The Toff and the Runaway Bride

by John Creasey

  Rollison hesitated.

  “I could be at the end of a telephone all the time,” Jolly urged.

  “Do you know, I believe I will,” decided Rollison, and he kicked open the kiosk door so that the constable and the bride-in-pants could hear. “I’ll stay at the Roebuck Hotel in Winchester, if there’s room.”

  “I think that’s very wise, sir,” approved Jolly.

  Rollison rang off, went past the policeman and saw Barbara moving towards the telephone. He took no further notice of her, but walked back to the cottage, already feeling much better than when he had left, yet even more puzzled. If Barbara had not wanted to be recognised she would not have come so near, but – how was it she had come here at all? Had Lessing told her about the cottage for the first part of the honeymoon?

  If so, why had Lessing lied to him about that?

  Rollison reached the cottage and saw that two men in overalls were running a telephone cable from the village to the cottage; that would be for the police. He also saw Reno standing big and burly over a slim, very youthful parson, who carried a heavy walking-stick. The parson looked distressed, but Rollison could hardly wait for him to go away and for Reno to approach him.

  “Yes. They were married in Hampstead,” announced Reno. “The vicar once took the trouble to go and make sure, and saw the entry. Major Guy Lessing, soldier, retired, bachelor, was married to Helen Goodman, spinster, of this parish.”

  If the name Lessing meant anything to him, he concealed it well.

  Chapter Eight

  Suspect

  Reno used his influence, and a room with bathroom attached was available for Rollison at the Roebuck, a hotel of distinction on the outskirts of Winchester. Reno, apparently determined to be friendly, drove Rollison in the Rolls-Bentley; on his own admission, it was the first Rolls car he had driven in his life. It seemed to purr past the double-decker bus just outside Winchester, and certainly he did not notice the tartan-clad “youth” who was sitting in the bus and looking down on the magnificent car.

  It was half-past ten, the bar was closing and most of the customers were coming out.

  “I’ll garage the car,” promised Reno, “and I’ll leave the key with the night porter. You’ll be crazy if you don’t go straight to bed.”

  “I will. Can you use your influence again and have some sandwiches sent up? A lot of sandwiches. I’m famished.”

  “You’re getting better.” Reno laughed, and left Rollison at the entrance to the hotel. On each side were round pillars, just inside was a bear rug on dark oak boards, and a tiger skin lay, mouth gaping and teeth bared, in a small smoking-room. There was an air of old-fashioned comfort about the dark brown, the red velvet curtains, red mohair chairs and gleaming glasses.

  The night porter gladly offered to bring sandwiches.

  “Two, sir, or three?”

  “Could you make it half a dozen?”

  “Really hungry, sir, are you? I’ll fix it. Beer?”

  “I hate to say it, but milk. A lot of milk.”

  “Quite all right, sir, after a bang on the head like you’ve had. Honour to have you with us, sir.”

  So the news was all over the town.

  Rollison held his head very erect as he signed the register in bold characters which an illiterate could read, and held his whole body erect as he walked slowly up the two half flights of twisting stairs. They reminded him of the stairs at Rufus Cottage; many things reminded him of the cottage, including a picture of some New Forest ponies on the staircase wall. He saw a chambermaid, elderly, grey, tired, smiling, opening a door on the right.

  “It is Mr. Rollison, sir, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, thanks. Ah, room twelve.” It was a monster of a room, with a two-poster bed, a head canopy of puce-coloured velvet, a vast oak wardrobe, a creaking floor, oak beams and the bathroom so modern that it seemed to have jumped three centuries. The bed was turned down, the maid left him, hurrying, and he sat gingerly on an upright William and Mary slung chair, to give his head a chance to recover; but although it ached, it was no longer pounding. He heard two lots of footsteps, and then a timid tap at the door. He got up, and opened the door a crack.

  “Oh, Rolly,” said Barbara.

  He stood aside, and she slipped into the room and stood behind the door. She had made a remarkably good job of being a youth, and had even managed to look flat-breasted. But she was flushed now, and obviously scared. Rollison did not help her out, and she said hesitantly:

  “I couldn’t have made a worse mess, could I?”

  “No. How did you know where to come?”

  “I remembered the address of the cottage,” said Barbara unhappily. “It was rather a silly thing, really. About three months ago, Guy had been caught out in the rain and had to send his coat to be dried, and some letters fell out of his pocket. I remembered it – you know how little things stick in the memory sometimes, and this name was so unusual.” She was quiet for a moment. Then: “Rufus Cottage, Bane. And after I’d seen you this afternoon, I remembered it again.”

  “Ah,” said Rollison owlishly.

  “Rolly, why are you behaving like a disapproving uncle?”

  “I’ll tell you in a minute, when I know whether you realise what you’ve done.” He felt terribly sorry for her; yet in his mind there was a suspicion which he knew would be in the minds of any others when they realised that she had been near the cottage; that she could have killed Lessing’s real wife.

  Impossible?

  “Well, it was just after I telephoned you,” Barbara explained. “I saw a woman I know socially, an absolute scandalmonger, and I went hot and cold all over. Then I realised that I couldn’t go on like that, being terrified all the time in case I was seen, and—well, I suddenly had an overpowering desire to see if Guy was at the cottage. I knew he probably wouldn’t be, but I just couldn’t help it,” she went on, a note of defiance now strong in her voice. “I suddenly felt that I had to confront Guy with it, that it was beastly and cowardly to leave it to someone else. I hated what I’d done, and I felt—well, can’t you understand?”

  “I might,” said Rollison, “if I believed it.”

  Anger flashed into her eyes.

  “Are you saying that I’m lying?”

  “I’m saying that you haven’t convinced me that you’re telling the truth,” answered Rollison. “Do you know what happened at the cottage?”

  “A woman was murdered.”

  “Do you know what woman?”

  Barbara closed her eyes, as if it had suddenly become impossible to keep them open, and she didn’t answer; in the quiet, Rollison heard footsteps on the stairs, and guessed what they heralded.

  “Helen Goodman,” Barbara whispered.

  “Helen who used to be Goodman,” Rollison confirmed, and there was no gentleness in his voice, because he wanted to spark a reaction from this unhappy girl. He failed utterly; she simply looked despairing.

  The footsteps were nearing the head of the stairs now, and Rollison went on, “The porter’s bringing my supper, pop into the bathroom for a minute.”

  She made no answer, but turned and walked across the creaking boards, past the big bed, through the tall door. She closed it behind her, looking very small and pathetic. Then there came a heavy bang on the door, and a moment later it swung open. The night porter came in with a laden tray on one hand, held high and balanced as if skilfully.

  “Here we are, sir,” he said brightly. “I think you’ll find enough here to look after the inner man.” He looked round, espied a small table, then slipped on polished boards and swayed. The tray tilted to an alarming angle. Rollison felt himself leap to save it, and pain shot through his head. The porter weaved and spun his arms and finally brought the tray to an even keel on both hands. With great care he stepped to the table, and lowered his burden almos
t stealthily. “That was a near thing,” he observed. “Nearly upset the apple-cart. You want to be careful, that floor’s very slippery.”

  “I’ll be careful,” promised Rollison.

  The porter stood back and rubbed his hands.

  “Well, sir, how’s it look?”

  It was a feast. Thin slices of bread and thick ham and beef; some firm tomatoes; a huge piece of Cheddar which looked as if it would have a perfect flavour; a tin of biscuits, a slab of butter, and two jugs of milk, glass, knife, fork, everything.

  “Wonderful,” said Rollison fervently.

  “If you get outside of that lot you’ll have nightmares, my wife wouldn’t sleep with me after it,” the porter declared. “Don’t worry about the tray, the maid’ll see to that in the morning. Anything else?”

  “Just tell me where my car key is.”

  “Hanging up on the hook where the door key is, at the desk. T meant to bring it up, an’ clean forgot.”

  “The morning will do,” said Rollison, and half a crown changed hands; Rollison half expected the porter to spit on it for luck, but he did not. “Good night.”

  “Good night, sir. Sleep tight!” The porter chuckled deeply as he went out.

  Rollison waited for the door to close, then went across and turned the key in the lock. When he looked round, Barbara was coming from the bathroom. She had taken off her cap, shaken her lovely hair loose and run a comb through it; she was a girl again. She was troubled, anxious and hungry; and she eyed the tray almost unbelievingly.

  “Hungry?” asked Rollison.

  “Ravenous! I haven’t had a morsel to eat since breakfast, except a piece of the cake.” She looked suddenly forlorn. “I suppose I oughtn’t to say so, but it gave me awful indigestion.”

  “Come and sit down and tuck in,” Rollison invited, no longer stern; for there was a limit to what this girl could stand, whatever her folly, if folly there was. She came quickly, and her eyes actually lit up; that was the moment when Rollison realised how very young she was, younger in some ways than her twenty-three years.

  She bit deep into a sandwich.

  So did Rollison, who had not eaten since the wedding breakfast, and then had not eaten much. For nearly ten minutes they concentrated on the sandwiches and the cheese, which did not disappoint. They had two glasses of milk each, too. It was Rollison who finished first; he watched Barbara pick up a few crumbs of cheese on the tips of her fingers and lick the cheese off.

  “Locust,” he said.

  “You were nearly as bad.”

  “I’m a grown man.”

  ‘Yes.” She looked at him in a way he didn’t quite understand. “This is absolutely ludicrous, isn’t it?”

  “Not quite the wedding night you expected.”

  Tears touched her eyes again.

  “It doesn’t seem as if it’s really happening, it’s like a nightmare. Rolly, do you think Guy—” She couldn’t finish.

  “Killed this Helen?”

  “Oh, it’s hateful even to think it!”

  “Apparently you thought it.”

  “It isn’t possible, is it?”

  “It doesn’t seem possible to me,” replied Rollison, with great deliberation, “but a lot of queer things have happened, this is the most topsy-turvy case I’ve ever been involved in. If it weren’t for dead Helen it would be the slapstick of the year. How long had you been at the cottage?”

  “Only about ten minutes. I got a train to Winchester, and then a taxi.”

  “What train?” Rollison asked quickly.

  She didn’t answer.

  “What train?” Rollison insisted.

  “Well, quite an early one, if I’d come straight from Winchester to the cottage I would have been there long before you, but I couldn’t go as I was, obviously. I couldn’t go in my going-away dress, at— well, could I?”

  Was she just being guileless?

  “I went to a Marks & Spencers and bought these clothes,” Barbara went on, “and I bought a carrier bag to put the other clothes in. I hurried back to the station to change in the cloakroom, and left the bag there. But I know what you’re thinking. I could have gone out to the cottage and arrived long before you.”

  “Yes,” Rollison said.

  “Rolly, you don’t seriously think that I could have done a dreadful thing like that?”

  “I seriously think that you might be what is called an accessory after the fact; or even before the fact.”

  “You mean—” She was husky-voiced.

  “I mean, if Guy killed her and you knew.”

  She was absolutely without colour now, and her eyes were feverishly bright.

  “I don’t believe he could have done such a thing.”

  “Did you see him at the cottage?”

  “No.”

  “Have you seen him at all?”

  “No!”

  “Have you seen his hired car?”

  “No, I haven’t. Rolly, if I had, I’d tell you.” Barbara leaned back in her chair, hands on the arms, and closed her eyes; a trick she had which was probably habit. When she opened her eyes again they were unbelievably bright and starry. “Rolly, the thing that frightens me is this: if Guy didn’t, who did? Who would want to?”

  “That’s what we’re going to find out,” Rollison said. “If I’d reached the cottage half an hour earlier, I would have saved her life.”

  “What did happen to you?” inquired Barbara.

  “I was trying to bring the woman round and someone clouted me,” Rollison answered. “A man who’d been hiding upstairs, and probably crept down, went out the front way, and came in at the back. Didn’t make a sound.” He was thinking over everything that had happened, feeling the moment of alarm all over again, seeing that clenched hand, that clenched gloved hand, with the hammer in it. He remembered the first agonising pain; his wrist was swollen and he could not move the fingers easily; he would not be able to for days.

  A hand with a dark-brown leather glove on it; he saw that vividly in his mind’s eye.

  But there were hundreds of thousands of pairs of gloves like those.

  Barbara was closing her eyes again, and this time it was easy to believe that she was simply tired; and that her eyes and head were aching. But she began to speak while he watched her; and he understood only too clearly how it was that Guy Lessing, who was about the same age as he, should fall in love with her. She was quite beautiful. Even in this hideous garb, she was—

  Desirable.

  “The thing that frightens me is that Guy always had these headaches,” she was saying. “He said they started after he was wounded. When he had one he hardly knew what he was doing.”

  She opened her eyes wide.

  She had cause to be frightened.

  “Barbara,” Rollison said, quite crisply, “the doctor gave me some tablets to make sure of a good night’s sleep. I’ve enough and to spare. Have you a room here?”

  “No, they’re full up.”

  “You take the bed, I’ll take two chairs—”

  “You won’t do anything of the kind,” said Barbara, with a flash of spirit. “You look as if you’ll crack up if you don’t have a good night’s rest, and this is a beautifully comfortable chair. But I wouldn’t mind the tablets, I’d like to get to sleep. I’d feel better if I could forget everything for a while.”

  There was very little to do, for neither of them had night things or anything for their toilet. Barbara loosened the waistband of the grey flannels and kicked off her shoes, a pair of brown slip-ins. Rollison turned off the light and cautiously eased himself out of his coat, took off his collar and tie, and loosened everything that needed loosening, then stretched out on the big, comfortable bed. He could hear Barbara’s even breathing, and did not know whether she wa
s asleep or feigning sleep. He was still not sure what to make of her story. The simple thing and the thing he wanted to do was to believe her sudden change of mood, her desperate desire to see if Guy had gone to the cottage, but would she even think of that possibility? Wouldn’t she assume that he would stay in London and look for her?

  Had she told the real reason for her visit to Rufus Cottage?

  She turned over in the chair, and her breathing was very soft and even. A young and lovely girl, sleeping, was a few feet away from Rollison. This should have been her wedding night; this was her wedding night. There was no doubt about it, but for the murder of the woman named Helen, who had married Guy Lessing, this would have been a bedroom farce.

  Gradually, he became drowsy.

  Why wasn’t it his wedding night?

  That would be the thing: there was the girl who had asked him point blank why he had never married. Now he was asking himself. Absurd, lazy, pleasantly sensual thoughts drifted in and out of his mind. Man and woman were made to sleep together, not within a few feet of each other. Was she asleep? Why couldn’t he get to sleep? Had the doctor given him tablets that weren’t powerful enough? He was more wide awake than ever he had been, but at least the tablets had helped him; his head was no longer aching. It was crystal clear, except that he could not force himself to think of the problem, only of the irony of this situation. He hitched himself up a little on his pillow, and could just make out Barbara’s face in the soft moonlight that was coming in at the open window. Even the moon was merged with his mood.

  Moon – mood.

  Moon – madness.

  Did Guy suffer from a kind of moon madness?

  Rollison felt himself much drowsier than he had realised, slid down in the bed again, turned cautiously to one side, and felt himself dropping off to sleep. The drug had taken a hold on him after all, there was nothing he need worry about. Forget Guy, forget Barbara, forget absurd thoughts and ludicrous longing.

  He heard a sound.