by John Creasey
A strange woman! All anxiety was now transformed.
She looked radiant and carefree, and stretched out both hands in greeting and, when he took them, drew him inside. She was so much smaller than he, and as he looked down on her he felt his heart thumping beyond control. The door closed automatically behind them as she held onto his hands; he thought there were tears in her eyes and wondered, can she be pretending? Her accent was more noticeable than it had been before, as words suddenly spilled out of her.
“Thank you, thank you for coming back.” She spoke as if from the depth of her heart. “I did not think you would, I thought you would think ‘She is a wicked woman and I will have no more to do with her.’” She gave his hands a tighter squeeze, then let one go and turned and led him into a room on the right, a surprisingly large room furnished pleasantly but unremarkably with a mixture of French and English period furniture. The strains of Swan Lake came very softly from a record player.
“You come without a coat,” she said, “you must be a very hardy man. Oh, I am so relieved you have come back. First – a little drink, but not to linger because already dinner is perhaps cooking too long, but it will be eatable, that I promise you.” Why did her voice sound so attractive, why were her eyes spilling over as if with happiness? “What will you have, please?”
“A whisky and soda, if—”
“Only an Englishman can mix a whisky and soda to his liking, but please, not too strong. I have cooked a great delicacy for us!” She moved towards a cabinet where bottles and glasses stood.
“And what will you have?” Mannering asked.
“For me, nothing, thank you. I do not ever drink alcohol before a meal; it spoils the flavour of good food. It is a habit I learned from my father, you understand. But please do not let me prevent you—”
He raised his glass to her, said: “To beauty,” which obviously delighted her, and then lowering his glass asked: “Why did you expect me to think that you are a wicked woman?”
“But is that not obvious?”
“Tell me, please.”
“So,” she said, spreading her hands. The poise she had always shown before, the studied calm she had assumed in Harcourt’s office were gone completely; she seemed to be a different woman.
Younger; more beautiful; seductive.
“So,” she repeated. “I ask you to come here. Two men attack you. No one else knows you are coming so who could tell these men but me? Is that not one thing you have already asked yourself?” she demanded.
“Yes,” he answered.
“So!” Her eyes glowed. “You are indeed the honest one!
“But I asked myself a question or two as well,” went on Mannering. “For instance, why should you make it so obvious? Too obvious.” She smiled in appreciation of his reasoning, as he went on: “Also – did they come to attack me, or to attack you? Before deciding how wicked you are I’d very much like to know the answer to that one. And of course I would like to know why you should want to protect your husband’s family if they are making such difficulties for you.”
At these words she drew further back, her smile fading, her expression becoming serious. He watched her over the top of his glass as he sipped again.
“I think they came to rob me,” she said.
“Of what?”
“The paper – the valuation, perhaps.”
“Won’t they get a copy?”
“There is much trouble and some things are not certain,” she said. “Also – they come to frighten me.” When Mannering did not speak she went on: “They have attempted this before. They think if I am frightened I will do what they want.”
“And what do they want?”
“Two thirds of the value of the Collection.”
“And have they frightened you?” asked Mannering.
“But of course. Many times. That is why I want to sell the Collection quickly and take the money with me to another country, where I shall be safe from them.”
“But you’ve never been frightened enough to give them what they want?”
“Of course not!” There was anger in her voice. “Would you expect that of me?”
“I don’t know you well enough yet to say,” he replied. “I don’t even know if you are a wicked woman, remember!” His eyes laughed and laughter sprang back to hers. “And I don’t know why, under such circumstances, you should try to protect his family.”
He wondered what she would answer, whether he should have waited for a while and not risked spoiling the happy mood. Certainly the laughter died, and she frowned – as he had once seen her frown behind dark glasses.
Then, she said: “For my husband’s sake, Mr. Mannering. For his memory. He was a good man. He loved his two sons. Is that something you can understand, or does it seem to you a pretence, a lie?”
9
Dinner for Two
Mannering finished his drink, and moving forward placed a hand lightly beneath her chin, tilting her head back slightly so that he could see the fullness of her beauty. She did not attempt to shift her position or to look away from him; there was defiance in her eyes but he did not think there was falsehood.
“It is something I would like very much to believe,” he said.
“Is it so hard to believe the truth?”
“Is it so easy to be sure what the truth is?” he countered. “Lucille, I tell you I want very much to believe it. Perhaps I shall find that possible when I know the whole story.”
She drew in a deep breath, nodded, moved away and echoed: “Perhaps, yes. And perhaps it will be easier when you are not hungry! Tell me, please, are you a domesticated man?”
He followed her change of mood unhesitatingly.
“Well, if you mean can I find my way about a kitchen – yes.”
“Bravo! I will be grateful for a little help, a very little help, with plates and knives and forks. In ten minutes, in five minutes you will be eating!” She took his hand and led him across the hall to a smaller dining-room full of books and objets d’art. From this she led him to a kitchen which would have made Lorna green with envy.
“From the refrigerator, please, the white wine. Also the butter.”
She opened the door of an eye-level oven and pulled a shelf forward, then drew out a dark green dish – his first indication that they were to have roast duck à l’orange.
“Now please,” she said, “in the larder there is some bread, please cut what you think we shall need and place it in the basket.”
The bread was a golden brown French loaf, and the knife lay on the board.
“Now from the refrigerator some melon,” she went on, shutting the door of the oven, and moving towards him with two dishes she seemed to have taken from nowhere. As he did as she directed, she declared gaily: “Now no more kitchen work for you – we start!”
The food was more than excellent, it was superb. Lucille ate with the single-minded attention of the gourmet, and they said very little. He gave her more of the duck, and took some himself. She preferred the white wine, a Moutrachet, he the red, from a château he knew only vaguely; but the flavour was perfect. An iced pudding followed.
At last they were done, and she said: “You would like coffee and some brandy, I am sure. You go please and prepare the brandy, I will bring the coffee.”
“Do let me help—”
“There is no need,” she said. “Please.”
He went back to the first room he had entered and found glasses, Martell, Napoleon and Courvoisier brandy, on a glass-covered table. Soon she came in with the coffee, which she placed on a small table between two comfortable armchairs.
“So,” she said. “You enjoy?”
“It was a perfect meal.”
“In spite of everything else?”
“All I was interested in was you – and the food,” Mannering added, laughing.
“You are ver’ gallant, M’sieu Mannering.”
“Lucille,” he said, picking up her glass and handing it to her, “either
we are going to become good friends or not friends at all, so – should we be formal?”
“Formal?” she echoed, looking puzzled, until suddenly her face cleared and she laughed. “No, John! No, we do not have to be formal.” Her eyes seemed to take on the colour of the brandy as she raised her glass. A moment later she poured coffee, then pulled a cushion close and sat on it so that she could look up slightly at Mannering. She looked at him for a long time and he did not even try to guess what was passing through her mind.
One thing he knew: it had been a long time since he had felt so absolutely contented.
It could only have been minutes but it seemed an age when she said quietly: “Now, John, the time has come to talk. Has it not?”
He wanted to say “No.” He longed just to sit here and watch her, feeling the warmth from the brandy steal through his veins, knowing that soon – or at least some time not very far distant – they would draw closer together. It was the only, it was the natural, it was the inevitable sequel to what had happened and was still happening.
He almost said: I don’t want to talk about anything, Lucille.
He did say: “Yes, I’m afraid it has.”
“And I have to convince you that I tell the truth,” she said, “and first, you wish to know why I watched you in the way I did.”
He had forgotten that question.
“Yes,” he said.
“It is very simple. I knew you were the one who was to value the Collection. I knew that my step-sons wanted the Collection. I wished to make sure you did not visit them, or they visit you. In the beginning I expected them to, but they did not. Perhaps it was because Mr. Harcourt had convinced them that you were incorruptible, but for me – I must satisfy this for myself.”
“You could have used a private inquiry agency.”
“Oh, but I did so,” she answered.
“To watch me?” Was it possible others had been trailing him and he had not been aware of it? Surely Bristow—
Her eyes were brimming over with laughter as if she understood what was passing through his mind, and she waited long enough to get the full savour from that situation before saying: “But no, John. To watch my step-sons!”
He found himself laughing, and then was surprised because she began to draw her brows together, apparently not thinking it funny. She sat with the brandy glass cupped in her hands for a few moments, and then remarked pensively: “They did not come to see you. You did not meet. I wonder how you would get on if you did meet?”
Mannering said: “Why did you expect them to come to see me?”
“Oh, I expected them to try to bribe you to put a very low valuation on the Collection so that you could advise me to sell at a very low price. Oh, they are scoundrels,” she went on, smiling now. “So was their father, but he was a darling scoundrel, whereas his sons – I hope you will not like them,” she finished abruptly.
“I may never meet them,” Mannering said.
“I think you will,” declared Lucille. “Do not ask me why, but I think you will meet them. Now, John, what more is there to tell you? That they have accused me of murdering my sweetheart Ezra – oh, it is ridiculous, but they have. He died of a heart attack, what you call a cerebral haemorrhage also, and it was very sudden. How they think I could cause such a thing I do not know, but they are funny people.” She shrugged her shoulders as if accepting such ‘funniness’ as part of her life. “Also, they accuse me of having lovers by the dozen! In that there is a little, just a little, more truth.” She put her head on one side. “Does that not shock you?”
“Should I be shocked?”
“You have the reputation of being a one-woman man,” declared Lucille, and mischief glinted in her eyes. “So perhaps you are shocked. Not with other people, no?” She frowned. “I mean you are not shocked if other people take lovers but—” She broke off and stood up. She had been sitting in what must have been an awkward position for rising but she was on her feet in a single, effortless movement, and began to walk about the room; now there was a touch of the feline in her; of the leopard, of the wild cat, her hair and her eyes flashing a tawny gold. “I promised to tell the truth, I tell the truth, not because it is a matter to discuss but because in one way it explains the attitude of the brothers. You will listen?”
“Of course.”
“Good! Then it is so, I have taken lovers. I am not yet old but Ezra was old and he was not a lover, he was what do you say—?”
“Impotent?”
“So. It was not his fault, he was a sick man, soon after we were married he began to have the heart attacks. That is one reason why the family blame me – they say I gave him these attacks. If I did, I do not know how. It was a very good relationship between Ezra and me. He was not a jealous man, he knew that sometimes I needed more than he could give me. He asked me only one thing: an impossible thing, but only one.” She came to rest in front of him and sank down on the cushion so that she knelt in front of him, only a foot or two away. She rested her ringless hands on her knees as she went on as if driven by a compulsion she could not deny. “He asked me not to fall in love.” She closed her eyes and began to sway a little on her knees as she repeated: “How is it possible for a man or a woman to command themselves not to fall in love? I could promise him I would not, but how could I be sure? I could promise him I would never leave him, and this promise I could keep but—”
She broke off, stopped swaying, and opened her eyes. Her head was tilted back as if in invitation for his lips; and hers were parted very slightly so that he could just see her teeth.
Mannering said huskily: “So you fell in love.”
Slowly, very slowly, she shook her head, saying in a voice which seemed to come from far away: “No, I did not fall in love while Ezra was alive, but if I had met the man earlier then I would have done. It was his death which introduced us.” She smiled, and paused, then standing up with another effortless movement, began to walk around the room talking in a much more lighthearted way.
“No, John, you know everything except one thing, which is important – and perhaps you can judge for yourself. I am supposed to be mad. Une imbécile.” She stood in front of him making the face children make when they pretend to be a bogey man. “You understand? I am not right in the head. This is what my stepsons are saying, so that they can discredit me. Everything, everything they can do to make me give them the Collection they will do. Do you understand?” Now she stood with her hands raised in front of her, the lists clenched. “You count, please. I am the murderess. I am the seductress. I am the imbecile. I should be shut away in some prison or perhaps in some home. And I do not know whether they could succeed in this or not, so I want to sell the Collection for as much money as I can get quickly and leave England. Soon. That is why I want you to help me, that is why I have asked you here and given you the dinner I cooked for you with such thought, and told you all the truth.”
She dropped into her chair now, and covered her face with her hands. She was a-tremble from head to foot and it was all he could do to prevent himself from going to her, picking her up, holding and comforting her.
Why didn’t he?
Bristow’s face seemed to hover in front of his mind and Bristow’s voice to echo in his ears. “Why don’t you, John?” Why didn’t he? He sat without moving, looking at her; shaken emotionally, but still not entirely bereft of the power of reasoning. She could be acting. Or she could simply be being herself.
“Lucille,” he said, “your step-sons will do all this and you still don’t want them to be proved scoundrels?”
“I do not,” she said huskily.
“It makes no sense.”
“Am I the one who must always make sense?” she demanded, her face still covered by her hands.
“Why did you buy the emerald tiara this morning?”
She started violently, snatched her hands from her face and stared at him in astonishment; he had no doubt at all that she had been taken completely by surprise. She actually t
ried to speak but could not find words until he insisted: “Could you afford it? And whether you could or not why did you buy it?”
She said simply: “It was beautiful.”
“Did you buy it because it was beautiful?”
She did not answer at first, but looked at him with a kind of defiance which grew bolder as the seconds passed. By her manner he knew that something would come like a bolt from the blue, and he had a feeling that it would be the truth: that all along she had told the truth, but not all of it.
At last, she said: “If I tell you, you may not like the reason.”
“On the other hand, I may.”
“So,” she said, in that attractive way of hers. “I saw you come along Hart Row and I saw you look at the emeralds and I saw your face and I knew the truth: you had a great passion for them, great love, great desire. So, I bought the jewels because I thought some of those things you felt for them you might also feel for me. I did not wish to tell you this but I must do so now, John. I have fallen in love with you. Almost from the first moment I saw you, it happened. I cannot explain. I ask you for nothing, but I tell you truly, John. I love you.”
10
Woman in Love
There was a deep silence, broken at last by Lucille who said in a strained voice: “Why do you not say something? Is it such an insult that I should fall in love with you? Are you going to make me wish I had not told you?”
Mannering leaned forward and stretched out his hands; she took them, hesitantly, searching his face for some clue to his thoughts. He was seeking desperately for the right thing to say; trying as desperately to still the thunder in his own breast. Beyond her was an image of his wife as she had stood on that morning when he had hurried back for the report on the Peek Collection and she had been waiting at the door of the lift.
“Lucille,” he said, his voice not quite steady, “I’ve never promised my wife that I won’t ever fall in love with another woman. But it might—might break her heart if I did, and I don’t think I could do anything which I knew could hurt her.”