The Beast Must Die
Page 6
After dinner the womenfolk (as no doubt George would call them) left him and me over the port. He was evidently ill at ease – didn’t know what to make of me at all.
He tried the usual gambit, ‘Heard the one about the Yorkshire woman and the organist?’ he asked, drawing his chair confidentially nearer. There were a good many more where that one came from. I listened to it and laughed as convincingly as possible. Having thus, in his sly, hippopotamus manner, broken the ice, he proceeded to pump me for details about myself. I’ve got the Felix Lane saga by heart now, so there was no difficulty about that.
‘Lena tells me you write books,’ he said.
‘Yes. Detective novels.’
He looked a bit relieved. ‘Oh, thrillers. That’s different. Don’t mind telling you, when Lena said she was bringing an author down here, I was a bit alarmed. Thought you’d be one of those highbrow Bloomsbury sort of fellows. Got no use for them myself. D’you make a good thing out of it – the writing game?’
‘Yes, I do pretty well. Of course, I’ve got some money of my own. But I suppose I make betwen £300 and £500 on each book.’
‘The devil you do!’ He looked at me almost with respect. ‘A bestseller, eh?’
‘Not quite that yet. Just a moderately successful hack.’
His eyes shyed away from me a little. He took a gulp of port and said, with over-deliberate insouciance, ‘Known Lena for long?’
‘No. Just a week or so. I’m thinking of writing something for the films.’
‘Nice girl. Plenty of spirit.’
‘Yes, she’s a fetching number.’ I said it quite unthinkingly. George’s face went all shocked and incredulous, as if he’d suddenly caught sight of a viper in his bosom. Dirty stories are one thing, it seems, and levity about his own ‘womenfolk’ another. He suggested, very stiffly, that we should join the ladies.
Can’t write more now. Just off for a drive with my prospective victim and his family.
2 August
AS WE WALKED out of the front door yesterday afternoon – Lena, George, his son Phil, a schoolboy about twelve years old, and myself – I could have sworn that Lena stopped dead for an instant in a kind of panic. I’ve gone over the scene again and again, trying to visualise it clearly. It all happened so quickly that I had not time to realise its implications at the moment. On the surface, there was nothing in it at all. We came out on to the steps, in the sunlight. Lena paused for a fraction of a second, and said, ‘The same car?’ George who was a little behind her, said, ‘What d’you mean?’ Am I just imagining an undertone of fear, of menace in his voice? Lena replied, with a touch of confusion, I think, ‘You’ve still got the same old car?’ ‘Same old? – I like that! She’s not done ten thousand yet. What d’you think I am – a millionaire?’
The whole thing could be susceptible of a perfectly innocent interpretation, that’s the trouble. We got in; George and Lena in front, Phil at the back with me. Phil slammed the car door behind him, and George slewed round and exclaimed angrily, ‘How often do I have to tell you that these doors don’t need to be slammed? Can’t you shut the thing quietly?’ ‘Sorry, Dad,’ Phil said, looking hurt and resentful. Of course, George may have been in a bad temper before we started, but I suspect that he was shaken up by what Lena had said – or not quite said, and took it out on Phil in consequence.
George is certainly a pushful driver. I can’t honestly say he drove recklessly yesterday afternoon, but he shouldered along through the Sunday traffic as though he had a sort of right of way, like a fire engine. There were numbers of cyclists three abreast. He didn’t abuse them, as I rather expected him to do, but shaved past very close and cut in sharply in front of them – obviously trying to panic them or force them to collide with each other. At one point he said to me, over his shoulder, ‘Know this part of the world, Lane?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’ve always been meaning to come back here, though. I was born at Sawyers Cross, you know, the other end of the county.’ ‘Really? Pretty little place. Been through it once or twice myself.’
He had a nerve all right. I was watching the side of his face, the jaw muscle didn’t even tighten when I mentioned the name of the village where he had killed Martie. Shall I ever make him betray himself? Lena was staring straight in front of her, hands clasped over her knees, immobile. I risked a lot when I said, ‘Sawyers Cross’; suppose he were to become suspicious, or just out of idle curiosity make enquiries? He’d find that there had been no family called Lane in Sawyers Cross for fifty years. When we got out of the car, Lena seemed to avoid my eyes, she had been silent for the last quarter of an hour – since I mentioned Sawyers Cross – and that’s pretty unusual for her, but not incontrovertible evidence of anything.
We got out, and I asked George to show me the points of his car. This was just an excuse, of course, to have a good look at it. It’s got stone-guards all right, but there was no indication – to my novice eye, at any rate – that a wing or a bumper had been removed and a new one fitted. But after seven months, there wouldn’t be; the trail (as I hope I always avoid expressing it in my detective novels) is cold. The only clues left are inside the heads of George and Lena; or maybe Lena alone – George has probably forgotten all about the incident by now. I can’t believe that an odd killing here and there would rankle with him very long.
The question is, how am I to get at it? And, more important at the moment, what plausible reason can I give for staying on here? Lena will be going back to town tomorrow. Perhaps I’ll find an opening this afternoon; we’re all supposed to be playing tennis at the Ratterys’.
3 August
THAT’S SETTLED, ANYWAY. I’m here for a month – on George’s invitation, more or less – which ought to be long enough. I’d better begin at the beginning.
When I got there, none of the people they’d invited had arrived yet, so George suggested he and I should have a knock-up with Lena and Phil. We waited on the court for a little and then George started to bawl out for Phil who was somewhere in the house. This brought Violet running out. She tried to draw George aside, and I heard her whisper something about ‘doesn’t want to play’.
‘What’s wrong with the boy?’ George exclaimed. ‘I don’t know what’s come over him lately. Doesn’t want to play? Go and tell him he’s damned well got to play. Sulking about upstairs! I never—’
‘He’s a bit upset, George dear. You know, you were rather unkind to him this morning over his report.’
‘My dear good girl, don’t talk nonsense. The boy’s been slacking this term. Carruthers says he’s got plenty of ability, but if he doesn’t pull up his socks he’ll stand no chance for Rugby next year. Don’t you want him to get a scholarship?’
‘Of course, dear. But—’
‘Well then, somebody’s got to tell him to buck up. I will not have him mooning about all the time at school and wasting my money. He’s thoroughly spoilt, if you—’
‘There’s a wasp on the back of your shirt,’ Lena interrupted, gazing at him with quite fictitious concern.
‘You keep out of this, Lena,’ he said dangerously. I thought I really couldn’t do with any more of the squalid scene, also, I was a bit sorry for Phil if his father went to lug him out in this mood, so I said I’d go and say we wanted him to play. George looked distinctly taken aback, but he couldn’t very well forbid me to go.
I found Phil lurking in his bedroom – in a very obstinate frame of mind indeed at first. However, we had a talk – he’s really not a bad kid at all – and after a bit it all came out. He hadn’t been slacking last term, but there was a boy at the school who’d made a dead set at him and this got on his mind (don’t I know how!) so that he couldn’t concentrate on his work. Phil was in tears by this time. For some absurd reason, it reminded me of the day I’d ticked Martie off for ruining my roses, and I suggested, quite impulsively, that perhaps he’d like me to give him a few lessons in the holidays – a couple of hours a day, say, so that he could make up the lost ground.
It
was only when Phil was in the middle of a stammering and most embarrassing display of gratitude that it occurred to me that here was an excellent pretext for staying on at Severnbridge. A nice example of doing good that evil may come of it – if one can call the removal of George an evil. I waited till George was in good humour, flushed by victory in a set of tennis, and then broached the idea – said I’d taken a fancy to the town, thought of stopping on a few weeks and making a start with my new book in the peace of the country, and suggested he might like me to give Phil a bit of coaching. George was a trifle sticky at first, but soon agreed to the idea and even went so far as to invite me to put up at his house. I refused politely and I think, to his relief. Not at any price would I stay in the Rattery household for a month. It’s not that I feel any taboo against killing the man whose salt I’ve eaten; I just couldn’t stick the sensation of being perpetually on the edge of some domestic squabble. Besides, I don’t want to risk George’s snooping about and finding this diary. My daily reading with Phil will give me all the foothold I need here.
After that had been fixed up, I watchd the tennis for a bit. George’s partner in the garage, Harrison Carfax, was playing with Violet against George and Mrs Carfax. The latter is a big, dark-haired, gipsyish, come-hither sort of woman. I got the impression that she might be one of the reasons for George’s return of good humour, I distinctly saw his fingers delaying on hers once when he handed her the tennis balls to serve, and she gave him one or two sultry looks all right. One can scarcely wonder; her husband’s a dreary, dried-up little nondescript if ever I saw one.
Lena came and sat down beside me – we were rather apart from the rest. She looks amazingly attractive in tennis dress; it suits her supple movements, and she manages to put on a sort of synthetic but appealing schoolgirlishness to match it.
‘You’re looking very sweet,’ I said.
‘Go and tell that to the Carfax woman,’ she said, but I could see she was pleased.
‘Oh, I’ll leave George to do that.’
‘George? Don’t be so absurd.’ She was almost snappish about it. Then she recovered herself and said, ‘I’ve hardly seen you since we’ve been here. You’ve been going about with a faraway look in your eyes, as though you’d lost your memory or got indigestion or something.’
‘That’s my artistic temperament coming out.’
‘Well, you might snap out of it and give a girl a kiss now and then. At least.’ She leant over and whispered in my ear. ‘There’s no need to wait till we get back to London, Pussy, you know.’
Nobody can say I’m not a single-minded murderer. I’d so concentrated on fixing things up with George that I’d forgotten about my attachment to Lena. I tried to explain to her why I was staying on here. I was afraid she would start to get temperamental – the fact that we were in full view of a dozen people would have stimulated rather than suppressed her. But, oddly enough, Lena took it quite quietly. Too quietly, in fact – I might have suspected something – there was a humorous, challenging lift at the corners of her mouth when I moved away to play a set of tennis, and halfway through it I noticed her deep in conversation with Violet. As we came off the court, I heard her saying to George (and obviously I was meant to hear it), ‘George darling, how would you like your glamorous sister-in-law to stay on for a bit? We’ve finished making that film, so I thought I’d dig myself in here for a few weeks more of the simple country life. OK by you, chief?’
‘This is all very sudden,’ he said, giving her one of his calculating, slave market looks. ‘I suppose, if Vi doesn’t mind, we can put up with you. Why the change of heart?’
‘Well, you see, I think I should pine away without my Pussy. But don’t tell anyone.’
‘Pussy?’
‘Mr Felix Lane. Felix the Cat. Pussy. Compris?’
George gave a very loud, embarrassed, stupid laugh. ‘Well I’m damned. Pussy! It does hit him off rather well. The way he pats the ball over the net. But really, Lena –’ He’d no idea I was listening. Perhaps it’s just as well he didn’t see my face then. I’ll not forget that crack of his. But Lena – what does she think she’s up to? Can it be possible that she thinks she’s going to play me off against George? Or have I been making a damnable, inexcusable mistake about the girl all along?
5 August
LESSONS WITH PHIL in the morning, as usual. He’s quite a bright youngster – heaven knows where he gets his brains from – but he wasn’t in his best form this morning. From certain indications – his own wandering attention and a rather red-eyed look about Violet who passed me quickly as I came in – I guessed there must have been a dust-up in the Rattery household. In the middle of a Latin unseen Phil suddenly asked me if I was married. ‘No. Why?’ I said. I felt oddly ashamed, lying to Phil, though I lie like a trooper to the rest of the family without turning a hair.
‘D’you think it’s a good thing?’ he asked, in a tight, severely controlled, precise little voice. His conversation is old for his years, like most only children’s.
‘Yes. I think so. It can be, anyway,’ I said.
‘Yes, I suppose so; for the right people. I shan’t get married, ever. It makes people so miserable. I’d be afraid –’
‘Love does make people miserable sometimes. It sounds all wrong, but it’s quite true.’
‘Oh, love –’ he said. He paused for a moment, then took a deep breath, and the words came out in a shocked rush, ‘Dad hits Mummy sometimes.’
I didn’t know what to say. I could see that he was desperately in need of some reassurance. Like any sensitive child, he’s horribly torn by this squabbling between his parents – it’s like living on the side of a volcano for him; no security. I was on the point of trying to comfort him; then, a revulsion from the whole business seized me; I didn’t want to become involved, distracted. I said, a bit coldly, I’m afraid, that we’d better get on with the unseen. It was a wretched piece of cowardice really. I saw my betrayal of him reflected in Phil’s face.
6 August
HAD A LOOK round the Rattery-Carfax garage this afternoon. Told George it might come in useful as material in a book – nihil subhumanum a me alienum puto is the detective novelist’s motto though I didn’t put it quite like that. Asked a number of idiotic questions which enabled George to patronise and me to discover that the garage keeps all spare parts of cars they’re agents for. I didn’t dare ask specifically about wings and bumpers – it might have made him suspicious that I was a policeman in disguise. I’ve found out already that he sometimes keeps his car there at night, though he’s got a garage attached to his house.
Then we went out at the back. There’s a patch of waste ground, with a godless rubbish dump on it, and the Severn at the far end. I wanted to have a look at this heap of old iron – not that I thought it likely that George would have been such a fool as to deposit his damaged wing there; so I delayed him with a little conversation.
‘Pretty unsightly all this stuff is.’
‘Well, what do you suggest we should do with it? Dig a neat hole and bury it, like the Anti-Litter League?’
George was quite up in the air. For such a self-satisfied creature, he’s curiously touchy at times. Suddenly I decided to take a risk.
‘Why don’t you dump the stuff in the river? Don’t you ever do that? Get it out of sight, anyway.’
There was a perceptible pause before he answered. I found myself trembling uncontrollably, so that I had to walk away from him towards the water’s edge to prevent him seeing it.
‘Good God, man, what an idea! I’d have the whole town council down on my head. In the river! That’s a good one! I’ll have to tell Carfax.’ He was beside me now. ‘Anyway, it’d be too shallow at the edge. Look.’
I was looking. I could see the bed of the river. But also I saw, twenty yards to my left, a derelict punt moored. Yes, George, it’s too shallow at the edge to conceal anything, but you might easily have taken the punt into midstream and got rid of the tell-tale evidence there.
‘I daresay,’ he said indifferently. ‘A bit slow for my taste, that game – sitting on one’s fanny holding a piece of rope.’
‘I’ll have to take you out some day in a stiff breeze. You wouldn’t call that “slow”.’
I’d seen all I wanted to see. The old iron on the scrap heap was very old iron indeed. A dreadful eyesore. And I was pretty sure I’d seen a rat scuttling out of it when we were walking down; with a dump and the river, it must be heaven for them. Back in the garage, we came across Harrison Carfax. I happened to mention I’d like a bit of sailing, and he said his son kept a twelve-footer here which he was sure he’d lend me as he only used it at the weekends. It’ll be a nice change for George, to get out on the river now and then. Might teach Phil to sail.
7 August
I NEARLY KILLED George Rattery this afternoon. Very, very nearly. I feel absolutely exhausted. No emotion. Just an aching emptiness where emotion ought to be – as if it was me, not him, who had been reprieved. No, not reprieve. A temporary stay of execution, that’s all. It was so childishly simple, too – both my opportunity and his escape. Shall I ever get such an opportunity again? It’s long after midnight already, and I’ve been going over and over and over what happened. Perhaps if I write it down, I’ll be able to put it out of my head and get some sleep.
Five of us – Lena, Violet, Phil, George and myself – went for a drive this afternoon into the Cotswolds. We were to do a bit of sightseeing Bibury way, and then have a picnic tea. George showed me round Bibury as though he owned the village, while I tried to behave as if I hadn’t been there a dozen times before. We leant over the bridge, staring at the trout, which are as fleshy and supercilious-looking as George himself. Then we drove off high up on the hills. Lena was sitting at the back with Phil and me. She’d been acting very affectionate, and when we got out of the car she took my arm and walked very close to me. I don’t know whether it was this that got George’s goat. Something did, anyway, because, when we’d spread out the rugs just by the corner of a wood and Violet suggested we light a fire to keep the midges off, a really bloody scene began to boil up.