Rose in Darkness (14 page)

‘Your place
here
Mr Devigne. Seven miles on, here’s this little town, Wren’s Hill, and the cinema. Ten miles on from the cinema to where the tree fell—
here;
and here, halfway between the cinema and the tree, The Fox, where Miss Morne pulled in for a drink: five miles from the cinema and five miles on to the tree. And then from the tree, that’d be about thirty miles on, to Miss Morne’s block of flats in Hampstead—i.e. where the body was found.’ He tilted back, chin flat against his neck, to look appraisingly at his work as though it had been a minor piece of art, jabbing with the pen point at each blob. ‘Just rough figures, of course: forty miles from the cinema to Hampstead where the body was found, ten miles from the cinema to the tree. And, coming back the other way, sir, fifteen miles or so from the tree to your house, here.’

‘I don’t know what on earth you’re on about,’ said Phin.

‘Well, sir, but you agreed to play it that you did swap cars with the lady. So then—just playing with it, like we said—the question would be—how did the cars get swapped back?’

Phin returned to the cabinet, poured himself—but carefully, measuring it out—a smaller second drink. Keeping his mind clear, registered Ginger; we’re coming to the tricky bit. ‘O.K., Sergeant, we’ll play it that way. For no obvious reason, I find myself at the far side of the fallen tree. I swap with Miss Morne, I drive back here...’ He strode over to the door and called, ‘Nanny!’

Nanny was not far to find, ear only just not clamped to keyhole. ‘You couldn’t have a more reliable witness,’ said Phin to the Sergeant. ‘Nanny has no love for me—have you, Nanny? So now tell this gentleman—on Saturday evening when I got home from the cinema—’

‘—and seeing your patient at The Fox—’

‘What time would that be?’ said Ginger.

‘Bit past eleven—’

No time then, to have killed the woman this side of the tree, turned back and exchanged the cars
then.
‘And I put the car away?’ Phin was saying.

‘In the garridge—’

‘And locked the garage, sir?’

‘Did I? I don’t know. It was the hell of a night, I made a dash for the front door.’

‘Soaking wet, you was,’ said Nanny.

‘And next morning I was duly at breakfast, Nanny?—and I spent the rest of the day with you and Ena Mee—that’s my daughter, Sergeant—in the park at Greenwich and later on at the zoo; and brought them both straight home and put the car away again—’

‘Miss Morne’s car had been found long before that, sir, with the dead body in it. Early afternoon, we already knew it was here.’

‘Very well then.’ Neither he nor Nanny made any false pretence as to her having listened at the door, being aware of what had already been spoken. ‘So, Nanny—just tell him the simple truth. Was there ever the smallest opportunity for me to have driven forty miles to Hampstead and exchanged the cars and driven back home?’

‘Well—not as I can see,’ said Nanny, grudgingly.

‘The day after the murder, then, sir, the Sunday morning—you did drive up to town?’

‘I drove up to Greenwich, Sergeant, and Greenwich is twelve miles at least the other side of London from Hampstead—if that’s what you’re thinking?’

‘You’d come by way of Hampstead?’

‘No I wouldn’t and I didn’t, I came straight down the Finchley Road.’

‘Didn’t stop on the way—?’

‘What, with those two in the car, and commit some skullduggery? No, I didn’t. We drove out to Greenwich, then we went to the zoo and were there till it closed and I was with them every minute.
So!
’

So, agreed Ginger within himself. Aloud, however, he suggested respectfully: ‘Bit of a funny place to go for a picnic, sir, if I may say so? Fifty miles from your home, right across London and you with all this countryside around you.’

‘Just what I bemarked,’ said Nanny. (Still, it had been nice getting a glimpse of the streets and the shops and all that.) ‘So, “Why?” I said. But of course by that time, Ena Mee—’

‘I had an errand there,’ said Phin briefly, cutting off the flow. ‘I thought we’d make a day of it.’

‘Oh, so you did leave the nurse and the child—?’

‘For at most ten or fifteen minutes. Nanny?’

‘Ten minutes,’ admitted Nanny. ‘I was looking at me watch. Bored to death, sitting there, nothing but grass and trees; and Ena Mee, “What’ll I do
now,
Nanny?” Pore child: Mummy would have taken us to a nice restrong—’

‘May I ask you what was this errand, Mr Devigne?’

‘I wanted to leave a message for a patient,’ said Phin, briefly.

He added: ‘Whose name I am not going to give you. Her affairs are private. No one was in after all, I did not leave any message, so it wouldn’t help you if I did.’

So... It did seem what Ginger called to himself a bit of an imparse. And all during the night, the tree had lain across the road, itself an imparse. Still... The chap lived here, he’d know the country pretty well, the side roads. ‘After Mr Devigne got home that night—’ he said to Nanny, ‘—the night before, we’re talking about now, the night of the storm—after the cinema and seeing his patient—he mightn’t have gone out again? (You won’t mind my asking, sir?’ he said limpidly to Phin, ‘we did agree to play it this way?)’

Dearly as Nanny would have liked to make trouble, she was obliged to admit defeat. ‘No, I don’t see he could of. I mean, I’d always know when he goes out in the night, urgent calls and that;
and
when he comes in late,’ added Nanny, getting one in there, anyway. ‘I keep meself sleeping light, account of Ena Mee.’ She gave a virtuous sniff. ‘In case the pore child has one of her nightmares, Nanny has to be ready to get up and comfort her. Crying for her Mummy, like as not.’ At Phil’s chill glance, she hurried on, slightly mollifying. ‘And Sat’d’y, I was awake anyway, what with me tooth. He never went out again that night—I took his wet mackintosh off him and hung it up in our bathroom to drip, Ena Mee’s and mine, and that’s right through our room; and next morning, well, I’ve got to be fair—none of his clothes was wet, his shoes was drying off nice and anyway, like I say, I’d of heard him go out and come back.’ She had privately made her own arrangements to keep watch on him so as to report back to Mummy; and now admitted, ‘Door of his room creaks somethink chronic; and there’s rose-beds right outside his window...’

‘
Thank
you, Nanny,’ said Phin. He looked into Ginger’s face with a sort of indulgent triumph. ‘Just exactly what the gentleman wanted to know.’

‘Yes,’ said Ginger, permitting himself, without too much difficulty, to look crestfallen. But as Nanny, bridling, went to the door, he put one more question. ‘Nanny—when Mr Devigne went out that Saturday—would he have been wearing a flower in his buttonhole?’

‘A flower?’ said Nanny. ‘Well, of course.’ He always did wear a flower, her voice implied, surely everyone knew that much? ‘Mummy used to say—Madam used to say—it was his trademark, bedside manner and all that.’

‘The patients like it,’ said Phin with the cold glance again. ‘Old dears in the wards—they don’t get bouquets sent to them, I’ll take out the flower sometimes and give it to one of them and they think they’re in heaven.’ Lovely, glamorous Mr Devigne, he added, with an almost bitter self-mockery; and did not add that quite a few ladies who
did
get bouquets sent to them, also thought themselves in heaven upon receiving this tribute from lovely, glamorous Mr Devigne.

‘Oh,’ said Ginger. And that day, he asked, hardly able to keep his voice steady—the day of the murder—had Mr Devigne happened to give away his buttonhole that day?

‘No, you hadn’t,’ said Nanny. ‘I took it out of your lapel when I took away your mackingtosh to dry, and put it down the lav.’ One of them chrysanths it had been, she added, a little white chrysanth with a nice bit of fern. She’d got it for him herself, that morning, him being in a hurry...

So what price old Charles and his deep red roses now?

S
ARI DROPPED SOFY OFF
at her flat and drove on in the Ferrari to Heathcliffe Heights. ‘Oh, Rufie...!’ Like two sad monkeys, they perched on the great, long sofa, each with an arm about the other, holding close. ‘My poor dovey darling, when it all sounded so lovely and you were so happy—!’

Dear Rufie, ever warm and loving, kind, patient, selfless in devotion. ‘This time, darling, I did think it was for real, it was so—well, immediate, so wonderful and sort of—sincere. That’s what I thought—sincere.’

‘Perhaps it’s all a mistake about this other girl?’

‘Oh, no, she was calling him “the boyfriend”, she threw her arms round his neck...’ She reached out with her left hand and fumbled a cigarette alight. ‘We’re two poor things, Rufie, aren’t we? What becomes of people like us? It’s all right now, but when we get older? Everybody falls in love with me, but nobody seems to want to marry me, do they?—and, you, what happens to you, darling, so mixed up and after all, not being
able
to marry anybody? I mean, I know you can settle down with another gay person and lots of people do and it’s happy and wonderful; only you’re like me, no one seems to settle down with you, either.’

‘I know,’ said Rufie. ‘It’s frightening, sometimes, when one lets oneself think about it. When we’re old and people don’t care about us any more... You’ve got money, you’ll always be all right in that way at least, but what am I? Hand to mouth, and if Cecil takes a turn against me, as at any time he may if the drawings don’t come the way he wants them—well, hand to mouth, but nothing in the said hand.’

‘I’ll always share with you, Rufie, you know that. Perhaps we shall end up like this, huddled together, two pore old things with nobody to love us but each other. And I do love you, darling, of course I do, you know that; only it’s not like—being in love and having a home full of Bad Habitat and the kiddywinx and—well, forever-ness.’ She said wretchedly: ‘I mean—not meaning it beastlily, darling, but—I mean, being gay and all that, you can’t
quite
understand.’

‘Do you really think that?’ said Rufie, sadly. ‘Even you? After all—one’s still a human being, even if one is a so-called queer. Hath not a queer eyes?—hath not a queer hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you poison us, do we not die? Because we may be “queer”, Sari—have we not hearts? And if we have hearts—just like anybody else’s, may they not break?’

‘Yes,’ she said humbly. ‘I’m sorry.’ They were silent. She suggested at last: ‘But there are other hearts. Perhaps, some day—?’

‘No,’ said Rufie. ‘You see, among our other unexpected qualities, we may even have fidelity. There was another heart once; but not for me. I hardly knew him, he never even glanced my way—’

‘Angelico?’

‘Angelico.’

‘You did but see him passing by—?’

‘And yet must love him till I die.’

‘Well, that’s the way I feel,’ said Sari. ‘This time yesterday, I didn’t even know Phin but I meant it and I thought he meant it. I thought for both of us it was for ever. And then in walks this dreary little Cerulium.’ She laid her aureoled head against his shoulder. ‘Two pore things aren’t we, darling?—you and I.’

And so they were back to Cerulium and the morning’s adventure. ‘Here was this ghastly female, my dear, too sick-making, you couldn’t have
believed
! Leaps up and half strangles him and I can’t say he took much notice of that, just snatched up the newspaper from the bar and stared at it as if he’d gone out of his mind; and rushed madly out of the pub.’

‘He’d seen about you and Vi Feather and all this ghastly horror?’

‘He must care for me a
bit
or he wouldn’t have been quite so shattered?’

‘Perhaps he doesn’t really love the other lady?’

‘Oh, yes, it’s been going on for ages. We didn’t know what to do, Sofy and I; we decided to come home, so into the loo for a quick wee and who should be there but the barmaid, the one that had obviously worked in the pub for some time. So of course she never connected us with Phin and that little Horrorbags, so I said how ever so sweet about the poodle, I’ll tell you about that later, Rufie, you’ll throw
up
!
—
and she said rather austerely that yes, very sweet only it got to be rather a nuisance in the evenings, especially at weekends when they were crowded. So I said, Oh, she even brought darling little Pow in the evenings? and she said well, yes, every Saturday... And what it comes to Rufie, is this, that they were there on Saturday; Phin was there with her—and it’s two miles this side of the tree. So he
was
at the tree.’

‘But you saw him in the cinema?’

‘All a bloody trick! Tells that ghastly Nanny he’s going there—establishes himself—oh, my God, yes, that’s it!—draws attention to himself, giving his buttonhole to Vi Feather so that she’ll remember him.’ She mimicked: ‘ “My Mr Adam, I call him, and every now and again he’ll take the flower out of his buttonhole and present it to me with ever such a gesture!” Oh, well—poor thing, it’s wrong to make a mock of her now, but that was it. Then he leaves by the emergency door and they go there for dinner complete with Monsieur Pouf as chaperone. She, meanwhile, has been to the matinee and clues him up on the film so that if Nanny gets nosey he can’t be caught out. No wonder he was in such a panic to get past the tree! If Nanny knew he’d been out that way—’

‘What’s it got to do with her?’

‘She wants him to be found out having an affair with a patient, which little Horrorbags is, I suppose—and then she could blackmail him into letting her and the Monster Child go back to Mummy. It wasn’t so dangerous with me because I’m not a patient.’

‘Horrorbags being married, I suppose?’

‘Yes, the barmaid settled down for a splendid chat—the pub was empty, lots of time. Obviously a husband at home but on Saturday he goes out and plays billiards or something or other, and she’s O.K. if she gets back before he comes home. So they’d always have one eye on the clock and that night they duly departed at half-past ten. And Rufie—two miles to the tree; and the police say it was twenty to eleven when the tree fell.’

He stared at her almost wildly. ‘But that means that
she
must have been at the tree.’