[Title here]

by Deadly Duo (epub)

  "No. Not now. Not since yesterday."

  He looked at her sharply and she could see the question in his eyes and feel him trying not to ask it. Her generosity was boundless. Her love was so great it engulfed all the small reluctances. She answered the query before he put it.

  "I think it must have been because of you, Denis. I wasn't admitting it at the time. Did you come here because of me?"

  "No!" he said so violently that she knew he was lying. "No, certainly not. I don't want to love you, Margot."

  "But you do, Denis?"

  He found her hands and bent his head over them.

  "Oh, darling," he said, "ever since I saw you and so hopelessly, do you know."

  Voices in the hall outside cut in on them brutally. He stepped back but did not release her hands.

  "We've got to talk," he murmured urgently. "When? They say you're going to London early."

  "I'll be home in the afternoon," she whispered back. "You'll be here?"

  A door slammed and the curtains shuddered. She released herself from him gently and felt an absurd but poignant sense of loss as her hands were freed.

  "Yes." His eyes were still on her face, still helplessly vulnerable, but there was a shadow in them. "Yes, I'll be here."

  Sir Kit opened the door.

  "The clock is on the wall, if you'll come in," he was saying to someone behind him. "I do most earnestly hope you'll be able to do something. Come along, come along. Good heavens, what a draught! Is that you, Victor? Come in, my boy, for goodness' sake, and shut those doors behind you."

  As the two on the hearthrug turned slowly round, Victor Soubise stepped in through the French doors and began to close and fasten them. He glanced over his shoulder at Margot as he shot the upper bolt, his face impassive.

  "I came in this way after putting up the car," he said briefly. "It's nearer." His voice was flat and unrevealing. There was no telling if the observation was an apology, a reproach, or simply a statement of fact.

  FIVE

  Hercule bonnet, manager of the Beaux Arts company, brought Margot down after the lunch in the chauffeur-driven hired Daimler he always used when in London. He was in the top of his form and there had been no getting away from him. At the end of the party he had pushed his eyeglass into one of the deep sockets-they always looked painted they were so dark-and had given her a flash of white teeth as he announced his intention of coming down to pay his respects to the "chere maitresse."

  On the way down he had talked all the time, his plump hands dipping and swooping like sea gulls over the dome of his grey waistcoat as he told her what he was going to say to Zoff.

  He was overdressed, as was usual in England, since, so he said, he believed the natives expected it of a Frenchman.

  "I have the exquisite courtesy," he would explain half seriously. "That is why I am beloved wherever I go."

  Margot was his discovery of the moment. She was his little pigeon, his cabbage, his queen. He was about, he insisted, to fling himself at Zoff's feet to thank her for bequeathing her genius on such a pupil. He was a trifle drunk, of course, but only to the point of elation. Margot had nothing to do but to look as if she were listening, and so far, for the best part of the journey, she had not missed a cue.

  She was so happy she almost told him the reason, but he gave her no opportunity to make that mistake. His theme was the future and his voice never ceased.

  As the car nosed its way through the endless little townships which had become the suburbs of the city, she lay back in the cushions, one ear on his chatter and all the rest of her conscious self obsessed with delight. It was madness to be in love like this, she reflected, her eyes dancing; in love as if one were sixteen, as if no one else mattered, as if every one of these dazzling successes which Bonnet was so cheerfully prophesying was well lost for an hour with Denis. It was lunacy, of course, delirious nonsense, proverbially ephemeral, and yet it was so very sweet.

  And behind the ecstasy was something real and inescapable and forever. She was sure of it. It had made a little blanket over her heart. She could still hear Denis's voice behind the florid periods which Bonnet was intoning at her side.

  "The English drowned the French." The deep voice sounded through the thin one: "ever since I saw you and so hopelessly."

  The words shocked her still. Even in memory they disturbed her breathing. They were precious and wholly ridiculous, for nothing was hopeless now. Bonnet's chatter cut into her daydreaming as the car turned into the familiar road and she sat up.

  "Chere doyenne des arts supreme, I shall whisper," he was rehearsing happily. "Maitresse de milles coeurs. Eh, we arrive, do we? Is this the house?"

  Margot spoke to the chauffeur, who turned into the drive and brought the big car to a standstill before the porch.

  "Permit me." Bonnet was in gallant mood. All vehicles presented certain embarrassments to his plumpness, but he was determined to hand her out himself, so there was some delay as he was first extricated and set panting on the step.

  Margot let him assist her and they were standing together in the conservatory when the front door was thrown open.

  Felix stood before them, gibbering. He was only just recognisable. There was no colour in his face at all and his eyes were blank. He stared at Bonnet and turned wildly to Margot.

  "That is not Monsieur le docteur," he said stupidly, "Mademoiselle, where is the doctor?"

  Her pulse missed a stroke and a chill crept over her.

  "What is it, Felix?" She heard her own voice speaking very quietly. "Quickly, what is it? Is Zoff ill?"

  "Mademoiselle, she is dead." He was dragging her intx the hall with the feeble, plucking hands of a frightened old man.

  "Oh no, no," she said, as if somehow the word could make it true. At her side she was just aware of Bonnet's scandalised face wearing a ludicrous expression of disappointment "Where is Sir Kit?"

  "Mademoiselle, he has not been here since before dejeuner." Felix was shaking visibly and appeared to be about to collapse. "There is no one here but me and Genvieve. It was Genvieve who first found Madame and she who telephoned Monsieur le docteur. I am waiting for him, but it is of no use. Madame is dead. I have seen her."

  "Where is Denis?"

  "Mademoiselle, Monsieur Denis is gone."

  Unless she dreamed it, the words were shouted.

  "It was after he left Madame's room that we found her suffocated. There was a pad over her face and her hands were folded. It was then, after Monsieur Denis had gone out of this door with Madame's case in his hands, that we found her."

  "With Madame's case?" she echoed blankly.

  "But yes, Margot." He had given up civilities, and the use of her name reminded her that he had known her from babyhood. "Her green case, the bag. The leather case with the drawer underneath."

  She stared at him, her brows drawn down into a line.

  "Where the jewels were?"

  "Where the jewels were."

  In the bewildered silence a step sounded on the stone behind them and she swung round to confront the young doctor. He was breathless and his eyes were furious.

  "So you let it happen," he said bitterly, peering contemptuously into her face. "You were warned and it was under your nose, and yet you let it happen."

  Margot remained staring at him. Her cheeks were transparently white and her eyes looked enormous under the pale feather fringe of her Lelong model. She felt as if a page were turning back in the course of her life. It was as though a digression had ended suddenly, hurling her once more into the main story.

  "But I told you," the doctor was saying. "I gave you the most explicit instructions. I said the patient was not to be allowed to see that man." He bent over her as she spoke. With bright patches of colour on his cheekbones, he looked like an infuriated archangel.

  She continued to meet his gaze helplessly. She was vividly aware of negligence but of absurdity also.

  "You're making a dreadful mistake," she said. "Denis can't have had anyt
hing to do with it. Of course he didn't. You don't understand."

  He drew back from her.

  "This is hardly the moment for discussion, don't you think, or do you?" The pomposity displayed his antagonism like a weapon and he brushed past her and strode on to the foot of the stairs. With one hand on the banister, he turned and looked back. "Have the police been sent for yet?" he asked Felix.

  "No, Monsieur le docteur. Genvieve telephoned for you, that was all."

  "I see. Will you come up, please?" He stood aside for the old man and mounted the stairs behind him. Margot watched them go.

  It was some moments before she remembered Bonnet. A cough at her side startled her and she turned to find him looking at her, a mixture of chagrin and honest alarm on his plump face. He had no need to explain. She understood immediately and went to his rescue.

  "Go back," she said. "After all, you've hardly been in the house. I shall simply say a friend brought me to the door."

  He was grateful but still very embarrassed.

  "Cherie, I wish I could stay. What a tragedy! What a disaster! She had quarrelled with someone, n'est-ce pas?"

  "No," she said quickly. "No, it's a mistake of the doctor's."

  "I see. I think, though, he intends to call in the flics, that one."

  "He does, doesn't he?" she agreed absently, her mind not so much on that alarming possibility as on the awful fact of Zoff's passing. "You get away, Hercule. There is no reason for you to be mixed up in this, none in the world."

  "Perhaps it would be as well." He was loth to relinquish his role of gallant, but prudence advised him strongly. No one understood more about the benefits and the dangers of publicity.

  Seeing him standing there hesitating focused somehow the whole situation for Margot. She was aware of every detail. The ornate hall, transversed with huge modern patterns in sunlight from the open door into the conservatory, was vivid for an instant. She knew what the scene must be like upstairs too, where the old servants and the doctor must be standing round the bed.

  Bonnet took her hand and held it tightly. Behind the mass of affectations and shrewdness’s which made up most of the man, there appeared for an instant a fleeting warm reality.

  "Ring me up if there's anything I can do," he said, his sincerity underlining the danger.

  "I shall hold you to that, Hercule," she said.

  He nodded. "You may, my dear. But now I shall go." He raised her hand briefly to his lips and trotted out to the car. She heard the door slam a moment later and then the whirr of the starter. For a second she hesitated, and then, laying her bag and gloves on a side table, went quietly up the stairs.

  Zoff lay stiffly on her golden bed. The peach-coloured coverlet was drawn up to her waist and a blue brocaded dressing jacket was wrapped softly about her breast and shoulders. Her hands were folded. Her face was calm, and, as it had never been in life, oddly gentle apart from a certain accentuation of her big features, the nose knife-sharp and the cheekbones prominent. It was difficult not to think her asleep.

  She was not quite smiling but her wide mouth was soft and secretive.

  At the end of the bed Margot stood with Genevieve and marvelled at her dignity. Death had shown none of its derisive cruelty here. There was no pathos, no absurdity; only majesty and peace and resignation. It was even difficult to think of weeping. This was something to admire.

  The extraordinariness of the fact did not strike the girl. She was stunned by the shock of her loss and stood quiet, her arm round Genevieve's shoulders, holding her hard brown hand.

  From the bed, the stones in the dead woman's rings winked and trembled, startlingly live against the quiet flesh.

  The doctor was moving about at the other end of the room. He and Felix had thrown open the windows and the curtains were swinging out in the stiff breeze, filling the room with movement. At the moment the two men were at the armoire and were bending down before the empty shelf where Zoff had kept her battered green dressing case. She had always insisted on having it there regardless of any valuables it contained, and relying on the secret drawer, a device which would not have deceived a squirrel, let alone a child.

  Felix was whispering, explaining the details to the younger man. Margot and Genevieve were only just aware of them. They stood close together, quite still, looking at the bed. As with most great personalities, Zoff had seemed immortal to her intimates, and since in death her personality had vanished only a stranger had been left behind. The phenomenon had stupefied them, They could not credit it, could not believe the one, irrevocable fact, Zoff was gone. They both felt that at any moment she must sit up and laugh at their terror, flinging back her head to show the gold-crowned tooth at the back of her mouth as she delighted in the outrageous joke.

  It was Genevieve who broke the spell.

  "She was just so when I found her," she whispered. "Like this, as if she was in a play. I took the towel off her face and saw her. God forgive me, I couldn't touch her after that. I put it back."

  "But it's so incredible." The doctor's voice, loud, young and impatient, startled them. He had been waiting for Genevieve to recover herself and now seized on the first sign. "I don't understand it," he said, coming round in front of them. "Do you mean to tell me you smelled nothing at all? Why, even now the room reeks of it. The towel must have been saturated."

  Margot trembled. She had been vaguely aware of something odd in the house ever since she reached the stair head, and now at last it took a definite shape in her mind. Once one faced it, it was inescapable. Everywhere, clinging to the draperies, eddying in the draught, fighting and conquering the hundred perfumes with which Zoff's belongings were always drenched, was the sweet, horrible stench of the operating theatre.

  "Ether," she said huskily.

  The doctor raised his eyes to hers. "No. Just old-fashioned chloroform, I think. Can't you smell it, Genvieve?"

  "No. I smell nothing."

  "Genvieve has no sense of smell," put in Felix, who had joined the group. "Not for many years now."

  The doctor caught his breath and glanced again at Margot

  "Is that true?"

  "I don't know. I suppose so. We used to tease her and say so. Zoff-Zoff said so."

  "But, good heavens, don't you see what this means?" In his excitement his pomposity dropped from him like a false moustache, she reflected bitterly. He was thrilled to find himself a detective. "Don't you see, it must have happened before? This must be the explanation of the other two attacks. I didn't notice it then because each time Genvieve had her propped up by an open window and the place aired, as far as it can be with all this scent about, before I arrived. On this occasion the fellow used so much of the stuff that he succeeded in killing her very quickly and I got here before the fumes were dispersed."

  Margot turned on him. "Oh, you can't say things like that," she said breathlessly. "You can't make wild accusations. You've not no possible way of knowing if it's true."

  "My good girl," the hostility swept back into his eyes "it's rather obvious, isn't it? Zoff told us herself that he had made two attempts to kill her, and like fools we didn't believe her. Now he has succeeded. He's probably a lunatic," he went on gravely. "He may have tried to be subtle to begin with, but in the end he became so reckless he drenched her with the stuff. Who else could have done it? Chloroform doesn't lie about in ordinary houses. Yet it would be the simplest thing in the world for him to get hold of, and would have been very difficult to trace after a short period."

  He silenced Genevieve, who was about to speak, and went smoothly on, still speaking to Margot.

  "You don't want the scandal, of course (I don't blame you), nor do I. But neither of us can help it. This is murder. He even took some jewellery, I understand."

  The girl did not speak. She was battling with an extraordinary conviction that something inevitable was taking place. It was not that she believed the story for an instant, but she realized that it was an explanation which must occur to most people, and somew
here she had the impression that it had all had to happen like this.

  The doctor left her and returned to Felix, who was busy at a small wall safe at the far end of the room. He had opened it and was examining the plush and leather cases within.

  "We must get on to the police at once." The doctor still spoke with that suppressed excitement which jarred upon them all. "They'll pick him up on an air station, I expect. Work out a rough inventory of the things that are missing, Felix. They'll need that."

  Margot glanced at the bed again and came to a sudden decision. It had occurred to her that probably she was the only living person in the household who knew where Denis lived. The police would find him through the hospital, but it was quite possible that neither Genevieve nor Felix would remember even that in their present state. At any rate, it would take a little time to find him. Even she did not know the address, but he had once pointed out the house he shared with a dozen other students and she thought she could find it again. If she went at once, the probability was that she would catch him first. One thing, at least, was obvious. He must come back at once to clear himself before any more of this crazy circumstantial evidence piled up against him. She had no idea why he had left the house or where he had gone, but if there was a chance of finding him, she felt it worth taking.

  She glanced at the doctor. He was still absorbed in Felix's discovery. Genevieve had crept up to the bed head again, a silk shawl in her hands. For the moment Margot was unnoticed. Without looking back, she walked quietly out of the room.

  Her grey-clad figure passed down the stairs as silently as a ghost. Her feet made no sound on the tiles of the hall and the street door closed gently behind her.

  Bridgewyck central police station was a yellow brick building at the end of the main street, next door to the Regal Cinema and opposite the subway to the electric railway. By one of those pieces of pure chance which figure so often in official police reports, as if Fate herself were on the side of the authorities, Inspector Lee was standing looking idly out of his window on the first floor when his telephone bell rang. He could reach the instrument from where he stood and was still on his feet, his glance fixed absently on the opposite pavement, when the sergeant downstairs put through the call from Clough House.