The Death Chamber (42 page)

The Bournemouth Major had been one redressing of the balance, and the widower in Reigate who had tripped over the wire stretched across the top of his stairs had been another. Vincent had never
been able to pronounce the Reigate Widower’s name because he had been Polish but Mother said he had very courtly manners.

‘The Poles are extremely civilized people,’ she said.

What a sad accident, people had said about him. What a tragedy. He had been on his own in the house that afternoon, but there you were, life was often tragic. After Reigate they had gone to live
in Chichester and then in Southend, where Mother had met the lonely, not so young bachelor.

Mother did not discuss her men friends very much. If Vincent questioned her, she would firm her lips and make a dismissive gesture with one hand. They would not talk of it, she would say.
Instead, Vincent should take her for a little drive. Would he do that? And when Vincent said that of course he would, mother would look out one of her chiffon scarves to drape over her hair. She
did not want to be seen driving around looking a fright, she said; people noticed such things. She was not going to lower her standards after so many years. And perhaps while they were out they
might have afternoon tea somewhere. When she was a girl afternoon tea had always been a great treat. Such a civilized thing, afternoon tea at half past four.

Afternoon tea was no longer the institution it had been in Mother’s youth, in fact people did not really bother with it any longer, but Vincent thought it was still a
polite time to call on someone.

As the church clock was chiming the half hour, he went along to Caradoc House and up to the little flat. Probably Georgina would offer him a cup of tea, and while he drank it he could find out
about her movements over the next twenty-four hours which should give him a way in to his invitation to take her to Calvary.

But she did not offer him tea. She did not even invite him in! Vincent could not believe it. She was quite polite: she said she was busy, there was still a lot of sorting out of Walter’s
papers to do, and she kept him standing at the door, the bitch! The really infuriating thing was that he could see, even from the door, she had laid out some kind of black and green outfit on the
back of the little settee. Well, that was not the kind of outfit you would expect someone to wear for sorting out musty, fifty-year-old papers! It was, in fact, what Mother would have called a
dinner dress, not that Mother would ever have dreamed of wearing such a clingy-looking skirt, even if she had had Georgina’s figure and legs. A bit cheap, she would have said. Not
ladylike.

Vincent went back down the stairs and out into the street with his thoughts in disarray. Georgina Grey was going out to dinner tonight, that seemed clear. And since she had told Vincent she did
not know anyone in Thornbeck, logically it must be with Dr Ingram and his people. This was increasingly worrying. It was as well he had such a good plan worked out.

But if Georgina really was dining out, he had better get on with his experiment on the lime right away. He had not got very much time.

Once inside his own house he put on gardening gloves, the scarf and the dark glasses, then went along to the potting shed. His garden was enclosed by a high brick wall, and it
was impossible for anyone to see over it. This garden was one of the reasons Vincent had chosen this house; you never knew when you might need real privacy, although he had not taken experiments
with lime into account when he made this decision.

The potting shed smelt of earth and damp; it was small and dark and it felt secretive. Vincent tipped the lime fragments into an old metal bucket, and then put a large plastic bag of commercial
compost within reach. After this he connected the garden hosepipe to the outside water tap, and, careful to stand well clear, trained a thin trickle of water onto the bucket’s interior. He
was only half-expecting a reaction because of the lime being so old.

But the lime reacted at once. It fizzed up in an angry boiling cloud, and Vincent was so astonished he almost forgot to turn the tap off and douse the hissing lime with the compost. But he
pulled himself together and did so, relieved when the bubbling lime seemed to be completely quenched. He carried the metal bucket to the end of the garden, and tipped the whole thing onto a small
unused patch, sprinkling another thick layer of compost over it all.

As he locked up the shed and went back to the house he was smiling because the plan for getting rid of Georgina Grey was moulding into a very good shape indeed.

The little hall clock was just chiming the half hour. Six thirty. Just time to put on his normal clothes and go back to Caradoc House. He did not much like the image of himself as some Peeping
Tom, lurking sleazily in the shadows to watch, and perhaps even follow, Georgina, but it had to be done.

In the event, he did not have to lurk for very long; shortly after seven o’clock Georgina came out of the house, slamming the door behind her. Vincent was glad to see that at least she was
sufficiently responsible to try the door to make sure the catch had dropped.

She walked quickly along the street, and as she passed under a street lamp Vincent saw that she was wearing the black and green outfit he had seen earlier with a black woollen cape over it. The
one unexpected note was her bag; it was not an ordinary handbag such as ladies usually carried in the evening, but a large haversack-sized affair. This was puzzling, but Vincent would be the first
to admit he was not absolutely abreast of modern fashions. For all he knew haversacks on dinner dates might be the latest look in London.

She went into the King’s Head as he had expected and he hesitated, then followed her in, pausing in the little reception area. She went through to the small dining area, and Vincent saw
the dark-haired man he had noticed the previous day – the one who was blind and whom he had thought an odd addition to Dr Ingram’s team. Were these two having dinner together? It looked
like it. Would they be discussing Walter Kane and Calvary? That was highly likely. It did not look as if the plan could be left in abeyance any longer; with a jolt of pleasurable anticipation,
Vincent saw that he had got to put it into action at once, now, tonight. Clearly he could not get Georgina out to Calvary tonight, but he could arrange to do so first thing tomorrow morning. How
about appearing to bump into her later this evening and making the suggestion then? He considered this and thought it would work very well indeed.

‘Why, hello,’ he would say, feigning surprise. ‘I didn’t know you were in here tonight.’ And it would be the most natural thing in the world for him to accompany
her to Caradoc House – in fact it would be the gentlemanly thing to do, particularly since the blind man probably would not be able to do so. As they walked along the street, the offer to
drive Georgina out to Calvary in the morning could be dropped quite casually.

Vincent looked across at the dining area again, to make sure Georgina and the man really were having dinner. Yes, they were seated at a table, and they had been brought a menu. Georgina was
reading it out to her companion, and something he had said had made her laugh. She would not be laughing by this time tomorrow.

It would be better to return here later – Vincent could hardly sit here for the next two hours or so, watching those two. He walked towards the bar and then stopped abruptly and patted his
inner pocket in the way of a man checking his wallet. Then he gave an exasperated
tsk
of annoyance, and turned to re-trace his steps. Anyone watching would have seen a man bound for a
pleasant evening’s drink suddenly realizing he had left his wallet at home.

Vincent filled in an hour at his own house by eating a hastily put together meal, and at ten to nine he returned to the King’s Head. Were they still here? Yes, it looked as if they had
just been served coffee. Very good, he would be able to have a drink at the bar and wait for Georgina to leave. Really, it was all working out very neatly.

But no sooner had he requested his glass of sherry than Georgina and the man left their table and walked out to reception. His hand was lightly on her arm, but Vincent had the impression that
this was not so he could walk without bumping into anything, it was more because he liked the feel of her arm under his hand. Slightly flustered by dealing with sherry and change all at the same
time, and by being elbowed out of the way by some rude person loudly demanding lager, Vincent prepared to go after them. Surely the man would not be seeing her back to Caradoc House after all? How
would he find his way back here?

They were not going back to Caradoc House, they were going up the stairs to the bedrooms! Had they known one another previously, or was Georgina the kind of cheap little tart who went to bed
with someone a couple of hours after the first meeting? Or was it something to do with the TV programme after all? Vincent did not know whether to be shocked at the possible promiscuity or
panic-stricken by the potential Calvary collaboration.

He drank his sherry unhurriedly in case anyone was watching, and exchanged a few words with one or two of the locals because it was important to seem entirely normal. He was trying to decide
what his next move should be, when Dr Ingram, the American and Drusilla came down the stairs, followed, more slowly, by Georgina and the blind man.

The bar was quite crowded, but Vincent was able to get nearer to reception. He was just in time to hear Drusilla say that Calvary at two a.m. ought to be quite a memorable experience.

He saw Georgina had changed into jeans and a thick jacket. Vincent followed them out and stood in the deep porch of the King’s Head, pretending to turn up his coat collar against the rain
that had started earlier and to pat his pockets as if trying to find his keys. All five of them got into the big estate car and drove away. Vincent frowned. It looked as if they were going to
Calvary for night filming of some kind – moonlight shots of the place, perhaps? But Drusilla had made that remark about two a.m. and it was still only a quarter to ten. As the estate
car’s tail lights disappeared into the darkness, Vincent walked quickly to his own house. His mind was teeming with ideas and possibilities, and the pieces of the plan he had made were
starting to come together in absolute symmetry.

A plan originally evolved for one person could as easily be used for two. Perhaps for more than two. Afterwards, everyone would say it was all very sad but the old lime store always had been
dangerous and it should have been properly demolished years ago. But there you were, people could be careless, especially people who had their minds on other things. On the making of television
programmes for instance, or on the sifting of a great-grandfather’s possessions. And the result would be that Calvary’s ghosts would be safe.

Vincent smiled, thinking of the lime store with its unreliable door that might so easily close and shut someone inside.

In the next couple of hours he would have to do what people called think on his feet. He would have to be alert and aware and he would have to adapt to whatever presented itself. But he could do
it. He could be as quick-thinking and as nimble-minded as the circumstances required.

There were a few quite simple preparations to be made. Vincent went about making them, pleased at the way everything was working out. Last of all he collected his own keys to Calvary – the
old scullery key and the key to the execution suite and the execution chamber itself – and went out of the house. On his way through the hall, he caught sight of his reflection in the mirror.
He looked almost exactly the way Mother used to look when she had disposed of one of her gentlemen. Flushed, exalted, confident. He smiled at his reflection, and went out to his car to drive to
Calvary.

It was raining quite hard by the time Vincent reached the track, and everywhere was very muddy. He switched off his headlights, and parked unobtrusively beneath some trees,
reversing in and going as far back as possible. He pulled on the hat he kept in the car against bad weather – a deer-stalker it was, which he sometimes liked to wear with a glengarry cape
– then he walked up the hill, keeping a sharp look out for Dr Ingram’s people. Were they here? Yes, there was the estate car parked at the front entrance. He went a bit nearer and saw
that the little inset door in Calvary’s main entrance was closed, but that there were footprints in the wet mud, leading up to the doors. Then they were inside and Georgina was in there with
them. Vincent glanced about him. Nothing moved on the quiet hillside, and there was only the sound of the rain pattering lightly on the few sparse trees out here. He went back down the track to his
car, and edged it a couple of feet forward so he could see Calvary’s main doors reasonably well. He settled down to wait, switching on the engine a couple of times for the heat to de-mist the
windows.

It was almost half past ten when they came out and got back into the car. But now there were only three of them. Vincent peered through the darkness. Was he right? Yes, there was Dr Ingram, the
American getting into the driver’s seat, and Drusilla getting in next to him. The car revved up and drove down the hillside. Vincent saw it pause at the far end of the lane and then turn left
towards Thornbeck.

As Vincent sat there, the rain blurring the landscape through the car windows, his lips curved in a smile at the thought of a sightless man and a single female completely alone inside the dark,
deserted prison-house.

CHAPTER THIRTY