by Joan Fleming
If there had been no noise from the weir he would have heard the click of the bonnet catch released and the glove locker snapped shut. For some reason she was going to open the bonnet. She came round to the front, the bonnet being within two feet or so of the hedge, and putting her fingers under the bonnet edge she ran them along until she felt the second safety catch. She released this, too. She raised the bonnet an inch or so to make sure it was free, then replaced it very gently so that the catch would not re-engage.
She then went across the drive to meet Sledge as he came out of the hotel, carrying her handbag; she took it from him and they stood there, she talking earnestly whilst Silas pulled himself together. He was going to be left out of this if he wasn’t careful. He ran to the end of the hedge, climbing over a two-bar fence, past some outbuildings and out into the road. He hurried along to where he had left his MG. Before climbing in and starting up the engine he called to the young woman, whom he could see outlined against a light in a downstairs room.
“Thanks!”
She waved.
He started up his car, backed out into the road and sat, side lights on (for it was darkening), engine being gently revved up, waiting for the Rover. It seemed a very long time coming and when it came, what was he going to do? Was he simply going to lean out and shout: “Look out for your bonnet catches, they’re undone!” and drive off madly? Whatever it was he had to do it; apart from his anxiety about his girl-friend there were other people to consider; the car was in no condition to go on to the Motorway, or any other highway.
The first large white car that approached was not the Rover, and he had to apologise for waving it down. But finally he saw it coming, very slowly because it had not had time to get into a high gear; this time he took no chances, he jumped out of his own car and stood in the middle of the road.
Sledge was in a towering temper, he leaned out shouting, recognised Silas immediately and threatened him with instant annihilation if he didn’t move. He kept his hand pressed on the horn and moved forward so that Silas had to jump clear and away and there was no possible chance of the driver hearing what Silas was shouting.
But one thing was for sure—she was not in the car, the driver was alone.
Silas drove his car into the hedge, not caring this time where he left it, and ran back to the hotel.
The mixture of stout and rum and shock were not conducive to mental alertness and it was only as he was running hotel wards that he realised that if he telephoned to the police he would be asked his name or that if he didn’t, the call giving them the lethal information could easily be traced. He would find Frances first, drive her to a call-box and insist that she make her own call. It was only right that her irresponsible behaviour should be brought home to her. Her action was parallel with that of the man who, wishing to kill a single enemy, plants a bomb in a crowded plane.
“Where’s that girl?” he shouted to the hall porter.
“What girl, sir?”
“The girl, the girl … she’s wearing a striped fur coat. She was standing out here a few minutes ago. She was with a chap …”
“Yes, sir, I know the one you mean. I’ve no idea where she is!”
He tore back to his car, he backed it out of the hedge, after a few trial attempts, it skidded on the muddy grass, but after several minutes had flipped past, he was free. Then he had to drive some hundred yards to find a suitable place to turn.
He had to turn, he seemed always to be turning——
He drove past the hotel and into the street of the little town, looking once again for a telephone box he might have missed. He still could not see one. He stopped the car, shouting at the first person he saw: “Telephone box?” It was a foreigner, of course, a stranger in these parts; it always was. He stopped again beside two schoolgirls, flopping along the pavement licking ice-cream cornets. When they got the message they burst into uncontrollable giggles about Silas’s hat, though he was not to know this was the cause of their merriment. They finally managed to tell him that there was a telephone box in the council houses, round to the right, first left, he couldn’t miss it. He could miss it and did. He tried again and found it. There were about four boys crammed inside, he pulled them out, the dial was sticky, the atmosphere was solid with cigarette smoke, they were making faces at him through the glass.
Nine, nine, nine.
“There is a white Rover 2000 making for the M4. Both the bonnet catches are undone. It must be stopped before the Motorway. Sorry, I don’t know the number.” Gently he replaced the receiver and made a face at the jeering boys that greatly outdid their own for sheer ugliness.
Back at the hotel he insisted to the hall porter that he must know where the girl in the striped fur coat was and the hall porter was quite plaintive in assuring him that he did not. One of the cashiers, however, was helpful. “She asked at the desk if there was a station. Well, the station’s closed, actually, but they told her she could get a train easily at Maidenhead. She asked how to get to Maidenhead and someone told her. She said she’d hitch-hike.”
“She had her handbag with her,” Silas argued, unreasonably irritated, “she could have paid for a cab!”
But now everybody’s helpfulness ran out. Nobody knew anything more. He went out on to the now quite dark lawn and walked briskly up and down beside the river. His face cooled, his anxiety cooled. Perhaps it hadn’t happened. Or perhaps, if it had happened, the bonnet lid would wobble, perhaps Sledge’s attention would be drawn to it as he drove, inevitably not fast, towards the M4. Perhaps it was all such stuff as nightmares are made on … like Joe Bogey being murdered by his friend.
Silas looked himself over, he appeared the same, from this viewpoint but sometimes life was so fantastic, it made you wonder. Deflated, he walked back to the MG, climbed in and drove away from the riverside hotel.
He was caught in the usual procession of cars and the driving was so monotonous he was near enough having stopped thinking by the time he went round the roundabout and on to the Motorway. He pressed down the accelerator with that recurring pleasure one has on starting along a Motorway, enjoying the delight of the engine to be released from the frustration of being driven along a narrow country lane.
It had happened all right, within a mile of the start. As he rounded the first bend the flashing lights slowed him down and finally he was waved to a stop.
Cars were still rushing past along the opposite carriage-way.
He drew on to the hard. He got out of the MG and sat down on the grass verge, he didn’t want to look at the disorder or see what the floodlighting revealed, the aftermath: he buried his face in his hands.
The eastward lane, to London, was entirely blocked, though the westward lane still seemed free of trouble. Cars coming westward had to stop and crowds of people were getting out. “It won’t be long,” he heard them saying, and someone in the know said “A Rover is trapped under a pantechnicon and the van has toppled over.”
Within half an hour the furniture van had been righted with two lorry cranes, and towed away, the smashed Rover had been removed, too, topless. The ambulances had driven away and the Motorway was clear. The highway maintenance men with huge brushes, were clearing glass from the surface of the roadway. Policemen were taking down statements from a number of witnesses. Another half-hour and it was all over. Silas rose stiffly and went towards his car.
“What happened, Officer?” he said to a policeman who was making his way to his motorcycle.
“Seems the poor blighter forgot to put his bonnet flap down proper. It flew open against his windscreen and he ran straight into the back of a big van at around eighty.”
“Is he killed?”
“What do you expect? Decapitated,” the policeman said tightly. “But it’s lucky he didn’t swerve over the centre; there’d have been slaughter, absolute bloody slaughter. Two chaps in the furniture van are not badly hurt. Could have been a lot worse.”
Silas drove back at not more than forty miles an hour.
/>
CHAPTER XIV
IT WAS AFTER midnight when Frances stumbled out of the taxi from Paddington, gave the driver a pound note without waiting for the change, and took the lift up to the Bogeys’ flat. Her eyes and nose were running, she had a terrible headache, she felt vilely sick because crême-de-menthe on the rocks does not make a good apéritif. She could not get the key into the lock the right way up but Mrs. Bogey, still up and sitting with her husband, came and opened the door for her, in her dressing-gown.
Hysterically Frances threw her arms round Mrs. Bogey’s neck, weeping in great gasps.
Thin cries of distress came from Pa Bogey’s room, he wanted to know what was happening.
Frances stood in the hall and shouted everything out wildly. “I fixed the Rover,” she screamed. Shocked, Mrs. Bogey tried to calm her, pulling her into Mr. Bogey’s room where Frances flung herself across his bed and wept wildly. “I’m partly drunk!” she kept saying.
Tea was the best remedy; Mrs. Bogey hastened to get it whilst Mr. Bogey kept a feeble hand on Frances’s head and gently patted it to reassure her.
When they had finally persuaded her to have some tea their calm acceptance of her condition had its effect, she subsided into occasional huge shuddering sobs.
“What do you say you did, dear?”
“The only thing I could think of, Mrs. Bogey.”
“And what was that, dear, Dad and I don’t quite understand.”
“A Rover, you see. A friend of my father nearly had a ghastly accident in his, only he was only going slowly. They forgot when he filled up with petrol and oil, they forgot to shut the bonnet properly and it flew up and shattered his windscreen, but as he was going fairly slowly, it didn’t do much harm. He just stopped very quickly, he said he’d have been killed if he’d been going fast. You see, Sledge went too fast, he did it to frighten me. But it may not have worked with him, either, there’s a long slow narrow country lane before you get to the Motorway, you can’t drive fast along it and maybe he’s run into a hedge or … or anything. But the thing is he’ll know I did it, sure to! I had a frightful row with him. You see, he locked me up in his bathroom and I really think he was going to starve me to death; however, he thought he’d killed me and was scared stiff till I shouted.”
“I don’t understand, dear.”
“I don’t suppose you can, Mrs. Bogey, nobody could understand Sledge. Once he’d killed one person he doesn’t care who he kills now. The woman in Kensington, probably the Indian girl, who knows, and I’m sure, Mrs. Bogey, I’m sure he’s killed Joe, he practically told me so and … he must have … because where is Joe?”
Mr. and Mrs. Bogey exchanged long, as they say, cool looks.
“I know he’s mad, anyone who knows Sledge would know he’s mad but if he were locked up and doctors and psychiatrists examined him … they wouldn’t say he was mad, or unfit to plead … well, he isn’t unfit to plead, but he’s mad all the same. And he sounds so sane, until he’s, what? Thwarted? It was outside that hotel, on the river, I went out to dinner there with him because we’d been before and I was going to … to do what I did … but I had to pretend, first, that I was going away with him. I know he was going to kill me next when I said I wouldn’t dream of going away with him. So I had dinner, only I spoilt it all by having about four crême-de-menthes on the rocks first and I felt so sick and awful. I fixed the car all right but outside the hotel we had a row, I said I wasn’t going away after all and it was better to part now but instead of talking it over calmly as I’d planned we had this screaming abuse and … oh, it was awful, only the ghastly noise from the weir made it not as bad as it might have been to everyone listening. People might have come rushing out to see who was going to kill who. I dashed back into the hotel and just sat in the loo crying and waiting till he’d gone and for a long time after.”
“And did he go?”
She nodded. “He was in a furious temper, I watched him drive off—as a matter of fact!”
Mrs. Bogey was anxious to get her out of Mr. Bogey’s room now; it was her only ambition at the moment and she achieved her aim after quite a lot more trouble.
“Well, dear?” she said when she had edged Frances into the room in which she was sleeping, “I’m sorry, I’m so very sorry you’ve had all this worry about Joe. We couldn’t tell you because, as Dad says, the fewer people knew the better. We got him out to Ireland.”
Frances’ mouth almost fell open.
“But how?”
“You may well ask. That evening I came back, after you’d gone to bed I put on my headscarf and coat and crept in to your room to get a few clothes for Joe and … Oh, my dear, you’ve no idea; never mention it to his Dad, he did what he hated to do, he begged Joe to go; Dad says he played on Joe’s pity for him but even so, what’s it matter? It’s not a crime to be sorry for your crippled father, is it? Dad says, he says: ‘Please go to your sister, Joe, for my sake,’ and he went but not willingly; I took most of our savings and I went with him and sat with him at the airport, half the day, until a seat on a plane to Dublin turned up.” Mrs. Bogey could not resist a smile: “I waited till it took off! You thought I was back at work, didn’t you? Well, there you are. Any comment?”
“Oh my God, no!” Frances moaned.
Finally Mrs. Bogey gave Frances two tranquilliser pills she had kept for emergencies and when she was sure she was asleep she crept into her husband’s bedroom, closing the door. “I’ve told her. Oh love! If she’s managed to finish off Sledge what a let-out for us all! Am I wicked?”
Mr. Bogey was big-eyed but pale with shock and excitement, he could not answer.
And at the end of the eight a.m. news on the radio: “… eastward-bound traffic lane of the M4 near Maidenhead was blocked for an hour last night … driver of a car was killed, the police think the accident was due to the flying up of the bonnet lid whilst travelling at a fast speed …”
“Amen and thank God,” Mr. Bogey said.
“I must show her Joe’s letter …” Mrs. Bogey said.
It read:
Ballyhoola, Megimmick, Eire.
Dear Mum and Dad,
Sis says I must write and tell you that things are going well, even (she says), if I don’t deserve it. A friend of Sis’s husband has this caff and Mick had a talk with him about turning it into a pizza bar; so now I’ve given up digging what they call “taties” and am helping him to fit out this bar which he wants me to run. Sis says it’ll go like a bomb, being as it’s something quite new in Ballyhoola and what it needs. I only hope things are not too bad with you and you’re not being worried by anything Sledge-wise.
And Sis says I am to say I’m sorry; she says it’s not enough being sorry, I must say it. So here goes.
I’m sorry, Mum and Dad, and I will do my very best to show you I am by … oh well, I will.
From your loving and turned-over-a-new-leaf
Joe
Love to Frances Smith.
Frances cried yet again when she had read it. “So you hustled him away to his sister; why didn’t you tell me, Mrs. Bogey?”
“Dad and I thought best not to tell anyone, we gave him the money and told him to get out quick, it seemed the best we could do, whilst expecting the worst. Even if it means Dad may never see Joe again.”
A wraith, or shadow of her former self, utterly subdued, dressed herself none too carefully and left the Bogeys’ flat for “work.”
Silas was frowning, giving a visible demonstration of the Wrath of God in which he no longer believed but fervently wished he did, or thought he did. Though Justice had been done to Sledge, via Frances Smith, ought not Justice to be meted out to Frances Smith too?
He was sure it ought. She had shocked him so profoundly that he felt quite unable to cope with her and uncertain of himself; he only hoped his frown would show her in some small measure how he felt.
She put up a very good appearance of nonchalance, looking rather like a dirty young cat who had been out all night, scrapping, ma
ting, screaming, getting soaked with rain … but bravely putting a good face on it, like Mehitabel:
“Hell’s Bells,
I’m still a lady!”
“Well, what’s the matter with you?” she had the extraordinary impertinence to ask.
He gave a short and what he hoped was a bitter bark of non-laughter.
“You behave just any old how, don’t you? You assume, you actually assume that everything is going your way …”
She stood directly in front of him.
“What’s the matter?”
Silas was unnerved by the presence of Mrs. James Trelawny who, he knew, was lurking behind the curtain endeavouring to hear everything.
He said: “You thought I was going to let you go off with Sledge to some hypothetical interview with the missing Joe? No, you didn’t think at all, did you? It never occurred to you I might wonder … it never occurred to you I might follow you, even down to the hotel by the river. Just for once, chance helped, or perhaps it was simply using my eyes because you didn’t see me pass the end of the road as you were waiting to leave Fiery Beacon in the Rover, did you? But I saw you through the driving mirror.”
“Well, so what? Whether you were very clever and saw it all, or not, what does it matter? It happened and you must agree, it’s a let-out for Sledge!”
But Frances did, in fact, look abashed, she stared down at the square, clumsy toes of her shoes. Finally she raised her head and said: “You saw the lot, then?”
“Yes, and I rang the police, but too much time had passed for my warning to be of any use. Do you realise how criminally irresponsible you are, you might have involved many, or even one other person, in the so-called accident?”
“I do,” she agreed, “and I’m sorry about that, terribly!”
“Sorry!” he practically shouted.
“What more can I say? Are you going to sack me, then?”
There was a long pause.