Enough to Kill a Horse (22 page)

Susan told her at once, ‘I’ve come to see Laura Greenslade.’

‘
You
have?’ Jean said, emphasizing the word so oddly that it sounded as if what she was really saying was, ‘You have
too
?’

It made Susan ask, ‘Then are you going to see her?’

‘Oh no – no,’ Jean said. ‘As a matter of fact, I – I was just going into The Waggoners to see if Colin’s there.’

Susan’s mind was filled with her own concerns and she did not trouble to ask herself why Jean should lie to her, as lying she certainly was, for even Jean, quietly puritan though she might be, would scarcely have been looking up and down the street in that furtive way merely to make sure that no one should see her going into The Waggoners. Leaning her bicycle against the wall, Susan pushed at the door of the saloon bar, leaving it to Jean whether to follow her in or not.

For a moment Jean did not move, then with a shrug of the shoulders and a hesitant, undecided air, she followed Susan through the door.

Susan was asking Mrs Toles where she could find Mrs Greenslade. The only other person in the room was Fred Davin, the ironmonger. He was in his usual place at the bar, with a pint mug in front of him. He said good evening to Jean, which made Susan, who had not heard her come in, aware that she was there. Turning to glance at her, Susan was surprised to see Jean’s extreme pallor. In the darkness outside it had not been noticeable, but now, in the lighted room, Jean’s face looked so drawn and grey that Susan thought she must be feeling ill. If that were so, it explained Jean’s unusual behaviour in the street. If she had suddenly felt faint, she might have been looking up and down for someone who could help her.

‘Are you all right, Jean?’ Susan asked anxiously.

Jean’s eyes were feverishly bright and at the same time vacant.

‘Yes, I’m quite all right,’ she said, as if the question surprised her. ‘Mrs Toles, have you seen my husband?’

‘No, dear, not since morning,’ Mrs Toles answered.

‘I think – I think I’ll sit down and wait for him, if you don’t mind,’ Jean said. ‘I said I’d join him here.’

‘That’s right, dear, sit down and make yourself comfortable.’ Mrs Toles then turned her attention back to Susan. ‘I think you’ll find her there, Miss Mordue. She hasn’t said anything to me about leaving, but it’s true her room isn’t very grand, as I said to Mr Raven, and maybe she isn’t satisfied. I said to Mr Raven, “The room isn’t very grand, Mr Raven,” I said, “but she’s welcome to it, only don’t blame me if she isn’t satisfied,” I said – ’

‘Thanks,’ Susan said and went through the door and started up the stairs.

On the chair on to which Jean had sunk, rather as if her feet would no longer carry her, she sat looking isolated, lost in herself and utterly out of place. She must have been very cold, for she was trembling slightly.

Seeing this, Fred Davin said, ‘Why not come nearer the fire, Mrs Gregory?’

She started to turn her head to look at him.

At that moment, from upstairs, there came a scream.

Of the three people in the saloon bar, Jean moved the fastest. It was almost as if she had been waiting for the sound. While Mrs Toles was still pressing a hand to her heart and Fred Davin was looking round in an incredulous way, as if a scream in The Waggoners were so far from the course of nature that probably it had not really happened at all, Jean crossed to the door through which Susan had gone, tore it open and started to run up the stairs.

But she was only on the third stair when Susan, looking ill with fright and horror, came racing down. Stumbling against Jean and catching hold of her shoulder to save herself, she almost made Jean fall.

‘Don’t go up there – don’t!’ Susan cried. ‘It’s horrible!’

Jean drew away from her. Her muddled and undecided air had vanished, her trembling had stopped. She gave a searching look into Susan’s terrified eyes, then started again up the stairs.

Susan clutched her arm.

‘Don’t – you can’t go in there, Jean!’ she sobbed. ‘She’s – she’s dead!’

‘Laura Greenslade?’ Jean said.

Mrs Toles and Fred Davin by now were also in the narrow passage at the foot of the stairs.

They heard Susan say, ‘Yes, there’s the handle of the knife sticking out of her back and there’s blood all over her – she’s been
murdered
, Jean!’

Jean shook herself free of Susan’s hand and went on up the stairs.

Fred Davin called to her to come back, saying that he would go up.

‘I’m a nurse,’ Jean answered austerely, ‘I’ve seen such things before.’

Following her, Fred Davin entered Laura’s bedroom only a moment after her.

He found Jean standing quite still, looking down at the body of Laura Greenslade, which was sprawled face downwards on the highly polished linoleum. Laura’s dark hair had come loose and was tumbled about her head. Her hands looked as if they were reaching out to grasp something. The horn handle of a knife stood out between her shoulder blades. A great patch of her tweed jacket was soaked in blood. In the fireplace the fire that she had ordered was burning cheerfully.

As Fred Davin stood there, he saw Jean stoop as if she were about to touch the handle of the knife.

‘We didn’t ought to touch anything, Mrs Gregory,’ he said.

‘No,’ Jean said, ‘of course not.’ But she remained stooping, peering down at the little that she could see of Laura’s face, under the tumbled hair. Then she slowly straightened up and turned to the door.

‘We’ll have to call the police,’ she said.

‘But who done it?’ Fred Davin said, as if she could tell him. ‘Not Mr Raven. He never done a thing like that.’

‘No,’ Jean said.

She went out of the room and down the stairs.

In the bar Mrs Toles was treating Susan and herself to brandy. Without asking Jean and Fred Davin if they wanted it, she filled glasses for them too. Jean gave a slight shake of her head as Mrs Toles pushed one of them towards her.

‘There, dear, you drink it up,’ Mrs Toles insisted. ‘I wouldn’t have gone up there like you did, not if you was to pay me to do it, not after what Miss Mordue’s been telling me. You drink it up.’

Again Jean shook her head. She looked at Susan.

‘She’s dead,’ Jean said. ‘There isn’t any doubt of it.’

‘I know there isn’t. I – I looked,’ Susan said.

‘You mean you touched her?’

‘No, I – I don’t think I did.’ Susan sounded dazed. ‘But with all that blood … I’m going to ring Mummy up.’ She looked round. ‘Where’s the telephone, Mrs Toles?’

She sounded like a child who in time of trouble thinks first of telling her mother.

‘In that cupboard over there, dear,’ Mrs Toles said, as she had said earlier to Laura.

Fred Davin had swallowed his brandy.

‘I’ll be going for the police now, Mrs Toles,’ he said, ‘if you ladies aren’t nervous being left on your own. If you are, I’ll call in Mr Crowfoot from next door.’

‘No, Mr Davin, we’ll be all right, thank you – but don’t be long,’ Mrs Toles said bravely, reaching again for the brandy bottle. ‘The poor young lady – of all terrible things! And who’s going to tell poor Mr Raven?’

‘I will,’ Susan muttered, going towards the telephone. ‘I’ll ring up the Lynams. They’ll tell him. And I’ll ring up my mother …’

She went into the cupboard, found a switch that worked a dim light inside it, closed the door on herself, and picked up the telephone.

She rang up first her home and then the Lynams. She spoke briefly and fairly collectedly to her mother and afterwards to Basil. As she put the telephone down, her glance was held by a white shape on the floor. Without thinking much of what she was doing, she bent to pick it up.

It was an envelope, addressed to Mrs Charles Greenslade. It was an old envelope, fairly crumpled, as if it had been in a handbag or a pocket for some time. There was nothing inside it, but on one corner of it, in pencil, were two numbers. Each number had some meaning for Susan, for the first was the Mordues’ telephone number and the second was that of the Gregorys.

Susan hesitated there inside the cupboard. It seemed certain to her, looking at those numbers, that Laura had telephoned Jean as well as herself. That probably meant that Laura had asked Jean to come to see her, or else that because of something that Laura had said, Jean had decided on her own to come. It had been with the intention of seeing Laura that Jean had waited outside The Waggoners, waiting furtively, looking up and down the street, hoping not to be seen.

Or, Susan thought, her heart suddenly thumping, had Jean already seen Laura when she arrived on her bicycle?
Had Jean been leaving The Waggoners
?

Thrusting the envelope into her pocket, she decided that she would not let anyone see it until she had shown it to Jean herself and given her a chance to explain. Switching off the light in the cupboard, she emerged into the bar and looked round for Jean.

But Jean had gone.

As Basil put the telephone down, after speaking to Susan, he turned and looked thoughtfully at Clare. She had sat down stiffly on the edge of a chair and was holding her hands out to the fire.

‘Clare,’ he said gently, ‘what’s the truth about this?’

She lowered her head a little, so that less could be seen of her face, and said, ‘The truth about what?’

‘About what happened when you went to see Laura.’

‘I saw her – ’

‘Alive or dead?’

Fanny gave a cry. Her face became almost as pale, as distorted as in the reflection in the gilt-framed mirror. ‘
Dead,
Basil?’

‘That’s what Susan says. Stabbed in the back, in her own room at The Waggoners. Susan found her.’

‘She was alive when I saw her,’ Clare said woodenly. ‘And I told her you wanted to make friends with her and I asked her to come back with me, but she refused. That’s all.’

Basil went to the door.

Fanny asked quickly, ‘Where are you going?’

‘To find Kit,’ he said and went out.

Fanny stared after him blankly, not yet able to take in what had happened. Then she turned on Clare. For once Fanny looked angry.

‘You aren’t telling the truth, Clare. From the first you haven’t told the truth and one’s only got to look at you now to know that you’re lying. What happened? What happened really?’

Clare did not reply. Sitting there rigidly, she had taken on an air of intense thought.

‘Clare!’ Fanny said loudly.

Clare’s quick frown made her look as she did when she was interrupted in her work. She seemed to be trying to blot out her own knowledge that there was anyone else in the room.

Fanny strode heavily across the room and stood over her.

‘Clare, will you tell the truth about what you found there?’

Absently, Clare answered, ‘She was dead, of course.’

‘
Of course?
Then why did you try to pretend she was alive when you saw her? What’s happening to you?’

‘Yes, she was dead,’ Clare said thoughtfully, as if she were working it out as she went along. ‘She was dead. And discovering her was a profoundly upsetting experience. I doubt if I have ever had such a shock in my life. I left quietly, hoping that I could avoid becoming involved in the affair. However, since you say it was obvious to you at once that I was lying when I said that I found her alive, I see that it will probably be best if I admit that I found her dead. Yes – dead.’ Her repetition of the word had the sound of an experiment, as if she were listening to see how she liked it.

Cold had invaded Fanny’s body. She was aware of it in her hands and her feet and along her spine. She felt it strangely at the top of her head, from where the chill seemed to be spreading into her brain.

‘You’re still lying,’ she said.

‘No, I’m speaking the truth.’

‘Then – something’s happened to you.’

‘Yes, indeed. I’ve had a very great shock.’

Footsteps on the stairs made Fanny aware that Kit and Basil were coming down together. She went to the door and saw Kit go by. He gave her a look, but he did not pause. Basil, putting a hand on Fanny’s shoulder, guided her back into the sitting room.

‘Shouldn’t you have gone with him?’ she asked.

‘He wanted to go alone,’ Basil said.

Clare was still sitting in the same position by the fire. Basil looked at her, then questioningly at Fanny.

‘She says now that she found Laura dead,’ Fanny said.

‘Yes, of course,’ Basil said.

‘Of course,’ Clare echoed.

‘But then – ’ Fanny began, but broke off as Basil very slightly shook his head.

He stood still in the middle of the room, frowning at the floor, as if he were considering a plan of action. When Fanny started to speak again, he again shook his head. Clare also remained still. It almost seemed, Fanny thought, that to the three people in the room Laura’s death required no comment. At last she could not endure the silence a moment longer.

‘Whatever’s happened to you both?’ she cried. ‘What are you doing?’

‘In our different ways,’ Basil answered, ‘we are both trying to think. Quickly, if possible.’

‘You mean before the police get here?’

‘That, I imagine, is Clare’s problem,’ he said. ‘Mine – mine is more difficult.’

‘I don’t understand you,’ Fanny said.

‘Well, now that it’s apparent that Laura was the intended victim of our poisoning, the question is …’

He stopped, as a knock sounded on the front door.

‘Is that the police now?’ Fanny asked, looking apprehensively at Clare.

‘I’ll see,’ Basil said, but Clare did not stir or give any sign of even having heard the knocking.

In a moment Basil returned, not with the police, but with Colin Gregory. As they came into the room, Basil was telling Colin what had happened. Fanny felt quite unable to let Basil tell the story by himself, and broke in, telling it in almost the same words, but a moment after him. Clare did not even glance in Colin’s direction, but still sat stiffly, communing with the fire.

Whether it was because this behaviour of hers struck Colin as excessively strange, or because of something else in his mind, he seemed unable, while Basil and Fanny were speaking, to take his eyes from Clare. When the story was told, he said nothing for a moment, then made a little gesture of helplessness, as if he could really find nothing to say.