Dancers in Mourning (8 page)

As soon as the three hurrying men stepped out into the darkness they saw the pale haze of headlights above the trees in the lane. Sutane was talking. He was excitable, but his extreme nerviness of earlier in the day had gone. Campion received the impression that he was watching his words as carefully as he could.

‘I told her not to come here at all,' he said, as they strode over the grass. ‘I told her frankly I didn't want her here. But she insisted, you know she did. This must have been in her mind all the time. What an incredible trick! On
my
place! Under
my
car!'

‘Be quiet.' Campion caught the gleam of Poyser's little black eyes as they flickered towards him. ‘Be quiet, old boy. We'll see what happened when we get there.'

They hurried on in silence for a little while. Sutane was breathing heavily.

‘I was blinding, you know,' he said suddenly. ‘Didn't see her until I was over her.'

Poyser took his arm. ‘Forget it,' he said softly. ‘We'll get it straight in a minute or so. How do we get through this hedge?'

‘There's a gap somewhere. I climbed the bank and forced my way through. It's only laurels.'

They came slithering down the high bank to the road, bringing great clods of the sandy yellow earth with them. The car stood in the middle of the lane, her engine still running, while behind, ghastly in the faint red glare of the tail-light, was something white and quiet on the grass verge. Poyser tiptoed forward, oblivious of the absurdity of his caution. He bent down and struck a match. He stood holding it in the still, warm air until it burned his fingers.

‘Lumme,' he said softly at last and the old-fashioned expletive was more forceful than any other he could have used.

As Campion and Sutane came up he swung away from the body and took the actor's sleeve.

‘Where was she when you hit her?'

Campion left them. He had a pencil-torch in his pocket and now knelt down beside the dead woman with it. Chloe Pye was still in her white swimming-suit. She lay on her back on the verge, her head dangling over the grass-grown ditch and her thin body limp and shapeless. The near-side wheels of the car had passed over her chest, crushing her rib-cage. There was dirt and considerable laceration of the skin, but very little blood. Her hand was cool when he touched it, but not clammy.

Mr Campion sat back on his heels. In the darkness his face was blank. Poyser's voice recalled him.

‘Have you got a flash-lamp there? Bring it here a moment.'

Campion rose and went over. The skid marks were easily discernible on the flint road. By the light of the little torch they found the spot where Sutane had jammed on his brakes, and a little further on the dreadful smother of stones and dust with the pitifully small stain in it where the woman had fallen. Sutane's teeth were chattering.

‘She just dropped in front of me,' he said. ‘I didn't see her till she flashed past the windscreen. She chucked herself under the car. I didn't know what had happened until I came back to see what I'd hit.'

‘It was an accident.' Poyser's voice was pleading. ‘A pure accident, old boy. Where was she standing?'

‘Don't be a fool. She did it deliberately.' Sutane's voice was exasperated. ‘That's where she came from.' He snatched the torch and sent its beam flickering upward.

Poyser swore because the unexpected sight startled him.

‘The bridge …' he said, staring up at the rose-hung arch. ‘Good God, didn't you see her fall?'

‘No, I keep telling you.' Sutane sounded sulky. ‘I was blinding. Naturally I was looking at the road, not up in the air somewhere.'

‘All the same, I should have thought the headlights would have caught her,' the other man insisted, still staring up at the leafy span above him.

In the faint light from the torch Campion saw his small face alive with worry and invention.

‘That's it,' he said abruptly. ‘That's what happened. I see it now. That's what happened, Jimmy. She saw you coming and waved to you to stop. Probably she leant right over, imagining she was a fairy or a bumble-bee or something – it's the sort of crazy idea she might have – and somehow or other she overbalanced and fell under your wheels before you could stop. That's what happened. It'd make it much more simple if you'd seen her do it. You must have seen her up there.'

‘But I didn't, I tell you.' Sutane was obstinate. ‘I was blinding with my eyes on the road and my mind on those damned invitations. Suddenly something plumped down just in front of me and I slammed on the brakes. There was a sort of jolt and I pulled up when I could and backed the bus down the road. Then I got out and went round to the back of the car and there she was.'

‘Jimmy –' Poyser's voice was wheedling, ‘– it
must
have been an accident. Think of it, my dear chap, think of the situation. It
must
have been an accident. Chloe wouldn't kill herself. Why should she? She was making a come-back in your show. She was a visitor in your house. She wouldn't deliberately chuck herself under your car. That's the kind of story newspaper-men dream about when they're half tight. She was trying to attract your attention and fell over. That's the obvious truth as I see it, and believe me it's bad enough.'

Sutane was silent. The vibrations of Poyser's arguments still hung about in the darkness. He shuddered.

‘It may have been so,' he said with an unsuccessful attempt at conviction. ‘But I didn't see her, Dick. On my oath I did not see her.'

‘All right. But it was an accident. Do understand that.'

‘Yes. Yes, I do.'

Mr Campion asked if he might have his torch back, explaining that he wished to examine the bridge.

‘Good idea.' There was an element of conspiracy in the way Poyser thrust the pencil into his hand, and it occurred to Campion that the tactics of business-men were elephantine capers. He hoped devoutly that the affair would remain a country one and that the astute Mr Poyser would never be confronted by a Metropolitan detective.

He scrambled up the bank again and, forcing his way through the shrubs, found the path without much difficulty. The bridge itself was a much more solid structure than it had appeared from the road. The parapets, although constructed of ‘rustic' work, were astonishingly steady and were further reinforced by a tangle of American Pillar and wild white convolvulus. The bright red roses looked unreal and somehow Victorian in the artificial light of the torch as Campion examined the hedge of flowers carefully, his discomfort increasing. The creosoted boards beneath his feet told him nothing. The dry summer had left them smooth and barely even dusty.

He worked over the ground with hurried inquisitiveness and at every step his uneasiness grew. Yet it was not his discoveries which so disturbed him. Poyser's voice, carefully lowered to an inarticulate murmur, floated up to him with the scent of the flowers in the warm, soft air. Now and again Sutane answered, his voice clear and irritable.

‘It would be like her,' Campion heard him admit.

And again, after a prolonged muttering from Poyser:

‘Yes, she liked secrets.'

At this point another beam of light swung down the lane and came racing towards them. Campion hurried off the bridge and plunged back through the laurels. In view of everything he was anxious to be present when the police arrived.

He came out through the bushes and slid into the road just as a car came to a standstill within a few feet of him so abruptly that the engine stopped. He saw it was a large Fiat, a few years old, a portly vehicle. The near-side window came down with a rattle and an old voice, slow with the affectations of the educated seventies, the father, as it were, of Uncle William's voice, said sternly:

‘My name's Bouverie. Somebody telephoned to my house to tell me that someone was hurt.'

‘Doctor Bouverie?'

‘Yes.' The curtness of the monosyllable suggested that the speaker was irritated at finding himself unknown. ‘Get that car out of the way. You've taken the patient up to the house, I suppose.'

‘No. No, we haven't. She's here.' It was Sutane who interrupted. He had hurried forward and now adopted unconsciously the tone of nervous authority which he kept for such of those strangers whom he did not instantly set out to charm.

‘Are you Mr Sutane?'

The voice in the car had authority also, and of the magisterial variety.

‘I think I met you at your house this afternoon. Were you driving the car?'

Sutane was momentarily taken off his balance.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘Er, yes, I was.'

‘Ah!'

The door opened.

‘Well, I'll take a look at your victim, don't you know.'

Campion never forgot his first glimpse of the figure who climbed slowly out of the darkness of the car into the tiny circle of light from the torch. His first impression was of enormous girth in a white lounge suit. Then he saw an old pugnacious face with drooping chaps and a wise eye peering out from under the peak of a large tweed cap. Its whole expression was arrogant, honest, and startlingly reminiscent of a bulldog, with perhaps a dash of bloodhound. He was clean-shaven except for a minute white tuft on his upper lip, but his plump, short-fingered surgeon's hands had hair on the backs of them.

A Georgian tough, thought Campion, startled, and never had occasion to alter his opinion.

He had not seen the doctor at the disastrous party of the afternoon and rightly supposed that he had been one of the many who had come late only to leave almost immediately afterwards.

Sutane remembered him; so much was obvious. His face wore that indignant, contemptuous expression which is always more than half embarrassment.

Poyser, who saw trouble brewing, came forward ingratiatingly.

‘It was a pure accident,' he volunteered, attempting to be matter-of-fact and succeeding in sounding casual.

‘Oh!' The new-comer raised his head and stared at him. ‘Were you in the car?'

‘No, I wasn't. Mr Sutane was alone. Mr Campion and I have just come down from the house. We –'

‘Quite. Where is the patient? It's a woman, you say? Where is she?'

Doctor Bouverie had brushed past the discomfited Poyser and addressed Sutane. His whole manner was truculent and high-handed to an extent which would have been ridiculous or merely rude had it not so obviously sprung from a lifetime of authority. As it was, he was frankly awe-inspiring, and Mr Campion, who knew the signs, felt his heart sink.

The doctor produced an eighteen-inch torch from his enormous coat pocket and gave it to Sutane to hold.

‘In the back of the car, I suppose,' he said, advancing upon the Bentley.

‘No, she's here.' Sutane swung the beam of light on to the verge with a suddenness unconsciously dramatic and the newcomer, who was growing more like the spirit of rural justice incarnate at every step, paused in his tracks like a startled grizzly. He made a little teetering sound with his tongue, expressing astonishment and, it would seem, disgust.

‘Come closer, will you?' he said. ‘I want the light actually on her. That's a little better. If you can't keep it steady one of the others must hold it.'

Poyser took the torch and the old doctor knelt down on the grass, having first assured himself that it was not damp. His whole poise suggested extreme distaste and disapproval, but his square hands were exquisitely gentle.

After a while he got up, disdaining Sutane's assistance.

‘She's dead,' he said. ‘You knew that, of course? What was she doing running about naked?'

He pronounced it ‘nekkit' and the affectation gave the word an odd shamefulness.

‘She used to do that,' said Sutane wearily. ‘She's worn a bathing-dress all day. What on earth does it matter?'

The old eyes under the peaked cap stared at him as at a curiosity and Poyser interrupted again. He insisted on giving his version of the affair, investing it in his extreme anxiety to be both lucid and convincing with a glibness which sounded positively inhuman.

The monstrous old man listened to him until the end, his head slightly on one side. It was a hopeless encounter, Mr Campion reflected; like a clever fish trying to talk to an equally clever dog, an experiment predestined to end in mutual distrust.

Doctor Bouverie directed his torch at the bridge.

‘But if she fell off there by accident, don't you know, she must have climbed out over those roses – an extraordinary thing to do so lightly clad. Ah, here comes the man we want. Is that you, Doe?'

‘Yes, sir. Good evening, sir.' A police constable, young and remarkably handsome in the uniform which seems to vary between the impressive and the comic, solely according to its wearer's face, swung himself off his bicycle and laid the machine carefully against the bank. The doctor advanced upon him.

‘There's been a shocking accident,' he said, sounding like an army colonel addressing a favoured subordinate. ‘The woman either fell or threw herself off the bridge here under Mr Sutane's car. This is Mr Sutane. The woman is dead. I shall want the body taken down to Birley and I'll ring up the Coroner first thing tomorrow morning and probably do a post-mortem a little later.'

‘Yes, sir.'

The doctor had not finished.

‘Meanwhile,' he said, ‘I should like to take a look at that bridge. How d'you get up to it, Mr Sutane?'

‘I climbed up the bank, but there's a gate a little farther along.' Sutane's utter weariness was pathetic.

‘Then I'll use it. Perhaps you'd be good enough to direct me.' The old doctor was brusque and bursting with energy. ‘Doe, throw a rug over that poor woman and then come along.'

Mr Campion did not join the party. As was his custom when his immediate presence was not necessary, he succeeded in effacing himself. As soon as the policeman's steady steps disappeared down the lane he wandered over to the Fiat and looked inside. The back of the car contained a bag, a folded rug and a wedge-shaped wooden box fitted with small flower-containers in little sockets arranged in neat equidistant rows. The rest of the interior told him nothing and with infinite caution he raised the bonnet.