by Mary Stewart
‘Burglary, perhaps? And Tony—’
‘Nothing was touched. And Tony had never moved from his bed. They said he was strangled as he slept.’
‘But why—’
‘That’s it, Charity, that’s the big thing. Why?’ His voice exploded suddenly. ‘My God, why? Night after night after night I’ve spent wondering why? If I only knew that … he was one of the decentest souls God ever sent, Charity. An ordinary, decent boy that nobody on this earth would want to kill, you’d think. They must have meant to do it, planned to do it, quite deliberately, but what the motive was I do not know. That was the strongest thing against me, of course – the fact that there wasn’t a shadow of motive for anyone else to do it. And when Loraine confessed to being Tony’s mistress that gave me the strongest motive there is.’
He was silent for a moment, his brows drawn. Then he gave his head a little shake, as if to rid it of the thoughts crowding through his brain.
‘Try as I will,’ he said, ‘I can’t see why Loraine should either do it herself, or connive at its being done.’
‘What if he’d turned her down?’ I suggested. ‘It can take women that way, can’t it?’
‘Hell hath no fury? I suppose it could … but then what about the other man? Why should he help in that situation?’
‘You seem very sure there was a man.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘David may be only a kid, but he’s intelligent, and he doesn’t get rattled easily. If he said there was a man’s arm then there was a man’s arm.’
‘Couldn’t he have been trying to divert suspicion from you?’
‘He told them the story as soon as he was fit to talk, and he had no idea what had happened, or that I’d even be remotely suspected. No, he told the truth. He thought he’d surprised a burglar.’
There was a pause.
‘It’s a stinker, isn’t it?’ said Richard.
‘It certainly is.’
‘And that’s only half the story. I don’t know yet why Tony was murdered, or why, apparently, Loraine should be so very anxious to see me dead.’
‘But how can you be sure –?’ I interrupted, then broke off as, like a whispering echo, I remembered her voice repeating in the frightened dark: he ought to be dead and done with, dead and done with, dead and done with … What was it they did to murderers? Buried them in quicklime, so that there was nothing of them left?
I shivered in the still warm air, and his hand closed sharply over mine, warm and strong and very much alive.
His voice was sombre, and he spoke with a conviction that chilled me again.
‘Because,’ he said, ‘I’m next on the list. She couldn’t get me hanged, but she staged another murder. And the second time, I was the victim.’
16
Madam, will you talk—?
(Old song)
‘It was after the trial,’ he went on. ‘I was allowed to go, of course, and someone handed me a note as I was leaving the court, to say that Loraine wanted to see me at Claridge’s, where she had a room. I got a taxi and went to see her. She was alone, and she had some news for me. Good news. She told me, quite plainly, that she was going back to France, and that there was no need for me to institute divorce proceedings.’
‘No need? What did she mean?’
‘She had just discovered, she said, that her previous husband, who had been missing and presumed dead since 1943, was still alive. Our marriage, therefore, was never valid.’
‘But – was this true?’
‘She showed me her marriage certificate – naturally, I knew she had been married before – and then a letter from a Paris laywer. The certificate, of course, was genuine; about the letter I don’t know yet.’
‘What was his name – the husband’s, I mean?’
‘Jean Something-or-other, I think.’ He reached for a cigarette. ‘To tell you the truth I hardly bothered. I’d come straight from the dock, I hadn’t even had a chance to wash the prison smell off my hands, I felt as if I never wanted to see her or speak to her again – and I wanted most damnably to get home and see David. He was still at Deepings, of course, and I imagined he must be half out of his mind.’
I must have made some inarticulate sound.
He said: ‘Yes, I know. Well, I slammed the papers down and snarled that I hoped to God it was true, and that I didn’t care what she did as long as she kept out of my way, and she could leave it to the lawyers because I didn’t particularly want to stay and talk to her. And a few other things. It wasn’t pretty, I can tell you.’
‘I don’t blame you. I’d have wrung her neck.’
‘She wasn’t frightened. She knew I wasn’t the neck-wringing sort.’
I said drily: ‘You don’t give a bad imitation of it, at times.’
He grinned a little at that, then seemed suddenly to recollect the cigarette-case in his hand. We lit cigarettes.
‘Well, our loving talk finished with Loraine throwing the car keys at me, and telling me she’d left the Rolls at Redmanor station and would I ficher le camp – only the phrase she used was more – direct, shall I say? – than that.’
I laughed. ‘I get it.’
‘You shock me. Well, I did as she suggested; I got the hell out of it, and, what with one thing and another, by the time I got down to Redmanor I was half sick with worry and reaction, and in a flaming temper into the bargain. The Rolls was there, all right, and I went off at the hell of a lick, with only one thought in my head: David.’
‘And there was an accident?’
‘Right first guess; there was an accident. There’s a place where you turn off the main road, about a mile from my house, where the road skirts a quarry. There’s a sharp bend about half-way down, with the quarry on your left, and a bluff of rock to the right – the road swings right-handed round it. In general it’s safe enough, because above the bluff it’s open, and before you reach the bend you can see if anything’s on the road below. Well, as I say, I was going the hell of a lick. I could see the chimneys of Deepings through the trees in the valley, and there was nothing on the road, so I took a run at that hill. And just half-way round that bend I met another car, on its wrong side. I was well over to the left, but there wasn’t time, and he held on … There was just room, only just, if I went into the verge; and he kept coming. I yanked the wheel over, something snapped with a crack like a gun, and we went clean over the edge.’
‘Richard!’
‘Oh, they had no luck,’ he said grimly. ‘The off-side door wasn’t caught – I’d been in such a hurry that I hadn’t noticed – and it fell open as we went over. I fell out. The car dropped to the bottom of the quarry and went on fire, but some bushes broke my fall, and I only got concussed on a ledge.’
‘But – are you sure – couldn’t it have been a real accident?’
‘I told you I’d seen there wasn’t a car on the road. He must have had it parked, waiting for me. I’ve had plenty of time to think about it, there in hospital, and this is what I think happened. There’s a phone box a mile or so along the road, and he could have been waiting there as soon as he heard the trial was over. They must have known I’d make straight for Deepings.’
‘But, Richard, why bother to tell you about the marriage business, if they’d planned to kill you?’
‘She had to know just when I started for Deepings, and besides, she wanted to give me the keys and make sure I’d take the car. Then, when I left her, I think she must have phoned him. He had his car parked behind the barn near the foot of the hill, and waited for me with field glasses. It was a cream-coloured Rolls coupé, and pretty unmistakable. He had only to time himself, so that he’d meet me on the bend, and he could reckon it would happen just like that, if the steering had been damaged beforehand. I tell you, it went with a crack like a gun, and the wheel just spun in my hands.’
‘Wasn’t he taking a big risk of being hurt himself?’
‘You have to take risks to get away with murder,’ returned Richard grimly. ‘But, after all
, the risk wasn’t so very great. He may have meant to swerve at the last minute, if I didn’t try to crowd into the edge, but he could be pretty well certain that I’d pull as far to the left as I could, and of course, with the steering column damaged, it was a hundred to one I’d go over.’
‘Didn’t the police find what had been done to the steering column?’
‘No. That was Loraine’s one piece of luck. The car burned right out – there was hardly a piece left recognizable, they told me.’
‘I suppose her accomplice had damaged the steering while the Rolls was in the station yard?’
‘I imagine so. I found the car unlocked, anyway, and my own keys inside it. But that proved nothing. No, my story was more than the police could swallow, I think; after all, motiveless murders, and an invisible, elusive murderer – it was too much. They were quite right, of course, it was too much. I’d started by insisting I was being framed for Tony’s murder – why? Then I’d talked of an attempt on my own life – why? It wouldn’t wash, Charity. We’re back where we were – where is the motive for these attempts?’ He gave a sharp little sigh; and threw his cigarette-stub out into the water. ‘The police were very patient, all things considered, but I could see their minds were beginning to run in all sorts of curious channels, so eventually I shut up and allowed them to write it off as accident.’
‘What sort of curious channels?’
‘Oh … suicide, for instance.’
‘Richard!’ I cried again.
‘Oh, yes. Disgraced Man’s Mind Unhinged by Trial … you know. The papers got it, of course, and said as much as they dared. But again, there was no proof.’
‘And David?’
‘The last time I saw David,’ he said slowly, and with great bitterness, ‘was when they arrested me and took me away. I wouldn’t let him visit me in prision, of course. Then, when I was in hospital after the smash, Loraine did as she’d promised. She went back to France. But she did more, as you know. She took David with her. He never even came to see me in the hospital before he went …’
He stopped, apparently absorbed in watching the floating butt of his cigarette discolour, split, and disintegrate into a little mess of sodden tobacco, among the débris floating below the wall. I said nothing.
‘As soon as the doctors would let me, a fortnight ago, I came over. I traced them as far as Lyons, heading south … and the rest you know.’
‘But, Richard, I don’t understand. David didn’t believe all that about suicide, did he? And he thought you were innocent of murder; you said so. Why did he go with Loraine?’
Richard’s voice tautened. ‘I don’t know. I suppose, if she never told him she wasn’t legally my wife, he’d assume that, as his step-mother, she had the right to look after him when I was ill. And he’s only a child. He’d do as he was told.’
‘But why didn’t he write? Why did you have to “trace” them? Why didn’t—?’
He turned to look at me, and the slanting lamplight slid over his face, sharpening the finely drawn angles of cheek and jaw-bone, and setting his face into a mask of great unhappiness. His eyes were full of such misery and uncertainty that I looked away.
He said, heavily: ‘I don’t know, Charity. I don’t know. Don’t you see, that’s what’s such a hell for me? I’ve stopped giving one single damn about Loraine or her precious confederate, or her shots at killing me, or even poor Tony’s death. I want to see David again, and get things straight with him. I want to find out what lies they’ve told him to make him go off like that without a word. Perhaps, in the end, they got him to believe it all … that I was a murderer, I mean … and he didn’t dare to wait and see me—’ He broke off.
His voice, when he spoke again, was very quiet.
He said, his head bent low, watching the water:
‘But you know that side of it, don’t you, Charity? You said he was afraid of me, didn’t you?’
I saw the sudden gleam and shift of his knuckles as he clenched them, and a wave of compassion went over me, so real – I mean so physical – that it left me shaking. I could not speak.
He looked at me sharply. ‘Well?’
‘Oh, Richard,’ I said miserably, ‘I don’t want to hurt you any more. It’s all such a muddle, and I don’t know what anything means, or what to believe at all.’
His face softened a little, and he touched my hand again, a feather-light touch.
‘We can’t work the muddle out until we get all the facts, my dear. Tell me your end of it – tell me everything he said, what both he and Loraine have been doing and saying. Don’t worry about my feelings – they should be pretty tough by now. Just tell me what you know, from the first moment you met him.’
I saw, as if a brush had suddenly sketched it in across the moonlight, the slight delicate branches and paper-thin leaves of the tree Yggdrasil … that shook and swayed as the cat clawed up the stem, then dissolved again into moonlight. I said suddenly: ‘Do you know a man called Marsden?’
He frowned, thinking.
‘Marsden? No, I don’t think so. What’s he like? Why?’
‘I remembered something.’ I said abruptly. ‘I think David was perfectly right about there being a man in the house that night.’ I began to tell him about the conversation I had overheard up at the Rocher des Doms. ‘And I remember his very words,’ I finished. ‘He said: I got you out of the mess before, didn’t I? I got you out of England, didn’t I, and the boy too?’
Richard had turned sharply as I spoke, and his eyes were very intent. When I had finished he was smiling, with a kind of grim satisfaction.
‘So we were right. So far, so good. It’s only a very little, Charity, but it’s something. I wonder just where this man Marsden could tie in with Loraine’s missing husband, Jean-Something-or-other, who appeared so providentially?’
‘If he did appear.’
‘If, as you say, he did appear.’ He straightened up suddenly. ‘We’ll soon know if that part of the story’s true: I’ve got someone investigating it in Paris. It’s beginning to matter, rather, too.’
He grinned.
‘Well, who knows what else you’ve seen and heard? We’ll have it cleared up before dawn at this rate – long before dawn, my dear, because you look tired, and no wonder. Come and get a drink, and we’ll find somewhere to sit while you tell me your story.’
17
Madam, will you walk and talk with me?
(Old song)
‘I shall probably get it very muddled,’ I said, ‘because of course a lot happened before I began to notice things particularly. And I doubt if I have the gift of narrative. But I’ll do my best.’
So I began to tell him what I could remember: David and the dog, Mrs. Palmer and her account of the Byron trial, the trip to Nîmes, and David’s reactions to his father’s presence. The drive home, and David’s half-confidence and strange childish insistence that I should tell Loraine Byron nothing at all. The snatch of conversation heard in Loraine’s bedroom that night. And everywhere, the presence of the man Marsden – lighting Loraine’s cigarette, loitering in the dark at the foot of the Rocher des Doms, driving to Nîmes in the bus, going up to the gardens with David next morning …
Richard Byron listened in silence, tracing little patterns in spilt wine on the table-top, his head bent, his brows frowning.
‘So you see,’ I said finally, ‘why I behaved in the silly way I did. I didn’t even tumble to the fact that David hated her when he insisted that his name wasn’t the same as hers. I just thought I had to keep you away from him. I – I rather fell for David,’ I finished lamely.
He shot me a look that brought the blood to my cheeks, then returned to his drawing on the table-top.
‘Yes, David,’ he said slowly. ‘We always come back to David. And the old questions: why he went away like that without a word; what he believes, now, about that horrible night; why he’s afraid to meet me … Why, d’you know, I even thought they might have done away with him, too, until I got the anonym
ous letter from Paris.’
‘Anonymous letter?’
‘I got dozens,’ said Richard briefly. ‘The usual filth that always starts flowing when a murder trial opens the sewer. This one was posted in Paris, and whoever wrote it apparently knew me, and knew David, and had seen him there. It included, of course, a lot of abuse about – oh, well, that doesn’t matter, does it?’
‘Richard, how beastly!’
‘But it gave a clue, you see. My housekeeper had told me that David went off with Loraine, and Loraine had told me she was going to France. This gave me a start. So I raised heaven and earth and the R.A.C. and shipped the car across on the next boat. And at my appartement in Paris – I have a room over my office – there was another letter waiting.’
‘But who on earth—?’
‘Loraine,’ he said, grimly. ‘Dear Loraine. This time it was signed, and it was written, not typed, but there was something about the style that made it just a continuation of the first one.’
‘Was it still about David?’
‘It was. She and I, it said, must have a long talk, some time, about his future. But, as David didn’t want to see me, and she herself didn’t feel like facing me yet, she was taking him away from Paris, and would get in touch with me later. That wasn’t all, but that was the gist of it.’
‘What did you do?’
‘The letter was postmarked Lyons, so of course I went down there. I hunted about for a couple of days, café-haunting, and asking questions, until I picked up what looked like a clue. Loraine’s pretty conspicuous, as you know, and the barman at one of the hotels remembered seeing her, and remembered too, that she’d spoken of going south. I won’t bore you with the rest of it, but I traced them fairly easily as far as Bollène, and then I went wrong. They had been seen on the road to Pont St. Esprit, and that, as you know, is across the Rhône from Bollène, and on the way to Nîmes. Well, I followed my nose, and landed in Nîmes on a chance. It was a wrong chance, as it happened, but it turned out to be near enough.’
I said: ‘No wonder you wanted to kill me when you got so near to David, and I got in the way.’