Going Wrong (v5)

by Ruth Rendell

  “I don’t remember that, Magnus. I think you dreamt that up.” She coughed again, reached over, and with a shudder ground out Guy’s cigarette end. “It was wonderful for Leonora, it took away all her worries.”

  “Needs must when the devil drives,” said Magnus, his eyes gleaming, leaving little doubt as to whom he meant by the devil.

  Guy got up, patting his pocket where the gun was. Tessa’s eyes followed his hand. The telephone was beside her on a low table, within easy reach. He had no sword to cut the wires. With his wounded arm, he lacked the strength to pull them out of the wall. He wouldn’t have wanted to anyway, but he put his hand into his pocket and felt the smooth cold metal.

  “Where have they gone?”

  “Where have who gone?” Tessa had got up too.

  “Anthony and Susannah. They’ve gone away on holiday.” Or was that a lie too, put about by the sister? “I was told they were away.”

  “Only for a few days. I wouldn’t dream of telling you where. It’s been quite bad enough our having to put up with this interrogation, but I took that on myself. I volunteered. I said to send you here and I’d be the one to face you. That was to save the others. I felt it was the least I could do, so you can be sure I’m not going to drop poor Anthony and Susannah into it at this stage. Anyway, they can’t tell you any more than I’ve told you.”

  He felt the gun and thought again of killing them. If he did that, he would spoil his chances of finding Anthony and Susannah. He took his hand out of his pocket. Breaking the place up, even kicking the vases of flowers over, would spoil his chances of finding Anthony and Susannah. Magnus Mandeville was the kind of man who wouldn’t hesitate before getting on to the police. He was probably on to the police about something or other every couple of days. Guy looked from one to the other of them and then he looked away, sickened.

  He thought, she is married. While I waited for her in that restaurant, at the very moment set for our meeting, she was getting married. I tried to make those phone calls, I went from house to house, I saw myself as her rescuer. All the time I was doing that, she was at a party, her own wedding party. She was drinking champagne and laughing and being congratulated. The flowers in this room had been in that room, she had probably smelt them, touched them, perhaps even carried some of them as a bouquet.

  He walked out of the room and across the hall, opened the front door, slammed it and walked down the long path to the gate.

  They were watching him, he knew that, but he didn’t look back. They had won, all of them. Tessa and Magnus, Rachel, Maeve and Robin, Anthony’s brother and Susannah’s sister, Anthony and Susannah. They had done what they had set out to do four years before. It had taken four years to accomplish it, but they had done it, and the instigators, the leaders of the plot, were Anthony and Susannah.

  He sat in the Jaguar. He switched on the engine and saw the digits on the clock light up: eight fifty-two. All these things had happened, his life changed, he himself changed, and it was still only ten to nine. It wasn’t believable, so he looked at his watch. Ten to nine. He drove a little way and parked the car again. He parked simply because there was a space at the kerb and no yellow line. The cigarette he lit was so comforting it nearly made him cry. How could he have considered giving up smoking? He would never give it up.

  When his head cleared and he could think again he would remember where Anthony and Susannah had gone. Susannah had told him where they were going. She had told him that day when he called in at Lamb’s Conduit Street. He had forgotten, but it would come back. On the other hand, he could phone the sister. What was her name? Laura Stow. He could phone Laura Stow. It was only ten to nine—well, five past now. He could be home by a quarter to ten. That wasn’t too late to phone someone. He wouldn’t be himself on the phone, he would think of some tale—an urgent message for Anthony, a package to be delivered express …

  All of them were guilty—Magnus and Tessa, Rachel, Robin and Maeve, Laura Stow and Michael Chisholm, but most of all, Anthony and Susannah. It had started with Susannah’s opening that letter from Poppy Vasari. That was the beginning of their vendetta against him. Then Anthony had set to work, forbidding her to go on holiday with him, preventing her from borrowing the money for the flat in Portland Road from him. Negative moves, all of them, but the next one had been positive. The next one had been finding a husband for her, introducing her to William Newton. It was as bad as Indian immigrants arranging marriages, he thought.

  The husband secured, all that remained was to get a job for him in the north of England, far away from the man she really loved. And the final step was Susannah’s plan to get her married in secret, a week in advance of what he had been led to expect. Anthony and Susannah had master-minded the whole thing, made the plans, carried out the operation, brought it to a triumphantly successful conclusion. The others were no more than their servants, willing and obedient, awaiting instructions. And Newton was their pawn, an innocent nonentity. How much had they paid him to fall in with their plans?

  Guy started driving home. On Battersea Bridge he stopped, left the car and looked down at the brown, gleaming, dirty water of the river. He took the blue leather box with the sapphire engagement ring in it out of his pocket and, after a very small hesitation, threw it into the water. His thoughts reverted immediately to Anthony and Susannah Chisholm. The world was not big enough to hold within it himself—and them. He wouldn’t rest while Anthony and Susannah were still alive.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  It was normal for the lights to be on. There was a timer arrangement that switched them on as dusk fell. He left the car in the mews, let himself into the house, and went straight to the phone in the living-room. The directory in his brain that held a list of Chisholm numbers came up immediately with the one for Lamb’s Conduit Street.

  A man answered. Laura Stow probably had a husband. Guy said he was Wing Express Carriers of South Audley Street with an urgent packet for Mr. Chisholm, and where could he reach him? If Laura Stow herself had answered he would have disguised his voice, but with the husband it wasn’t necessary. The man wasn’t suspicious. He gave Guy the name of an hotel in Lyme Regis.

  Guy fetched himself a drink, a very large brandy, a triple. On the table, where he had left them, lay The London Review of Books and The Guardian. He thought he had left Cosmopolitan magazine there too but he couldn’t have because it wasn’t there now. Other things came to mind, the Paloma Picasso perfume and bath essence he had put in the bathroom, the house he had arranged to view on Monday. Rage that was as much misery as anger took hold of him and he seized the two papers, pulling them to pieces, tearing the sheets. He cursed as he did it, holding his head up, shouting at the ceiling—or God. He could hear his own voice raving as if it were someone else’s. He kicked the table, drummed with his fists on the wall.

  “Guy,” someone said. “Guy, what is it?”

  He turned round. Celeste was standing in the doorway.

  “Sweet Guy, what’s happened?”

  “Oh, God. Oh, Christ.” He had forgotten their date, or rather forgotten that he hadn’t succeeded in cancelling it. They had arranged for her to come here and she had come. How long ago? It was almost ten. “Celeste.” He simply spoke her name, his voice all ragged and rough from the shouting. “Celeste.”

  “I thought something had happened to you. I thought, Guy’s had an accident.”

  As if it were not himself but another man seeing her, as if he saw through that other man’s eyes, he thought how wonderful she looked. Her long dark chestnut hair hung loose, but still in the ripples made by plaiting. An inch-wide gold band held it off her face. She wore a black silk sweater and a black skirt densely embroidered in turquoise and blue and pink and red. Everything was perfect, from the tiny gold studs, snail shells, in her ears, to the bracelets of gold wire, to her flat gold-embroidered blue-and-green silk pumps. He closed his eyes and saw Leonora in navy-and-white washed-out cotton and dirty running shoes. The pain of it made him wince.
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  “Are you hurt?” she said. “Is it your arm?”

  “Celeste, I’m sorry I wasn’t here. I forgot you were coming. I’m sorry.” If he used those words and asked her to forgive him (“forgive me”), he would start crying. “Awful things,” he said carefully, trying to be careful, “have been happening.”

  “What things, Guy?”

  He lit a cigarette and gave her one. He tasted the brandy. It was good but it made him shudder. “I’ve got to go out again. I only came home to make that phone call. But I’ve got to go out soon. I’ll drive through the night.”

  “Can I come with you?”

  “No. I have to go alone. You stay here and sleep. Okay?”

  “I’d like to come with you. I could drive you.” She didn’t say he soon wouldn’t be fit to drive but that was what she meant. Still looking at him, she knelt down and began picking up the pieces of torn newspaper.

  “Oh, leave that.” He put his hands up to his head. “Celeste, she didn’t come today. She’s married. She got married while I was waiting for her in the restaurant.”

  “What?”

  He said it all again. It was easier the second time. She sat beside him and he told her all about the Chisholm conspiracy. Celeste listened in silence. When he had finished she was still silent, then she said, “That was a terrible thing to do.”

  He nodded. He had always liked the way she spoke, with that faint touch of accent that is Caribbean, the stress on the last syllable of words. “Teri-bull” was what she said. He looked at her affectionately. It came to him that she understood, she had always understood.

  “They ganged up against me,” he said. “They set out to turn her against me and they succeeded.”

  “I meant what she did was terrible. What she did. It was wicked, Guy. A good person wouldn’t do that.”

  He jumped up and stood a few paces from her. The warm feelings he had a few minutes before were gone. She continued to look at him.

  “She’s twenty-six years old,” she said. “She does her own thing. She does what she wants. You have to face that she wanted it. No one could make her, she’s not a child or an animal, she’s intelligent, she’s got a lot more brain than me and I’m younger, but I’d never do what people told me, never, never. And she didn’t. She did what she wanted. She enjoyed it, I really think she enjoyed it. You said she stood there and watched you fight William. She liked you fighting over her and making a goddess of her and not asking for anything in return.”

  His body trembled. He would have liked to kill her. His right arm itched to rise and his hand to strike her a swinging blow. Something stopped him, an old gallant shibboleth that you don’t strike a woman. You may kill her but you won’t hit her. He held his hand in the other hand and the scarf touched it, the silky scarf that was Leonora’s. All that he would ever have of her, he thought.

  “You’re jealous,” he said. “You always have been.”

  She shook her head. He didn’t know if she meant yes by it or no. “Leonora’s in love with William, Guy. Her father didn’t find her a husband, she found him. She loves him.”

  “How would you know?”

  “She told me. That day in the restaurant. She said, “I’d like to think of Guy loving someone the way I love William and them loving him back.”

  “It’s funny you never mentioned that before.”

  “I tried to tell you. You wouldn’t listen.”

  He went to pour himself another drink. The night had become very quiet, though it was Saturday and early yet. He heard her say, “Where are you going?”

  “A long way. To Dorset.” The brandy nauseated him. It had never had that effect before. “I want to see Anthony and Susannah.”

  There must have been something in his eyes to tell her. “I’ve hidden the ammunition for your gun. When you didn’t come I had a sense, a premonition.” By gun, she meant his .22. She didn’t know about the Colt. “I’ll never tell you where it is. You’d have to kill me first.”

  “You can stop interfering in my affairs, Celeste. You’re not my wife. You’re not even my girl-friend. You’re just a girl-friend. Isn’t it time you got that straight?”

  He wanted to hurt her. Sometimes, in the past, he had seen her wince and he wanted to see it again. But her face was calm. She was still. “Have you ever thought,” she said, “that if you hadn’t been chasing that dream, you had what was best for you right here at home? You and I, we’ve got everything in common, Guy. We like all the same things. We want to do the same things. We’ve got the same tastes. You don’t love me but you would one day if you gave it half a chance. I love you. I don’t have to tell you. We’ve been good lovers, haven’t we? We’ve been good to each other there, haven’t we? There’s never been a better for me—has there for you? Has there? Be honest, Guy. Have you had a better, more loving lover than me?”

  “I told you,” he said, “from me first I was in love with Leonora.”

  “I know what you said. What you say and what really is, they’re not the same. D’you know your life’s one hundred per cent illusion?”

  “You’re talking about things you don’t understand. Leonora is the great love of my life. She is my life.” He remembered that utterance Leonora had denied, had attributed to a character in some book. “I am Leonora,” he said. “We were one person.” The brandy was making him wild and slurring his speech. “I’m dead without her. Life’s meaningless without her.”

  For a moment he thought Celeste was going to laugh at him. She didn’t. She said softly, “How many times did you actually make love to her?”

  It struck him as a monstrous impertinence. “That has nothing to do with it,” he said stiffly.

  “From that first time you told me about, on a grave or whatever, all those years ago—how many times, Guy?”

  It was like one of those anti-Catholic jokes, priests in the confessional and the little Irish girl kneeling. “How many times, my child?” Celeste was looking at him very seriously, though. She wasn’t joking. He thought back to those early years, but he could only remember Kensal Green, the long summer grass, and me butterflies.

  “Does it matter?”

  “I should think it matters to you.”

  “Five or six times,” he muttered.

  “Oh, Guy,” she said. “Oh, my sweet Guy.”

  He shrugged his shoulders, looked away. Suddenly he was aware of tiredness, heavy and dark, covering him like a blanket. He reached for the brandy and drank what was left. The cigarette he lit tasted ashen from the first draw.

  “She liked it,” Celeste said. “You were right when you said she wanted to meet you on Saturdays and have you phone every day. She liked having you on a string. What did it cost her? Nothing. It was flattering, having you hanging after her, you so handsome and rich and nice, Guy, and her not wanting anything from it but people knowing you were in love with her. She could get herself another boy-friend and fix up to marry him but you’d still be there, phoning her every day and taking her out to lunch on Saturdays, and her not having to pay a thing, not even sleeping with you.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” he said, but it had been. “Get me another drink, would you?”

  “Aren’t you going to drive through the night?”

  “Get me another drink, please.”

  He would go to Dorset first thing in the morning. That would be best. When Celeste was asleep. He always woke early. Fresh, revived, he would make a start at eight and be there by midday. It occurred to him that he had had nothing to eat all day except that bread and cheese in the afternoon, but he didn’t want anything. For the first time in years he hadn’t gone out to a restaurant or someone else’s house to eat his dinner.

  In the Chinese bed he lay for a little while apart from Celeste. He was thinking about his plans for tomorrow. It would be better to have a night’s rest first. When he got to Lyme he would walk straight into the hotel and ask for them. The clerk in reception would tell him they had gone out and he would go in search of
them, along the cliffs maybe—Were there cliffs at Lyme? There must be. He could see them in the distance, walking along the beach at the water’s edge. The Colt was still in the pocket of his leather jacket. Let it stay there. In the morning he would put on his jacket and go. How would they feel, what would they do, when they saw him in the distance, walking along the sands to meet them?

  The wide empty beach, the vast sea, no one else there. Nowhere to run to, but they would run … An image came to him of Leonora’s smile, coquettish, controlled, secret, Vivien Leigh’s smile in Gone With the Wind. It was her wedding night. Not that this meant much, she had been living with the man on and off for weeks. How cruel she had been to him! He had never supposed he could think of Leonora as cruel, but he did now and with self-pity and wonder …

  Celeste’s slender hands touched his face and she brought her lips to his, very soft and warm. She could speak through a kiss, he had never known anyone else who could do that.

  “Sweet Guy, I love you. I want you to make love to me.”

  He did. He thought that in order to do so he would have to conjure up Leonora, never difficult for him, but this time she refused to appear, or Celeste’s presence was too strong to admit ghostly intruders. It was as if Celeste were determined to dispel by her love everyone but herself and him. This was Celeste in his arms and no one else, her eyes open and shining, her voice silenced. He could feel emanating from her a curious concentrated power, and the word “witchcraft” came into his mind. Inside her body, her self, was a healing white magic.

  It was a kind of boast of his that he could never sleep late. He had hardly expected to sleep at all, only to rest. But when he woke up, the hands of his carriage clock told him it was after nine and Celeste still lay wrapped in sleep, as deeply burrowed into sleep as if it were still the small hours.

  This way it was better, he could make his escape without her knowing, go without her. He showered. It struck him as absurd that a man should bother to wash his body all over, soap himself and stand under these power-driven cascades of hot water, before going off on a killing mission. Why bother with anything? Why stand here making tea, waiting for the kettle to boil? Why consider, wrapped in his towelling robe, what clothes to put on? There should be nothing between his determined aim and its accomplishment. He should already have been on his way.