by Clara Benson
‘Well, now you know what she meant, anyhow,’ said Angela.
‘Yes,’ he said with a grimace. ‘Next time I shall take her more seriously.’
‘There, we’re all done,’ said Angela, and straightened up. ‘Well, it’s a pretty story, I suppose.’ She was in two minds as to whether or not to believe a word of it, since he had told her similar stories in the past which had turned out to be misleading, to say the least. She did not like him very much when he talked so carelessly of these things, and at that moment was glad that they had been interrupted in the garden, even though she would not herself have chosen that particular sort of interruption.
‘You’ve gone all cool again,’ he observed. ‘I’m sorry it offends you, Angela.’
‘I’m afraid it does,’ she said. ‘I can’t help it.’
‘I suppose you think I ought to retire,’ he said.
‘It’s nothing to do with me.’
‘Oh, but it has everything to do with you.’
‘I told you before,’ she said. ‘Your conscience is your own affair. I won’t be held responsible for it.’
‘Then you’re very unusual,’ he said. ‘Most women would jump at the chance to reform a sinner.’
‘Not I,’ said Angela emphatically. ‘I know to my own cost that it’s a waste of time even to try.’
She saw him regarding her curiously and looked away.
‘Did your husband make you very unhappy?’ he said at last.
‘He did, rather,’ she replied, busying herself with the discarded bandages so he would not see her face. ‘Still, I suppose it was partly my own fault: I married the man after all—no-one forced me to do it. I can’t even claim I wasn’t in my right mind at the time, as I knew perfectly well what I was doing.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You don’t deserve to be treated badly.’
She waved his words away and turned to put the bandages on a nearby table, on which one or two letters and bits of paper lay.
‘Oh!’ she said in surprise, as she saw what was on top of the pile. It was the little sketch of her done by Jack Lomax.
‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘I got that off him and I was going to get it framed for you, but I haven’t had the opportunity yet.’
She picked up the drawing and looked at it thoughtfully for some time without speaking.
‘What is it?’ he said.
‘It’s very nice,’ she said after a pause, ‘but I should say it flatters me.’
‘Do you think so?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He’s given me much too pretty a nose. It ought to be longer—all the better for sticking into other people’s business.’
She glanced at him slyly.
‘Did I say that?’ he said. ‘I do apologize. I was very angry with you, wasn’t I?’
‘Yes, well,’ she said. ‘I was angry enough myself. Perhaps it’s better for all concerned that we forget what happened last night.’
‘I’ll forget the row with pleasure,’ he said, ‘but I won’t forget the rest. Please say you won’t either.’
She met his gaze.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Of course I won’t.’
There was a short pause.
‘Can’t we try again, Angela?’ he said. ‘You could leave the hotel and hide with me up here until you go back to England. No-one would ever know. It would be our little secret.’
She could not help laughing.
‘I must say, I have to admire the sheer impudence of a man who can attempt seduction from his sick-bed shortly after taking a bullet in the side,’ she said. ‘And in return for that I won’t put on a display of outraged modesty at the suggestion.’
‘Thank heavens for that,’ he said. ‘But I take it the answer is no.’
‘It is,’ she said. ‘I am going back to Stresa shortly, and this time I should like you to keep your promise to stay away until I leave. It ought to be easy enough, since you’re not exactly in the fittest state at present.’
He looked down at the bedclothes.
‘Very well,’ he said after a moment. ‘You have my word. I won’t bother you any more. I’ll keep away from you and you’ll go back to England and we’ll never see each other again.’
Angela’s heart gave a treacherous thump at this, but she ignored it.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘It’s for the best.’
‘I expect it is,’ he said. He glanced at her. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I’ve always been in the habit of seeing what I want and taking it, but I can’t do that with you, can I?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Some things are not for the taking.’
‘And yet I’ve never wanted anything more,’ he said softly.
Angela stared determinedly at the floor. She would not look into his eyes, for she was afraid of the effect they might have on her.
‘Very well, then,’ he went on at last, in much more like his usual manner. ‘I shall leave you to return home and no doubt be claimed by a better and a duller man.’
‘No fear of that,’ she said. ‘No, I shall be perfectly happy on my own. As you have no doubt deduced, I seem to be afflicted with a constitutional weakness for men who are very bad for me, and so I’ve rather sworn off all that kind of thing. Last night you caught me off guard, but I won’t be taken like that again.’
‘You talk as though it were a deliberate move on my part,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t, I assure you. You took me by surprise just as much as I did you.’
‘Well, no matter,’ she said, for she wanted to bring an end to the subject. ‘Now,’ she went on briskly, ‘I shall have to take your car, I’m afraid. You can have the people at the hotel return it to you later. You won’t be needing it for a few days anyway.’
‘You’re going to cut quite a dash, strolling into the place wearing a blood-stained evening-dress first thing on a Sunday morning,’ he remarked.
She looked down at herself in dismay.
‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘You’re right—look at the state of me. I shall probably attract all kinds of unpleasant attention. But it’s still early, so with any luck things will be quiet when I get there. Otherwise I expect I shall have to climb in through a window or hide until nightfall.’
‘I’d lend you something, but I don’t tend to keep a supply of women’s clothes here,’ he said. ‘I shall know better in future, naturally.’
‘No need for that,’ she said. ‘Unless you’re planning to get shot again, of course.’
‘I’ll try most things once,’ he said, ‘but I think once was quite enough in this case.’
She cleared the old bandages away and returned to find him looking tired again.
‘You’d better get some more sleep,’ she said. ‘In fact, I should advise you to stay in bed for a few days at least. You were lucky enough this time, but bullet wounds are not to be taken lightly—even minor ones.’
‘So you really are leaving me,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I am.’
‘Then shake hands before you go,’ he said.
They did so, formally.
‘Goodbye, Angela,’ he said.
He seemed inclined to keep hold of her hand. She withdrew it gently.
‘Goodbye, Edgar,’ she said. ‘Be good.’
‘I’m not sure I can remember how,’ he said.
He looked so rueful and forlorn that Angela was forced to bolt out of the room before he began to work on her sympathy. The car was standing where they had left it the night before. She got in, turned it with some difficulty and set off back to Stresa.
TWENTY-THREE
The day was dull and overcast, but Angela hardly noticed the weather as she drove the short distance back to Stresa, lost in her own thoughts. Being a sensible woman not generally prone to excessive sentimentality, she congratulated herself on her success in having escaped from an extremely awkward situation with at least some—although certainly not all—of her dignity intact. Clearly, it was quite impossible for her to continue to have any
sort of association with Edgar Valencourt, and she was pleased with herself for her strength of purpose in having acknowledged the fact and acted upon it promptly—or at least she knew she ought to be pleased with herself, but something that she recognized to her annoyance as a sharp twinge of regret would keep on nagging at her and puncturing her complacency. From there it was an easy step to feeling cross with him again, and within a very short interval her thoughts had revolved in so many directions that by the time she turned back onto the lake-front she could not have said whether she was happy, sad, angry or merely rather puzzled.
As she approached the hotel she forced her thoughts away from Valencourt and turned her attention to other matters. The important thing now was to resolve her current predicament, which was how to get to her room without attracting attention, for she really did look quite dreadfully disreputable. It was just after eight, and she hoped that most people would be either at breakfast or still in bed. Rather than walk in through the front door, she decided to try and creep in through the quieter side entrance, and accordingly stopped the car as near to it as she could. She looked down at her pale-green evening-dress, which was blood-stained in several places, and wished fervently she had worn something darker last night. Still, it was too late now: she would just have to make a run for it and hope for the best.
She waited until the coast was clear, then alighted from the car and hurried up the path, but immediately saw someone coming out through the side door and had to duck behind a bush, feeling rather foolish. She waited until the man had passed, then emerged and ran as fast as she could through the door. As she entered she heard the clink of plates and cups and the sound of voices coming from the restaurant, and paused to reflect for a second. The lift would not do at all, of course, and neither would the grand staircase. No: she would have to go up the back stairs by the kitchen. It was a pity her room was on the fourth floor, she thought—although before today she had never considered the fact as an inconvenience.
There were a few people in the hall and she was just slipping discreetly past them while trying not to draw attention to herself, when she heard a voice she recognized as Mr. Morandi’s call out her name. She pretended not to have heard and, throwing all caution to the winds, put her head down and made a dash down the corridor that led to the kitchen, and through the door to the back stairs. She ran up all eight flights, meeting only one startled housemaid on the way, and to her relief made it to her room, panting for breath, without encountering any of the guests. After the extraordinary events of the past twelve hours or so she was almost astonished to find that the room looked exactly as it had when she had left it. The bed looked very tempting, and she suddenly realized that she was feeling extremely tired, not having slept much the night before. A lie-down—just for half an hour or so—would be just the thing to refresh her, she thought. She took off her soiled dress and lay down.
When she awoke she found to her surprise that she had in fact slept for almost four hours, and that it was gone noon. She lay for a while in a pleasant state of abstraction until an uncomfortable emptiness in her stomach reminded her that it would soon be lunch-time, and that she really ought to get up. She rose and debated the possibility of a bath. There was unlikely to be any hot water at this time of the day, but the weather was warm enough for it not to matter much, and so she decided to take the risk. Afterwards, scrubbed clean and looking entirely respectable in a light summer dress, she felt much refreshed and ready to face the world—or at least that portion of it that was to be found entertaining itself in the public rooms of the Hotel del Lago. She went down—in the lift, this time—and looked about for Elsa, whom she soon spotted coming in from the garden.
‘Goodness, Angela, I’ve been looking for you everywhere,’ said that lady. ‘Where on earth have you been? You disappeared last night without so much as a word, and then I missed you at breakfast this morning. I was starting to think you must have gone back to England without telling anyone.’
Angela said—for to tell the truth was obviously impossible—that last night she had been afflicted with a terrible headache and had had to go to her room and lie down. She had spent the morning in bed but was feeling much better now.
‘You poor darling,’ said Elsa. ‘Well, if you really are better you must be feeling awfully hungry by now. Let’s go and have lunch.’
‘How is Francis?’ said Angela as they went in and found their table. ‘Have they taken Chris away?’
‘Oh, of course, you went off in the middle of all the uproar, didn’t you?’ said Elsa. ‘Poor Francis—and poor Chris! Yes, they went along to the pensione last night and I’m afraid it’s all true. It looks very much as though he killed himself, although nobody is quite sure why. There have been vague mutterings about nervous trouble, but I shouldn’t have thought that would be enough reason to kill oneself, should you? I mean, even people who suffer from their nerves generally have to have a reason for that sort of thing, even if it’s just the fact that they were served some tough beef at dinner. Something must have upset him enough to make him do it, surely.’
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said Angela. ‘What does Francis say? Does he believe it was suicide? Or might it have been an accident, do you think?’
‘Why, I don’t know,’ said Elsa, ‘and I don’t suppose he does either. He seemed just as shocked and confused as the rest of us last night. Quite distraught, in fact, the poor boy.’
‘That’s understandable,’ said Angela.
‘I’ve rather taken Francis under my wing,’ said Elsa. ‘He reminds me so much of my youngest son, you see. We brought him back to the hotel last night and he’s staying here now, since the owner of the pensione had rather a fit at what happened and wanted nothing more to do with him.’
‘Dear me.’
‘Well, quite,’ said Elsa. ‘Look, there he is now.’ She waved at Francis, who was just then entering the dining-room, and he saw her and came over to their table. He looked tired and even more subdued than usual.
‘I’ve just been talking to that police chap, D’Onofrio,’ he said. ‘He was asking me all sorts of odd questions about Chris.’
Angela pricked up her ears.
‘What kind of questions?’ she said.
‘It’s too bad of him to disturb you like that when you’ve just had such a shock,’ said Elsa in concern. ‘He might have waited a day or two.’
‘No, no, he was very kind,’ said Francis, ‘but he wanted to get the facts straight, he said, just to make sure that everything was done correctly—for Chris’s sake, you see. He wanted to know where Chris got the chloral hydrate. I said he must have bought it here in Italy, as I’m certain he never had anything of the sort in his luggage. I’ve been thinking about it all night and I’m sure of it. You see, I was going back to the pensione to fetch something one day and he asked me to look out something of his. As you can imagine, he’s not—he wasn’t—the tidiest of fellows, and I spent about twenty minutes searching through his things and never saw anything of the kind. If I had I’d have said something at the time, because it would have worried me.’
‘Did you happen to get a look at the bottle when you found him last night?’ said Angela. ‘Was the label in English or Italian?’
Francis thought for a moment.
‘Why, English, now you come to mention it,’ he said. ‘I’m pretty sure I saw the words “Chloral Hydrate” on the label. If it was in Italian then I shouldn’t have understood it, should I? I suppose that must mean he did bring it with him, then, although he must have kept it pretty well hidden. How odd. I wonder why I never found it.’
He excused himself a moment as he had spotted Mr. Morandi and wanted to speak to him about something. Elsa watched him go in sympathy, and sighed.
‘Goodness me,’ she said. ‘What a week it’s been! Why, there’s been nothing but trouble, it seems.’
Angela glanced up at her quickly and seemed about to say something, but changed her mind.
‘What is it?’ s
aid Elsa.
‘Trouble,’ said Angela after a moment. ‘That’s a word I keep hearing lately.’
‘Well, what else would you call it?’ said Elsa.
‘Oh, it’s a perfectly good word to use in the circumstances,’ said Angela, ‘but—I don’t know. There’s something odd about it.’
In fact, she had just remembered something that Asphodel Quinn had said—something about having foreseen trouble for the Sheridans. Angela wondered very much whether Miss Quinn had seen something similar for Christopher Tate, and had half a mind to ask her. Illogical as it was, Angela could not shake off the feeling that Miss Quinn knew more than she was prepared to tell—but whether because of her supposed clairvoyant abilities or for some more prosaic reason she could not say. She made up her mind to speak to the girl if she got the chance, and see if she could persuade her to speak.
After lunch Angela set off to walk into Stresa, for she had agreed to meet Virginia Sheridan and Mary Ainsley to discuss the séance—an event that now seemed part of an earlier age after all that had happened since, although in reality it had taken place only yesterday. As she walked along the lake-front she saw Mr. D’Onofrio coming towards her. He nodded politely, and seemed to be wondering whether or not to approach her. She made up her mind and went across to him.
‘So then,’ he said. ‘Another man is dead, it seems.’
‘Yes,’ said Angela, ‘and I wish it hadn’t happened.’
‘There is no stopping a man who wants to end his life,’ said D’Onofrio.
‘Then you don’t think it was an accident? Or perhaps—something else?’
He shrugged.
‘Again, I have no evidence to the contrary,’ he said. ‘This boy is a nervous type who carries a medicine with him to help him sleep, and one day, when life seems just a little too hard for him to struggle on with it, he makes a decision to stop struggling. He takes the bottle of medicine, puts a few too many drops of it in his drink and then drinks it all up, and so it ends.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Angela.