It has made no difference. I think it’s time the matter was settled and I propose to take a short cut. If Mrs. Maxie has no objection I want to see you all together in this house at eight o’clock tonight.”

“Did you want something of me, Inspector?” They turned towards the door. Eleanor Maxie had come in so quietly that
only Dalgliesh had noticed her. She did not wait for the reply but moved swiftly to her son.

“I’m glad you’re here, Stephen. Did Deborah telephone? I meant to myself if he didn’t improve. It’s difficult to tell, but I think there’s a change. Could you get Mr. Hinks? And Charles, of course.”

It was natural, Stephen thought, for her to ask for the priest before the doctor.

“I’ll come up myself first,” he said. “That is, if the inspector will excuse me. I don’t think there is anything more we can usefully discuss.”

“Not until eight o’clock tonight, Doctor.” Stung by his tone Stephen wanted, not for the first time, to point out that surgeons were addressed as “Mister.” He was saved from this pedantic pettiness by a realization of its futility and of his mother’s need. For days now he had hardly thought of his father. Now there were amends which he must make. For a second Dalgliesh and his investigation, the whole horror of Sally’s murder, faded before this new and more immediate need. In this at least he could act like a son.

But suddenly Martha was blocking the door. She stood there, white and shaking, her mouth opening and shutting soundlessly. The tall young man behind her stepped past her into the room. With one terrified glance at her mistress and a stiff little gesture of her arm which was less of ushering the stranger in than abandoning him to the company, Martha gave an animal-like moan and disappeared. The man looked back at her with amusement and then turned to face them. He was very tall, over six feet, and his fair hair, cut short all over the head, was bleached by the sun. He was dressed in brown corduroy trousers with a leather jacket. From its open neck the throat rose sunburnt and thick, supporting a head
which was arresting in its animal health and virility. He was long-legged, long-armed. Over one shoulder was slung a rucksack. In his right hand he carried an airline hold-all, pristine new with its golden wings. It looked as incongruous as a woman’s toy in his great brown fist. Beside him Stephen’s good looks paled into a commonplace elegance and all the weariness and futility which Felix had known for fifteen years seemed at once graven on his face. When he spoke his voice, confident with happiness, held no trace of diffidence. It was a soft voice slightly American in tone, and yet there could be no doubt of his Englishness.

“It seems I’ve given your maid a bit of a shock. I’m sorry to butt in like this but I guess Sally never told you about me. The name’s James Ritchie. She’ll be expecting me all right. I’m her husband.” He turned to Mrs. Maxie. “She never told me exactly what sort of job she’s got here and I don’t want to cause inconvenience, but I’ve come to take her away.”

In the years that followed when Eleanor Maxie sat quietly in her drawing-room she would often see again in her mind’s eye that gangling and confident ghost from the past confronting her from the doorway and could sense again the shocked silence which followed his words. That silence could only have lasted for seconds yet, in retrospect, it seemed as if minutes passed while he looked round at them in confident ease and they gazed back at him in incredulous horror. Mrs. Maxie had time to think how like a tableau it was, the very personification of surprise. She felt none herself. The last few days had drained her of so much emotion that this final revelation fell like a hammer on wool. There was nothing left to discover about Sally Jupp which had power to surprise any more.

It was surprising that Sally was dead, surprising that she had been engaged to Stephen, surprising to learn that so many people were implicated in her life and death. To learn now that Sally had been a wife as well as a mother was interesting but not shocking. Detached from their common emotion she did not miss the quick glance that Felix Hearne gave Deborah.
He was shaken all right but that swift appraisal held something, too, of amusement and triumph. Stephen looked merely dazed. Catherine Bowers had flushed deep red and was literally open-mouthed, the stock registration of surprise. Then she turned to Stephen as if throwing on him the burden of spokesman for them all. Finally Mrs. Maxie looked at Dalgliesh and for a second their eyes held. In them she read a momentary but unmistakable compassion. She was conscious of thinking irrelevantly “Sally Ritchie. Jimmie Ritchie. That’s why she called the child Jimmy after his father. I could never understand why it had to be Jimmy Jupp. Why are they staring at him like that? Someone ought to say something.” Someone did. Deborah, white to her lips, spoke like someone in a dream: “Sally’s dead. Didn’t they tell you? She’s dead and buried. They say that one of us killed her.” Then she began to shake uncontrollably and Catherine, getting to her before Stephen, caught her before she fell and supported her into a chair. The tableau broke. There was a sudden spate of words. Stephen and Dalgliesh moved over to Ritchie. There was a murmur of “better in the business room” and the three of them were suddenly gone. Deborah lay back in her chair, her eyes closed. Mrs. Maxie could witness her distress without feeling more than a faint irritation and a passive curiosity as to what lay behind it all. Her own preoccupations were more compelling. She spoke to Catherine.

“I must go back to my husband now. Perhaps you would come to help. Mr. Hinks will be here soon and I don’t expect Martha will be much use at present. This arrival seems to have unnerved her.” Catherine might have replied that Martha was not the only one to be unnerved, but she murmured an acquiescence and came at once. Her real usefulness and genuine care of the invalid did not blind Mrs. Maxie
to her guest’s self-imposed role of the cheerful little helpmate competent to cope with all emergencies. This last emergency might prove one too many but Catherine had plenty of stamina and the more Deborah weakened the more Catherine grew in strength. At the door Mrs. Maxie turned to Felix Hearne.

“When Stephen has finished talking to Ritchie I think he should come to his father. He’s deeply unconscious, of course, but I think Stephen should be there. Deborah should come up, too, when she has recovered. Perhaps you would tell her.”

Answering his unspoken comment, she added, “There’s no need to tell Dalgliesh. His plans for tonight can stand. It will be all over before eight.” Deborah was stretched back in her chair, her eyes closed. The chiffon scarf loosened around her neck.

“What is the matter with Deborah’s throat?” Mrs. Maxie sounded only vaguely interested.

“Some rather childish horseplay, I’m afraid,” replied Felix. “It was as unsuccessful as it deserved to be.”

Without another glance at her daughter, Eleanor Maxie left them together.

Half an hour later Simon Maxie died. The long years of halflife were over at last. Emotionally and intellectually he had been dead for three years. His last breath was the technicality which finally and officially severed him from a world which he had once known and loved. It was not within his capacity now to die with courage or with dignity but he died without fuss. His wife and children were with him and his parish priest said the prescribed prayers as though they could be heard and shared by that stiffened grotesque figure on the bed. Martha was not there. Afterwards the family were to say that there seemed no point in asking her. At the time they knew that her sentimental weeping would have been more than they could bear. This death-bed was only the culmination of a slow process of dying. Although they stood white-faced about the bed and tried to evoke some pietas of remembrance and grief their thoughts were with that other death and their minds reached towards eight o’clock.

Afterwards all of them met in the drawing-room, except Mrs. Maxie, who was either without curiosity about Sally’s
husband, or who had decided to detach herself momentarily from the murder and all its ramifications. She merely instructed the family not to let Dalgliesh know that her husband was dead, then walked with Mr. Hinks back to the vicarage.

In the drawing-room Stephen poured the drinks and told his story: “It’s simple enough really. Of course I had only time for the bare details. I wanted to get up to Father. Dalgliesh stayed on with Ritchie after I left and I suppose he got all the information he wanted. They were married all right. They met while Sally was working in London and married there secretly about a month before he went to Venezuela, on a building job.”

“But why didn’t she say?” asked Catherine. “Why all the mystery?”

“Apparently he wouldn’t have got the job abroad if the firm had known. They wanted an unmarried man. The pay was good and it would have given them a chance to set up house. Sally was mad keen to get married before he went. Ritchie rather thinks she liked the idea of putting one over on her aunt and uncle. She was never happy with them. The idea was that she would have stayed with them and kept on with her job. She planned to save £50 before Ritchie came back. Then, when she found the baby was coming, she decided to stick to her side of the bargain. Heaven knows why. But that part didn’t surprise Ritchie. He said that was just the kind of thing that Sally would do.”

“It’s a pity he didn’t make sure that she wasn’t pregnant before he left her,” Felix said dryly.

“Perhaps he did,” said Stephen shortly. “Perhaps he asked her and she lied. I didn’t question him about his sexual relationship. What business is that of mine? I was faced by a husband who had returned to find his wife murdered in this
house, leaving a child he never even knew existed. I don’t want a half hour like that again. It was hardly the time to suggest that he might have been more careful. So might we, by God!”

He gulped down his whisky. The hand which held the glass was shaking. Without waiting for them to speak he went on: “Dalgliesh was wonderful with him. I could like him after tonight if he were here in any other capacity. He’s taken Ritchie with him. They’re calling in at St. Mary’s to see the child and then they hope to get a room for Ritchie at The Moonraker’s Arms. Apparently he hasn’t any family to go to.” He paused to refill his glass. Then he went on: “This explains a lot, of course. Sally’s conversation with the vicar on Thursday, her telling him that Jimmy was going to have a father.”

“But she was engaged to you!” cried Catherine. “She accepted you.”

“She never actually said she’d marry me. Sally loved a mystery all right and this one was at my expense. I don’t suppose she ever told anyone that she was engaged to me. We all assumed it. She was in love with Ritchie all the time. She knew he was soon coming home. He was pathetically anxious to let me know just how much in love they were. He kept crying and trying to force some of her letters on me. I didn’t want to read them. Heaven knows I was hating myself enough without that. God, it was awful! But once I’d started reading I had to go on. He kept pulling them out of that bag he had and pushing them into my hand, the tears running down his face. They were pathetic, sentimental and naïve. But they were real, the emotion was genuine.”

No wonder you’re upset then, thought Felix. You never felt a genuine emotion in your life.

Catherine Bowers said reasonably, “You mustn’t blame yourself. None of this would have happened if Sally had told the truth about her marriage. It’s asking for trouble to pretend about a thing like that. I suppose he wrote to her through an intermediary.”

“Yes. He wrote through Derek Pullen. The letters were sent in an envelope enclosed in one addressed to Pullen. He handed them over to Sally at pre-arranged meetings. She never told him they were from a husband. I don’t know what story she concocted, but it must have been a good one. Pullen was pledged to secrecy and, as far as I know, he never gave her away. Sally knew how to choose her dupes.”