Thoughts crowded Virginia’s mind as she went forward tentatively, but over-riding them her conscious mind still operated.
‘The switch is by the door, Harry.’
He pressed it, and Charlie’s overhead lights, now dimmed by accumulated dust, snapped on. In the semi-gloom they seemed to be brilliant. He hurried to her side, not wanting her to approach Cynthia alone.
The back of her head was smashed in, the obvious conclusion being that it resulted from a single discharge of the shotgun. This was at once dismissed, as it was the butt of the shotgun that had clearly been used. Matted blood was on it.
Harry’s first feeling was of relief. She had known nothing — it had been from behind. The second was of a hot pride, that this had not been suicide, and that it had been necessary to sneak up from behind in order to destroy his Cynth.
The rain was thundering on the iron roof. Virginia drew back. ‘The telephone, Harry.’ Harry moved towards the side door. ‘Try the one on the bench.’ She gestured. He wondered why she didn’t do it herself. He didn’t know she was close to collapse, so close that only intense concentration kept her on her feet.
The phone set was black, overlaid with a thick patina of grey dust and vagrant spray from a hundred cars. It was not possible to read the numbers on the dial, but he didn’t need that for 999. He was surprised to get a dialling tone. He asked for police, and at a second thought for an ambulance. When he replaced the handset, Virginia was clinging to the open doorway.
‘Your car,’ he said. ‘Come on.’
But she rejected the touch of his hand on her arm. The lashing rain seemed to revive her, and have her panting for air to her starved lungs. They ran for the Mercedes.
Harry paused at the police car. Freda had not moved, but she was now making whimpering noises, and tears ran from her chin. The right side of her uniform skirt was soaked black. Harry closed the door and hurried on.
Virginia was standing staring at the wet leather seats, the car door open and taking her weight.
‘Damn you, Harry,’ she screamed. ‘You didn’t put the hood up.’
She collapsed on to the seat and buried her face in her hands. Harry stared at her heaving shoulders, then set about erecting the hood over her. He slid in beside her, reached back for her bag, found cigarettes and lighter, lit one for her though he didn’t smoke, parted her hands, and when she glanced at him popped it between her lips. For a few moments it hung there, then she drew on it, coughed, shuddered, and sat back with her head against the rest.
She finished the cigarette before she spoke, with meek gravity. ‘Thank you, Harry.’
He nodded, but she didn’t see. He got out of the car because the first of the police cars had arrived, containing a policeman and a policewoman, in uniform.
‘In there,’ said Harry, indicating the shed. ‘I sent for an ambulance.’
‘The word came through she was dead.’
‘For your mate.’ Harry jerked his thumb.
The policewoman went over to the car door, opened it, and spoke to Freda. Getting no response, she went round and got in beside her. Harry saw her take Freda’s cap from her head, then her fingers from the wheel and clasp the hand in hers. He couldn’t see whether they spoke together.
Other cars began to arrive. Harry prowled the yard restlessly, now so wet that he hesitated to enter Virginia’s car again. These were the county police, but once they’d had a word with Harry, (‘We just drove here from the industrial estate.’) and when the officer in charge had sat beside Virginia for ten minutes in her car and it had become evident that the two crimes were linked, radios were used and the team from the town force drove over.
One of these was Oliver Brent. Both teams were under his jurisdiction. Another was Paul Tranter, who avoided Harry’s eyes. After a while Brent came out from the shed and gestured to Harry, leading him over to the Mercedes, where they stood beside the open driver’s window. Brent’s face was expressionless but his eyes were ice-cold. Rain dripped from the brim of his tweed hat.
‘As it’s clear that you two did no more than drive here and discover this, you’re not being detained. You will drive home, Virginia, both of you, get yourselves dry and warm and some food inside you, and wait. I shall be a long while here, but we have to talk. Tonight. Understand?’
Virginia nodded. For a moment his fingers touched her shoulder. ‘It’s been a bad day, my dear.’ Only then did a hint of warmth enter his voice.
Harry walked round and slid into the passenger’s seat with a squishing sound. She backed into the lane, edging round the clusters of cars and vans.
‘You’re all right?’ he asked.
‘I can drive.’
But she’d driven a hundred yards before she put on the lights, seeming surprised that it was dark. The wipers were still on intermittent, a wipe every five seconds. Half a mile later she switched to normal wipe.
Ada fussed and worried, and Harry found himself once more in the same dressing gown, his clothes commandeered before he thought to remove the pistol from the pocket of his leather jacket. Then there was soup and a hot plate of something strengthening, on a serviette on their laps, all informal. And finally, Ada marching in with a tray on which rested a bottle of brandy and glasses, along with Baldy’s pistol.
‘And what,’ she demanded, ‘may I ask, is this?’
Virginia sighed. ‘Put it on the table over there, Ada please. My father will take charge of it.’
Ada nervously did so, raised her chin, and walked out with quivering dignity.
‘There goes my ten per cent of possibly three hundred quid,’ said Harry lugubriously, hoping Virginia would take it as a joke.
Her eyes danced at him. She handed him a balloon glass with a tiny pool of brandy swimming in the bottom.
‘Harry, you are an idiot. You and I, together, have found the bank haul and the jewellery haul. In due course we shall receive a just reward, probably ten per cent of something like a hundred and twenty-seven thousand pounds. That’s over six thousand for you, and you’re worrying about thirty pounds.’
Harry, to whom £6000 was a sum you heard about but never actually handled, puckered his lips and said: ‘In due course. Could be months.’ It was difficult to accept the possibility.
‘But then, Harry, you’ll be independent. You can go your own way.’ She cocked her head at him. ‘You won’t need to find work…’
‘No.’ He wondered why so large a glass held such a small amount. ‘You’ve got it wrong. Then I’ll be independent, and I can afford to take that job your father mentioned.’
She hesitated, wondering whether she would ever understand him. ‘Yes,’ she murmured. ‘Of course.’
Then they waited. She put a tape of Bach on her hi-fi, through which he dozed. She watched his face in repose. It was strange that the character his battered features normally concealed was now more clearly revealed.
Oliver Brent arrived at two o’clock. They were both asleep, but instantly alert. For a moment he stood in the doorway, and if he smiled it brought the barest flush of colour to his strained, grey face. He seemed smaller inside his clothes.
‘You stayed up,’ he said in grave approval, and walked past the table on which the pistol lay. He seemed not to notice it, but headed straight for the easy chair Virginia had placed for him.
‘I see you’ve been at my brandy. Virginia, I’d appreciate…’
‘I’ll get a clean glass.’ She was on her feet at once.
The movement of his hand was weary. ‘It doesn’t matter. Whichever glass doesn’t smell of lipstick.’
‘I’m not wearing…’
‘I know that. It was a pleasantry, my dear, indicating that I’m not too annoyed with you. But make it a large one. By the time you’ve told me what’s been going on, I may well need it.’
All this, Harry realized, was a setting of the mood between them. Each had to know how matters stood. There was a mutual trust that had to be treasured. There was a hint that honesty all r
ound was imperative.
Harry sat back and let it happen.
‘How is Freda?’ she asked.
‘Tell me where the firearm came from.’
She handed him the glass. ‘I’m concerned about Freda.’
He sniffed at his brandy. ‘At this moment she’s in hospital. My latest news is that she’s not spoken.’
‘Catatonic.’ She nodded. ‘The experts call it catatonic.’
‘Do they? The pistol, my dear.’
She sat opposite him, leaning forward, and related the O’Loughlin episode as though drawing him into the excitement of it. Apart from the fact that his lips tightened, he seemed not to be affected. When she’d finished with O’Loughlin he said: ‘I trust you appreciate the danger you were in.’
‘Harry was with me.’ Thus she dismissed the danger.
‘Even so…’
‘And Cynthia?’
He sighed. ‘Dead, of course. You must have realized. One blow from the gunstock.’
‘Freda found her. No wonder she’s in shock.’
‘You know something there, too?’
She told him what they had discovered about their relationship, and the way the shoe had been used.
‘We saw the shoe,’ he told her.
‘Angela’s.’
‘I realized that.’ He sighed. ‘Miss Graham will not, I should imagine, be long in the force.’ He sipped the brandy and raised his nose from inside the glass. ‘If not worse. Now tell me how you came to locate the petrol station, and the body of Charles Braine.’
‘Harry used the business of the shoe to pressure Cynthia into telling us somewhere he might have gone.’
Harry stirred. ‘It wasn’t quite like that.’
Neither of them took the slightest notice of him. Although their dialogue seemed idle and undramatic, they were locked in a conflict that had been going on since her teens. Oliver Brent had always encouraged her into a spirit of independence. Having no wife to advise him, he’d not understood how dangerous this might be. Since she’d reached the age of twenty he’d been trying to undo the result of his efforts, but, being basically a kind man, he’d not had the necessary ammunition. Now they competed in methods that allowed each to emerge unscathed from their clashes, and happy that neither had inflicted distress. Sometimes, for Brent, it was difficult.
‘But surely,’ he said now, ‘you didn’t expect Charles Braine still to be there?’ Sometimes, by trying too hard, he heard his voice emerging with a ridiculous formality.
She smiled at him. ‘Of course not, father.’ She too could be formal. ‘Nor did we expect to find the money intact, and the gun and the jewellery.’
‘The gun was empty,’ he said. ‘Unloaded.’
‘I know.’
‘Who told you that?’ he asked sharply.
‘Paul Tranter.’
‘I’ll skin him.’
‘You’ll do nothing of the sort.’
He smiled thinly. ‘And that’s all the trouble you’ve got yourself into?’
‘Every bit. Tell me how things stand.’
He blinked. ‘It’s all official…’
‘Oh…come on. I know my thinking on it, but I’d like to hear whether you agree.’
‘I agree? With you? Well…’ Then he laughed. Harry smiled. She said: ‘Let’s have it, daddy.’
Brent got up to pour himself another measure of brandy. With his back to her he permitted himself another grimace. He was not a very good liar, and although what he was about to say was not going to be a direct lie, there was to be a certain amount of evasion in it. The moment his eyes fell on the pistol, he’d realized he had to put an end to Virginia’s activities. If orders wouldn’t do that, and he knew they would not, then guile it had to be. Guile he detested, partly because he was a basically straightforward man, but also because it required too much mental effort. Besides, she usually saw through him.
He sat down again, leaned back in the chair, and crossed an elegant ankle over his other knee.
‘I’ll have to talk myself into it, because what you’ve told me is fresh evidence. Freda Graham hasn’t said a word. I left orders for them to phone if she did, as I believe she’s under sedation. But now, taking into consideration the emotional involvement between her and Cynthia Braine, and the possibility that Angela was therefore linked with it, we’ll have to give fresh thought to the original murder. The difficulty at that time was that nobody but Harry knew Angela was stranded at the lay-by, so that only the casual motorist driving past seemed a possible alternative suspect. But the actual crime didn’t have the elements of such a set-up. You’ll have thought of all this, my dear?’
‘We discussed that, Harry and I.’
‘Then you’ll have considered the fact that there was one other person who knew she was there, Freda Graham, though she was there as a policewoman. Suspicion never even drifted in her direction.’
‘And surely not now,’ Virginia suggested quietly.
‘You think not?’
‘Angela was the one person she’d want to keep alive. Angela was taking Charlie out of Cynthia’s life, and leaving Freda a clear field.’
‘Hmm!’ he said. ‘I get your point.’ He thought about it, and whilst doing so reached sideways for a silver box with a cedar lining, and helped himself to a cigar. ‘Harry? No? Good man. May I borrow your lighter, my dear?’
By the time he had it going to his satisfaction he’d worked out what he was going to say.
‘Of course, I’ll have to have a word with the psychologists about this. But it seems to me, from what you’ve said, that she hasn’t had such a clear field of it, even with Charles out of the way. This…business with Cynthia…I understand it was going on before Charles left her…’ He was hesitant.
‘Most certainly. It was why he left her.’
‘But since then it’s fallen on hard times. Yes. Perhaps Freda realized that could happen. A clandestine affair, even a normal one between a man and a woman, can be exciting. The very unattainableness…is there such a word? Anyway, you can see what I mean. Perhaps Freda would realize their affair would collapse when Charles wasn’t there as a kind of safety barrier.’
Harry, who had thought of Charlie, perhaps not consciously, in that way, said: ‘Oh yes.’
Virginia tossed him a frown. ‘Freda said she wanted Cynthia to see the woman Charlie was going away with.’
‘She said that recently. Four years after the event. There’s been time for a full defensive mechanism to have been erected.’
‘Yet she did phone Cynthia. Cynthia confirmed that.’
‘And told you she saw nothing. Which would be the case if she delayed long enough, and if Angela was dead and hidden by then.’
Virginia pouted, then shrugged. To Harry it was clear that Brent was no mere figurehead in the scheme of things, as he’d always thought was the case with top men in the police.
Brent waited politely for any comment, received none, and continued. He was now well into his verbal stride.
‘Freda knew what was going on from her personal knowledge and from what she’d heard on the car radio about the two crimes. On the trip to the lay-by she worked out what she would do. Her reasoning would be that her affair with Cynthia stood a better chance with Cynthia’s husband back at home, and conducted clandestinely, than with him out of the way with Angela. This seems to have been borne out by subsequent events. So she seized the chance to get rid of Angela by killing her with the heel of Angela’s own shoe. Freda’s strong enough for that. She took away both shoes, the right one because it was the murder weapon, the left one for a very practical reason. As you yourself worked out, my dear, and so cleverly…’
‘Father!’ she said sharply.
He grinned at her. She hated condescension. ‘I meant that. As you worked out, the complete lack of shoes indicated a woman murderer, but more specifically a woman who must at the time have been wearing stiletto heels. So this also protected one other person, a woman too, who would certainly no
t be wearing stiletto heels. A woman police officer in uniform. Freda was practical, you see. Self-defence. It would only be later, when the affair with Cynthia seemed to be running into heavy weather, that she would realize the shoe might be used for persuasion.’
‘Sheer blackmail.’
‘Not, I think, so direct as that. But it was used in such a way. Freda Graham must have a tortuous mind.’ He frowned over that for a moment.
Virginia pushed him on. ‘And Cynthia’s death?’
‘Well…you know yourself how emotionally charged the situation had become. I rather feel that Cynthia was still clinging to the possibility that her husband would return to her. Heavens, the poor woman was in a completely confused state of mind over the situation with Freda. She wanted Freda’s affection, but not in so…heavy and wholesale a manner as Freda presented it. She might well have taken refuge in it, if she could have been the dominant figure. But if Charles Braine returned…then it could all go back to its light and playful and secret bit of fun…’ He grimaced, finding himself unable to find the correct words. ‘And be safe. Yes. Be safe. How would she feel, then, if Freda arrived with the news that Charles had been found dead? Freda, telling her that, and waiting to take charge…no, I think Cynthia would reject her outright. I think Cynthia, in those circumstances, would turn her back on her.’
He was silent. Harry stirred in his chair. Virginia bit her lip.
‘So who killed Charlie Braine?’ she asked at last.
‘Who else but O’Loughlin? Not personally, of course, but through his minions.’
Harry, who had never heard that word actually used, was sparked into activity. ‘He said he didn’t.’
‘As he would.’
‘Nah! It was the way he said it. What he wanted was the money.’
‘He’d want that, of course.’
Harry shook his head. ‘None of his men would miss the paint cans.’
‘All the same, O’Loughlin’s the obvious bet.’
Virginia shot a glance of approval in Harry’s direction. ‘He offered me a diamond to find the money for him.’
The Second Jeopardy Page 18