by Amy Myers
Louise looked fabulous in a short silvery evening dress. I was so used to seeing her in thirties gear or in casual clothes that to see her in her full glory was breathtaking. Eleanor on the other hand, in a skimpy brown dress with too many ruffles, looked like a particularly cross hen.
As we all moved to the lawns, the women’s dresses and party food and champagne livened up what could have been an awkward evening. Talk seemed to centre on the future and not on the traumas of the past few weeks. I watched Bill carefully as he circulated. He seemed preoccupied, but as the evening progressed he looked more relaxed, even – to my horror – standing up to make a speech at the end of the excellent meal. Not a good idea. I expected a shot to ring out at any moment with such a clear target.
Nothing happened. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or whether this merely raised the tension level. I took them alternately, relaxed when coffee and liqueurs were circulating, then felt my muscles tensing as we left for the cinema.
‘The film won’t make much sense to you at this stage,’ Louise warned me. ‘It’s nowhere near finished.’
I was almost lulled into relaxation myself, by the time the lights dimmed for the film show. That quickly came to an abrupt end. I’d been expecting the film to begin with the 1935 Jubilee Ball. What we actually saw with the opening shot was First World War fighter planes flying over fields of poppies.
There was a general gasp, someone cried out, but most of us sat in frozen bewilderment. Bill lost his cool. ‘What the hell is this?’ he yelled at the unfortunate operator.
That at least was clear, as we had only recently seen this shot. It was the opening of Running Tides.
‘Some mistake,’ Louise muttered to me, as Bill and the operator struggled in the projection room to get the right film running. I had a renewed fear that the Dark Harvest rushes had indeed been destroyed, but apparently not because its first scene duly appeared, with the arrivals of the cars for the Syndale Manor ball.
‘I hope you’re right about its being a mistake,’ I replied.
She stiffened. ‘The joker again?’
‘Yes.’
It was clear to me that Geoffrey Manning had thrown down the gauntlet. It was his open declaration of war. The question was what would come next.
I was in a state of jitters as the film progressed, but nothing more happened. Not until after midnight when the party broke up, and the buses were ready to leave. And then, just as I was beginning to think it was all over, Nigel came rushing into the house and made straight for me.
‘Trouble, Jack. The cars.’
I was out there in the forecourt like a flash. Bill’s gesture of defiance had been noted. The Auburn’s creamy paint now had a gaudy decoration. The word ‘whore’ had been painted in bright purple across the bonnet.
Amazingly, Bill took this in his stride, merely demanding of police and security guards what they thought they were paid for. It was his very quietness that made me nervous. I was well aware that this was just the warm-up. Manning was not going to be catching the bus back home.
‘Shall I stay, Jack?’ Louise asked.
‘No, pet. I’d be worrying about you as well as Bill.’
She took that. ‘But you . . .’
‘The police are here,’ I said lightly. ‘Plus the guards.’ The extra security guards round the marquee had now left, but there were still two remaining, plus the two police and every security light and alarm yet known to man.
Louise didn’t believe me, but I managed to persuade her to go. Everyone went, save for Bill, myself and our security. Plus, I feared, Geoff Manning.
‘You go too, Jack,’ Bill told me.
‘As if,’ I said briefly, and for once he didn’t argue with me.
I checked with the police that the same number of guests had left as had arrived, and tried to believe their assurance that this was the case. Manning was clever enough to have sorted that one out, however. I walked out on to the terrace where I could see the marquee, now empty of all but the bare tables waiting to be picked up the next day. Maybe that was when Manning would come, I thought, and already I could feel the adrenalin dying down inside me. I roused myself. That would be what Manning was counting on.
‘No sign of anything yet, Jack,’ Bill said neutrally as we walked back into his living room.
‘You call that Running Tides switch nothing? Or that attack on your Auburn?’
‘Guess not, but it’s good. It means that’s his last shot. No murder in mind.’
‘It’s not over yet.’
A pause. ‘You still thinking Geoff Manning is going to come?’
‘Yes.’
He sighed. ‘Whoever does come, it won’t be him. I checked him out. He died three years ago.’
SEVENTEEN
We sat in our comfortable armchairs in silence, Bill and I. I wished I could have believed that the storm clouds had passed. There was a police car in the forecourt, containing one constable. Another one stood at the gate. Two security guards had replaced the earlier ones for the night patrol, and the house had been minutely searched to their satisfaction. Bill had told me enough to convince me that Geoffrey Manning was indeed no longer in the picture – whatever the picture might be. No switch of identities or false funerals in this case. The information had shaken me, but not to the point where I could shut up shop and go happily to bed. Either my fears had been one gigantic fantasy or I had taken a wrong turn in my thinking. I hoped it was the former, but every gut feeling told me it was the latter.
At one thirty Bill told me that he was going to get some sleep; I could do what I wanted. There was a bed ready for me upstairs, third door on the right, or I could stay here with the whisky bottle, or I could lay me down and sleep on the floor outside his door in the good old-fashioned way if I preferred. I opted for staying put – without the whisky bottle. Why stay? Obstinacy perhaps, or a feeling that if and when our killer arrived I needed to be on the spot, not lying vulnerably in bed.
After Bill left there was no temptation for me to sleep. I went over the evening again and again in my mind. Not everyone had attended the party, as the last day’s shooting had not included a full crew and extras. I thought of the two incidents of the evening: the intrusion of Running Tides into the film and the paint on the Auburn. There had been – and must still be – some joker in our pack. So where was he now?
It was a scary feeling that he was around somewhere. In all my oil company days I’d had experience of being in the midst of the desert and yet knowing that danger was lurking near. Even though the security lights blazed out fiercely at the slightest move and we were safely indoors, I felt prickles at the back of my neck, as if I were a particularly stupid mouse who had been lured into a trap that would shortly slam shut. I saw a security guard passing, but it gave me little confidence. Shotsworth Security? I wondered. Was Nigel in on this deal too? He’d been present this evening, but I had seen him drive out in the Bentley. He’d wanted to take Louise with him, but she chose to go on the bus with the others. Perhaps she preferred that to Nigel. Had he bargained on that, and had not in fact left at all? All sorts of scenarios buzzed through my mind.
Except the one that exploded outside.
No security lights flashed on.
Only noise.
Noise so deafening that it shot me out of the armchair, rushing to the windows to look out into the darkness of the night. Nothing to be seen. Only heard, as a woman’s voice magnified a thousand times shrieked out endlessly in desperation:
‘Bill, Bill! Come to me. Come.’
Intermingled with it were snatches of music, music I remembered. We’d heard it earlier this evening. It wouldn’t stop. It assaulted the eardrums, it tore at the nerves, blocking out reason. It brought Bill bursting back into the room with white face and staring vacantly. He wasn’t focusing on me, and as he clutched at me and missed I thought he would collapse. He didn’t, but stood there, swaying in a trance.
‘It’s Margot,’ he whispered.
> No need to ask more. There was only one Margot. And all along she had been the missing character in this crazy script.
‘Margot,’ he repeated, as the racket continued, lights blazing out. If the guards and police were shouting, I wouldn’t have heard them.
I tried to shake Bill out of his stupor, shouting over the din. ‘What is it?’
I could feel him trembling, not with fear, but with disbelief. ‘Running Tides,’ he said. ‘The last scene.’
I remembered now. Ramble, Margot’s code name in the film, was in prison, calling on the man she loved, the British fighter pilot Bill Brackley.
‘Stop it, Jack,’ he whispered as I rushed for the door. ‘Stop her.’
Without working out what the hell I was going to do, I ran over the terrace and down to the gardens, as the security lights blazed out. The noise was coming from the woods on the far side of the boundary wall. Or was it this side, where the line of trees ran in front of it?
I reached them at the same time as one of the two policemen. ‘Over there,’ I panted. I could hear it nearby. At the same time he was yelling at me and pointing in a different direction. The security lights didn’t reach through these trees but we rushed for the wall – anything to stop that noise. I wasn’t looking down as I ran over the uneven ground, and I tripped on something. I nearly threw up.
It was a body. The policeman was waving frantically for his mate, who was just catching up with us. I fell to my knees to see what had happened. It was a security guard – probably the one I had seen from the house. He was alive, thank heavens, groaning and even conscious, although my hands were sticky with blood.
‘Where is he?’ I asked sharply. ‘Ahead of us? Over the wall? Behind us?’
I thought he couldn’t speak but his lips managed to form one word: ‘Woman.’
Woman? Dear God, what was this? Thoughts raced through my mind. Could it be a woman who had killed Angie and Joan? A woman had rung Tom. A woman had driven the Auburn. No time to think back. Think forward. Do, not think. The police were giving first aid and calling for back-up, the other security guard had arrived. I rushed to get over that wall to the source of the noise. One of the PCs was over first, but then my brain clicked into gear before I followed him.
Where the hell was Bill? If one security guard was on the ground, the other with him, and two police here, Bill must be on his own. Whatever that racket was, the joker knew Bill wouldn’t be going in search of it. Its aim was to lure me and anyone else that might be around out of the house. Whoever this woman was, she wanted Bill all to herself.
To kill him.
‘Back,’ I yelled to the PC still with me, leaving the wounded security guard with his mate. I was already racing towards the house, my breath coming in gasps. I realized the PC had hesitated, so I had to shout back, ‘Bill Wade’s alone there.’ More time lost while I did so.
I didn’t wait to see whether he was following me. I just hoped to heaven that he was. I could take on any woman I reckoned, but one with a gun was a different matter. I needed the advantage of surprise. I had to hope that Bill was still in the living room and thanks to the angle at which I was approaching the terrace, with the marquee shielding me, I might be out of their sight line if the woman was already with him. I might be able to think of something. But suppose I didn’t? I pushed that thought away. Of course I would. At times like this, reason isn’t always to the fore.
As we reached the house, reason obliged, and I clutched at it. There was a way into the house at the side of the building, if it was open. The killer would be expecting any relief operation to be through the French windows, not through a door from the house. I looked round to see where my cavalry was. At first I thought I was it, but thankfully it showed up. The young PC had caught me up as I pushed my way into the house. ‘What on earth is this door doing unlocked?’ I muttered fleetingly. Had Bill’s killer come this way? Could be. And where were they? Was Bill still in the living room? Had he been frogmarched somewhere else? Was he already dead? I cut through all this. Find him first. Try the living room.
Then I heard the sound of voices. They were there. Voices raised. I could hear Bill’s. I could hear a woman’s husky voice too. Was it the same that had been calling out ‘Bill, Bill, come to me’? Was it Margot’s?
I tried to cling to sanity. How could this be Margot Croft herself? I remembered at last the Victorian murderer who had flashed through my mind earlier. He’d killed the actor/manager William Terriss at his stage door. He just waited patiently for his quarry to come along and stabbed him to death. In revenge. This woman was the same. She had a plan and calmly executed it bit by bit. Somewhere there had been a pattern, which I had not picked up.
This woman really did not care if we arrived provided that Bill was dead. Was she planning to kill herself too? Another suicide? I was advancing all the while step by step. The woman’s back was to me as I pushed the door open a little way. I could see Bill. He was facing her, as though he’d always known her. I couldn’t read his face. Montgomery meets Rommel face to face. No time for crazy thoughts now. She was chatting almost conversationally to Bill.
‘Never me, never me, always you, Bill.’
She must have known that people would soon come so there must be something she wanted to tell him, part of the plan. Now I needed a plan. Who was this woman, her back to me and clad in a long bedraggled skirt? That voice . . .
‘She killed herself because of you, Bill. You took her from me and everything else too.’
The gun was trained on Bill. If she intended to kill herself and saw me, I stood a chance. But if she saw me and Bill was her sole target, she would shoot him first before I could grab her. It would be blindingly stupid for me even to try it. And then I remembered the bulletproof gear I wore.
‘Are you armed?’ I whispered to my cavalry.
‘No.’
Silly of me to have asked. Budget cuts. ‘I’ll go then. You follow.’
My hand felt sweaty on the knob as I pushed the door fully open. No going back now. Dear God, was I mad? Too late to change my mind. The cavalry was behind me, at least.
As she heard me and turned just fractionally Bill leapt forward, bless him. I heard a shot as I threw myself forward and bore her to the ground. The gun went off again, but wherever the shot went it wasn’t into any of us. As I gripped flailing arms, Bill tore the gun away. The cavalry and I had her in our grasp and pulled her over on to her back.
I froze. Chalk-white face plastered like a painted clown’s with heavy lipstick, massive blue eyeshadow, a long brown wig, skirt, jacket, but no full breasts. No woman. This was a man. And one who had been with us all the time. No gentle face now. Why had I never noticed that his eyes were so completely mad?
It was Chris Frant.
Stand on a tower in the middle of a maze and look out over the pattern of the hedges below and you have an overview of all the little innocents trying to find the right way round it. Be one of those innocents yourself, and you’d be just as adrift as I felt. In theory I could have put all those indications of a warped personality together. Mazes have plans behind them. Work out what it is and you’re there. Or should be. Plenty of innocents are thwarted at the last hedge before the centre.
Bill and I sat in his study as the night hours ticked on. We’d been checked over by the first-aiders, given our preliminary statements, ignored everyone’s recommendations for shock relief and assured the police we’d be here the next morning when the SOCOs returned. Not a murder scene, thank heavens, but attempted murder provided that the security guard pulled through. The police were a new gang to me, being in a different area to Charing, and it was a relief to find I was actually ‘known’ to their computer because of my work for Dave Jennings. It saved the hassle of explaining how I came to be wearing bulletproof gear.
Neither Bill nor I could face sleep. Something had to be said between us before we could do so, and it had to start with Bill.
‘That racket,’ Bill said eventually. �
�Running Tides, of course. He must have taken it from the film and made his own recording of that speech. Easy enough for him to get hold of it from the studios given enough time.’
‘And that he had. Over ten years.’ The police had already found an intricate sound system rigged up in the trees outside the wall, with small powerful speakers and an amplifier. They were high up, where the patrolling guards would not have noticed them. They would have been searching at ground level. Bill told me that Chris had driven over early that day to set the system up, then gone back to the studios, joined the bus to attend and leave the party – and once back at the hotel driven back again to stage his coup.
‘He wanted to tell me the whole damn story before he shot me,’ Bill said with a kind of wonder. ‘He was convinced Margot would have loved him if it hadn’t been for me. He was an extra; I doubt if she’d even have noticed him.’
‘I remember his telling me he auditioned for the lead in Running Tides without success.’
‘Yeah. He brought that grudge up too. I had no idea. Wouldn’t have stood a chance.’
Like Terriss’s killer, I thought, who believed Terriss had ruined his stage career. ‘He blamed you for that?’
‘Yeah. And for the fact that his wife walked out on him last year. My fault too, apparently. He tried for Robert Steed in Dark Harvest too. Another black mark against me. If he did, the news didn’t reach me. He’d have been ruled out right away.’
‘Because of his acting?’
‘No. There’s just something about star quality that stands out, and he hasn’t got it.’
I thought of all the non star players in this world, and of how the Bill Wades brush them aside. Unfair to blame the Bill Wades though. They have to reach for the best. Others find their own level, their own achievements, but once in a while there’s one who doesn’t. And Chris was one of them.