Tour de Force (16 page)

‘There is such a thing as underwater swimming,' said Cockie.

Fernando made a rude noise. ‘Who, Inspector – me? From here to that rock?' He leapt to his feet dangerously tilting the raft. ‘Come with me, Inspector, we go into the hotel, we ring up Gibraltar, you speak therewith my friends. Ask them, here is a thing that a man's friends can say in a jiffy, here is no pretence: ask only, “Can Fernando Gomez swim under water a distance of even five yards?” Ask at my swimming club – in Gib. we all go, all my office, all my friends, to the swimming club. Here is a thing they must know.'

‘All right, all right,' said Cockie. It was true that here was a thing that members of a swimming club could say about another member, one way or another. A man can swim under water or he cannot; and Mr Fernando, failed half-blue for swimming at his university, was not one to have kept this talent dark from his admirers.

Inspector Cockrill swam by no means under water himself, but with a style retained from his boyhood gambollings along the coast of Kent – reared up half out of the sea, practically horizontal, and hitting out wildly with his hands at the surface of the water, like a dog. By this means, leaving Fernando to dash off, reassured himself, to reassure his lady-love, he propelled himself shorewards and, as though casually, intercepted Leo Rodd as he swam in. ‘Here you are, Mr Rodd – I believe this belongs to you.'

It was the black rubber mask with its corked breathing tube from Leo Rodd's frogman's suit. ‘Good lord, thank you,' said Leo. ‘I'll lose the thing one of these days, I'm always leaving it washing about on that raft.' He still had the black rubber fins on and, like a seal, flopped along in them across the hot sand. ‘Come and lie in the sun and dry, Inspector, and tell me what's all this nonsense about poor Miss Trapp.'

Inspector Cockrill, unwontedly communicative, outlined the cases – now largely exploded – against both Fernando and Miss Trapp. ‘Fernando couldn't have swum from the raft right across to the rock without my noticing him,' he ended. ‘He kicks up a spray like a fountain every time he moves in the water and I remember it was like that, way back in Rapallo, it isn't an act that he's put on since all this blew up. So he'd have had to swim under water. Well, either he can swim under water or he can't: he says he can't, and offers to confirm it, and I believe it's true. So Miss Trapp is out; and Fernando is out …'

‘And then there were three,' said Leo, narrowing down the list of suspects as Fernando had done, but with considerably less complacency. ‘Mr Cecil, my wife, and me.' He sat with a towel hung across his maimed shoulder and stared out to sea. ‘Well, I never was awfully fond of that Cecil,' he said.

‘Mr Cecil was floating up and down in a rubber duck,' said Mr Cockrill. ‘In the sight of all.'

‘You wouldn't say that the rubber duck popped round to the far side of the rock for a short time?'

‘I wouldn't say it didn't,' agreed Cockie, readily. ‘But not for a long time. Not for half an hour.'

‘It certainly would have taken half an hour to – to stage that thing up in that room?'

‘Yes,' said Cockie. ‘And to get up there and down again. Probably longer, far longer; but at the very least and narrowest calculation half an hour.'

‘Which would narrow things down even more?'

‘It would appear to,' said Cockie. He asked, offhandedly: ‘Where is Mrs Rodd this afternoon?'

‘She didn't come down to swim. She was still asleep when I left so I didn't disturb her.' He did not add that Louli Barker had besought him to meet her during the siesta hour, that he had taken advantage of his wife's being asleep to slip off quietly to the pine-woods and there go painfully through a reconciliation scene that had been truly happy and satisfactory to neither of them. He leaned on his one arm, lying twisted sideways on the hot yellow sand. ‘Inspector: let me get this straight? By no silly chance are you suggesting that my wife …?'

‘Then there were two,' said Cockie. ‘You calculated it yourself.'

‘And
I
've got no right arm.' He gave a sort of snorting half laugh, unconvincingly unconcerned. ‘Of course you don't really believe she had anything to do with it?'

Inspector Cockrill sat up on his narrow hams, feet flat on the sand, knees raised, hands dangling between them holding the inevitable untidily smoking cigarette. ‘I have to be impersonal. I simply consider facts.'

‘Well, the facts are that my wife was under the sun-shed with me the whole blessed afternoon. She never moved.'

‘You can't be sure of that. You admit you were sound asleep.'

‘And
you
admit that you could see her there.'

‘I assumed,' said Cockie wearily, ‘that I saw her there. What I actually saw, was the rope soles of a pair of yellow espadrilles. I could see the roof of the sun-shed and the shoes sticking out at the far side, towards the sea.'

Leo Rodd made an impatient gesture. ‘She could have got up while everyone on the beach was asleep,' insisted Cockrill, steadily, ‘and moved along under the wall – I wouldn't have seen her there – and up the corner path to the cabins. The only time I need have seen her – if I'd been looking, only I was not for that moment – would have been while she crossed to the wall: just a few feet. Everyone else was asleep.'

‘How could she possibly have counted on that?'

‘I don't suggest for a moment that she did, Mr Rodd. The same thing applies to everyone: it isn't suggested that the murderer went to Miss Lane's room with any preconceived intention of killing her. He may have left the beach, originally, with no intention of seeing her at all; wanted to go to what Mr Cecil calls the huh-ha, or something. He probably left the beach quite openly, it was probably the merest chance that I didn't see him go, and that everyone else was asleep. But he will have noticed on his way, that they were asleep – and he couldn't see me, from below, sitting reading on the terrace; so – having, on an impulse killed the girl – he would take advantage of their being asleep, to creep back to his place.'

‘Why come back at all?'

‘It was a risk,' agreed Cockie. ‘But the murderer might think the risk worth taking – and so it's proved. The alternative would be disastrous: to be without an alibi when everyone else was known to be on the beach.' He added that in Mrs Rodd's case, she would probably have taken particular care even when she was – quite openly, as far as her intentions went – leaving the beach: so as not to waken her husband.

Leo Rodd's fist was clenched on a handful of warm sand: that broad and beautiful musician's hand that would never again find its full satisfaction in creating music. He said stonily, ‘And then?'

‘The supposition would be that then Mrs Rodd, having gone up to the balcony, either on a private errand or intending to see Miss Lane, did in fact see her and – again, I emphasize on an impulse – killed her.'

‘You suggested the same fable about Miss Trapp but Miss Trapp's out because she wouldn't have gone to Louvaine Barker's room and got the shawl. Well – that applies to my wife as well as to Miss Trapp.'

‘Except,' said Inspector Cockrill, with some temerity, ‘that Miss Trapp could have no – no grudge against Miss Barker.'

‘You mean …?' His hand tightened so that the sand was squeezed out through the close lattices of his shaking fingers. ‘You want me to believe that to – to throw the blame on Louvaine …?'

‘I only say,' said Cockie, ‘that that may be a counter to your objection.'

‘But …' He shook his head impatiently. ‘Inspector, Helen simply isn't like that. I mean – well, you're insisting on facts, and it's a fact, a positive fact, that it's not in her character to do such a thing. You've got to take character into account: and it would be out of character for her to even think of an unworthy thing like that, and what's more, utterly out of character to have struck out and killed the girl. Why should she, to begin with? She had nothing against Miss Lane, there wasn't even anything against her in the blackmail book – on the contrary, there was a suggestion of wanting to be on her side, sneaking to her about Louvaine and me – at a price, it's true, but that's neither here nor there. Of course, you may say that Helen would be revolted, she might strike out at the creature; but I tell you, and it's true, it counts, she's just not that kind of person, she's not one to lash out if she's angry or insulted …'

‘Or in danger?' said Cockie.

‘But in danger of what?'

‘Of losing what she most values,' said Cockie. He extinguished his cigarette, grinding it with unnecessary violence into the sand between his bare feet ‘Mr Rodd – Vanda Lane was in love with you. Everyone could see it; everyone could see her watching you, listening to you, skirmishing to be at the same table or in the same party, scheming to speak to you, even a few trivial words. One didn't catch Miss Barker doing these things; she was frank enough goodness knows, but not to all and sundry – she concealed the affair between you because there was something to conceal. Miss Lane didn't try to conceal it – because there was nothing to conceal. I've seen her myself, we've all seen her, those first evenings – slipping along after you, hoping, I suppose, to meet you somewhere “by chance” and get some word or some sign from you.' He looked at the battered stump of the cigarette, unseeingly, and tossed it away from him. ‘Vanda Lane was in love with you.'

‘Well, so what?' said Leo, impatiently. ‘It was Louvaine I was going to meet – not Vanda Lane.'

‘Are you so sure,' said Cockie, and his voice was very grave, and very kind, ‘that your wife knew that?'

When at last they went up together to the hotel, they went in silence; what they had to say to one another had been said. At the door of his room, Leo paused. ‘Well – thank you, Inspector. I still don't believe it; but either way, you'll do your best for us?' He said again, ‘Thank you,' and pushed open the door.

She made an instinctive movement warning him to silence, motioning him to close the door; but Inspector Cockrill had seen her standing there, deathly pale, with the red blood staining the white sleeve of her dressing-gown.

She must have moved in her sleep, half awakened perhaps by the softly-opening door. The knife had gone through the fleshy part of the right upper arm, pinning her in sickening helplessness to the bed. The room had been dimmed by the closed shutters for the siesta hour; startled into terrified awareness, she had seen nothing but the soft closing of the balcony door. She had struggled to release herself, fallen back fainting with the pain and horror of it, come to again, and a second time fainted away. She could not tell how long she had lain there, how long ago the attack had been made; except that she had been still asleep, and it was not like her to have gone on sleeping for more than an hour or so. ‘On the other hand, it was hot, I'd been having bad nights; I might well have slept on.' She dwelt upon the contradiction a little insistently, Inspector Cockrill thought; and for some reason avoided her husband's eye.

The wound had been made with a steel paper knife, identical with the one that had killed Vanda Lane. Cockie picked it up gingerly, handling the hilt with loving care. ‘I suppose, though, you've been handling it yourself? – trying to pull the thing out, poor girl!' He looked at her with kindness and with admiration. ‘You're a brave woman, Mrs Rodd.' He thought of the fuss some women would have been making by now, and wondered what further reserves of courage might be there for him to draw upon.

The injury was not serious. Once she had got the knife out, she had staunched the bleeding effectively with cold water and he bound it up for her now with torn hotel towels. He seemed in no hurry to rush off and spread the glad tidings; and she said to him at last, hesitantly: ‘I suppose it wouldn't be possible to – to say nothing about it to the police here?'

It was what, above all things, he wished for; but he was startled into asking sharply: ‘Why?'

‘Well, I don't know,' she said, rather uncertainly. ‘I just hate – fuss.' She leaned back against the pillows on the four-poster bed. ‘It doesn't hurt too much now; I could wear a long sleeve and I don't think anyone need know anything.'

‘Just go about as if nothing had happened?'

Leo Rodd sat perched against the dressing-table, his legs straight out in front of him, looking at the toes of his shoes. ‘Suppose they try again?'

She attempted a light shrug and desisted, wincing with the pain. ‘There can't be an unlimited supply of Toledo steel daggers. Miss Lane and I account for two.'

‘The Gerente has the one that killed Miss Lane,' said Cockie. ‘This one …' He looked at it fondly. ‘If I could get it back to England, you see – we might yet find fingerprints. But if we tell them here, I shan't have a chance.'

‘Who else bought these knives?' said Leo Rodd.

‘Just a minute,' said Cockie. He left them but returned a couple of minutes later. ‘Miss Barker and Mr Cecil bought them at the same time as Miss Lane did. Their rooms are empty at the moment – so I just looked in. The knives are there.'

‘Of course other people may have bought them?'

‘It's a little unlikely,' said Cockie, ‘that they'd have concealed the fact after Miss Lane's death; unless of course they intended this second attack.' He added thoughtfully that there would have been no opportunity to buy one since then, for no one had been let out of the hotel grounds.

‘Until to-day,' said Leo.

‘To-day?'

‘When we got back from the funeral.'

When they got back from the funeral they had caused a sort of jolly havoc among their guards by dispersing about the little town, kicking their heels for a few minutes in the joy of freedom from surveillance. Mr Cecil had laid it on, darting about the deck of the
vaporetto
, all excitement and boyishness. ‘All split up and go different ways as soon as we get off the gangway, there are seven of us and only two of them and they won't know which to follow, it'll be too amusing for
any!
' Mr Cockrill had complied by simply walking on doggedly up to the hotel which was the only place he had any particular desire to go to, and he remembered that at the time he had been a little surprised at the avidity with which the rest had embarked upon so remarkably childish a proceeding. But meanwhile it meant … It meant that any of them might have been long enough alone to have slipped into the shop that sold the Toledo steel knives.