Hollow Vengeance

by Anne Morice

  ‘You know very well that I am.’

  ‘She says that, with this move coming up and nothing whatever settled about where they’re to go, it might be ages before we could actually get married, and I suppose you have to admit that’s realistic. Neither of her parents is capable of organising anything at all in that way. They’d get themselves into one hell of a muddle, financially as well as every other way, so it’ll fall to Diane to arrange everything and she could hardly do that, if she was living with me in London.’

  ‘Yes, I do see that, but it won’t take forever. You’d be perfectly prepared to wait for another few months, I imagine?’ Marc hesitated and a gleam of what looked suspiciously like guilty amusement momentarily lightened his expression. ‘Well, yes, of course . . . but you know . . . it wouldn’t be easy. It hasn’t always been easy in the past. Oh well, I’ll just have to wait until she gets back and then see how long she can stand out against my fatal charm. It might mean staying on here for a couple of days, if that’s all right with you, Ma? In the meantime, I think I’ll go down to the pub and drown my sorrows. I take it the car’s in running order now?’

  ‘Oh yes, all fixed up now, but do be careful, won’t you? Driving back, I mean.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ he exploded, sounding exactly like Millie. ‘I’m only going to have a game of darts and a pint of lager.’

  ‘From which I deduce that with Diane it’s ring first and bed later?’ I suggested, when Marc had gone.

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid so. I’ve always suspected that she was rather a cold little fish underneath all the gush. I used to be quite pleased about that at one time. I thought Marc would grow tired of being dangled on a string and would turn to someone a little more earthy, but I was quite wrong. Being unattainable only seems to have enhanced those charms. I wonder what her game is now, though?’

  ‘You take it for granted there is one?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry to say I do.’

  ‘No chance that she’s such a frigid fish that when it’s getting close to the crunch she can’t face marriage at all?’

  ‘It could be, I suppose, and I may be doing her a grave injustice, but I have a feeling, in that case, it would be the ring first and the chronic headache ever after. No, what I’m really afraid is that her aim now is to plunge him into even lower depths of slavish love, so as to give the screws an extra turn.’

  ‘To what end?’

  ‘Well, it’s perfectly true that it would be difficult for her to get married and leave her family in the lurch, so long as they have this eviction order hanging over them, so I suppose this was an attempt to force Marc into taking some action.’

  ‘Like murdering the landlady, for instance, if he hadn’t been forestalled in the meantime?’

  ‘Now, now, Tessa dear, don’t be silly! You know perfectly well that I didn’t mean anything of the kind.’

  ‘Then what kind of thing did you mean?’

  ‘Well, so far with Marc, one must admit that it’s been a lot of wild threats and hot air and nothing much else, and I expect Diane got it into her head that, with his legal training and such small influence as our family has in these parts, he could perhaps have been a little more constructive; made some direct approach, say to David Trelawney. I daresay she reckoned that, if it was a question of his losing her or taking up the cudgels, he wouldn’t hesitate for a second. Judging by his reaction this evening, I am bound to say that she was probably right. Of course, the situation has changed now and it may no longer be necessary for Marc or anyone else to intervene, but I’m sure that’s what was in her mind.’

  ‘So, as things have turned out, you may still be stuck with her, despite her noble renunciation? Oh well, let’s not be too pessimistic. When Marc’s had time to cool off, he may well see this for what it is, a bit of cheap blackmail; and then perhaps the scales will fall from his eyes. I’d say there was a fair chance of that and, whatever else, Mrs Trelawney won’t be around to harass you any more. So let’s follow the advice Millie’s always giving us and Think Positive, while we have the chance.’

  The chance was not to be ours for long, however, for it was scarcely half an hour later that, much to my horror and annoyance, we received a visitor in the person of Inspector Bledlow of the Dedley C.I.D. He appeared to have little interest in me, however, and I was subjected to nothing more daunting than a sharp, appraising look when he learnt my identity. It was Marcus he had really come to see and, on hearing this, Elsa promptly collapsed in a dead faint.

  ‘She is recovering from a nasty bout of flu,’ I explained re-entering the room a few minutes later, with the brandy bottle in one hand and a glass of water in the other, ‘and a close friend has just died very suddenly, so the smallest shock is liable to unnerve her.’

  Elsa was now sitting up, although still pale and distraught looking. She accepted the glass of water and sipped it very slowly, presumably to give herself a little time to think, in the event of the Inspector finding my explanation inadequate to account for her passing out at the mention of her son’s name.

  Perhaps he did not, though, because he said mildly, ‘I am sorry to hear that and very sorry indeed to be the cause of further distress, but, as I told you, my business is really with Mr Marcus Carrington and I was told that I might find him here this evening. Is he at home, by any chance?’

  He was altogether a reassuringly mild looking man, although not lacking in authority. I judged him to be about fifty, and he was below average in height and on the burly side, with a round head and crinkly brown hair. There were a lot of crinkles round his eyes too and deep horizontal lines on his forehead, which suggested that smiling came naturally to him, although he was not doing any now.

  ‘Not here just at the moment,’ I replied, since Elsa still seemed incapable of speech, ‘He’s gone to . . . see some friends, but he’ll be back soon, I expect. Can I give him a message?’

  ‘What time do you expect him, then?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Around nine, wouldn’t you say, Elsa?’

  She nodded. ‘About then.’

  The Inspector, who had not taken his eyes off her, even while ostensibly speaking to me, was looking thoughtful.

  ‘I see. Well, if he should be back any earlier, would you be kind enough to ask him to give me a ring? The number’s on this card and I’ll be in my office till eight-thirty or so. Failing that, first thing in the morning?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘It’s quite important,’ he added, moving to the door. ‘Don’t get up, either of you, I’ll see myself out.’

  I thought he must then have broken into a sprint because we heard the sound of a car engine seconds before he should, by rights, have reached the front door. Unfortunately, it was the wrong car and two minutes later he was back.

  ‘Your son has just returned, Mrs Carrington and I’ve asked him to accompany me to the station. Just a small matter I want to clear up and it shouldn’t take long. Very sorry to have disturbed you. Good evening!’

  ‘What do you suppose that’s all about?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t have to suppose anything. I know only too well what it’s about.’

  ‘Oh, really? Is that why you were looking so worried yesterday?’

  ‘Yes, I was so desperately afraid something like this would happen, and now it has, you see!’

  ‘You’ve left me far behind, Elsa, because today you’d stopped looking so worried and yet, as you correctly point out, now it has happened.’

  ‘And just when I was beginning to feel safe, when I’d managed to convince myself that there was nothing in it and the scare was all of my own making. I might have guessed that they’d wait till this evening, when they knew Marc would be here. Although I suppose you could take that as a moderately good sign, couldn’t you?’

  ‘A good sign of what?’

  ‘That they didn’t regard it as so urgent that they had to go chasing up to London to see him; that twenty-four hours, one way or the other, wouldn’t make much d
ifference?’

  ‘Honestly, Elsa, I’m doing my best, but since you’re the only one of us who knows what you’re talking about, I do find it a little hard to give you the advice and reassurance you are obviously craving for.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry, Tessa, but I haven’t quite got myself together yet. It’s about Marc’s car, you see!’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Well, he leaves it down here during the week. He couldn’t really use it much in London and garaging is so expensive, so it makes sense.’

  ‘And he goes back and forth to London by train?’

  ‘Yes, I always take him to the station on Monday and, if I know what train he’ll be on, I usually try to meet him. If not, he gets a taxi up here, as he did this evening.’

  ‘I think I’ve grasped all that, but why should it interest Inspector Bledlow?’

  ‘If you’ll cast your mind back to last Wednesday, the day before yesterday, I’ll tell you exactly why. The house, as you may remember, was deserted for at least two hours, from about three o’clock onwards. I had my Darby and Joan party and Millie was playing at revolutionaries with her friends in Dedley; and you . . . I can’t remember exactly what you were up to, but, being the model guest, you told me that you’d spent the afternoon relaxing in the fresh air.’

  ‘Yes, that more or less describes it. And so?’

  ‘After we’d finished our good works I drove Louise home. Tim was using their car to take the poor dog down to the vet to be destroyed, which he’d promised to see to while she was out, so naturally I’d offered her a lift. When we turned off the Dedley road into her lane there was a little red sports car driving along about a hundred yards ahead of us, too far off to read the number plate, but, without any prompting, we both assumed it was Marc’s. It went past the Macadams’ and on towards Orchard House.’

  ‘Where it stopped?’

  ‘I don’t know. We’d lost sight of it by then, but I assumed that it was Marc and that he’d gone to see Diane. I felt a little cross with him, because this is the last run-up to his exams, but not all that surprised, you know. It wouldn’t have been the first time he’d done such a thing and I was sure that when I got home I’d find a note from him saying that he was planning to spend the night here. All the same, I was puzzled.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, because it was only about five o’clock, which seemed to indicate that he knew she’d taken a few days off from work, otherwise she wouldn’t have been home by then; yet on the other hand he obviously didn’t know that she’d taken her mother to Bexhill. That didn’t make sense, so then I told myself that we’d been mistaken and that it wasn’t Marc’s car, after all, and for the time being that was that.’

  ‘But not for long?’

  ‘No. Louise invited me in for a cup of tea, which I was dying for, and I spent about an hour with her. We were talking mainly about poor old Geoffrey, who’d died that morning. When I got home Marc’s car was in the garage, looking exactly as it had when I went out in the morning. In a sort of superstitious way, I put my hand on the bonnet, and it was only just faintly warm, as you’d expect, with the sun streaming in all the afternoon, and there was no message when I went indoors. So that was the end of it, until yesterday morning.’

  ‘When Louise came round to tell us that Mrs Trelawney had been murdered on Wednesday afternoon?’

  ‘Exactly! Do you remember how her manner changed when she mentioned the car which Alice had seen driving away when she was shutting the gate? Quite suddenly and for no apparent reason, she became evasive, almost guilty-looking, or so it seemed to me. Otherwise, I’m sure I wouldn’t have read anything sinister into it, certainly not made the connection, but after she’d gone I became steadily more convinced that the car had been Marc’s, or twin brother to it. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It kept going round and round in my head and then coming back to the starting point again and finally I was in such a state that I had to find out for certain, however bad it might be. I had to know where Marc had been and what he was doing on Wednesday afternoon. Only it was going to be tricky and I’d have to be careful how I put it, maybe tell a few lies even, and that meant that I couldn’t do it where you might overhear me. So I made an excuse to go down to the village and I rang him from the post office.’

  ‘I see! So that’s why we didn’t get our avocados? How did you put it, incidentally?’

  ‘That was pure inspiration, which hit me on the way down. I felt terribly ashamed of myself for being so devious, but I think you’ll agree that it was rather subtle. I told him that I’d tried to move his car out of the garage that morning, to get at something which was stored at the back, but that I hadn’t been able to do so because the battery was flat, and so what did he want me to do about it? I thought I’d be able to tell immediately from his reaction whether or not he’d been driving it himself on the previous afternoon.’

  ‘Clever, indeed! And what was his reaction?’

  ‘Everything I could have wished for. He didn’t sound wildly surprised, just faintly irritated, as one would be in the circumstances, but taking it in his stride, and he asked me to get the garage to send someone up to have it put on charge. Fortunately, he didn’t specify which garage and I thought, if any questions were to arise about that later on, I’d simply say that he wasn’t to worry and that I’d had it put on my account.’

  ‘And that was all there was to it?’

  ‘On that subject, yes, but I wanted to keep everything as normal as possible, so I asked him what train he’d be coming by this evening and he said that it depended on how the work went and that he’d take a taxi up. Oh, and he sent you his love and said he was looking forward to seeing you and I’m sorry I wasn’t able to pass that message on. I took it as almost the best sign of all, though; the fact that he was able to give his mind to ordinary things and speak of them so naturally and cheerfully, which I felt sure wouldn’t have been the case if he’d been concealing anything. I don’t mind telling you, Tessa, that when I walked out of the post office and drove back here I was feeling ten years younger.’

  ‘You looked it too!’

  ‘Not any more, though. Not after what’s happened now.’

  ‘So now you think perhaps he was concealing something, after all, and putting on a very convincing act?’

  ‘No, I do not, not for one minute. I know Marc better than that and, for one thing, he’s much too impulsive to carry it off. He speaks first and thinks later. That’s one reason why he hasn’t made himself very popular in certain quarters.’

  ‘You said something like that once before. What are the other reasons?’

  ‘Oh, some of them find him arrogant and conceited. It’s not true, of course. He’s really quite modest and shy underneath all that sort of swagger he sometimes puts on in public, but so few people bother to look below the surface, do they? He also has rather a quirky sense of humour, which sometimes gets him into trouble.’

  ‘Oh really? What form does that take?’

  ‘Practical jokes. It’s something he inherited, or maybe copied from his father and I must confess that I don’t find them awfully funny. In fact, they’re apt to be quite cruel and humiliating, which is strange when you consider how sensitive he is in other ways. But I’ve never been able to make him understand how objectionable some people find it. He once played a particularly unkind one on the Macadams. It wasn’t long before their only child was run over and killed, which seemed to make it worse, in a curious way, and I know Louise has never entirely forgiven him. She wouldn’t admit it to me, but . . . Oh, Louise! Oh, how can I have been so blind?’

  ‘About Louise?’

  ‘Yes. All the time I’ve been talking to you, even when the Inspector was here, there’s been a question hovering at the back of my mind.’

  ‘Mine too, several in fact. How does Louise answer yours?’

  ‘The question was, you see, even if it had been a car just like Marc’s which Alice saw, how would she have recognised it as such? I
t’s not as though she’d ever worked here, or knew us at all well, so it’s really most unlikely. But I was simple, wasn’t I? I see now that what must have happened was that Louise told the Inspector about the one she and I saw and how we’d both assumed it was Marc driving it and when the description matched the one Alice had seen he put two and two together. It’s hard to believe that an old friend could be so treacherous, but really it’s the only way to account for all that evasiveness and embarrassment on her part.’

  ‘No, it isn’t, you’re jumping much too far ahead. It’s much more likely that Alice gave a rough description, which could have fitted dozens of cars besides Marc’s, but was close enough to make Louise veer away from the subject when she was reporting to you. It doesn’t follow that she added anything off her own bat.’

  ‘I only hope you’re right. It’s not very nice to think of her doing anything so mean.’

  ‘Actually, though, from Marc’s point of view,’ I remarked thoughtfully, ‘it might be better if I were wrong.’

  ‘Now why do you say that?’

  ‘Well, listen, Elsa, we have to face the fact that if you and Louise, and most likely Alice too, saw that car at some point during the afternoon, then almost inevitably other people did, as well. You said it was too far off for you to read the number plate and it’s a safe bet that Alice didn’t even try to. There was no reason to. Therefore, if Louise had been the one to pass on the news, it would have proved nothing. I’m very much afraid, in view of their present approach, that the police must have found someone who got a much closer view of it, perhaps in the vicinity of Pettits Farm and who either noticed the registration number and were able to recall it later, or else identified it positively as Marc’s.’

  ‘Do you realise what you’re saying, Tessa? Would you, by any remote chance, be suggesting that Marc would have lied to me?’

  ‘He didn’t actually need to, did he? You didn’t put the direct question concerning his whereabouts on Wednesday afternoon.’

  ‘Well, perhaps not in so many words, but he allowed me to believe that he was in London, which amounts to the same thing.’