Fog of Doubt (18 page)

But Tedward sat close to Rosie, his hand over hers. ‘I wasn't going to let Thomas suffer—not in the end. I had only to say one word to save him; I knew he was willing to put up with a few weeks in prison, even a trial, knowing that I could always save him in the end. He thinks it's for someone else of course—at least I suppose so; but the facts are the same. He sympathized with the killing of Raoul Vernet and he's willing to suffer if the killer can go free. And by the time the trial was over, by the time they started looking for someone else—well, I'd have had a much better chance of escaping altogether. I knew Thomas wouldn't mind putting up with a bit, if he knew. And I didn't see why I should hang unless I had to, for having settled accounts with that brute.' He shrugged and gave a bitter, small smile. ‘And now my beautiful gesture comes too late.'

There was a rattle of cup against saucer, a crash as cup and saucer fell to the parquet floor. Melissa stooped automatically and grabbed at the empty air to save them, but, not touching them, straightened herself, unaware that she had moved. Her eyes did not leave Tedward's face. She cried: ‘You? y
ou?
'

They all turned their heads, astonished, to stare at her with wide, startled, uncomprehending eyes. She moved her head from side to side, her mouth foolishly open; she could not speak. Cockie said, sharply: ‘Why should you be so surprised?'

She ignored him. She tried again to speak, and her teeth chattered together uncontrollably. She blurted out at last: ‘You say
you
killed him?'

Oh, God, thought Matilda;
now
what? She said, impatiently: ‘Of course he didn't Melissa! They're all running round protecting each other and there isn't a word of truth in any of it, not one word.' To Tedward, she said: ‘Don't go on and on, darling, do for God's sake leave it—what's the point of all this, why go accusing yourself? Thomas didn't kill the man, they can't do anything to him in the end. Leave them to find that out for themselves, don't go complicating matters, making everything horrible for everybody, irritating the police and putting them even more against us all.' And she burst out cheaply and bitterly that everyone was glorying in it, making martyrs of themselves, having a wonderful time in the limelight while poor Thomas was doing the real suffering, caged away all alone in that dreadful place.…

Melissa disregarded her. She said to Tedward, still staring, ‘How
can
you have killed him?'

Cockrill cast his cigarette into the fire with a flick of his wrist. He got up and took a pace forward, facing her. He said again: ‘Why should you be so astonished, Melissa? What's behind this?' And he broke off and glanced across to where, in the shadows, the door had slowly opened; and glanced sharply away again. The door remained half open; nothing moved.

In the bright light about the fireside, attention was focussed entirely on Melissa. She stood, as she had leapt up from her chair, the broken china at her feet, a thread of spilt tea winding its wormy way from out of the little deposit of sugar and tea leaves in the bottom of the cup. Tedward sat upright on the sofa, still holding Rosie's hand, but looking up into Melissa's face with bewildered concentration, Rosie curled up beside him, her mouth a little round O of slowly dawning comprehension and alarm; old Mrs. Evans looked lost in her deep chair, clutching at the wide arms with thin, nervous hands; Matilda had relaxed back against her cushions, exhausted and distressed by her outburst of weary protest. Melissa fought down the chattering of her jaw. She said, again, ‘But why should you kill him?'

Tedward looked down at Rosie's hand. He shrugged. He said: ‘I killed him for very excellent reasons, Melissa, which are nothing to do with you. I killed him because he deserved to die; I killed him because it would prevent any more unhappiness, to ourselves or to other people; and I killed him because it gave me great personal satisfaction to do so.' He leaned back, smiling. ‘On the day I'm hanged, don't all get into a huddle and go into mourning; it will have been worth it, and that's what I shall be thinking.' Without turning his head, he added: ‘All right, Inspector Charles-worth, standing there in the doorway; now you've heard it all and you can declare yourself. You're creating a hell of a draught.'

Charlesworth came into the room, followed by Sergeant Bedd. Cockrill gave him a questioning glance and he almost imperceptibly shook his head. Tedward intercepted the exchange. ‘What—no proofs? No chips out of the window-sill, no finger-prints on the back door bell? You'd better get busy with the neighbours, Inspector. Perhaps they heard my car ticking over all that time, round the corner of the house.'

‘Thank you,' said Charlesworth. That's a good idea. I will.'

‘What
is
this idiotic trick, anyway?' said Matilda. ‘Everybody knows Tedward was with Rosie in his surgery at the time that Raoul was hit.'

‘No, darling,' said Tedward. ‘That was a doings, very brilliant but not brilliant enough for the Yard.' He was cool, quick, mocking, but he drew his hand across his face in a gesture that gave away his intolerable inward weariness. ‘I'll tell you. You see—the moment I heard that this man was coming, I got the idea that I would kill him: somehow or other—I didn't know how. My first idea was to wait outside, of course, and just hit him on the head as he left the house; but you'd probably ring up for a taxi and see him into it, so that wouldn't be any good; and I didn't think the doorstep of the Ritz was a very suitable spot for slaughter either. Then I thought that you would have to leave him for a bit when you went up and did the baby and I began to work out whether I couldn't engineer it that he would be left alone. Oh, it was all frightfully vague in my mind; but it sort of built itself up, I began to take steps that would help it along, just in case.… I mean, Gran would be upstairs in bed by then, and it was Melissa's day out because you'd told me so. I knew I could get Rosie over to my place if I said I'd discuss getting rid of the baby; so there was really only Thomas. That was the first step I took—writing down a call, and leaving it on his pad; if nothing came of it, it wouldn't do any harm. And if I was going to kill the man in the house, then I'd better use weapons from the house, that anyone might have picked up, a burglar or someone; so I took the mallet and the gun on the way out: I thought the mallet would do fine, and I haven't got one of my own, of course—besides that would have been fatal. And then it looked as though there were going to be a hell of a fog, and I thought that that would probably help if I could take advantage of it—and it did. The only thing was that I'd have Rosie on my hands.' He smiled down at her.

Charlesworth stood listening with all his ears. He wondered if he ought to be giving the feller the official caution; but he hadn't made up his mind to charge him yet—it was true that there was no evidence whatsoever at the house on the canal bank, and moreover he already had one prisoner in custody over this crime! I'll leave it, he thought; I haven't invited him to make any statement, and if we want it again, it looks as if he's ready enough.… He prompted: ‘So you made a virtue out of necessity?'

‘Yes,' said Tedward. ‘I decided that Rosie should be my alibi—and a very good alibi you were too, my pet,' he added, smiling down at her again, ‘until the telephone let me down! Well, never mind. I faked the 'phone call, Tilda; I'd planned it for earlier, as soon as you'd have gone upstairs, but this little wretch kept me waiting. Still, all was not lost. I rushed her into the car; if by the time I got to the house the nursery light had been out, it would all just have been a mysterious hoax; like the phoney message calling Thomas out. But the light was on. I left Rosie sitting in the car and I went in and killed him. Didn't I, Rosie?'

Rosie said nothing; but she looked down dully at her hands and at least made no dissent.

Matilda sat staring at him, staring at him.… It all sounded so true, coming from Tedward in this quiet, level voice, coming from Rosie, speechlessly acquiescent. And if it were true … She said: ‘You did tell me he couldn't have been killed outright at the time of the call. I suppose—I suppose you knew the next doctor to see him would have known he hadn't been dead for long? So—you told me he'd just died.'

‘Yes,' said Tedward. ‘He
had
just died; I'd just killed him.'

Melissa still stood, with the broken cup and saucer at her feet, the trickle of tea. ‘I don't understand. You say it was you who killed him? How
can
you have? And, anyway—why?'

Tedward was silent; not for him to bandy Rosie's name with Melissa Weeks. Charlesworth said, curiously: ‘Why should you be so astonished? He's explained it. Rosie doesn't really constitute an alibi at all. He made some excuse to leave her sitting in the car while he came in ahead of her—“to see what had happened”, I suppose, save her a shock and all that.' Rosie looked up swiftly, but he went on: ‘He whistled the feller out into the hall, banged him on the head, and rushed out and brought her in, pretending he'd found him dead. And as for why—well, Rosie was having a baby. He killed her seducer, that's all—he killed the father of her child.'

Melissa took one step forward. The thin china crunched beneath her heel, her mouth was a hole in her white face, her eyes were witless, her hands curled up into fish-white stiffened claws. She cried: ‘The father! The father of her child! Good God!—she didn't even know who the father was.' Her eyeballs rolled upwards under the lids, she went off suddenly into scream upon scream of hysterical laughter; and Rosie slid out of the safety of Tedward's arm and, slowly toppling, slumped like a pink and white jelly to the floor.

CHAPTER TWELVE

I
SUPPOSE,
thought Matilda, I shall live through all this and somehow come out sane at the other side. She looked at Melissa, lying back shuddering and sobbing in a chair, at Tedward's sick white face as he bent over Rosie, heaving unbeautifully on the floor. She said: ‘The whole thing's nonsense. Rosie's been showing off to Melissa, that's all. She was in love with a student in Geneva, she practically lived in his atelier or whatever they call it, and this is his baby. She told me the whole thing.'

Old Mrs. Evans looked up sharply; and sharply closed her mouth and looked down again. Tedward saw it. He gave them a smile that was almost terrible. He said: ‘Go ahead, Mrs. Evans—what did she tell
you?
She told me he was an elderly roué who got her drunk.'

‘Fisherman,' said Mrs. Evans, briefly. ‘Young. Moonlight on the lake.'

Rosie moaned and lifted her head. ‘We'd better get her up to bed,' said Tedward, ‘and give her a sedative.' And he smiled again, a different smile altogether, and said to Matilda: ‘Don't take on for my sake, love; my illusions never really ran very deep—at the back of my idiotic heart, I think I knew all the time. What she was, I mean.' He shrugged a little. ‘They can't help themselves,' he said.

They got her, moaning and flopping about, up to her little room; Matilda shrewdly suspected that she preferred unconsciousness to the necessity of speech but, in the end, flopped on her bed, she clung to Tedward, holding his hand against her cheek and weeping bitterly. Matilda left them to it. ‘She's probably thought up a new one by now,' she said to Cockie, who waited with Charlesworth in the office downstairs. To Charlesworth, mightily anxious for a word with Rosie which would corroborate or explode the theory of Tedward's guilt, she said untruthfully that he had already administered a sedative and that Rosie was more than half asleep. ‘Surely you can ask her in the morning? It'll keep.'

But in the morning, Rosie refused to utter. She crept down to the office and sat hunched over the fire, reiterating merely that she wouldn't talk to anyone but Tedward. ‘You can't,' said Charlesworth. ‘He's at the police station, under interrogation; and the longer you keep me here, the longer they'll keep him there.… One word from you …'

‘I've thought it all out, and I won't say a thing until I've talked to Tedward.'

‘Very well, talk to him on the telephone.'

‘What, with all Scotland Yard listening-in?' said Rosie. ‘No thank you.' When Charlesworth had gone, promising dire things to witnesses who refused to co-operate with the police she said to Matilda: ‘I shall write to him, that's all,' and gathering up a large stack of notepaper from Thomas's desk, retired to her room upstairs. Matilda could hardly bear to answer her: a grubby, promiscuous little trollop, that was all—and for her Thomas was shut up in that dreadful place (What is he doing now, now this minute? Is it hateful, is he wretched and bewildered and impatient, is he wondering what we're all doing here, at home and free …?), and Tedward was—or was not, God only knew—a murderer. She felt relieved when nearly two hours later Rosie came down with an envelope in her hand, and announced that as everyone was so stuffy and beastly she would just go out, that was all, and not stick around to be disapproved of, and Melissa was a jolly untrustworthy person and not deserving of a person's confidence, and rather than stay home to be treated like a criminal or something, one would simply be out of the house all day and not bother to have any lunch.…

‘Good,' said Matilda. ‘That'll save me a lot of trouble.'

‘And you needn't think I'll worry
you
for any more help, Matilda,' said Rosie, tossing her head.

‘Good,' said Matilda again. ‘That'll save me even more trouble.' It's mean and unworthy, she thought, jibing at the poor little beast like this, and she does look white and rotten; but I just can't be nice to her this morning, I just can't. She snatched her child out of the way of an over-tipped pot of boiling water and smacked it soundly for having its life saved. Emma took no notice either of the spanking or of her mother's remorseful embraces, but trotted off gaily, singing Cuppa Tea an'a Piece of Wood, a lyric of her own composing. Rosie flounced off down the front steps and, true to her promise, was seen no more till the evening. Matilda turned her attention to her disordered house.