Crooked Wreath (24 page)

Ellen said nothing. She thought: “This bitch tried to steal my husband, she nearly succeeded in stealing him (which is what hurts!). She wanted him because she wanted somebody–not because she really loved
him.
She's self-centred and–and not real; she'd have made him miserable and unhappy, she'd have driven him mad with her emotionalism and scenes and play-acting … Why should I help her out? Let her suffer a bit!” She tipped back her garden chair and looked at Claire coolly. “Did you? I don't think I noticed.”

Cockrill, with sardonic amusement, watched her face. “It doesn't matter anyway, Ellen, because if Claire hadn't gone up the path as she says she did, how could she have left the breakfast tray in the middle of it?”

“Oh. So that leaves me,” said Peta. “What fun.” She did not look as though she found it fun at all.

Cockrill sat rocking pleasantly back and forth on the hind legs of his chair, nursing his white panama hat. “The case against Peta is an interesting one. She had a great deal to lose if the new will was signed. She went with Lady March down to the lodge clad only in her bathing suit, of which there isn't much, because I've seen it. She couldn't have concealed a hypodermic syringe about her person, but I suppose there's no reason why she shouldn't have carried two or three tiny glass ampoules, tucked up the leg of her trunks; they were so closely fitting that it would have kept them there; that would have been enough, if she could have got down the tumbler from the shelf and introduced the coramine into it, so that your grandfather, when he went for a glass of water, would fill up the glass and drink the whole lot off. But the point about the glass is that Peta couldn't have got the stuff into it without touching it; and that if she had touched it, she must have left fingerprints on it. That glass hadn't been polished: it was still a little dusty on the outside. So Peta couldn't have murdered Sir Richard either; her prints were not on the glass–only his.”

Now was the time to tell Cockie. Now, if he really was going to put his threats into action, was the time for Edward to tell Cockie that Peta
could
have touched the glass, and left no marks; to tell Cockie how it was that though she had touched the telephone she had left no marks on that either–to tell Cockie how Philip had suggested that Peta might have covered her fingertips with colourless varnish; that she could be–must be–the murderer! Now was the time. They had deceived him, terrified him, they had let him suffer to take responsibility for this horrible crime; now was the moment to pay them all back, to speak out and tell Cockie all he knew. He opened his mouth to speak; to tell about Peta, to tell Cockie to deliver up Peta to–to God knew what horror of prison and trial and condemnation and death … Peta, so pretty and sweet and gay and laughing–so vulnerable, in her foolishnesses and her tendernesses … Yet if Peta was a murderess–if Peta had let him suffer … He turned away and went to the edge of the terrace and stared down at the river. Let someone else speak. Not he.

It was Peta who spoke. She said: “Oh, Teddy darling–thank you!” and to Cockrill added, quite gaily: “The family have a theory about my fingerprints, Cockie; we're so full of theories and this is the one about me. They think I put colourless enamel over my fingertips to stop them making prints.
They
think I did it that way; but the important thing is–do you?”

“No,” said Cockrill, and he put his hand in his pocket and fished out something and laid it on the table before him, not taking his eyes off her face. Peta said: “Good God!–what's that?”

It was a pair of flesh-coloured, elbow-length gloves.

They all stood staring at them. Bella said: “Gracious, Cockie, where on earth did you get those?”

“From the little casket under the portrait in the drawing-room,” said Cockrill. He picked them up and bundled them back into his pocket. “I thought it was my handkerchief; I'd forgotten I had them there.”

“I thought you were going to tell us that Peta had worn a pair of Serafita's gloves,” said Bella, laughing a little, nervously. “There are a pair in the casket in the lodge, only, of course, they're black, and Peta couldn't possibly have worn them without my seeing them; and Richard would have, too.”

“You frightened me, Cockie,” said Peta.

“You were right to be frightened,” said Cockrill. “You ought to be frightened: you
all
ought to be frightened, because something very bad and horrible and cruel has taken place and I think it's time you all faced up to the fact; really faced it, didn't play with theories and suspicions and silly accusations that you don't really believe in–but looked the fact square in the face, that one of six people here on this terrace is twice a murderer …”

Not Peta. And not Claire. And not Bella and not Philip and not Ellen and not Edward. Cockrill waited. And suddenly Edward said, in a whisper: “You can't mean–Stephen?”

Even Cockrill looked startled. “I'm sorry, Stephen,” said Edward. “I didn't mean
I
thought that! I only thought Cockie did. And, of course, after all, you being keen on Peta and wishing she wasn't an heiress and all that …” To Cockrill he said: “You did it on purpose, Cockie. You're playing with us all; you're going on and on at us, hoping that someone will break down and give themselves away. You're–you're like a cat with us poor little mice, scared to death all round you: you're doing it deliberately to make the murderer confess …!”

“Yes,” said Cockie. “I could put my hand out and take the murderer now, this minute; the murderer of Brough and of your grandfather. But I think it would be–well, less terrible all round, if he'd confess; if he or she would confess. I have known you all for a long time; I knew your grandmother, Serafita; I knew Lady March when she first came here, I remember very well how naïve and charming she was in her eagerness and inexperience … I remember Peta and Claire and Edward when they were little children, I remember Philip when he first came home to Swanswater and Sir Richard killed the fatted calf for him, I remember Ellen as a bride … That's why I am giving the murderer this one chance. That's why I say to the murderer: This is the end. These are the last minutes; for God's sake, get this thing off your soul! Isn't there a little gleam of reparation to be made for the irreparable harm you've done–by putting out your hand now and saying ‘Take me,' instead of just letting yourself be ignominiously taken …?”

Bella, Peta, Claire, Ellen, Philip–one of these five. Edward looked round at them imploringly. “One of these five, Cockie; one of
these five?
There isn't anyone else. There's nobody else …”

“Well, only one other person,” said Cockrill.

“One person? One other person?”

Cockrill took out his little tin of tobacco and his papers and with great deliberation, concentrating deeply after his uncharacteristic outburst, he made himself a cigarette. When it was rolled and lighted, he tossed the match over the balustrade into the river. “Edward, my boy–this is as clever a frame-up as ever I have known. Somebody such as yourself is the perfect scapegoat. You are or you are not mentally unsound; nobody knows. If anything inexplicable occurs, the responsibility may easily enough be fixed on to you and even you yourself need not know for certain whether or not you are the real culprit. The family will fight tooth and nail to protect you from discovery; but if you are finally accused and convicted, nothing very dreadful can happen to you after all. You will be detained ‘at His Majesty's pleasure,' which in a case would largely be a matter of seeing that you could never again do any harm, to yourself or anyone else. Ye Gods, yes,” said Cockie, ruminating over it, “this was a cleverly thought-out plan! At the worst you would be an object of interest and pity, living a life of comfort, subjected only to proper supervision. The chances were that by the united efforts of the family, you could be protected from discovery and the thing would simply resolve itself into an unsolved mystery; but if somebody had to take the responsibility, why you were the one person who could take it and not be held responsible …”

Bella, Peta, Claire, Ellen, Philip … “But, Cockie,” cried Edward, “who is this? Who did this? Who thought this all out? Who do you mean?”

Almost in a whisper, Cockrill said: “I mean you!”

Far above their heads, what had been a low, grumbling drone grew to a roar: a steel wire whanged and split asunder with a stinging crack; and, one-winged after its impact with the balloon cable, a flying bomb came hurtling through the summer sky.

12

T
HE NOISE
of the bomb burst fanned hotly against their recoiling nerves. It was as though with a great thick stick, an invisible giant struck at the very softness of the brain behind the frontal bone; all the flesh shuddered from the impact of the sound, from the thrusting suck and eddy of the blasted air. The spirit screamed to the mind to fight its way to the surface of the engulfing dark; the mind struggling against more merciful nothingness, feebly implored obedience of limbs held captive by horror; wide eyes open upon the upbrush of devastation, sent no message to the unasking brain. Like a ship destroyed at sea, the great house seemed to rise piecemeal into the air, settling down slowly, low in the water, a huddle of tangled wreckage afloat on the wide green lawns. And as the dust cleared and the wave of the blast that had tumbled them backwards, withdrew, leaving them spent and gasping, Ellen cried out: “My baby!” She staggered a few steps forward and fell fainting to the ground.

Edward did not know that he was running towards the house, that they were all running towards the crumbling house, that he was outstripping them, was rushing, two steps at a time, up the rise of terraces, into the hall and up the crumbling stairs. As he gained the first-floor landing, the structure of the staircase gave way; a beam crashing past him glanced off his shoulder; he caught at his arm, unconsciously, with his other hand, and, holding it, looked down into the hall below. Philip and Stephen stood, warding off the falling masonry with their arms, staring up at him helplessly; on either side of them the new parts of the house were already a mere mass of lath and plaster and slowly settling dust; but the sturdy Georgian brick stood proudly, defying till the last possible moment an enemy of which its builders had not dreamed. He leaned against the carved wooden banister and screamed out over the din: “I'll get her! Go outside! Go out under the balcony window … I'll try and get her down to you …”

It was terrible to leave the comforting support of the strong oak to which he clung; but he dragged himself away and, still holding his arm, began to stagger through the falling bricks and beams, towards the baby's room. In a world where everything else was giving way, the door had jammed; he beat against it wildly with his uninjured arm–and behind him a little red tongue of flame savoured the wooden banister of the fallen staircase and, caught by a gust of draught, licked up suddenly into a leaping flame.

With the door the inner wall collapsed and fell about his head. Stunned and blinded, he stumbled across the overturned bedroom furniture to the cot. Antonia was not there, but his heart turned sick with relief as, somewhere in the corner, he heard her lusty howling. He groped his way through the dust-filled air towards the sound. He tried to call out, to reassure, to comfort her, but no words would come; he put his hand to his throat and found blood there. Blood was trickling down from a small wound in the side of his head, but he felt no pain; he found Antonia and picked her up.

The baby was heavy on his single useful arm, and turned and twisted in an abandonment of terror, but she did not seem to be injured. It was terrible to be able to find no words, no sound, to soothe her. He dragged himself towards the balcony window. Through the gaping roof and tottering outside wall, fantastically, unimaginably, sunshine was pouring in through the veils of thickly falling dust. The roar of the fire behind him lent a panicky strength to his failing legs.

Philip and Stephen had torn down the heavy linen curtains from the drawing-room, and were trying to fashion a cradle from them, for him to drop the baby into, from the balcony; but the blast had slashed them to shreds and they were useless. Edward stood swaying on the edge of the little balcony, clinging to the stone balustrade. Philip screamed out at him: “Stand back! Don't lean against it! It's giving way … Drop the baby, try to throw her to us; but be careful, the balcony's giving way …”

He leaned over perilously, letting the child slither through the grasp of his one hand, dropping a few feet into the safety of their outstretched arms; and, thrusting himself backwards and away from the balustrade, he fell back into the room as the stonework broke and crumbled and toppled with a crash to the terrace below. With it went the outside wall, and he was alone in a prison of falling stone, with the red fire raging outside the open door.

For a moment it was almost peaceful, shut in alone there with his task accomplished. The baby was safe–the baby who had danced for Grandfather on the terrace, a thousand aeons ago; the baby who had sat, crowned with buttercups and daisies, on the green grass of the lawn; the baby who, only yesterday, had greeted her mother in a white silk smock with forget-me-nots round her neck; the baby was safe and he, poor dotty Edward, had given his life to save her … There was nothing more now to do; for a moment he, who of late had known so much evil and terror and pain, who surely could never know happiness again–for a moment, he was happy.

But the time for surrender had not come; surrender to death might be preferable to struggling on, since life held so little of joy; but not to this death, not to a death creeping upon one in a cloak of curling, suffocating smoke, slashed with bright flame; not to a death in choking and agony. He staggered once more to his leaden feet and, with heavy reluctance, drove his dragging legs towards the door.