The Secret House of Death (19 page)

Bob's footsteps sounded in the sideway. No more formal front door calling for him. Susan looked at the mirrored girl and saw in her face pleasure at the new intimacy, the beginning of taking things for granted.

She went to meet him a little shyly. He came in and took her in his arms without a word. His kiss was long, slow, expert, almost shocking in its effect on her. But they were only friends, she told herself, friends in need, each other's comforters. She broke away from him, shaken, unwilling to meet his eyes.

‘Bob, I . . . Wait for me a moment. I have to get my gloves, my bag.'

Upstairs the gloves and the bag were ready where she had left them on the dressing table. She sat down heavily on the bed and stared at the sky, hard blue this morning, at the elms that swayed lazily, seeing nothing. Her hands were shaking and she flexed them, trying to control the muscles. Until now she had thought that the year passed without a man, a lover, had been nearly insupportable on account of the lack of companionship and the pain of rejection. Now she knew that as much as this she had missed sexual passion.

He was waiting for her at the foot of the stairs. She remembered how the girl in Harrow had turned to look at him, how Doris had spoken of his looks and his charm, and these opinions, the spoken and unspoken views of other women, seemed suddenly to enhance him even more in her eyes. All but his own wife were overpowered by that physical presence, that quintessence of all that a man should be and should look like. She thought of his wife fleetingly now as she came down towards him. Why had this one woman been impervious, indifferent?

He smiled at her, holding out his hands. There was something shameful in wanting a man because of his looks and because—ugly, shameful thought—you wanted a man. She came closer and this time it was she who put out her arms to him and held her face up to be kissed.

‘We'll have lunch,' he said, ‘in a little country pub I know. I've always liked little pubs.'

She held his hand, smiling up at him. ‘Have you, Bob?'

He said nervously, ‘Why did you say it like that? Why do you look like that?'

‘I don't know. I didn't mean to.' She didn't know, nor did she know why Heller and Heller's widow had suddenly come into her mind. ‘Let's make a pact,' she said quickly, ‘not to talk about Heller or Louise while we're out today.'

‘God,' he said, and she felt him sigh as briefly he held her against him, ‘I don't want to talk about them.' He touched her hair and she trembled a little when she felt his fingers move lightly against her skin. Her relief should have matched his own, but she felt only a vague dismay. Had they anything else to talk about, anything at all in common? There was something painfully humiliating in the thought which had crept into her mind. That instead of going out with him she would have preferred to stay here like this, holding him, touching her cheek to his, in an eternal moment of warmth and of desire. Outside this room they would have, it seemed to her, no existence as a pair, as friends.

The sharp bright air shocked her as if out of a dream. She walked ahead of him to his car and she was appalled at herself, like someone who had committed an indiscretion at a party and now, in the light of day, is afraid to face both his neighbours and his partner in that fall from grace.

Doris looked out of her window and waved. Betty looked up from her gardening to smile at them. It was as if she and Bob were going off on their honeymoon, Susan thought, and the pink cherry petals fell on to her hair and her shoulders like confetti on a bride. She got into the car beside him and then she remembered how harsh he had been with her the day he had driven her to Harrow, violent almost as he drove deliberately fast to frighten her. It was the same man. He smiled at her, lifted her hand and kissed the fingers. But she didn't know him at all, she knew nothing about him.

Whatever she said it would come back to Heller. It always did. But she had promised not to mention him or Louise and now she realised that although Bob himself would do so and derive a strange comfort from the tragedy, he became uneasy if she took the initiative herself. It was as if the double suicide was his private possession that no one, not even she, might uncover and look at without his permission.

The idea was very disagreeable to her. He was thinking about it now. She could see it in his face. For the first time she put into silent words what she had known since that other drive in this car with him. He thought about it all the time, day and night without rest.

She must talk to him about something. ‘How are you getting on with Mrs Dring?' she asked desperately.

‘All right. It was good of you to persuade her, Susan, sweet of you.'

‘She can only come on Saturdays?'

‘Yes, when I'm there.' He took one hand from the wheel, touched her arm. Not from desire, she thought, not out of affection. Perhaps simply to assure himself that she was really there. Then he said, his voice very low, as if they were not alone in a car but walking in a crowded street were anyone could hear unless he whispered, ‘She talks to me about it. I try to keep away from her, but every chance she can, she talks to me about it.'

‘She's rather thoughtless,' Susan said gently.

He set his mouth, but not defiantly. He was controlling the trembling of his lips. ‘She opens the windows,' he said.

And thereby let fresh air and sound into the secret thing he kept there? Susan suddenly felt cold in the stuffy car whose heater blew out a hot breeze. In a monotone, low yet rapid, he began to tell her about the questions Mrs Dring had asked him, of her maudlin tactless sympathy.

‘I'll have a word with her.'

But he hardly seemed to hear her. Once more he had returned to that morning, to his arrival at Baeside, to the couple on the bed. And, pitying him, not wanting him to know she was also a little afraid, Susan put her hand on his arm and rested it there.

‘I couldn't find them,' David said. Ulph's expression was that of an indulgent father listening to a child's tall stories. Perhaps he had never really believed in the existence of Sid and Charles. He made David feel like a crank, one of those people who go to the police with wild accusations because they want to make mischief or attract attention to themselves. And it was on account of this that he said no more of his quest with Pamela Pearce, of their visits to eighteen different pubs, of the perpetually repeated enquiries, all in vain. Nor, naturally, did he say anything of their subsequent quarrel when their tempers were frayed by frustration and the incessant rain.

‘I should think they work in the City,' he said, feeling foolish. ‘We could try the Stock Exchange or Lloyds, or something.'

‘Certainly
you
could try, Mr Chadwick.'

‘You mean you won't? You wouldn't put a man on it?'

‘To what end? Do any of the other regulars at this pub remember seeing Mr North and Mrs Heller there?' David shook his head. ‘From what you have told me of their conduct, your two bearded acquaintances aren't remarkable for their probity. Mr Chadwick, can you be sure they weren't—well, having you on?'

This time David nodded stubbornly. Ulph shrugged, tapping his fingers lightly on the desk. He too had much in his mind his professional discretion prevented him from revealing. There was no reason to tell this obstinate man how, since his last visit, North and Mrs Heller had again been separately questioned and had emphatically denied any knowledge of the other prior to the suicides. Ulph believed them. Mrs Heller's brother-in-law and Mrs Heller's neighbours all knew Robert North by now. They knew him as the kind benefactor who had first shown his face in East Mulvihill five days after the tragedy.

And, because of this, Ulph had lost his faith in David's theory as to the gun. He still believed in North's guilt, still had before his eyes that moving picture of North's actions on that Wednesday morning. But he had acquired the gun some other way. Ulph didn't know how, nor did he know how North had got out of the house. Answers to these questions would help him to get the case reopened, not unfounded theories as to a conspiracy.

‘You see, Mr Chadwick,' he said patiently, ‘not only do you have no real evidence of conspiracy existing, you have no theory to convince me such a conspiracy would be necessary. Mrs Heller offered her husband a divorce when she first discovered his infidelity and only failed to petition because for a time he wanted them to try to keep their marriage going. He couldn't have prevented her divorcing him as the guilty party. It wasn't even as if he tried to conceal the truth from her. He loved Mrs North, was committing adultery with her, and he told his wife so. As to North, he might have committed a crime of passion from jealousy or hurt pride. That's a very different matter from conspiring for months with a comparative stranger. His anger would cool in that time. Why take the enormous risk premeditated murder entails when with all the evidence he had, he too had only to seek a divorce?'

He said no more. Show me, he thought, how this man in the jealousy and the rage I can understand came into possession of a gun he could not have possessed and left a house unseen.

She had invited him often enough and yet, he thought, she would be dismayed to see him. By now North would have told her of his visit to Matchdown Park. He stood on the doorstep for a second or two, hesitating, before he pressed the bell. The red and yellow glare from the neon signs, the passing buses, rippled and flickered on the peeling wall and the chalk graffiti.

It was the brother-in-law who let him into the flat. In the half-dark it might have been Bernard Heller and not Carl on whose face the slow smile dawned, Bernard who stood aside to let him enter.

The flat smelt of greens and gravy. They had shared a meal and the dirty plates were still on the table. Magdalene Heller was standing against the wall underneath the mandoline, an unlighted cigarette in her fingers.

‘I thought it was time I looked you up,' David said, and with a sense of rightness, of retribution, of destiny almost, he stepped forward with his lighter. The flame threw violet shadows on her face and her eyes widened. She said nothing for a moment but David felt that she too recalled the parallel forerunner of this scene and had, as he had, a sense of having been there before. He half-expected her to glance quickly over her shoulder, searching for North's face. She sat down, crossing her long beautiful legs.

‘How are you getting on?'

‘All right.' Her gruffness, her gracelessness almost, reminded him a little of Elizabeth Townsend. But whereas Mrs Townsend's sprang from the confidence born of background, upbringing, connections, Magdalene's was the attitude of a woman sure of her own beauty, of the lily that needs no gilding.

It was Carl who said, ‘People have been very kind, Mr North most of all.' David fancied that the girl stiffened a little at the name. ‘He's lent Magdalene money to tide her over.' Carl smiled bovinely as if to say, There, what do you think of that? ‘More like an old friend,' he said, and when David slightly raised his eyebrows, ‘The police even came here and asked Magdalene if she'd known him before.'

David's heart seemed to run a little, to trip. So Ulph
was
interested. . . . ‘But of course she hadn't,' he said innocently.

Magdalene crushed out her cigarette. ‘Why don't you put the coffee on, Carl?'

While Bernard's twin lumbered off to do her bidding, she fixed David with those green eyes in which the gold specks, particles of metal dust, moved sluggishly. ‘Tell me something.' Her accent was strong tonight. ‘Did Bernard ever tell you how he met that woman?'

‘He told me nothing,' David said. ‘How did they meet?'

‘It was last August in Matchdown Park. She was in a friend's house and he came to fit a spare part to the heating. She'd been ill and she had a bad turn so he said he'd drive her home. That was how it started.'

Why are you telling me this? he wondered. The words had been bare, almost all monosyllabic.

‘He told me it all,' she said. ‘Bob North didn't know a thing. I had to tell him. It's not surprising, is it, we got together after the inquest? We had plenty to tell each other.'

‘But the police somehow believe you and North had met before?'

Pure hatred flashed briefly in her eyes. She knew why the police had questioned her and who had alerted them, but she dared not say. ‘I never set eyes on Bob till three weeks ago,' she said brusquely, tossing her head so that the black hair swept her shoulders. ‘I'm not worried. Why should I be?'

‘No coffee for me,' David said when Carl came in with the tray. He had a strong revulsion against eating or drinking anything in this flat and he rose. ‘I suppose
Equatair
have given you something?' he said baldly, for there was no longer any question of impertinence or of tact between him and her. The memory of her full pink mouth pressed against his skin sickened him.

‘Precious little,' she said.

‘I don't suppose it was easy for them getting someone to go to Switzerland in Bernard's place.' David turned to look at Carl. ‘Not in your line, I suppose?'

‘I speak the language, Mr Chadwick, but, no, I am not clever like Bernard was. I shall go to Switzerland for my usual holiday. I was born there and my relatives are there.'

Magdalene poured her coffee very slowly as if she were afraid her hands would shake and betray her. Suddenly David felt sure he must keep in touch with her brother-in-law. Once before he had failed to secure an address. He nodded to the widow, keeping his hands behind his back, and he met her sullen eyes before following Carl into the hall.

‘I may go to Switzerland myself,' he said when they were out of earshot, side by side, almost touching in the narrow passage. ‘If I wanted a bit of advice . . . well, would you let me have your address?'