The Cherry Blossom Corpse (22 page)

“And that was that, at the time?”

“Well, I suppose you could say so, though that sounds unromantic for how it actually felt. It was
the
great event of my adolescence, and it stayed with me. But, on a literal level, no, we did not keep in contact. Next day she was gone—to Lusaka, Kampala, or wherever. I never talked about it, still less about her, but her name was always with me: ‘engraved on my heart,' as they used to say in the old-fashioned sort of romance.”

“And it was the name you came across again?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Oddly enough, it was in
Twentieth-Century Romantic Novelists.
A big fat directory of all of us. You may have noticed that I'm very serious about studying trends, competition, markets. When I had my first romance accepted, I went to all the libraries in Nairobi trying to find out what I could about the romance game. I found this in the university library, and while I was stewing over it, her name—her real name—came out and hit me. It was like a revelation, an assertion of kinship! She hadn't gone on with her acting. She'd become a romantic novelist, like me!”

“You never doubted that she
had
written her books?”

“No. Why should I? She was in the book as Amanda Fairchild, pseudonym of Maureen Jane Shottery. I never had any suspicions, until I heard
after
her death. She never told me herself. It just tickled me, and I suppose appealed to my romantic side. I was pretty lonely for a time, after my . . . big love had died.”

“You did nothing about it?”

“Not then, no. What could one do? I just read any of her books that came my way.”

“You didn't recognize her in them?”

“No, but then, I wouldn't expect anyone to recognize
me
in
mine.
And I really knew her so little.”

“Fair enough. When eventually did you get in touch?”

“When I knew I was coming here. The fancy took me one night, when I was on my own. Her agent's name was in the directory where I'd found the name. I typed her a letter, reminded her very tactfully of the schoolboy she'd known in Nairobi in 1961, saying that by chance we'd both landed up in the same profession, and wondering whether she was coming to this conference.”

“And she replied?”

“Eventually yes. I think she waited for a bit, wondering whether she should. But at last I got a letter, saying she would be here, that she'd be staying at the KvalevÃ¥g guest-house, and hoping she'd see me. She said: ‘Don't be put off by the performance I give—it's a relic of my old profession, and I regard it as part of my trade.' But she also said her acting days were so long in the past that she felt it was ‘a quite different me' who had been Celia in
As You Like It.
She said: ‘Let's meet as strangers and take it from there.' ”

“And that's what you did. I never suspected any prior acquaintanceship, I must say.”

“That was how she wanted it, and that was fine by me. But we did, of course, get together. We had the odd word, a few laughs, and she threw off the ‘Amanda' bit the moment we were alone together, even for a moment . . . We sat together, remember, the first night in the bar. And on the second night she invited me along to her room. She had an empty room on one side, and the Finn on the other, so we could be discreet about it. I took along some of my books, we had a few drinks from her duty-free, and . . . we made love. Not very satisfactorily. I understood the problem now—and in fact she talked about it quite openly. But we were, we remained, very good friends.”

“And in fact you went along a second time to her room on the night of the murder.”

“To fetch my books! That much at least was true. And maybe to ask her if she'd like me to go along again later. I was just going out of la Zuckerman's sitting-room after my books when I remembered I'd left them with Maureen—Amanda. I went along there, but she wasn't in. The door was unlocked, though—somehow the usual precautions don't seem necessary in Norway—and I went in to look for them. They weren't in any of the obvious
places—on the dressing-table, or the bedside table. Eventually I found them on the floor by, and half under, the bed. That's why I was so long away from the Zuckerman room.”

“I see. And after the murder, you decided to lie.”

“Yes. It was as simple as that. There was the sleeping with her, and the going along to her room at a time when she was out being murdered. I just hoped you wouldn't find out about the night we spent together.”

“We did, in fact, have an attempt to pull the wool over our eyes about that.”

“Oh? Who by?”

“Amanda's Australian editor.”

“That rather drab-looking girl?”

“That's right. Robyn Harben. She tried to tell me that she, in fact, was Amanda's lover—implied she had been to bed with her out here.”

“But you didn't believe her, though?”

“I half did at the time. But she was proved almost immediately after we'd finished talking to have told me one lie. She told me that she and Amanda became lovers soon after they first met, when Amanda was on an Australian tour. I learned immediately afterwards that Amanda had wangled a job for Robyn with Tamworth (Australia) even before that. Why would she do that? It was puzzling.”

“And why should the girl say they were lesbian lovers if they weren't?”

“I think it was an extremely chivalrous attempt to keep hidden something she knew Amanda was ashamed of. Her lesbian tendencies she was not ashamed of—they were known, at least to a small circle. She didn't hide them from you, this time. So Robyn could claim that they were lovers without doing what she felt would be harm to her memory, harm to how she would like to be
remembered. But the truth, I suspect—and I am only guessing here—is that Robyn was Amanda's
daughter,
and that she'd been given away at birth to an Australian couple.”

“And it was that that Amanda was ashamed of?”

“That's my guess. It accounts for Amanda getting Robyn that job, even before they'd apparently met. It accounts for the
tone
of the letter she was writing just before she died, which was not that of lovers. Of course I think she was foolish to be ashamed: abortion was more difficult at that time, many people even then were crying out for babies to adopt, and an illegitimate baby would have been a hindrance in an acting career. Many women—and I suspect Amanda was one of them—are simply not maternal. How she got the baby adopted I can't say, but she may have been going out to Australia on another tour. Anyway, she felt guilty, and perhaps the fact that her career never really prospered afterwards confirmed her in her feelings of guilt. That's why she took on the Amanda impersonation—it was regular money. Anyway, Robyn was loyal to her feelings of shame at what she'd done. She kept the truth from me.”

“How extraordinary.”

“They did get on, I suspect, extremely well once they did meet up. That also came through in the note.”

“It shows a remarkably fine nature.”

“Yes, it does. And there's another thing about this girl that I think you ought to know.”

“What's that?”

“She was born in 1962. The year after Amanda's African tour.”

H
ALF AN HOUR LATER
I was sitting with Stein and Svein in the little bedroom that they had taken over for their own use, reading the various reports that had come in about Amanda and some of the suspects. Some of these had come through my own contacts at Scotland Yard, but I was disappointed to see that they were no more revealing for that. One or two, however, did fill in the picture, as we were beginning to know it.

“There,” I said, jabbing a finger at a report from someone who had once been (indeed, nominally still was at the time of her death) Amanda's agent for her stage work. “British Council tour of Central and Southern Africa in 1961. Then a J. C. Williamson tour of Australia in
The Constant Wife
in 1962—3. What's the betting she
went out there early, had the baby, gave it to adoptive parents, and then went into rehearsal? . . . Now, what's this? Lorelei's record in the armed forces. Very sparse and formal.”

“They don't give anything away,” said Svein. “A lot of the time she was on confidential work.”

“You mean spy stuff. I suppose that's where the story comes from that she worked for the CIA.”

“That's right. What it was was interrogating suspected spies and potential defectors. There's a more informal report there somewhere from someone who worked with her at the same job—since retired, like her.”

“Ah—here it is: ‘adept at finding a weak place, then working and working at it till the suspect broke.' Well, that doesn't surprise me. Report from a man who was briefly her agent. Lorelei generally had to be kept away from fans and conventions of this sort because of her manner and tongue. Once told an interviewer on a Midwest television station that she'd taken up with the hearts and flowers market because it was the one literary form where you could have a complete contempt for your audience. Wow! That must have set the telephone lines buzzing! What else? . . . Police reports . . . Patti Drewe suspected of fiddling welfare payments for her sick husband twelve years ago. Hmmm. Nothing there, surely? Anyway, welfare in the States is so tiny it wouldn't keep a dog alive. More power to her elbow . . . Maryloo Parker arrested in 1969 on suspicion of soliciting. Released for lack of evidence. Quite right: that's her natural manner.”

“Not much there,” said Stein, in his soft little voice. “Or not much to the purpose.”

“Not much at all,” I agreed. “Nothing to establish anything like a motive. Dislike isn't a motive. Rivalry isn't a motive. Having slept with someone who didn't greatly enjoy it isn't a motive. There's nothing that we really want here.”

I got up and walked to the window. Down below in the garden Cristobel and Bernard were walking. Theirs had to be the most peripatetic romance since the Pardoner and the Summoner. They were holding hands and swinging their arms backwards and forwards. Really! Cristobel was a lumpish thirty-odd, and Bernard a bony about-the-same. A spasm of irritation shot through me. The trouble with my family was that they never grew up. The trouble with me, Jan sometimes says, is that I grew up too soon.

Stein was speaking, even more slowly than usual. He had been thinking about my last remarks.

“You say they throw no light on
motive.
Does that mean you think you know how it was done?”

I turned back from the window and looked at him.

“I
think
so.”

“And who did it?”

“That too. At least, I'd take a bet on it. No certainty. And any ‘evidence' I have is not law-court evidence at all.”

“No conviction?”

“No conviction—sorry. Unless your boys can dig up something substantial, something that will hold.”

“Are you going to tell me?”

I smiled.

“Are you going to let me go? I have a few days of holiday left, and I'd very much rather spend them in the mountains with my wife and son than here.”

Stein spread his hands.

“We can't keep you indefinitely. We can't keep any of these people much longer. Tell us what you think, and you're free to go when you like. As far as I can see, practically any of them could have done it.”

“That's right.
Practically
any of them. The woman I saw come through the lounge and go out to the boat-house
was
Amanda—I saw her face, from three or four
yards' distance. Normally Amanda might be quite easy to impersonate—floppy hat, big, obvious coats. But there is no question of that: I saw her face, and she had no accessories, she was quite simply dressed. It
was
Amanda. That being so, I myself would rule out Patti Drewe, Mrs. Biggs and Lorelei Zuckerman, because their activities are vouched for pretty reliably all through the relevant time. Any of the rest could have done it.”

“Some being more likely than others?” Stein hazarded.

“Maybe,” I said. “Basically their eligibility as suspects consists in each case of trips away from the scene—to the loo, to bedrooms, to get drinks—trips which in fact may have been longer than they needed to be, and in one case must have been longer than it needed to be. Of course, in the nature of things, and with a lot of drinking going on, or even just a certain amount of it, other people failed to notice. To me, then, all the rest are possibles. For example, the idea that Arthur Biggs was at the loo for only two minutes depends on the evidence of his wife. And when you look at their relationship—which is based on the desire to be worshipped and the willingness to worship—then the evidence is next to totally useless.”

I looked back into the garden. Bernard and Cristobel were sitting on the far seat, on the other side of the lawn, holding hands. Cristobel was gazing into Bernard's eyes in the generally approved manner, and he was apparently finding this acceptable. Some relationships are based on funny things, I thought.

“What is this evidence that is not evidence that leads you to prefer one of them over the rest, then?” asked Svein.

“First, an empty bottle,” I said, turning back. “A nice produceable piece of evidence, you might think. But the
smell
is not produceable. I kick myself that I didn't think
about it at the time. I was rooting round behind the boathouse before you came, with Amanda's body still lying there. And there was this empty bottle in the undergrowth, and this strong smell of alcohol.”

“We found the bottle next day,” said Stein. “We still have it, of course. What's so significant about it?”

“An empty bottle, thrown away, doesn't smell strongly of alcohol. Only if the bottle had alcohol in it when it was thrown away would you get the sort of smell I noticed. Now who in Norway throws away bottles with alcohol in it?”