Rose in Darkness (15 page)

‘That’s what I worked out—driving back from Sofy’s just now. She must have been.’

‘You didn’t see her there?’

‘Well, all that storm, pitch dark except for the headlights; and I turned away and was hunting in the car for a bit of paper to write my address on. She could have crept under the tree then—they’d both be worried about being seen together; and while I was scrambling under, she could have hopped into my car which by then was
his
car, and crouched down out of sight until we both started backing and turning; and then, flat out for home before Hubbens, or whatever cute name she doubtless calls him by, gets there!’ And so to an old grievance. ‘So you see,
she
saw me there,
she
knows I did exchange cars, none of you has ever believed me—’

He couldn’t be bothered with all that for the moment. ‘The thing is, Sari, this means that she must know about Vi Feather.’

‘Oh, well, Vi Feather—there must be some other explanation about Vi Feather.’

‘What do you mean, some other explanation?’

‘You don’t think I’d ever believe that Phin killed Vi Feather? Of course he didn’t!’

‘You say that, only because you’re in love with him.’

‘Who needs a better reason? I know him. And he’s just not that kind of person.’

‘
Somebody
killed her.’ He got up off the couch. ‘God, it makes me feel sick—just remembering her...’

‘Oh, Rufie, you’re not going to start smoking? You know the stink upsets me.’

But he needed it. They had created an ingenious hiding place, rolling white paint round the inside of a jar until it dried, dropping into the space in the middle the small plastic bag, with a sort of lid of dried paint rammed down on top of it. Even tracker dogs, Sari had said, with visions of splendid pale labradors feathering about the flat, would be put off by the smell of the paint. Rufie himself was slightly put off by it but one smoked pot not for the pleasure but for the effect. Much misled by Edgar Allan Poe into believing that anything left conspicuously visible was thereby rendered invisible to investigatory police, they kept the paint pot with the rest of the clutter on the mantelshelf in the big untidy sitting-room. He rolled a cigarette and got it smouldering. She was hunched up on the couch when he turned back to her, hands fisted on the low back of it, her forehead butted against the fisted hands. ‘Oh, darling—you’re upset now!’

‘Of course I’m upset, of course Phin didn’t do it, he couldn’t, he’s a person who saves lives, he couldn’t have killed her!’ She raised her head, stared back into his face resentfully. ‘She was killed in mistake for me. People were following me—I’ve always been watched and now since they’ve wanted Aldo to marry this Italian girl, they’ve been following me. None of you believe me, you’ve never believed I really was followed, you don’t really believe about the tree. But you have to believe about Vi—and who could want to kill
her,
poor wretched, scrawny little thing, and who else would want to kill
me?
They were following me, they shot ahead...’ And now she sat upright, her hands unfisted themselves, her eyes grew bright. ‘I tricked them at the pub, the followers; they shot ahead of me. They passed before the tree fell. But they heard it fall - and when someone came staggering up the road behind them, they thought my car had been held up by the tree, they thought it was me, trying to find some way to get home... And in the dark and the storm—they got out of that horrible little car, like a black beetle crawling along the road, and they killed her. They thought it was me.’

Rufie was terribly pale. ‘They can’t have... I mean ...Well, anyway, what could Vi Feather have been doing there anyway?’

‘I don’t know, or how she got into my car or how my car got into the garage, when I’d swapped it with the stranger—well, with Phin. But why does everyone try to find someone in this country who’d have killed her? Of course it was the Juanese—’ And she leapt to her feet and caught him by the wrist and stood intently listening. ‘Rufie! There’s someone outside the front door!’

Chief Superintendent Charlesworth, assiduously collecting contributions to his collage, brought in hourly by investigating minions, sat surrounded by scraps of metaphorical feather and fur (not to mention haddock) complete with imaginary canvas and large pot of glue. He had been much exercised as to the mysterious message which Phin had failed to deliver on the Sunday morning after the murder, to a lady living in Greenwich; and had been at great pains to discover that such a patient indeed existed and, despite his protestations, a female patient—one of Phin’s Harley Streeters, as departed Ena had keenly deduced—who might suit the description; who duly had been away from home had not expected a call from Mr Devigne, and was all wide-eyed astonishment at the possibility of his having intended one. And now there was a second lady, it seemed, discovered by Sergeant Ellis at a place called The Heavenly Angel.
She
might settle a thing or two, thought Charlesworth. While he waited for further telephone calls from Ginger, currently snuffling about the environs of Wren’s Hill like a portly uniformed piglet in search of truffles, he settled back and gave his mind to such fur and feather as appeared to relate to Phineas Devigne.

Motive easy. He dabbled in his glue-pot and affixed a positive ostrich feather. A consultant surgeon, having an affair with a young married patient, and scared to death of being found out: things were easing off a bit, these days, but gynaecologists were always at special risk and he would certainly be in very serious danger indeed of finding himself struck off the Medical Register—no longer allowed to work, his reputation in ruins and, worst of all, brought to a pass where he must hand over his child to the untender mercies of an emotionally unstable mother. And Vi Feather had seen him regularly at the cinema and might well have discovered that he did no more than pass through the auditorium on his way to his meetings with his mistress. Black mail, then? It had emerged, from among the details now being unearthed, that he had been in the habit of presenting Vi Feather with a flower. A five pound note, or a ten, wrapped round the stem? A signal for an assignation? A couple of Ginger’s truffles joined the ostrich feather. A very possible Why now reasonably established. He turned his attention to the How.

He and the blonde—Mrs Harte her name had turned out, most appropriately, to be—had left the pub at half-past ten. Heartsease, as the lady’s house was called (‘How predictable can you get?’)—was a little off the main road, which still was not much of a main road, on the way back to Wren’s Hill; six or seven miles from The Angel. Comfortable time, therefore, to drop her off there before the billiard-playing husband should return home. But meanwhile—a few minutes for the dash through the rain from the pub door to the Halcyon, to settle down, complete with Monsieur Pouf, to drive carefully off, peering through storm-washed windscreen at the twisting road ahead. And two miles beyond the restaurant, the tree falls.

They are past the spot before the tree falls? Sari Morne observes the twin Halcyon crossing with her as she approaches the spot and so later conceives the idea of the exchange story?

Or they are not past the spot when the tree falls? Phin’s passenger is present at the exchange of the cars?

In that case—what does she know about the death of Vi Feather?

Impossible that she should have known already about Vi Feather—should have dined with her lover, revealing to the staff—who all knew her quite well—no outward sign of agitation or distress. After the dinner then? Had the woman been waiting for him beside his car, springing out upon him with her ugly importunities? Had he, in his frantic anxiety, hardly knowing what he was doing, taken both hands to the scrawny throat and obliterated the threat? To Cerulium’s advantage also, that their affair be not betrayed; might she not have kept quiet ever since about that almost accidental murder?—turned her head away while the body was thrust into the back of the car, agreed to silence for ever regarding an event which surely need never be traced back to herself? And yet again... Three days later she is perched on a stool in the course of a luncheon date with ‘the boyfriend’, playing foolish games with the powder-puff poodle, like a happy child. Mr Charlesworth by no means underrated silly little women—they played quite often a fearsome game of bridge, might be foolish and yet shrewd, look frail and be as tough as old boots; but a visit back to that place of hideous memories had been totally unnecessary: the thing simply was not on. She had known nothing about Vi Feather’s murder. It had been committed after he had left her.

Or before he picked her up to take her out to dinner? What would Vi have been doing, out there at The Heavenly Angel, twelve miles from the cinema in Wren’s Hill? Was it not more likely that, aware of his habit of leaving before the film even started—it was the main feature, there would be no more customers, she would be free to gather up her takings for later collection, and depart—was it not more likely, then, that she would await him outside the cinema, in some perhaps familiar out-of-the-way place of rendezvous, for just such handing over of blood-money? And that there, in the darkness and storm with not a soul in sight, he had lifted his hand?

Why not have left her lying there? Lest someone, perhaps, had noticed his, coming out through that little-used side door? Drive somewhere out of the way, dispose of the body elsewhere? But time pressed; he must account to his lady-love if he arrived late, and she might perhaps at some future time grow suspicious. So—nobody about—he picks up the small body, conceals it in the back of the car, perhaps with a rug thrown over it?—forces himself to remain calm until he shall be free to rid himself of it again...

To rid himself of it.

He does or does not exchange cars at the fallen tree with Sari Morne.

Does
not
exchange cars and drives on to Wren’s Hill in his own, with the body in the back of it.

Does
exchange cars and Sari Morne drives on to London in his car, with the body in the back of it.

But next day, the body is found in the back of Sari Morne’s car.

Imparse, as Ginger would have said.

A knock came at the door; it was Ginger himself.

Sergeant Ellis had been visiting a lady. A chat with the local police had uncovered a useful little fact which could serve as an introduction and general cover-up. He assumed his most unctuous approach, the body slightly bent forward, the inward curling paws against in-curving chest. A thousand pardons for intrusion, his attitude appeared to implore. From the police. That little Thing about Mrs Harte’s car the other evening—

Mrs Harte clasped Monsieur Pow and raised piteous eyes. ‘I thought that was all finished with? I know I banged into the bicycle—’

Mr Harte was twice the age and three times the girth of Mrs Harte and had fairly evidently been chosen’ entirely for his ability to provide expensive sports cars and pedigree poodles; other attributes must be looked for elsewhere and had doubtless been discovered in Mr Phineas Devigne. He was stalwart, however, in defence of his lady. ‘Of course it’s all finished with. The damage was paid for—’

‘There remains the question, sir, of the second bicycle. Of course it was raining very heavily, Saturday night—’ said the sergeant indulgently.

Fear leapt into the china blue eyes, the ringlets shook with her sudden trembling.
‘Saturday
night—?’

‘What are you talking about, officer? What second bicycle?

There was only one bicycle involved—I was with Mrs Harte myself at the time and anyway the whole thing happened on the Tuesday.’

Ginger drew out a notebook and with anxious deliberation scanned through its pages. ‘It says here Saturday, sir.’

‘She was never even out on Saturday, were you, my dear?’

‘No, of course not,’ said Cerulium, shifting the dog to one arm and with the other clinging prettily to Hubbens. ‘In all that awful storm?’

‘It says here, clearly, Madam, Saturday last, eleven o’clock, p.m.’

‘On Saturday last at eleven o’clock, officer, Mrs Harte was here at home. I was out at my bridge club—’ (not billiards after all then; indeed the gentleman was hardly the figure for clambering about baize covered tables) ‘—and I got home well before eleven and here she was as usual to greet me...’

‘Pow and I were sitting at the piano, rehearsing,’ said Mrs Harte, piously. ‘Weren’t we, darling?’

‘Yes, you were,’ said Hubbens, though in fact she had been addressing her fellow musician. ‘So you see, Sergeant, you’re quite mistaken. The whole thing’s a muddle.’

No one knew better than Ginger how to inject into his voice the right note of the blunderer at bay. ‘I’m afraid I have to admit that it is, sir.’ He took a chance on exchanging with the lady an infinitesimal invitation and she followed them as he was impatiently ushered into the hall. At the front door he paused, frantically feeling about his uniform pockets. ‘Oh, dear, I’m sorry, sir, I really am sorry, sir; I can’t seem to be able to find my car keys.’

Anything to be rid of the man! ‘I’ll fetch them, I’ll fetch them,’ said Mr Harte, fussing back to the drawing-room.

‘Not the bike really,’ said Ginger the moment his back was turned, conspiratorially muttering. ‘But I didn’t want to say anything.’

‘Not about—? Oh, my God! Oh, no, you didn’t, and thank you!’

‘So, tell me quickly—two cars?’

‘Yes. Mine out of sight, not to set them off wondering. In the evenings, anyway.’

‘And you away first?’ At her nod, he broke off and ran back to the drawing-room door. ‘Sorry, sir, terribly sorry; here in my pocket all the time, must have slipped down into the lining...’  Flushed with confusion and self-deprecation, he was gone.

‘Damn fools! They haven’t got a brain in their heads,’ said Hubbens disgustedly.

There had been no one at Sari’s front door—no one in the corridor outside. But, caged in in the letter-box—an envelope: a large, squarish envelope of fine quality, unaddressed, but with a heavy circle of red wax embossed with a seal. A rose, formalised, not unlike the Tudor rose of England. But this was the Juanese rose; the seal of the Hereditary Grand Dukes of the island of San Juan el Pirata.