He gave me a queer sidelong glance under his lashes.
“I wish I thought I had,” he said deliberately. “Unfortunately, I don’t. I never did. That makes me odd man out. Before God, Judy, if I shot that girl I did it in a brainstorm, and all my life since I’ve been terrified I’d have another.”
I felt my heart turn over in my chest, I was so appalled by the revelation. The agony the child must have suffered, the horror of adolescence in such circumstances.
“Darling,” I exclaimed involuntarily, “what a miracle you stood it. Of course, of course you didn’t kill her. She was going to meet somebody. That’s why she was so angry when you appeared on the bank so inopportunely.”
He stared. “That’s what my father tried to believe. What put it into your head?”
“The photograph.” The words came out of my mouth before even I realised their full implication. “That girl wasn’t smiling up at a child when that snapshot was taken.”
He frowned. “Wasn’t she? I don’t really remember the picture. I know there was one and I recall a rather kindly old copper trying to persuade me to say that I took it. But it didn’t mean a thing to me. I was simply sticking to what I believed was the literal truth. Never, at any point in my life, have I been able to remember anything different from the story I told the police, yet now it does seem to me that if there had been any other possible explanation they would have discovered it. That’s the mischief of the whole wretched situation. Nothing can ever be proved, and after all this time it’s what everybody believes which is the reality.”
They were so nearly Mother’s words all over again I felt a wave of sheer dismay pass over me.
“But it’s all wrong,” I burst out, stammering in my excitement. “It’s – it’s monstrous! Don’t let it make any difference to us, Laurie. Please darling, that would be wicked.”
I heard him catch his breath. “You’re the sweetest thing, Judy. I love you. I want to ask you to marry me more than anything in the world, but I shan’t because I know I couldn’t stand the publicity all over again and I don’t think you could.”
“Publicity —” I began contemptuously but he cut me short.
“My dear, you’ve no idea what it’s like. It’s not the paragraphs in the newspapers, or even the re-hashing of the whole dreary story which can only have the same hopelessly indeterminate conclusion – either I’m a liar or a lunatic. It’s the letters from people one’s never heard of.”
“Good heavens,” I ejaculated. “Surely they didn’t write to you as a child?”
“Did they not!” He was bitter. “My father and mother were almost driven to suicide. People wrote condoling, or censuring, or suggesting idiotic solutions. Some were spiteful, some were ostensibly well-meaning, but they were all utterly relentless. I tell you, the public’s reaction to a story which takes its fancy is fearsome. It can shake you up horribly, especially if you don’t know quite how guilty you are.”
I said nothing. I was both scandalised and scared. Also, I loved him so much that the prospect of losing him made me feel positively faint.
“Are you sure people would still be interested after all this time?” I ventured at last.
He grimaced. “Some hardly need a reminder. Last week, as you know, there was a couple of paragraphs about this job I’m on in two very solid and respectable journals. Today I got a cutting from the Meade Courier quoting them and then recalling the whole of the old story, while three or four days ago there was an illiterate note from some woman in Cornwall saying that her lodger, who had just died, had painted a picture of the ‘lady you shot as a little boy’ and asking me if I would like to buy it as ‘he always said you ought to have it’. No, Judy, once our names are linked together we’d pull a hornet’s nest about our ears, and yet – oh God, my darling, what can we do?”
I put my arm through his possessively.
“Tell me about the woman in Cornwall. The lodger was John Ryder, I suppose?”
“That’s the man.” He held my arm tightly against him as we strode on down the road together. “He was visiting Meade at the time. I don’t really remember him so well as I do his wife, who was a terrifying piece of work, Spanish or something, jealous as the devil. He was quite a well-known painter then, although I can’t say I’ve heard of him since. All the same, it shows you how even disinterested people talk. It must be the element of mystery which fascinates them. Did the wretched child pull the trigger or didn’t it? Unluckily, in this case there never can be any proof.”
“Someone might confess,” I suggested half-heartedly.
“After twenty-five years? It’s not very likely.” His quick smile faded, and the long wrinkles appeared on his forehead. “Even so, you know, I think both the police and myself would need more than a mere statement to set all doubt at rest. Proof is the necessary item, Judy, cast-iron irrefutable proof. At this stage in the proceedings it’s just not possible.”
The word lay heavy between us for the rest of the walk home. I saw his point only too vividly. I was remembering the attitude of my own people. Whichever way I turned the same blank wall seemed to confront me and I had never felt so helplessly miserable.
All the rest of the day I turned the matter over and over in my mind, and by evening I was in the mood to catch at the most flimsy of straws. Laurie and I were in his study listening to some records when the idea which had been nagging me suddenly took shape. I got to my feet.
“Look,” I announced. “I’m going to Cornwall to see that picture. Will you drive me?”
To my relief he laughed. I’d been afraid he might be angry.
“Anywhere in the world,” he assured me. “There’s nothing I’d like better. But if it’s merely a matter of morbid curiosity I can satisfy that instantly. The lady sent the picture on approval with the letter. I hardly looked at it. It’s in the cupboard, still in brown paper, ready to be returned.”
We went across the room together and carried the square flat parcel to the table under the light. Laurie pulled off the wrappings and put his arm round my shoulders as we stood looking down at a canvas perhaps twenty inches square. The moment I saw it I stood transfixed, staring at it incredulously, hardly conscious of Laurie’s voice continuing in the quiet room. When at last I got hold of myself and turned to him he was still talking about the painter and his landlady.
“She didn’t actually say so, but I gather he was definitely odd at the end of the time,” he was saying. “She says something about him painting this picture over and over again and making her promise to give it to me when he died. But, as she points out, since he owed her nearly a year’s board she thought she was justified in trying for a sale. His wife must have vanished some time ago. There’s no mention of her. It’s not a bad, old-fashioned factual painting. What do you say? Shall I buy it and justify her faith in writing letters to strangers?”
On the last word he looked round at me and caught my expression.
“Why, Judy,” he exclaimed, “what is it, my dear? What’s the matter? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I – I have,” I said huskily. “Laurie, this is it. This is the answer. This is the confession and the proof.”
“Proof? Darling, what on earth are you talking about? You’re lightheaded, my poor pet. This is only a portrait of Dorinda. I can’t even remember if it’s very like her. I thought of her as being older and more – more staid than this. There’s no significance here.”
“Isn’t there!” I exploded. “You don’t understand. This is the picture, the one which didn’t come out properly, the one the police couldn’t reproduce because the negative was too bad. Don’t you see, he knew he had taken it. He knew it was not only in the camera but in his own mind’s eye. That’s why he wanted you to have it. John Ryder shot Dorinda. One can easily guess why. She was wanton and reckless, and he had a jealous termagant of a wife. This is his confession. Moreover,” I added, looking up into his disbelieving face, “as it happens, I can prove it.” And I
opened my handbag.
It was terrifying. The two pictures were almost identical. The shadow of the leaves made almost the same pattern on the white skirt with the tell-tale scalloped hem which fixed the time of wearing, but, whereas in the photograph the face was almost lost in shadow, in the painting it was unbearably vivid. Every provocative line was clearly emphasised and there was no doubt whatever about the mingled fear and attraction which the painter had felt for that impish face for ever implanted in his memory.
Laurie stood looking at the two for some time and then suddenly he put his arm round me.
“My God, Judy,” he said, and he sounded afraid. “I thought I’d suffered, but what hell it must have been for him.”
I made no comment. How could I, with his lips over mine?
Mum Knows Best
Mrs Chubb’s “little room”, which hung like a signal-box over the great circular bar of the Platelayers’ Arms, was unusually deserted for the time of day, which was six o’clock on a fine warm evening. Only two or three of the habitués were present, but Charley Luke, the DDCI of the district, was there, and so was his old friend Albert Campion, startled at the moment into mild astonishment.
Luke was speaking. “Mum? Of course, I’ve got a mum.” He was aggrieved, and his diamond-shaped eyes opened as wide as his prominent cheek-bones would permit. “What do you think? That I sprang in full uniform from the head of an Assistant Commissioner?” As was his custom, he gave a brief pantomimic display to illustrate his words and managed to look for a second like a piece of early Greek statuary, boldly costumed by a spiv tailor. “Not on your life,” he went on, settling down again on the table where he had been sitting. “I’ve got a mum, all right. Two jam pots high and boss of all she surveys. Perceptive, that’s what mum is.”
He hunched himself suddenly and, by peering at us from under his lids and pulling his lips down over his teeth, gave us a sudden startling glimpse of a new and doughty personality.
“What she knows, she knows she knows,” he said. “She’s got a twenty-two-carat heart, was born within sight – much less sound – of Bow Bells and takes a poor view of policemen.”
Luke grinned at Campion. “Her dad was killed in the Melbourne Street Raid when he was a Sergeant CID; she married a Superintendent and then there’s me coming along. She’s had a packet to put up with.”
“What exactly has she got against the profession?” inquired Mr Campion with interest. “Always assuming, of course, that the question is without personal offence.”
“Not at all, chum.” Luke’s magnificent teeth showed for an instant above the pewter rim of his tankard. “She thinks we’re a weak-minded, unsuspicious lot, too slow to catch a pussycat. And so we are, by her standards. If she wore a helmet, none of you would go out without your rear lights, and she can smell breath over the telephone. I caught her out once though. Whenever she comes the acid, I promise to buy her a diamond necklace. That sends her back to the gas stove.”
He presented his back to us, hunched and sulky, so that we caught an image of an angry, elderly person minding her own business grudgingly.
“It was before I got my step up,” he said, referring to his Chief Inspectorship. “I’d just taken over this manor and I was going steady, playing myself in. As you know, this isn’t a posh district exactly, but it’s been posh and there are, so to speak, remnants of poshness scattered about.” He waved a hand to the open doorway where the flight of stairs led down into the stucco wilderness of the area north of the park.
“I’d got my office nice and clean, decided which peg to hang my hat on, and started reading up the ‘pending’ file, when in came my first bit of homework, a nice respectable old housekeeper, all gloves and embarrassment, and would I please come and see her ‘Dear Old Master’ who’d been made a fool of and wanted to speak to someone BIG. I hinted the DOM might demean himself and come down to see the DDI, but that wouldn’t do. The ‘Dear Old Master’ was too old, too ill, too silly, too upset. It sounded as though he was dropping to bits, so I took my hat off the peg and went down the road with her to inspect the ruin.” He paused, and his diamond-shaped eyes became reflective.
“I expected a nice clean house, you know,” he went on. “But wacky! Luxury! Enormous great rooms full of gorgeous junk!” His long hands, which were never quite still when he was talking, drew some remarkably vivid shapes in the air. One received an impression of vast quantities of baroque furniture, statuettes, pictures and floating drapery. At the end of the swift performance he rubbed an imaginary piece of material between thumb and forefinger. “Velvet,” he said. “Carpets, too. I was over my ankles in lush! Well, I saw the old boy and I thought he was one of his own idols until he spoke. He was sitting by the fire in a high-backed chair and he looked as if the last hundred years hadn’t meant much to him. But he was very nice, you know. Very charming and even ‘wide’ in his own way. I took a shine to him. The story he had to tell was familiar enough – old-fashioned and not even out of the ordinary; but he told it very well and very politely, if you see what I mean – didn’t expect ME to be a mug. He could laugh at himself, too. I’ve been hearing versions of the story all my life. The old chap had been out in his car with a chauffeur driving and they had crossed the park in a rainstorm. Presently, what should they see but a young woman, not too well dressed but quite respectable, caught by her high heel in a grating in the road. The old boy stopped the car and told his man to help her get free. After that they had to give her a lift home because the heel had come off. She gave a very decent address in this neighbourhood and they drove her to it, but didn’t wait to see her go in.”
He sighed, and we shook our heads over the duplicity of young women.
“Meanwhile, of course,” Luke continued, “on the drive he had heard ‘The Tale’. It was a good one. She was very young, and she said she was a student at a dramatic school, that she lived with her mother who was a widow, and that she was determined to go on the stage. He asked her to tea one day in the following week and the old housekeeper, glad to see him amused, baked a special cake. So, it went all through the season until he’d grown quite fond of the poppet. As far as I could hear he never gave her anything but cake, and the visits were restricted to formal tea parties. He was that sort of old boy. But the time came, naturally, when she did her stuff – ‘came to her bat’, as we say in the trade.” Luke pushed his hat on to the back of his head and blinked at us innocently.
“It’s wonderful to me,” he announced, “how certain stories just happen to work. Everybody’s heard ’em, women are born knowing how to tell ’em, yet they never fail. Tell the truth – say, you’ve counted your money and you haven’t as much as you thought – and no one will believe you. But come out with one of these old Cinderella yarns and Bob’s your uncle! You’ve got a happy and contented audience digging in its hip pocket. This girl told the one about the ball – I believe she really did call it a ball – where she was to meet ‘The Impresario’. She’d got a dress but – ahem – no jewellery.” Luke favoured us with a leer of quite horrific archness, fluttering his lashes and widening his mouth like a cat’s. “He fell for it,” Charley went on, “went through all the motions except one. He did not ring for the chauffeur and drive her down to Cartier’s for something suitable. Not at all. He trotted off to his study, unlocked the secret safe, and came back with something which must have startled her out of her wits. It was a single string diamond necklace. Family stuff, worth the Lord knows what. I had a full description of it, complete with weights of the individual stones and all the rest. He lent it to her for the evening. He told me that without a tremor, but I could see he knew he’d asked for it. He said she was so young and so guileless and had come to the house so often – that’s where she was so clever – that he trusted her.”
Luke wrinkled up his long nose with weary resignation. “After that it was just the usual,” he went on, flicking away the details with a bony hand. “No girl, tea party deserted, no girl next day. Housekeeper consulte
d, talk, chauffeur sent round to the house where they had taken her on the first occasion. Finds out she’s not known there … All the ordinary palaver. And there is my poor old pal without his sparklers and without his little ray of sunshine who, no doubt, is shining somewhere else all lit up like a perishing Christmas tree. That was where I came in.” Luke shook his head. “The public believes in us if mum doesn’t,” he said. “Think of it. What an assignment!”
“So, you didn’t get the necklace back?” someone said.
Luke lifted up his hand.
“Don’t hurry me,” he protested. “Let me have my pleasure. I tried. We worked on it for months. The only description of the girl which we sifted – from the report of the three of them – housekeeper, chauffeur, and old boy – was that she was five foot one, two or three inches high; that she was pretty, innocent looking, ‘like a flower’, that her eyes and hair were ‘blue and brown’, ‘hazel and black’, ‘brown and dark’. The diamonds were easier, but not much. It was a single string, you see. The value lay in the size and purity of the stones. The jewellers helped more than anybody. They all agreed that the necklace couldn’t be disposed of over here without making a bit of a stir in the trade and that if it were broken up it would lose so much in value that they rather thought an effort would be made to get it to the Continent intact. We warned the Customs and shook up all the likely fences. I put the thing in the hands of a really good boy by name of Gooley, who was a sergeant of mine, and I got on with my other work.”
Luke paused and accepted the cigarette Campion offered him. “It was one Sunday afternoon in August,” Charley continued. “Hot? I thought I was being rendered down! I was sitting in mum’s backyard reading the paper and trying to make a noise like someone weeding a path, when Gooley came through on the blower. He was in a terrific state. He thought he’d got her, he said, or he thought he knew where she was. In the last report I’d had from him he’d mentioned some rumours he’d picked up of a diamond necklace owned by a member of the chorus at the New Neapolitan. He’d followed these up like a sensible lad, but the show had closed, making the job more difficult. Now he had got wind of the string of ice again and had pinned it down to a troupe of seventeen dancers who were just going off to Holland. In fact, they were actually at Liverpool Street Station, waiting for the boat train which was mercifully late. He was ringing up from the platform and they were all in the tea-room, chattering like a parrot house and laughing as if they’d got something on their minds.” Luke grinned at the recollection.
The Allingham Casebook Page 21