Home through the Dark

by Anthea Fraser

  “I’m going down. You stay here.”

  “No, Marcus, you mustn’t! Wait till he’s gone, please!”

  “Nonsense. You’re not to move, do you hear?” And the next moment he had disappeared, leaving me trembling at the window with the feel of his kisses still on my mouth.

  With held breath I waited long minutes until, down to my left, I saw him emerge and make his way in the shadows of the building round the corner of the wing. After that everything happened at once. There was a scuffle, a muffled shout and then a dark figure vaulted lightly over the balustrade and disappeared into the darkness. Frozen with fear, I waited to see what had become of Marcus. It was endless minutes later that I saw him appear, and gave a little sob of relief. He came back slowly and I saw that he was limping. I turned and sped down the stairs, meeting him at the bottom.

  “Marcus, are you all right? What happened?”

  “He got away, blast him.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “Not much.” He put a hand up to the corner of his mouth and it came away dark with blood.

  “Let me bathe it for you.”

  “No need; I can manage. Have you got your bag and things?”

  “No, I just ran down –”

  “Get them, will you?” He leaned against the newel post breathing deeply while I hurried back up the stairs. The music was still playing and the cigarette he’d dropped in the ashtray when I had said I must go home still smouldered there. I grabbed my bag and fled from the room before its tentacles could reach out for me again.

  As I rejoined him he silently held out his hand for my key and went ahead of me into the flat. The bare boards in the hall were bleak and unwelcoming, but they were almost dry and the dusty smell of long unused heating met our nostrils. At least the atmosphere was warm. Swiftly Marcus went through every room, opening cupboard doors, bending to look under the bed. He tested the catches on all the windows and checked that the lock on the back door had not been tampered with. When at last he was satisfied, he turned towards me, but he was still not quite meeting my eyes. “Will you be all right here alone?”

  “Yes, quite, thank you.”

  “You wouldn’t rather I stayed? In the drawing room, naturally.”

  “I’ll be all right,” I repeated tremulously, “but can’t I at least bathe that cut for you?”

  “It’s nothing, I tell you. As long as you’re sure, then, I’ll go, but if you hear anything, anything at all, ring me and I’ll be here inside two minutes. The number’s 821 – got it?”

  “821,” I repeated mechanically. “Marcus, thank you so much for –”

  “Good night, Ginnie.” The door closed behind him on a final little click. I stood in the hall staring at it while the tears rained silently down my face. Then, wearily, I slid the bolt into position.

  Suppose, I thought suddenly, going into the bedroom, that I hadn’t been with Marcus but in my own flat when the intruder arrived? What would have happened then? The unaccustomed warmth from the radiator was soothing, but it didn’t prevent the shivering which had taken hold of me, rattling my teeth with a ferocity that was almost pain. Reaction, I told myself judderingly, from all the strains and stresses of the last week, and the emotional maelstrom with Marcus; but I couldn’t trust myself to think about Marcus yet; not about Marcus, nor Carl, and certainly not about the unwelcome visitor on the balcony. Zombie-like I moved through the routine of washing and undressing and, with the last ounce of my strength, slid thankfully into bed. I only just managed to reach out a grouping hand to switch off the lamp before sleep, swift, total and overwhelming, claimed me utterly.

  Chapter 11

  MARCUS phoned soon after ten the next morning. His voice was clipped and businesslike. “Everything all right? No further disturbances?”

  “Not a thing, but I slept so heavily it would have taken a lot to wake me.”

  “You’re lucky,” he said shortly. “Ginnie, about last night. I’m sorry if I embarrassed you; it won’t happen again.” He gave a brief laugh. “I imagine you’ll be careful in future not to leave your washing machine on. It can land you in deeper water than you realize!”

  I started to speak but his voice overrode mine. “The real reason I’m phoning is to let you know I’m going to report the incident to the police. I’m not prepared to accept the responsibility of it.”

  I said quickly, “Oh, Marcus, please don’t! Really, I’m sure it wasn’t as serious as you thought.”

  “It was enough to leave me with a stiff jaw and a wrenched ankle,” he said tightly, “which seems to me to go beyond the definition of playing games.”

  “I’m not trying to belittle what you did, I’m very grateful, but I honestly don’t think he would actually have hurt me. It’s a war of nerves, intimidation.” I hesitated. “Did you – were you able to get a glimpse of him?”

  “Not so much a glimpse as an impression. It certainly wasn’t one of the old fuddy-duddies from the park, I assure you. I wouldn’t have had any difficulty catching up with them. This was a young man, tall and strong and for some reason exceptionally anxious that I shouldn’t see his face – almost as though he thought he might be recognized.”

  Stephen, as I’d thought. The men in the park were probably just paid to sit there, without being told why. The more dubious occurrences, the doorbells and torch beams in the night, would have to be Stephen’s own responsibility. I couldn’t imagine what he hoped to gain by climbing on my balcony, unless it was merely stepping up the terror campaign. I was obviously proving harder to shake off than he’d hoped.

  Marcus’s voice broke in on my musings. “Ginnie, what the hell am I going to do with you? You won’t tell me what this is all about, you won’t let me go to the police. Suppose something does happen to you, that you’ve been underestimating them, whoever they are. How do you think I’d feel then?”

  “I’m hoping that it won’t go on much longer now, but there’s nothing the police could do except keep an eye on the place.”

  “At the moment I’d even settle for that. You’re not in trouble with them yourself, are you?” His voice had sharpened as the idea suddenly struck him.

  “No, of course not.”

  “Then I can’t see why you won’t let me contact them. Has anything like this ever happened before?”

  “Not exactly like this.”

  “What was it?”

  “My doorbell did ring once, in the middle of the night.” He swore under his breath. “And Carl knows you’re mixed up in all this?”

  “He knows,” I said bleakly and a little unfairly.

  “Well, I sure as hell wouldn’t allow you to be, in his place, but that’s neither here nor there. You do promise to contact me if you’re at all worried? You won’t let that episode last night stand in the way?”

  “I’ll contact you.”

  I went through to the drawing room with a cup of coffee and sat staring disconsolately out of the window. There was no man on the seat this morning. Perhaps, I thought fatuously, they don’t work on Sundays. I had a bizarre mental picture of an Intimidators’ Association complete with rules and union cards. Moira Francis’s two boys were kicking a ball about on the grass and there was a steady downward drift of yellow-brown leaves. In the flat above the whir of a vacuum cleaner rose and fell, creaking its way across my ceiling. It was Sunday morning. Everyone – almost everyone – was relaxing, or catching up with the housework or cooking the roast or going to church. But here and there dotted round the district were those for whom Sundays were no different from other days and offered no letup of tension – Etienne Lefevre, his kidnappers, myself.

  “Tell them she won’t pay,” Carl had instructed, but how could I? If I contacted them, even by the ignoble means of an anonymous telephone call, how would they react? They couldn’t know I had decided to do nothing, to let events take their course. They would probably imagine flocks of sirening police cars closing in, and they might be desperate enough to try to silence me more permane
ntly. Perhaps after all I was playing a more dangerous game than I realized. And yet I still balked from believing people I knew socially were capable of murder. Stephen was hard, devious, possibly even vicious, but surely no more, and Laurence, already riddled with doubts, was surely incapable of violence. But a frightened man could sometimes be more dangerous than a cool one, panic reactions couldn’t be gauged in advance. It was a temptation to let familiarity breed contempt, to go to Laurence and say, “Look, I know all about it but his mother’s not going to pay, so you might as well let him go.” Once again the stumbling block was having to convince them that proceedings would not be taken as soon as Etienne was free.

  Slowly the hours crawled by. The Francis boys went in for their lunch and later a young couple pushed a pram round the park. The Sunday afternoon film, muted from the set upstairs, provided a background hum to my perusal of the papers. Miserably I found myself wondering with which of our friends Carl would be spending the day. There would be no shortage of invitations. The usual shaft of pain twisted inside me. I was glad when at long last the time came for me to go to bed.

  The clarion of the telephone must have been going on for a long time. I lay listening to it as it wove itself neatly into my dreams, but at last its insistence forced me awake and I raced through to the hall and caught it up. “Hello? Yes?”

  I was met with silence: not the silence of a dead phone, nor of a holding line. Although I could not hear breathing, I was acutely, nerve-tinglingly aware that someone, somewhere, was at the other end of the line, waiting, listening. I dropped it back with a clatter and stood staring down at it, willing it not to ring again. Outside the wind lashed the branches and closer at hand the click of the cooling hall radiator brought my heart to my mouth. The seconds stretched into minutes. The smug black muzzle remained obstinately silent. Teeth chattering, I crept back to bed.

  Monday morning, and no job to go to. I almost wished I could go along to Culpepper’s as usual, even if it meant bearing with Rachel’s moods.

  After I had tidied the flat I drove into town and called at the secretarial bureau. “Oh yes, Miss Durrell, your three weeks with Culpepper’s are up, aren’t they? Now let’s see what we have that might interest you. You prefer to work for estate agents, don’t you?”

  “Not really,” I said carefully, and as she looked up, surprised, I added quickly, “If there’s nothing in that line, I’m quite happy to try something else.”

  Her long fingers continued expertly riffling through the card index. “I have a couple here that might appeal. There’s a vacancy for a receptionist-cum-secretary at the George Hotel, which could be quite interesting, or –”

  “I’ll try the George,” I said at once. It had been my first home in Westhampton and at least I knew Mrs. Baillie. I felt in need of familiar faces and surroundings at the moment.

  A few hours later I was installed behind the desk in the hall. My switch of employment had been accomplished swiftly and painlessly; I was duly grateful. Mrs. Baillie seemed pleased to see me and came over to welcome me to the staff. “By the way,” she continued a little awkwardly, “that was the Carl Clements, the actor, you were with the other evening, wasn’t it? I was almost sure, but it was such a surprise –”

  “Yes, it was,” I answered briefly.

  “How very exciting! I wonder – I don’t want to make a nuisance of myself, of course, but I’m on the committee of the Townswomen’s Guild this year. Would it – is there the remotest chance that he might agree to come and speak to us?”

  “I don’t know.” I was aware of sounding ungracious and added perfunctorily, “I could ask him if you like.” Obviously Mrs. Baillie had not witnessed my precipitate and dinnerless departure from the hotel on Thursday night.

  “Would you? I’d be so grateful. It would be wonderful to have a real celebrity like that!” My lack of response finally began to reach her and I could sense her disappointment in holding back all the questions she was longing to ask me. With a little murmur of thanks for my grudging offer, she reluctantly moved away.

  The morning passed in a whirl of phone calls, reservations and bookings. It was interesting to see all the different people who came through the swing doors, to note the varying places of residence they wrote in the visitors’ book. By lunchtime I was feeling perfectly at home and congratulating myself on my luck in finding the job. And then Marcus came pushing through the swing doors with the strange, shabby little man I had first seen him with. He saw me at once and hesitated, but I was dealing with a queue of people at the desk and he merely nodded and went through to the bar. Soon after that it was time for my lunch and I handed over to Jane, the girl I remembered from my brief stay at the hotel, and made my way downstairs to the staff dining room.

  It was as I came back up the stairs that I heard my name called and Marcus, alone now, came out of the grillroom where Carl and I had had our disastrous confrontation. “You do turn up in the most unexpected places!” he remarked with a smile.

  “So do you, and with the most unexpected people!”

  “Joe? He’s the foreman of one of the building firms I work with. If he can’t contact me at home, he tries here, knowing I usually drop in for a pre-lunch drink. I supervise the work on behalf of my clients and occasionally queries arise.” Wryly I remembered my dark suspicions about the unlikely alliance.

  “Are you all right, Ginnie? You look rather drawn.”

  “I had a disturbed night,” I said shortly.

  His hand gripped my arm. “Not our friend on the balcony again?”

  “No, a phone call. At two A.M.”

  He made an exclamation under his breath. “What happened?”

  “Nothing. No one spoke. How’s your ankle, by the way?”

  “All right if I don’t put too much weight on it. Ginnie, I don’t like this at all.”

  We had reached the hall. “I must go; I’m due back on duty.”

  “What time will you be home?”

  “About five-thirty, I should think.”

  “Right, I’ll call round for a few minutes then, if I may. I’ve just had an idea which might be worth considering.”

  I nodded and went back to the desk. Phone calls in the dark hours or not, I was determined to go to the theatre that evening and make a positive attempt to locate Etienne Lefevre.

  I was in the middle of preparing my evening meal when Marcus called and he followed me into the kitchen and sat down at the table, accepting the glass of sherry I had poured ready for him.

  “What’s this idea you mentioned?” I asked, turning down the light under the vegetable pan.

  “Simply this. You sleep in my flat and I’ll sleep here.”

  I turned sharply and stared at him.

  “Look, honey, whatever you might say, I think you’re in danger. I still feel I ought to get in touch with the police, but you’re so set against it, so this seems a good way round it. No one will know about the arrangement, of course. We make the switch after dark and again early in the morning, before anyone’s around, so we’re back in our own flats for breakfast. You’ll be quite safe up there and I’ll be on hand to deal with any funny little games they might try.”

  I said awkwardly, “Marcus, I can’t let you do all this for me. You’ve already had your face bruised and twisted your ankle. Suppose you get really hurt next time?”

  “I thought you insisted there was no real danger?”

  “I don’t really think there is, but I suppose there’s always the possibility.”

  “Exactly,” he replied grimly, “and rather me than you. Don’t worry, I can take care of myself now that I have their measure. What do you say, shall we try it?”

  The thought of Marcus’s flat, safely away from creeping footsteps and balconied windows, was irresistible. “If you’re sure you don’t mind.”

  “That’s fine, we can put it into effect straightaway. I’ll go back and change the sheets and things. You stay here till I come and I’ll see you safely up to my flat. What t
ime would suit you?”

  “Well, I have to go to the theatre tonight, so –”

  He frowned. “Again?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “What time will you get back?”

  “It shouldn’t be long after ten.” Provided no one finds me prowling in the passages. I gave an involuntary little shudder and his eyes narrowed.

  “Ginnie, is it something to do with the theatre, all this business?”

  I didn’t reply and he went on softly, “Of course! I should have guessed before. You’ve been spending nearly all your time there.” He sipped his drink, his eyes still intent on my face. “Then I’d better come with you. It’s certainly not safe for you to go alone.”

  “Marcus, it’s sweet of you, but no. I must go by myself. There’s something I have to find out.”

  “Can’t I help you?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “I wish I could get my hands on that husband of yours!” he said with sudden violence. “When I think of the calm way he sits back and lets you take all these risks –”

  “No,” I said again, and my voice wasn’t steady. “He’s no idea that I might be in danger. You have to believe that.”

  “How can I believe it? He knows you’re here, that –”

  “He thinks,” I said clearly, “that I’m one of them.”

  Marcus looked at me blankly. “One of who? The crowd who is trying to scare you?”

  “Yes. It’s too long a story to go into now, but I couldn’t let you go on thinking that about Carl.”

  “Damn Carl!” he said in a low voice. “Whatever he knows or doesn’t know, damn him just the same!”

  I smiled crookedly. “Yes. Well, anyway –”

  “All right, so I’m not even to be allowed to go to the theatre with you. One thing I will insist on, though. You’re not to take your car round to the garage when you get back. Leave it at the door and when I’ve seen you into my flat I’ll go and put it away.”