He’d scrubbed the floorboards and cleaned the carpet again and again. “Nothing,” he said.
French led the way out of the room.
*
For once, Hermione was wearing an expensive frock, made for her, but somehow she’d deprived it of all reasonable shape and as she stood in the centre of Armitage’s sitting-room she looked as ill dressed as ever. “Why won’t you tell me, George? Why won’t you trust me?” She was speaking in bewildered tones, but anger was very close.
Armitage answered wearily: “I keep telling you the truth. I don’t know where Pat is.”
“And I don’t believe you.” She crossed to one of the chairs and thumped herself down in it. “I’m not going until you tell me.”
Her overriding emotion was, he belatedly realised, a twisted jealously. It was that which had made her betray him to the police. “Hermione, I swear I trust you completely. If I knew where Pat was, I’d tell you.”
“You’re lying.” She opened her handbag and brought out a cigarette case. He offered her cigarettes and with childish ill manners she ignored him and took one of her own and lit it. “You know perfectly well where Patricia is and it’s wicked of you not to tell me. Look how I helped you both. You used to trust me then — when you wanted something from me. It was even I who brought you together in the first place.”
He didn’t bother to contradict her. She believed his relationship with Patricia had gone far beyond the limits it had and she wanted to be treated as a confidante, perhaps as consolation, perhaps as a gesture of secret spite against Dudley. If he took her into his confidence, she would remain his friend: if he didn’t, and he couldn’t, she would hate him.
She waited. When he didn’t speak, her lips twisted. “You’re being very beastly.”
Emotionally, he thought, she was like a girl in her early teens. “Hermione, I don’t know where Pat is and only wish to God I did.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
He realised he’d revealed too much of his desperate fear. “When I don’t know where she is, I get worried,” he answered lamely.
“She’d have told you where she was going.”
“She hasn’t told anyone. She wanted to be entirely on her own.”
“She’s too considerate to act like that. But you won’t tell me anything because you don’t trust me. It…it hurts most terribly.” She blinked rapidly and then tears began to spill down her coarsely grained cheeks.
He’d never seen such an ugly or pathetic sight as this ungainly, lumpy woman crying because she believed she was being excluded from the truth of a liaison.
There was a ring on the front door.
His relief was tremendous. “I must go down and see who that is.”
She wiped her eyes with a handkerchief and stared up at him. “Go on, then.” Her voice was now venomous. She knew no shades of grey in human relationships.
He left and went down the stairs to the front door. His mind was so occupied with the problem of Hermione that he was surprised to see French, accompanied by three other men, who between them carried two small, battered suitcases.
“Here’s the warrant, empowering me to search this flat.” French handed over a double foolscap sheet of paper, folded into three, bearing on the outside the seal of the magistrates.
As Armitage stared at the warrant, not bothering to open it, there was a sound from the head of the stairs. Hermione, head held high, came down the stairs. She was wearing a valuable diamond and sapphire brooch, but on her it looked like costume jewellery.
When she reached the foot of the stairs she said to French: “What are you doing here?”
“We’ve come to have a word with Mr. Armitage,” French answered easily.
She smiled at Armitage and he was shocked by the degree of malevolence, then she pushed her way through and out on to the pavement.
French closed the front door. “Your co-operation will make our job easier and quicker,” he said briskly, to Armitage. He pointed beyond the stairs. “Where does that door lead to?”
“The cellar,” answered Armitage dully, still shaken that Hermione could have been so obviously glad he was in some sort of trouble.
French detailed two of the men to go down to the cellar. Then he led the way upstairs. On the landing, stopping as if by chance by the patch of cleaned carpet, he said: “Is there anything more you’d like to say regarding the present whereabouts of Mrs. Broadbent?”
Armitage shook his head.
French ordered the other two to search the rooms. They worked quickly, but neatly, checking drawers, cupboards and the clothes hanging in them, the soles and heels of shoes, beds, even the dirty linen in the basket. They were in the bathroom when one of the others came up from below and spoke to French. French turned to Armitage. “Have you been digging down in the cellar?”
“I…I can’t remember,” muttered Armitage.
French shook his head, as if amazed by so stupid an answer. “Four of the flagstones have recently been moved. Why have you had them up?”
Armitage didn’t answer.
“Will you please come down with us.”
They all went down the two flights of stairs to the cellar. The overhead unshaded light, covered with dust, was giving off the characteristic odour now it was warmed up. A detective passed a torch across to French and he shone the beam on to the four flagstones that were pointed out to him. The earth between them had clearly been recently disturbed.
“Get the flagstones up,” ordered French, voice grim. At that moment he was certain that underneath they would find the body of Patricia Broadbent.
Within five minutes French and the others knew they’d been wrong. The earth had only been excavated down to a depth of about a foot, as evidenced by the compacted state of the yellow clay below this. French stood up and could not quite hide his surprise. “Why did you dig that hole?”
A writer was supposed to have imagination, but Armitage’s had gone on holiday. In the end he said weakly: “I wanted to see what kind of soil the place was built on.”
French shrugged his shoulders. He turned and spoke to one of the younger detectives. “D’you find anything else down here, Fred?”
“Nothing, sir, except the remains of a sandwich over there.” He pointed with the torch and the beam picked out two crusts.
French didn’t bother to go over. “All right, let’s get back up top.”
When they’d finished searching the rooms they collected around the cleaned patch on the carpet. French said: “We’re going to carry out a test for blood.”
“You won’t find any,” muttered Armitage, and wondered desperately whether his voice had sounded as false to the others as it had to himself.
One of the detectives switched on a torch and knelt down to shine the beam along the floorboards, gradually moving it away from the edge of the carpet. He quickly found something and French knelt by his side, then took the torch and slightly altered the angle at which it shone. He looked up. “In artificial light, dried blood often has an appearance of glossy varnish. There’s a patch of glossiness between at least two of the floorboards.”
A cold sweat prickled Armitage’s forehead.
A detective took from one of the suitcases a small plastic container filled with benzidine, two plastic tubes, some blotting paper, cotton wool, and a penknife. The blotting paper was damped with tap water whilst French sliced off a slither of wood from the edge of one floorboard. He put this on the dampened blotting paper, rolled it around, and poured a few drops of benzidine on to the blotting paper. In places it turned a light shade of blue. He stood up. “Dig out half a dozen other slithers of wood, if you can find that many, and pack ‘em in tubes.” He turned and spoke to Armitage. “The initial test for blood has proved positive, but that’s only presumptive and not necessarily specific. Further tests will be made at the police laboratory to make certain whether the stains on the wood are human blood and, if so, to group them. The carpet is only tacked down, so we’ll t
ake it away for similar tests. Can you tell me what blood group you are?”
“It’s…it’s on a medical card I have.”
“Will you go and find out what it is, please.” Armitage went into his bedroom and took his wallet from his coat pocket. He returned to the passage. “A two, Rhesus positive.”
French wrote down the classification in his notebook. “Thank you.” He turned away and Armitage watched them pack several slithers of wood in dry blotting paper and the blotting paper in the test tubes. There was a label on each tube and French wrote on these the date, time, and place, and his initials. The others used a claw hammer to raise the carpet, which they rolled up and secured with string. With careful formality, French wrote out a receipt for the carpet and handed it to Armitage, then they left.
In terrified despair Armitage slammed his fist against the wall of the passage.
CHAPTER XVII
The telephone rang as Armitage was pouring out the last of the whisky in the bottle.
“You’ve had a bleeding army of splits in.” Weir made it a question, a statement, and a vicious threat.
If that were possible, his fright increased because the detectives were not long gone: the caller knew what was happening almost as it happened. “They think I killed her and were looking for the body. They found traces of blood and went down to the cellar and discovered the flagstones had been moved. They thought I’d buried her there.”
Weir swore. His immediate idea was to make Patricia Broadbent ring her husband to say she was all right, but almost immediately he realised it was too late for that now — no call from her could explain the blood in the flat. If the detectives realised the blood hadn’t come from Patricia Broadbent, they’d no longer accept the obvious solution which was her murder and they might have sufficient imagination to piece together what had really happened. So no matter what, they had to go on believing Armitage had murdered her. But what if she was a different blood group to Shocker’s?…How long could Armitage go without cracking now he was under pressure from both sides?…“If you don’t want her learning how rough life can get, keep your trap tight shut whatever the splits do or say.”
“But I…” The connection was cut. Armitage replaced the phone and then hurriedly swallowed down the whisky.
*
Weir paced the floor. He hated the bitch beyond reason for not having said in time she wasn’t married to Armitage. If she’d told them, they’d not have left the car around, they’d have put the pressure on the husband…He forced himself to accept that what had happened had happened. The police believed Armitage had murdered the missing woman, but had not yet sufficient evidence to arrest him. How long before they really put on the pressure and tore the flat apart — surely, when the blood on the floorboards and the carpet were grouped? Until they had those results, though, there’d be something of a lull whilst they checked out her bank balances, and so on. But the moment the blood group came through — if Shocker proved to have been of a different group — they were going to wonder whose blood that had been…So how long had he? Since the introduction of the breathalyser, all forensic laboratories had been buried under work, but this test would be priority. The results could even be through before the weekend.
Had he been a complete realist, his summing-up of the situation would have meant the end of the job. The risks had become too great. But now he’d assessed the position, he carefully ignored the logical conclusion.
Why shouldn’t they move before the weekend? Bring in two extra men, as well as Chiver Hyman who was taking the place of the dead Shocker, promise everyone the earth and the bloody planets as well if they worked fast enough. Burner could talk about all the time he needed, but that was only insurance. Put him in front of the door and he’d bum it in the time available. After the job they’d save more time by abandoning all the equipment. It was all cleanly nicked: it would tell the splits nothing.
He had to sell the job to the others. They knew things had taken a wrong turn and were getting scared. He’d tell them an extra consignment of money was due in. The thought of more money would make them forget all about the dangers of working to too close a time limit.
So it was still possible.
*
It was early dusk and Armitage was sitting in front of his typewriter, trying to make himself work, when the front-door bell rang. He shivered. That bell had come to mean trouble. It rang again. Reluctantly, he crossed to the window and looked down and could see a woman. Incredibly, it was several seconds before he identified Gwen.
He went down and opened the front door. She was brown and looking very fit, but there were new lines in her oval face. She said in a low voice: “Can I come in, George?”
He stood to one side, and it occurred to him that it must be days since he had last thought of her.
“Why are you looking at me like that…?” She put her fingers up to her right cheek, in a sad, lost gesture.
“How am I looking at you?” he asked.
“I…I don’t really know.”
Nor did he. It was like meeting a friend from the long past and not knowing how to entertain her.
She again touched her cheek. She was wearing a light blue and yellow dress, with a sweeping design in which the colours gradually intermingled and changed, simple but with the elegance of expensive quality. She had a small brooch that was new: a horse, picked out in diamonds. When she saw him looking so intently at it she hurriedly unclipped it and dropped it into her — new — crocodile-skin handbang. “I…I’d thought…I hoped…” She began to cry.
He sighed, seemed about to touch her but didn’t, then led the way upstairs and into the sitting-room. She sat down on the settee, opened her handbag and took out a handkerchief with which she wiped her eyes. He crossed to the table on which were the bottles and found there was some sherry left. “Will you have a drink?”
She nodded.
He poured out the sherry and handed her the glass. She moved slightly, expecting him to sit next to her on the settee, but he went across to one of the armchairs. She drank, then opened her handbag and brought out a thin gold cigarette case, realised this was just one more visible sign of Fred Lett’s wealth, and hastily took out a cigarette and dropped it back into the bag.
“How have things been?” he asked finally.
She shook her head. “Not…not too good. Fred changed.”
“How d’you mean, changed?”
“He became nasty and crude and tried to make me unhappy.”
“I could have told you that would happen, but you never stopped around long enough to ask me.” His voice was flat and without apparent rancour. “His type get all their pleasure from pursuit, not capture.”
“If only…If only things had been different and you could have made a little more money.”
“If only you could have learned to be grateful for what we’d got.”
“Can’t you…? Oh God! I know I’ve no right to expect you to understand what it was like always having to scrimp and save when everyone we knew had so much more money. To wear the same dress over and over again. To have a car that never started.”
“So you still think the important things are material?”
She shook her head. “I was trying to explain how things were.”
“Before you met Fred and were swept away by his gallant, sophisticated self? So different from me, a third-rate author?”
“Stop it!” she cried. “You’re being so cruel.”
He was being cruel!
“It wasn’t a bit like I expected it to be.” Then she said something which showed how she had matured. “It never could have been, could it?”
“No.”
“Will you believe me when I tell you I kept thinking of you? Imagining you trying to cope on your own, cooking, washing up…Did you break much?”
“Not very much, really.”
“What about my blue plates?”
“I never used them.”
“Because you…you thou
ght I’d come back?” she asked, with sudden eagerness.
“No,” he answered flatly. “I just reckoned that one day you’d want them sent on, along with the rest of your stuff.”
“Oh!” Wearily, she stood up.
“Was Fred…?” He stopped.
She guessed what his question was going to be. “Was he good in bed? He’s hopeless. At first he made a joke of it, saying he’d drunk too much, but it was always the same. That’s when he began to get nasty — blaming me because he couldn’t manage.”
So Fred wasn’t an athlete in bed.
“Please, George, have me back? Even if only for a little?”
Tonight she could offer him the kind of scalding, uninhibited sex that could temporarily release a man from even his worst worries and fears. But if she stayed, she might learn about the robbery.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She began to cry once more, but accepted his decision without argument. “I won’t bother you again.” Then she left, hurrying downstairs to get away from him.
CHAPTER XVIII
The lorry left the isolated farmhouse in the very early morning, hours before the two cars. Weir was awake to watch it off. Word from Ricard and Carver said nothing had blown up yet, so they were moving. Let the police laboratory waste another twelve hours in classifying the dried blood and they’d be too late. He shut his mind to the extra risks he was taking.
*
The day had been a busy and trying one for Dudley Broadbent, trying because his secretary had been away ill and the girl who’d taken her place had made a complete mess of things, accepting two appointments for the same time on the same day and ruining three letters by gross misspellings.
He was glad to return home, even if Patricia were not yet back from her motoring holiday so that the house was empty: there was the television, a drink, and a cigar. And if he tried really hard, he did not think about what the police had told him or wonder what they were doing now.
When the front-door bell rang, suggesting company, he was annoyed because the television programme was one he especially liked. When he went through to the hall and opened the door and saw Hermione Grant his annoyance increased. She didn’t wait for him to ask her in, but pushed past him to enter. She was rude, but not usually quite this rude, and when she stood in the middle of the hall, heavy legs akimbo, a twisted expression on her face and a queer look in her eyes, he had the unnerving thought that perhaps she’d gone mad. He looked past her at the telephone.
The Colour of Violence Page 12