Did he know? Did he know what? Why had she thought of those letters . . . more precisely, the ribbon that lay hidden beneath her silk scarves. She’d wanted to throw it out but felt oddly bound by it. She felt, indeed, like weeping. “Mirrors,” she said suddenly.
“Oh? Blood makes you think of mirrors?”
What she was thinking of was the mirror she’d been looking into last night over Mr. Plant’s shoulder and the doctor’s and Madeline Galloway’s reflection in it. “Were you watching?” Her voice was edgy, nervous. She didn’t like this at all.
He became very still. “Watching what?”
“Oh, nothing.” Change the subject. “My mother had a three-sided mirror. I used to stand before it and preen.” This wasn’t changing the subject. He was looking at her—scrutinizing would be a better word. “I dislike looking in mirrors.”
“But you used to like it, apparently.”
She laughed. “Well, I was a child, wasn’t I. So conceited. Still am. I’m a preening sort of person.”
“No, you aren’t. Just the opposite, I’d say. You’re very, very clever. Canny, shrewd. I wouldn’t want you, you know, on my trail.”
Oblique, she thought. Very clever himself. “My mother was quite beautiful, you see. And my father—” She stopped and swallowed.
He was looking at her in that odd way. “Go on. Your father.”
“Have you ever been married, Dr. Kingsley?”
Silence. And he seemed to be humoring her when he answered, “Yes. A long time ago.”
She glanced at the lighter. “To A.”
Again he smiled. “Yes. To A.”
“I’ve often wondered about Dr. Viner. Has she?”
“What? Been married?” He sat back. “No. What’s all this interest in the marital state of psychiatrists?”
“Both of you are so attractive. It seems odd that neither is married. Especially Dr. Viner.”
He started his doodling again. “And have you some fantasy going about me and Dr. Viner?”
“That would be rather—impudent.”
He laughed. “ ‘Impudence’ isn’t a word that has much coinage in psychiatry.”
She filled in her own thoughtful silence by taking out another cigarette. But she wouldn’t use the lighter; she pulled out one of her monogrammed silver matchbooks. She liked matches. Perhaps she’d been a child arsonist. Yes, she’d mention that if the conversation got unpleasant again. But that wasn’t at all what was chiefly on her mind. She said, “A number of years ago I became rather attached to an exquisitely beautiful woman. Foreign type.” She struck the match, watched the tiny flame spurt up between them, watched it die. “I don’t recall my feelings as being of a sexual nature, but the experience did lead me to question my, well, latencies, shall we say. Now, she herself was one of those exotic, European women. Mind you, nothing at all passed between us. But I know she was drawn to me physically. I don’t know how one knows that sort of thing.” She smoothed her skirt. “She gave me boxes and boxes of chocolates.” She smoked, looked mistily at the light spangling the tall window.
“No, she didn’t.”
“What?” She started.
“Give you boxes and boxes of chocolates.”
“And how do you know that?”
“It was an afterthought. You tossed it in to lend credibility to the whole story—this ‘foreign type’ of woman.” He smiled. “I know you nick chocolates. It’s apparently a real obsession. Like the ribbons—”
“Let’s not pursue that, thank you—”
“If you had been ‘enthralled’ by this ‘foreign’ lady, your description would be more precise. And you, Lady Cray, do not strike me as a person much given to ‘thralldom.’ You’re too damned smart.”
“Next you’ll be saying I’m a pathological liar, I expect.”
He laughed. “Oh, no. You’re definitely not that.”
Again, she was silent, thinking. “Several years ago I was riding on the Underground behind a young lady with her hair tied up in a ribbon. It was pale blue; I still remember. It dangled down to the top of the seat. I stared at it for some time. Then I pulled the end very, very slowly, absurdly thinking perhaps I could get it. Well, of course she felt the tug. She turned, yelled . . . rather nasty things. ‘You old les!’ meaning, I expect, ‘lesbian.’ It was quite humiliating. Again, I wonder if one can tell—about one’s self, about others.” The thin, upward swirl of bluish smoke might have been that ribbon.
“Yes, if one’s extremely sensitive to the signals of others.”
“And was I sending out a signal?”
“To her?”
“Ah, you believe in this lady.”
“Yes. But you weren’t signaling her. You are me.”
“Why would I do that?”
“I’m not sure.” Kingsley was chewing on the end of his pencil. “You want to know something.”
“No. As I said, I was just wondering if some instinct could tell one of another’s . . . sexual preferences.”
“Homosexuality, you mean.”
She shrugged, letting her eyes rest on the beam of sunlight.
“Me? Is it me you’re wondering about?”
“Heavens, no.”
“Why does blood remind you of mirrors?”
She jumped. “Good heavens, what’s that to do with the subject?”
He smiled. “But that is the subject. Much more than the chocolates. You thought I was watching you in the mirror last night.”
She didn’t answer.
He leaned forward, his head jutting over the desk. “Do you know what displacement is?”
Her eyes were fixed on the window. “I daresay I could deduce the meaning if I wanted to. Which I don’t.”
“Example: all of these ribbons of different colors. Pale blue, green, yellow, it doesn’t matter. Except for red. That’s the one that matters. All of the other colors actually mean nothing, but if you see red as only one color amongst many, then it loses some of its potency.”
He must know about the letters. She felt in some sort of dreadful danger and thought of his watching her in the mirror. But was it him? Dr. Kingsley? She tried to swallow; there was a stone in her throat. “The hour’s really up and I have to meet—”
“Sit down. Come on, Lady Cray: what does a red ribbon bring to mind?”
“Blood.” The word came out against her bidding.
“Was it really your mother’s three-sided mirror? Or is that a screen memory? You standing in front of her mirror putting ribbons in your hair? Preening? You saw blood. But where?”
She really couldn’t swallow. Her mouth opened, shut.
He waited.
She said nothing.
“What happened before your father died?”
“My fath—” And then she saw it. The little image pulled her from the chair. “Shaving. He was shaving and I crept up on him. Surprised him. The razor slipped and cut him—” She ran her finger from her ear down her throat. “He was furious.”
“Superficial. A purely superficial cut. How long after that did he die?”
She shook her head. Nothing came. She thought of the ribbon lying where she’d hidden it. It was no longer a treasure. It was no longer anything.
She felt a terrible sense of loss.
“It’s odd, isn’t it?” asked Kingsley. “What plagues us is what we most desire. One of those needs has to go.”
After a few more moments, she rose and hoped her dignity was still somewhat intact. After all, she was an old lady. Terrible for an old lady to be driven by the terrors of a little girl. She walked toward the door, able now to swallow. To speak. She turned. “I really think you’ve earned it.”
He raised his eyebrows. “What?”
“Although it’s of great sentimental value to me, do keep the lighter.”
She glanced at the desk where it lay and walked out.
40
“Faster, faster!” yelled Adam Holdsworth, arm raised like an officer commanding his troops.
Short of breath, Wiggins stopped. It was nine in the morning; Adam Holdsworth had breakfasted on scrambled eggs and four rashers of bacon, urging Wiggins to have something more than tea and toast. Wiggins was already exhausted. “But you must understand, sir, I can’t go faster; there’s too many twists and turns and blind hedges.” He took out his big handkerchief and wiped his face as the old man mumbled something about “sissy police.”
They were in the maze, privet hedges six feet tall, and Wiggins felt they’d been here for hours because of the similarity of every green corridor. Never mind, he told himself. He was only humoring Holdsworth in order to get him to talk about the family.
He refused to “pick up the speed” again. “I need to talk to you, Mr. Holdsworth.”
“So? Talk and push, Sergeant.”
“If you don’t mind, I’ll just rest for a bit.” Wiggins slapped his handkerchief across the moistness of a white bench and sat down, ignoring the hugely exaggerated sighs of Adam Holdsworth, who was twiddling his thumbs.
“I should think you’d be concerned about your great-grandson’s welfare, sir.”
Adam’s head whipped round. “Certainly, I’m concerned! I’ve made every provision for Alex.” He lowered his head. “It’s rotten about his mother; you probably know my grandson—” He looked away. “Well, you know about Alex’s father.” Wiggins nodded. “Graham was a perfectly nice boy. A bit weak, perhaps, and much too impressionable. But . . . I expect psychiatrists can’t work miracles.” He sighed. “I expect depression and despair can hit any of us, correct?”
Wiggins wondered if Adam had guessed at the apparent source of Graham Holdsworth’s despair. “Did the doctor ever indicate the cause of it to you?”
“Hmm? No. I wondered, though, about that troubled marriage. From what I could gather, it was largely Graham’s fault—well, his wish to get out of it. I don’t think Jane was heartbroken, but she wasn’t pleased, certainly. Madeline, however, was.”
“Miss Galloway?”
“Well, she’d wanted to marry him. Expect she was jealous as hell. I think she’s pretty colorless; of course, she’s always nice as nine-pence to all of us. Money. It’s always love or money or both. You know, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she had thought she might just snag Crabbe after Virginia died.”
“What?”
“Why not? Happens all the time with employers and their secretaries. Then here comes Genevieve. That must have put the poor girl’s nose out of joint.”
“You don’t care much for Miss Galloway and Mrs. Holdsworth?”
“Hell, Sergeant, I don’t care for any of them now except Alex and Millie. The others are gone.” He squeezed the bridge of his nose tightly.
When Wiggins told him what they’d discovered about Virginia Holdsworth and what they suspected about Annie Thale, Adam sat there like a graven image. “Good Lord.” He was silent for a long time, looking about, unable to see anything except row upon row of green hedge. “Why not just kill me and be done with it, if it’s the money?”
Wiggins didn’t want to remind him that he, Adam, was eighty-nine. The old man hadn’t that long to go. And, Wiggins thought, this killer was very patient. It had been five years since the grandson and cook had died.
After a few more minutes of kneading his blue-veined hands, Adam said, “Move! I’m sick of all this talk of death and desolation. Come on, Sergeant, push!”
Obediently, Wiggins rose and spent another ten minutes pushing the old man at a fast walk.
Then he heard something like the sound of a death rattle. Immediately, he went round the chair to check for signs of life and discovered old Adam was laughing and tattooing the chair’s arms with his small fists.
Well, he certainly found a joke in all of this that was lost on the sergeant. As Wiggins started to push again, the old man demanded to know the time.
“Just going on nine-fifteen, Mr. Holdsworth.”
“What? What? I need my medicine. Supposed to take it on the half hour, that’d be nine-thirty, and by God if I don’t get it, there’s no telling! I go into fits! I’ll have a seizure. Happened once before. So get rolling and push me out of this damned place.”
Wiggins, thoroughly alarmed, pushed harder, and then remembered this was a maze and if he hadn’t found the exit yet, he wasn’t likely to in the next fifteen minutes. “You’ll have to point me in the right direction, sir.”
“What the hell are you talking about? I don’t know where it is.”
Wiggins’s alarm was turning quickly to terror as he trotted behind the wheelchair, going right, going left. Breathless, he managed to say, “Good Lord, sir! I’m a perfect stranger! How would I know the entrance?”
Bumping along, his head tilting in the wind, Adam said, “Because you’re a copper! You’re supposed to have some sort of deductive powers but you damned well don’t seem to be using them. Do you think I’d’ve been fool enough to come in here with just anybody?”
• • •
Wiggins had his arsenal of drugs in his coat pocket. “What’s . . . the . . . medicine . . . for?” he asked between hard breaths.
“My insides.”
It wasn’t much to go on; still, undaunted, Wiggins reached in his pocket and brought out a charcoal biscuit, stopping just long enough to take a breather. “This works like . . . magic,” he huffed. His own lungs felt on the verge of collapse.
Adam bit it, made a retching noise and spit it out.
“I’ve an idea!” said Wiggins.
“First one today. What?”
“Crumbs. I’ll drop crumbs along the path and that way we’ll know if we’ve been on that particular part before. So’s we won’t be going round in circles.” Wiggins rammed a privet hedge while trying to maneuver round a corner.
“Help! HELP!” Adam shouted at the sky, or tried to. His reedy voice was growing weaker; he could barely get it out. “Ah . . . ahh . . . ahhh. I feel it coming on.” Then his head lolled.
Wiggins had been dropping crumbs all along their way, which had prevented his going down several openings since he could see they’d already been there.
From the chair came heavy, stentorian breathing. Then Adam said, “What I need’s a damned drink.”
Wiggins was relieved that he seemed a bit livelier and bumped him over several large rocks, careening round a corner.
“Time?” demanded Adam.
“Nine twenty-two.”
Now the groaning began and Wiggins was pushing at a run, leaving new crumbs behind him at the same time he was avoiding the old crumb trails. Wiggins knew what this sort of exertion, coupled with all this tension, would do to a nervous system. At last he saw it: “The exit! Straight ahead!”
No response was forthcoming from the lolling head of Adam Holdsworth. Wiggins stopped, gave him a gentle shake, felt the pulse. Still there, but for how long? He pushed faster out of the maze and across the green lawn. He could see at a distance someone—yes, it was the nurse named Rhubarb. He hailed her. She glowered at him, but he ignored the look. Wiggins, despite his breathlessness, just managed to convey the message to her.
Miss Rupert looked totally blank.
“Mr. Holdsworth’s medicine! You can see he’s ill.”
Miss Rupert studied Adam Holdsworth. “Looks all right to me. A person his age, eighty-nine, isn’t he? One expects a little slowing down.” With this unarguable comment, she set off down the path.
“Mr. Holdsworth is doing more than slowing down. He’s coming to a dead halt! I insist you go and find a doctor.”
“You needn’t get shirty about it, Sergeant. I know him better than you.” And she continued on her way.
Wiggins sat down at the edge of the mildly sloping lawn and dropped his head in his hands.
A heaving noise came from the wheelchair. He looked at the old man through parted fingers. Adam Holdsworth was laughing and slapping his leg—or the rug that covered it.
“Got you running like hell, didn’t I?”
Wiggins
got up, his face set in stone. “Are you telling me it was all an act?”
Wham went Adam’s hand across his knee. “Scared within an inch of his life, he was! But I’ll give you this, lad; that crumb thing was a damned good idea. Hard getting out of that maze.”
“You’ve been in it before, is that it?” asked Wiggins in his strangled voice.
“Hell, yes. I know every bend and turn and there are clues left all over the place. Well, you weren’t sharp enough to see the clues, but, still, no one else ever got out without help except Alex. So you’re not such a bad copper, after all.”
During this little dissertation on the sergeant’s competence, Wiggins had slowly walked round behind the chair, which was facing the long, sloping lawn, at the bottom of which sat the little stone cottage Helen Viner used as her office. “I appreciate the compliment, sir. Now, I must go and see if Superintendent Jury is here yet.”
With that, Wiggins pushed the wheelchair with his foot and sent it flying across the lawn, which had just enough incline to send the chair careering, but enough upward slope at the end to stop it.
Old Adam had his arms stretched out, bellowing to the skies: “Hallelujah! I’m about to meet . . .”
Who he was going to meet was lost on the wind.
Wiggins chewed on a charcoal biscuit and smiled thinly.
Then he saw the wheelchair bump and twist, heard what could have been a scream or a wheezy laugh, and walked down the lawn.
Definitely a wheezy laugh. “Brilliant, Sergeant! Let’s do it again!”
“No more playing silly buggers, sir.” He knocked the old man’s hand off the lever. “Superintendent Jury wants to see you.”
“No joy there, I’m sure.” Then he put his finger to his mouth and whispered. “Not a word; this is just between the two of us.”
“Depend on it,” said Wiggins, grimly.
• • •
More than was usual, Jury noticed, Sergeant Wiggins kept his eyes glued to his notebook. He was sitting in a black lacquered chair on one side of a long window.
In the companion chair sat a handsome woman, slightly built, beautifully tailored, and shrewd-eyed. Probably in her seventies, but looking sixty.
The Old Contemptibles Page 27