Tour de Force

by Christianna Brand

  Meanwhile, reunited, the Helpless Ones drew together as never before. Il Grouppa took possession of the beach and made all hideous with British bathing cries; the seven poor suspects conducted an emergency meeting among the pines.

  Detective Inspector Cockrill made a short speech. He said that from this moment on, it was every man for himself and what the French called sorve qui pert. One of six persons – seven if they liked to count him in, and they were welcome to – was a murderer. He, Cockie, was not going back to that dungeon to save the neck of any murderer; and he was not going to let anyone else go. No innocent person should end up in the Barrequitas gaol if he could help it; if he could help it, the guilty should not end there either, but come back to England and there stand a fair trial and have a fair chance. ‘But that’s all the mercy he’ll get from me,’ said Cockie. ‘From this moment I’m against him: whichever of you six people it is. And if you’ve got any sense, you’ll be against him too. Whatever you may think of the rights and wrongs of murdering a blackmailer – if she was a blackmailer – the fact remains that by letting the blame fall on the innocent, the killer is a danger to us all. I’ll help you all I can; but you’ll have to help me. And I give you fair warning, that my neck isn’t out of the noose yet, not by a long chalk; and I’m going to do everything I possibly can to find out the true murderer, and protect myself.’ He sat down abruptly on the intricately pebble-patterned seat in a little clearing in the pine trees, and took out his tobacco. They were silent, sitting on the pine-needled ground in a ring round his feet like children listening to a bedtime story; but the story was too grim for children at bedtime and they were startled and shocked at the cold vehemence in his voice. Into the anxious silence, he repeated it. ‘This isn’t funny, not a bit; and man, woman, or child, I’ll get whichever of you six people is the murderer. I’ll go back to that place for no one. I warn you now.’

  ‘Yes. But Inspector Cockrill,’ said Leo Rodd, ‘taking as read that we don’t for one moment suppose that you are the murderer – you did, yourself, give the Gerente an alibi for all the rest of us. And it was true. We were there, you could see us all. You said you had thought it over carefully …’

  ‘I have thought it all over a great deal more carefully since,’ said Cockie, ‘and it only goes to show that one should not work to preconceived notions of things. When I wanted none of you to be guilty, I soon convinced myself, quite sincerely, that none of you could be guilty, that I could give you an alibi. Now I want one of you to be guilty, and I can clearly see that none of you had an alibi after all.’

  Except one. One of them had an alibi; and at the bottom of his arid old heart, he knew that he was glad of it. For there was, in Louli Barker, that quality which in these young creatures always had power to move him – that quality of gaiety and courage, hiding under however garish an exterior, a humble and deeply vulnerable heart. He was glad that she had an alibi; had slept through the long, sun-drenched afternoon, lying at his feet with her red head pillowed on her arms. Louli Barker was Out. For the rest of them, it was definitely sorve qui pert.

  Chapter Eight

  THERE is no room on the island of San Juan el Pirata for a burial-ground. For some decades, this constituted a drawback in its amenities, but at last the inhabitants were made happy by the discovery of a current which could be relied upon to deposit a corpse – in not less than five days from its launching – upon the Ligurian shore; and, thus delicately blackmailed, Italy agreed to cede a plot of ground just north of Piombino, complete with landing-stage. Here the Juanese built a high wall in the Moorish fashion still prevalent in Spain, pitted with narrow recesses like overlong bread ovens, where the dead might be popped, head first, to bake slowly away into nothingness, decently sealed in with the paraphernalia of Christian piety. The little Vaporetto del Muerte plies between Barrequitas and the landing-stage, exquisitely gloomy in dingy black and silver and all a-flutter with purple drapery and ostrich feather plumes. By this means, on the second day after her doing to death, Vanda Lane of St John’s Wood, London, was taken – weather not only permitting but insisting – to her last resting-place.

  Telegrams had been exchanged between Inspector Cockrill and Scotalanda Yarda, to the infinite astonishment of the Gerente who appeared to regard the whole thing as a species of witchcraft; but so far nothing was known of close friends or relatives of the dead girl. A considerable company, however, followed her coffin, inappropriately gay in their summer holiday clothes; and stood with muffled curiosity among the sentinel cypresses while Mother Church, on the off-chance that this might be one of her children, conditionally performed the last rites. Mr Cecil, half hidden behind a cypress and hardly less sorrowfully dark in trappings of full Juanese mourning bought for the occasion and really too amusingly chic for words, scribbled away in his sketch book with ostentatious surreptitiousness and confided to Louvaine that probably this was the best turn La Lane had ever done to anyone in her life.….

  ‘Only it’s in her death,’ said Louli.

  Louvaine, also, was tremendously decorative that day, in a skirt of bold patchwork lined with scarlet and a scarlet blouse to match, that nobody else in the world would have dared to wear with that hair. ‘I think one should go a bit gay at funerals,’ she confided to Miss Trapp, who caught up with her as they trailed along the dusty white road back to the landing-stage. ‘I know I shan’t want people going around in black when I die, folding their hands and looking piously down their noses …’

  Miss Trapp stifled any inclination to say that she thought the chances of Louli’s friends observing the proprieties at her obsequies, were remote. She said instead that, as she found Miss Barker alone – so difficult usually, she was always so surrounded by – er – friends – she would be glad of a word with her. ‘Miss Barker, I wish to ask you a question, straight out.’

  ‘A question,’ said Louvaine, looking round rather desperately for one or any of the doubtful friends.

  ‘Yes, a question. Miss Barker – that day, while we were watching Miss Lane diving (poor creature, this is all so dreadful, one can hardly believe it, even yet!) – you – you mentioned that you had been in one of those bathing cabins some of the time …’

  The road was long and straight, bordered with depressed villas in hideous shades of burnt siena and arsenic green and a crude rose-pink. The heads of the straggling procession were dappled with the flickering shade from the laced branches of the bordering trees. ‘I was in one of the cabins, yes, fixing my bathing dress.’

  ‘That would be while – while Mr Fernando and I were talking? The others had gone on down to the beach by then.’

  ‘I didn’t hear what you were saying, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘But, Miss Barker –’

  ‘You were standing quite a little way from me, Miss Trapp, the other side of the steps from the top terrace. I wasn’t eavesdropping, I do assure you; I heard nothing.’

  Miss Trapp’s nervous hand fidgeted on the handle of the brown bag. She wore yet another of her expensive silk dresses, which surely had never been designed to have a V neck. ‘Yet you told the Inspector that Miss Lane was blackmailing me.’

  ‘I told him she spoke to you when she came back up to the top of the rock, after her first dive.’

  ‘You could hear that too?’ said Miss Trapp with an edge to her voice.

  ‘I couldn’t hear any of it. Mr Fernando had started off down the path and she said something to you as she passed you; but I didn’t hear what it was and so I told the Inspector.’

  ‘Well, all she said to me was, “The tide’s on the turn.”’

  ‘That doesn’t sound very blackmailing,’ agreed Louli.

  ‘That is what she said,’ declared Miss Trapp firmly.

  ‘O.K., well, that’s splendid. Just tell the Inspector that that’s what she said, and then don’t fuss any more.’

  ‘I have told the Inspector,’ said Miss Trapp. ‘He replies that you told him I went white and gave a startled exclamation.�
�

  Louvaine had actually reported that La Trapp had gone mud-grey and let out a great squawk. She did not labour this distinction, however. ‘I had only just opened a crack of the door, Miss Trapp, and peeked through, and I saw Miss Lane say something to you. I do hope you realize,’ said Louvaine a little anxiously, ‘why I told inspector Cockrill all this? It was only to protect you: it was before the murder happened that I told him, you know. She tried the same thing on me a moment later. I told the Inspector about me and about you at the same time.’

  ‘But there was nothing to tell.’

  ‘All right, then there wasn’t,’ said Louli. ‘In view of the fact that she started in on me one minute later, perhaps I was only being wise after the event and imagining that you sort of cried out. Mr Fernando came back up the path and asked you what was the matter …’

  ‘He did not ask me what was the matter He merely turned back to see if I was coming; Mr Fernando has good manners,’ said Miss Trapp, tossing her head in its depressing brown straw.

  ‘Well, all right, he didn’t ask you what was the matter,’ said Louli, getting cross. ‘I don’t see why you should be in a state about it, anyway. Anyone would think I’d accused you of murdering the woman.’

  Miss Trapp went mud-grey once more. ‘I was on the beach while she was being murdered. I could not have been anywhere near her.’

  Louvaine was hot and weary, the white dust kicked up through the open straps of her sandals, unpleasantly dry and scrunchy beneath her toes, the red hair hung hot and heavy about her white neck. She said irritably that that was not what Inspector Cockrill believed: he had said that, after all, any of them had had opportunity to kill. ‘You could have gone up the path by the rock …’

  ‘I was on the beach during the entire afternoon. Inspector Cockrill could see me there.’

  ‘He could see an enclosure of towels and beach umbrellas,’ said Louli. ‘You needn’t have been inside it, after all! You’d built it right up against the diving rock, you could have chosen that place on purpose, you know; you were better placed than anyone for going up to her room, you only had to skip along the bottom of the rock, up the steep little path in the corner where it joins the terrace, and so on up through the jasmine terrace and all the rest of it; and scuttle down again.’ Mr Cecil overtook them, exquisite in his tapering black satin trousers and billowing black cotton blouse, tucking away the sketches in his red attaché case as he walked. ‘Oh, Cecil, do come here and rescue me! Miss Trapp’s being so cross because I’m supposed to have told Cockrill that La Lane was blackmailing her, when all the time it turns out she was only remarking chattily that the tide was on the turn.’

  ‘Hardly an observation to have made me turn pale,’ suggested Miss Trapp with heavy irony.

  ‘Oh, but. my dear, I couldn’t agree less.’ said Mr Cecil. promptly. ‘Too pale making for words! I mean, whatever can she have meant?’

  ‘Have meant?’ said Miss Trapp, beginning to falter.

  ‘But the Mediterranean, dear: no tides,’ said Mr Cecil.

  ‘Drinks, of course, were available on the Vaporetto del Muerte and might be taken with great wedges of pizza, rich with garlic and onion and tomato and waxy, melted cheese, to the accompaniment of mournful music played by an ordinarily cheerful small brass band. Helen Rodd, who seemed to find some ease of spirit in the cool, impersonal, heartless friendliness of Mr Cecil, joined him at one of the little tables and accepted an Americano. Leo Rodd left them and went and leaned over the rail at the stern of the boat, looking out over the scummy white wash slashing the shining blue silk of the still sea. Louvaine, joining him there, repeated her remark about going gay to funerals, leaning on the rail beside him trying surreptitiously to touch his hand. ‘I mean, I think one should wear something not too depressing.’

  ‘So I see,’ he said rather coldly, and he moved his hand away from hers. ‘Damn it, darling – not now!’

  She whipped away her own hand as though it had been stung and once again there came to her face that look of sorrowful foreboding that had come to it when he had snubbed her on the evening of Vanda Lane’s death. ‘Oh, Leo …’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But the woman’s dead. We’ve just left her, lying there all alone, and I do think we might have some thought for her, just a little pity. Nobody with her but a pack of strangers, poor wretched woman, not a soul who loved her.’

  She gave a little shrug. ‘Oh, well – as to that, I don’t think you need really worry.’

  ‘Not worry?’ he said, roughly. ‘What do you mean?’

  She was frightened again. ‘I only mean – well, you go on and on about nobody loving her: what does it matter, she’s dead now, why should you care?’

  He thumped with his one hand on the painted black wooden rail. ‘My God, Louvaine – not you too! Not you too – jealous and possessive, fighting off even a kind word for another woman: and a dead woman at that! For God’s sake, I didn’t care two hoots for the girl, I don’t care whether anyone loved her or not, I dare say no one did, she was an unlovable creature at the best of times. I only Say that she lies there now, alone in a grave in an alien land – don’t you think she’s just to be pitied a little for that?’

  The wind lifted the heavily-curling mass of red hair, swept it back from the face that was suddenly no longer the face of his gay and lovely love but the face of a stranger, only dimly to be recognized. Once again, as on the first evening that he had known her, the great blue eyes were abrim with unshed tears. ‘Pitied?’ she said. ‘No, I don’t think she’s very much to be pitied. She’s dead, and I’m alive – but sometimes I think I envy her, with all my soul.’ She waited: but he was not looking at her, he was examining the palm of his hand where he had whacked it down on the wooden rail. He said, absently: ‘I’m sorry … I seem to have picked up a splinter. Just a second …’ He went over to the café bar, and she saw him hold out his upturned hand, like a child, to his wife.

  She turned and walked away, along the dirty decks, among the plumes and the beaded wreaths, the tarnished silver and the mourning draperies, past the garish uniforms of the funeral band; and stumbled as she went.

  Chapter Nine

  LUNCH on the terrace that afternoon was not a very festive affair. The exculpated tourists were to continue their itinerary next morning, in the care of a new guide who had been deflected from another tour after much to and fro cabling between Gibraltar and England; and already their minds were filled with apprehension as to whether the canals of Venice would smell and what would happen if they failed to have their baggage outside their doors the next morning at seven-thirty, as required. Several of the guests who were to have filled their vacated rooms had heard of events in San Juan and, apparently assuming murder a natural hazard of holidaying there, had cancelled their bookings; and the hotel management, though they had easily filled the rooms up with ‘chance trade’, were not pleased with Odyssey Tours. Mr Fernando, of course, remained behind with his helpless ones, and appeared by no means elated at the prospect; his eye was shifty and he wore a hangdog air. Louli Barker was white and silent, Leo Rodd ominously black-browed and his wife alert and anxious; Miss Trapp was altogether absent, having declared her intention of going to lie down, not obviously comforted by Mr Cecil’s reminder that this had proved in the past to be not necessarily the safest thing to do. Only Cecil himself was up to scratch socially, twittering away to Inspector Cockrill over espressos on the terrace, ticking off on tapering white fingers intriguing points against Miss Trapp. ‘A Christophe client, Inspector, but I don’t recognize her, never seen her in one’s life, I do assure you. Shopped by proxy, perhaps, but then why? If one’s not coming in oneself for fittings, why come to a couturier?’ Under such circumstances, said Mr Cecil, blenching at the bare thought of it, one might as well simply get things off the peg. ‘And then why go all funny when I recognized her hat?’ He considered it. ‘Mind you, it’s a very old hat.’

  Cockie sat perched on the wide balustrade of the terrac
e, with his coffee cup beside him, swinging his short legs, his back to the sea. ‘Is it? How old?’

  ‘Well, but I mean, my dear – roses: three seasons ago, it gives one the actual date. And come to think,’ said Cecil, ‘everything she’s got is at least three years out of fashion. It’s odd. She goes to the big houses, she spends a lot; but she gets nothing new for at least three years. Now, why?’

  ‘Perhaps she can no longer afford to,’ suggested Cockie.

  Mr Cecil cradled the shallow coffee cup in his long white hands. ‘It might be. Everything she has is madly expensive – but old. Of course some people like things like that, we have lots of old drears who think it’s not chic to be smart.’ He went off into a whinney of high-pitched laughter. ‘Oh, dear – not chic to be smart! – I do think that’s rather good!’

  ‘Miss Trapp still lives in Park Lane.’

  ‘Can’t get rid of the lease, dear. Or wants to keep up appearances till the last ditch. Hoping and hoping that something may turn up.’

  ‘Such as a husband?’ suggested Inspector Cockrill.

  ‘A husband!’ He put down the cup with a rattle in its saucer. ‘A rich woman, Inspector, rich and lonely but not minding being lonely because of being rich. But something goes wrong, she begins to take fright about her money; and while it still lasts, she decides to go forth and use what’s left to get herself a husband.’ But, to be honest, it did not sound like Miss Trapp. ‘Or a husband just comes along …’