It was almost an hour before in fact the three of them returned.
“What’s the news?” I asked quickly, looking fearfully at their white, strained faces.
“She’s having an emergency operation now. We’re to ring the hospital in an hour.” It was Carl who had answered. Marcus nodded to me to produce the coffee, but my hand was shaking so much that a lot of it went into the saucers.
“We came down here yesterday morning,” Stephen began jerkily, as though knowing the time for explanations could no longer be delayed. “Rachel was sure Ginnie suspected about Lefevre. This was just to be a temporary hideout till we had time to work out what to do. I had to go straight back to be in time for the matinée. I’m not in the next production and I was going to come back to join her tomorrow. What with the party last night I didn’t feel like making the journey today. I wish to God I had, though.” His voice shook. “They said at the hospital she’d been unconscious for over twenty-four hours. He must have attacked her and got away almost as soon as I left. God, I thought we’d made it once we got here; the journey was a nightmare. I kept thinking he’d try to attract attention or something, but the gun must have done the trick.”
Suzanne said ringingly, “How could you do it, both of you? What on earth possessed you to kidnap him in the first place?”
Laurence said heavily, “The short answer to that is jealousy. That and greed, and the desire for revenge. It’s hard to credit it, looking back, but it was all done on the spur of the moment. We regretted it almost immediately but it was already too late.”
“How did you find out?” Suzanne asked in a whisper.
“I happened to be driving back along the Amesbury road and saw you both go into the Picardy. You must admit that was pretty conclusive.”
“And you told Stephen?” she demanded incredulously.
“In a manner of speaking. In point of fact I went straight home and got very drunk. Stephen came round to see why I didn’t show up at the theatre for a meeting that afternoon. I was pretty far gone by then and blurted the whole thing out. At the time he just concentrated on sobering me up in time for the performance, but he came to my dressing room after it was over.”
Stephen eyed us belligerently. “All right, I admit I was the chief instigator. I just didn’t see why Lefevre should get away with it.”
“Go on,” said Carl coldly.
“Well, the theatre was in dire financial straits as usual and when Etienne had been with us he’d never stopped going on about all the money his mother had. To be fair, he brought quite a sheaf of it down once, to repay us for –” He broke off, plainly wondering how much we knew.
“For smuggling him into the country,” Carl finished for him.
Stephen flushed uncomfortably. “Yes. Well, anyway, we knew he’d no money of his own – that was obvious – and we also knew his mother would be unlikely to pay for the privilege of his being with Suzanne. But we did think she’d be prepared to fork out if his actual life seemed to be in danger, and what’s more, under the circumstances she wouldn’t have dared to go to the police. It seemed foolproof. We thought it would all be over in a couple of days. In the meantime we could hide him out in the theatre and Rachel could be called on to provide food. Best of all, we knew that even when we let him go, he couldn’t report us for obvious reasons.”
“What we hadn’t reckoned on,” Laurence put in heavily, “was that she wouldn’t believe our note was genuine. At least, we imagined it must be that because she ignored it completely. Then we really were in a mess.”
“One of you went to the Picardy to collect him?” Marcus prompted.
“Yes. We knew that Suzanne would make enquiries there, so it had to look as though he’d left voluntarily. The next morning Laurence kept her out of the way –”
“Of course!” Suzanne broke in. “That new outfit you suddenly insisted I needed for the third act!”
“– and I went to the hotel and told him Suzanne wanted to see him urgently at the theatre. He went with me like a lamb, but things started to go wrong straightaway. There was that foul-up of the phone call.” His eyes moved to my face. “It was you who took it, wasn’t it?” I nodded. “And of course Rachel’s accident meant I had to see to him all the time. On top of that, the note brought forth nothing whatever and to cap it all Ginnie here kept turning up with her big, innocent eyes and guileless questions.”
“So you tried to frighten me off,” I said steadily.
“Yes, phone calls and Sam and Teddy in the park. But you didn’t frighten easily, did you?” He glanced at Marcus. “I presume it was you I tangled with on the balcony? Sorry about the left hook.”
“What were you doing there, anyway?”
“I was only going to force the window open. I wouldn’t have touched her.” He turned to Carl. “I hope you believe that.”
“Go on,” Carl instructed grimly.
“I imagine you know all the rest.” He looked at our faces in frightened defiance. “Well, what are you going to do about it? Nothing that I’ve told you can be proved in any way and naturally Laurence and I will deny everything.”
“What I don’t understand,” Marcus said, leaning forward to put his coffee cup down, “is why, since the ransom note obviously wasn’t going to work, you didn’t simply give up and let him go.”
“It’s easy to be logical now,” Laurence said bitterly. “Of course that’s what we should have done, and actually what we were finally going to do, tomorrow, in sheer desperation.”
“But why hang on so long? In case his mother finally gave way after all?”
“Partly that; we felt time might be on our side and the strain would eventually begin to tell. And also” – Laurence’s eyes flicked to his wife and away again – “releasing him would mean he was free to go back to Suzanne. He’d tell her the whole story and she would probably have gone off with him and become as much a fugitive as he was. I couldn’t risk that until I’d no alternative.” Suzanne’s eyes had filled with tears. Ignoring the rest of us, he turned to her. “Darling, I’m sorry, I know these last few weeks have been hell for you, but believe me they have for me too. Let him go. It would be an impossible life for you, always only one jump ahead of the police.”
We all waited motionless for her reply but she merely shook her head and covered her face with her hands. Obviously the spell of Etienne Lefevre was not broken yet.
Stephen’s voice was loud in the stillness, making me jump. “It’s almost time to ring the hospital. Where’s the nearest phone, Laurence?”
Laurence wrenched his eyes away from Suzanne’s bent head. “At the bottom of the hill. I’ll come with you.”
This time no one suggested that they might not return. It didn’t seem to matter, anyway. The rest of us waited in almost total silence and in fifteen minutes they were back.
“The operation was a success, apparently, but they won’t really be able to gauge her chances for another few hours yet.” Stephen wiped his hand across his face. “I’ll stay down here, of course, but there’s nothing to keep the rest of you. Laurence left his name in case the police want to contact him. Is there anything else the police have to know?” His pathetic attempt at a challenge made me wonder how I had ever been frightened of him. Carl shook his head for the rest of us. “Right, then you might as well be going. I’m sorry to have caused all this trouble. If it’s any comfort, I’m paying for it now.”
Nobody replied. Laurence went over and put his hand gently on Suzanne’s shoulder. She looked up, her face dazed. “He might come back here. Perhaps I should stay –”
“This is the last place he’ll come,” Stephen said shortly. “For all he knows, he could have killed Rachel. It’s my bet he’s miles away by now, probably on the way back to Mama.”
I met Carl’s startled glance. “God, I never thought of that. We’d better stop at that phone box ourselves and warn her. He could have arrived there hours ago.”
Laurence helped Suzanne to her feet and she al
lowed him to lead her to the door. Stephen’s eyes, brooding and unreadable, followed them. At the door Laurence turned and addressed Carl. “It may sound trite, but would you pass on my very sincere apologies to Madame Lefevre and thank her for not taking things any further. I can promise you we’ve all learned our lesson. I just hope to God Rachel –” He bit his lip, glanced at Stephen and away again and, his arm still round Suzanne, went out of the house.
Marcus said quietly, “If you don’t mind, I’ll stay with Stephen. I don’t think he should be alone. I’ll phone you in the morning with any news.”
Stephen said with difficulty, “There’s no need –”
“I’d like to.”
“Then thank you.” He turned away abruptly, the unexpected act of kindness too much for his already shaken control.
Carl stood up. “Ready then, Ginnie?”
Marcus said to me, “If I don’t see you again –”
“You will,” I interrupted quickly. “I’ll be in Westhampton at least till the end of the week. Good night, Marcus, and thank you.”
He nodded and I went with Carl out into the strong sea wind. It was just after ten-thirty. At this time yesterday I had been sitting outside the London flat waiting for Carl’s return. A traumatic twenty-four hours. We stopped at the call box at the bottom of the hill and Carl phoned Madame. “She hasn’t heard a thing,” he told me as he came back to the car. “Poor soul, she doesn’t know what to think now, and of course she’s extremely concerned about Rachel, though I didn’t tell her how badly hurt she is.”
“Do you think she’ll live?” I asked fearfully.
“I suppose it depends on the brain damage. She could be in a coma for weeks; you hear of such things.”
I must have slept on the way home, for I remember little of the journey. Fortunately even without Suzanne and Marcus to guide him, Carl managed to find the right road and it was just after midnight when we arrived back at the Beeches. I directed him round to the garage and we walked back with the help of the torch he had taken to the theatre hours before. The days of fear, of looking back over my shoulder, were finished. Never again should I have to walk home through the dark alone.
It was as we sat in the minute, sun-filled kitchen over breakfast the next morning that the final piece of the jigsaw fell neatly into place. The current affairs program on the radio had been providing a background to our desultory conversation and it was pure chance that the vital words happened to fall into a pause in our talking.
“Southampton police say that a man is helping with their enquiries into the holdup of an off-license in the area on Saturday evening, in which the manager was knocked unconscious. They are examining the possibility of a link between this attack and that on a woman in a remote cottage outside Lymington the same evening. The woman, Miss Rachel Derbyshire, aged twenty-six, was discovered by her brother last night and rushed to hospital where she underwent an emergency operation. Police have named the man as Etienne Lefevre, a Frenchman who escaped from St. Luc prison last July. It is not yet known how he managed to enter this country, as he insists he has neither friends nor relatives here. The French police have applied for an extradition order. If anyone has any information which might shed a light on Lefevre’s movements during the last three months, the number to ring is –”
Carl reached over and switched off the set. “Well, well,” he said softly, “all in all, it’s the best thing that could happen, certainly for Laurence and Madame anyway.”
“If Rachel dies, he’ll be on a murder charge,” I reminded him. The phone shrilled in the hall. “That’ll be Marcus now.” There was a hard lump of apprehension in my chest.
“I’ll go.” Carl went through and I could hear him relaying the news we had just heard. Slowly I pushed back my chair and went to the doorway, leaning against the frame and staring down at the green carpet.
Carl replaced the phone. “All right, honey, you can go to work now with an easy mind. Rachel has regained consciousness and it looks as though she’s going to pull through. I’ll drive you to the George and then come back and phone Madame and the Greys.”
On the familiar journey through the streets of Westhampton, my mind revolved round the happenings of the last weeks, the people I had met and the situations that had arisen. If I hadn’t found Carl with Leonie, would the fate of Etienne, Rachel, Suzanne, have been any different? It was impossible to unravel all the threads, to pick out one which could have altered the pattern of the events that followed.
“Here we are.” Carl pulled up outside the hotel and leaned across to kiss me. “Don’t worry any more, sweetheart. Everything will be all right now. I’ll come back and join you for lunch.”
I nodded and watched him drive away with a wave of his hand. Then I turned and walked slowly up the steps of the George, which, I reflected with a slight smile, just about brought me round full circle.
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