Craft and I exchanged glances. Before very long she would have to be told the reason why her husband couldn’t have been the person who drove her on Sunday night. A very uneasy superintendent coughed, so to speak, in my direction as he produced cigarettes and matches. Belle Sullivan forced the decision herself.
‘Now I’ll tell you why I’m inflicting all this dreary stuff on you. Got that cigarette?’
Craft struck the match.
Its bright yellow flare contrasted with the deepening dusk. As Belle inhaled greedily – the smoke must have made her head swim, and I wanted to protest – you could see the gleam of tears against match light. You could see the soft line of the cheek tremble. Yet her voice remained conversational and even casual.
‘I discovered something else when I was making that jump,’ she told us. ‘I’m not in love with Barry. And that’s straight.’
‘I’m rather glad to hear it, miss.’
‘Oh? You think I’ve been a sap too?’
Craft was unhappy. ‘If you’d just talk to the doctor about these matters, miss –’
‘The way I figure it out is this,’ said Belle. ‘I’ve been kicked around just about long enough. Don’t you agree?’
‘Well …’
‘You tell me it wasn’t Barry who did that business. I don’t know whether I believe you or not. You’ve got something up your sleeves, both of you.’
‘Now, miss –!’
‘But I can’t see why Barry should have done that, even if he did want to get rid of me. I mean, that car cost seven or eight hundred pounds. It’s not his property. He’ll have to make good to the company, and he can’t. Anyway, if he wanted to get rid of me, why bring me back and throw me in here while I was unconscious?’
‘Exactly!’ agreed Craft.
‘But look. If he didn’t do that, what is the guy doing? Why hasn’t he been out here? Why did he let somebody go and sink his car, with a key to the ignition and everything? And now, you tell me, he’s gone back to London!’
‘Not exactly to London, miss.’
‘But you said he had!’
‘No. I said he’d gone away.’
‘Where?’
Craft turned to me and spread out his hands. It had to be faced. It was a risk; but if we refused to tell her she would become hysterical, and that would be worse. After debating it, I picked up the flask-cup from the ottoman, poured out still a third brandy, and handed it to her. She drank it as though she hardly saw it.
‘Mrs Sullivan, your husband and this … floosie,’ I said.
‘Well?’
‘I’m afraid you’re never going to see her. And, if you do see him again, you must get ready for a shock.’
‘They shot themselves and chucked themselves over a cliff on Saturday night,’ Craft blurted out. ‘They’re lying down on a slab in the morgue now. Sorry, Mrs Sullivan; but that’s how it is.’
I turned away and began to make an intensive study of the other side of the room. Each piece of furniture for this room must have been brought secretly, at one time or another. You could see Rita Wainright’s hand in this. The carpet on the floor, the crimson velvet curtains which could be drawn across boarded windows, to shut out a real world for an imaginary. In one corner stood an ornate folding screen, and behind it – I went to look – a washstand with pitcher, bowl, and towels. Sordid? Well, yes. But Rita was Rita.
The thing which occupied me, with intense concentration, was what we should do with Belle Sullivan. Evidently she had brought no suitcase. Molly Grange would be only too glad to take her in. But a vision of Steve’s face rose up against this. No: she had better come to us. Mrs Harping would take care of her.
So I stood there, with bitter black tragedy in my mind, and only wished I could take a drink out of the flask in my hand.
‘It’s all right, Doctor,’ observed Belle. ‘You can turn round now. I’m not going to throw a fit on you.’
Our pocket Venus was still sitting on the ottoman, one leg tucked under her, taking deep draws at the cigarette. The grey eyes looked at me steadily.
‘I just want to ask you a couple of questions about this woman he was running around. Was she?’
‘Was she what?’
‘A floosie?’
‘No. She was the Canadian wife of a professor of mathematics.’
‘What was her name?’
‘Rita Wainright.’
‘Good-looking?’
‘Yes.’
‘High-hat?’
‘Not particularly. Just an ordinary professional family, that’s all.’
‘Any mon … No; that won’t do,’ argued Belle, squeezing up her eyes, ‘if they bumped themselves off. How old was she?’
‘Thirty-eight.’
Belle took the cigarette out of her mouth.
‘Thirty-eight?’ she echoed incredulously. Then her voice grew suddenly shrill. ‘Thirty-eight? Jesus Christ! Was he nuts?’
Superintendent Craft started as though someone had stuck him with a pin. This shocked him perhaps more than anything he had heard yet. He had been bending gloomy brows on the girl, ready to utter a word of praise for her fortitude, and now he didn’t know what to say. But in Belle Sullivan this seemed neither callousness nor the brandy talking. It was sincere bewilderment, boiling up under every other emotion, because she knew her husband so well. I emphasized it.
‘It’s only fair to tell you, Mrs Sullivan, that I don’t believe for a moment those two committed suicide.’
‘Oh?’
‘Somebody shot them both. You’ll probably hear a different version from the police; but that’s the truth. And now we’re not going to talk about it any more, for the moment. You’re coming along home with me.’
‘But I haven’t got any c-clothes!’
‘Never mind. There’s a girl near there who’ll attend to that. You want food, and you want sleep. If you feel fit enough to walk now, let’s go downstairs.’
This request was also underlined. A violent and prolonged squawking from a motor-car horn, in the road outside, droned out with such abruptness that Belle let out an involuntary cry. I went to the window. Sir Henry Merrivale, with a face of indescribable malignancy in the dusk, was leaning forward and poking with the end of his crutch at the button of the horn.
‘I’m a patient man,’ he said; ‘but the dew is settlin’ on my head and I got reason to suspect incipient pneumonia in my toe. What’s more, my jailer has caught up to me. I just wanted to say good-bye.’
We had another visitor now. Paul Ferrars, in a very ancient Ford, had drawn up behind the police-car and was getting out. To judge by his astonishment, when my face appeared at the window, he must have thought H.M. was being led into some very strange company.
‘We’re coming down straightaway,’ I said.
Belle made no objection. I regret to say that her voice was marred by a slight hiccup, and her gait did not remain altogether steady. But mental anaesthesia was probably best under the circumstances. While Craft locked the door of the upper room, and put the key in his pocket, I assisted Belle down the steps.
When we arrived outside the studio, H.M. and wheelchair – the latter upside down – had already been transferred to the back of the Ford. It was a stroke of luck or thoughtfulness. If we had had to drive H.M. to Ridd Farm, it would have meant crossing the edge of Exmoor. And that could have been no pleasant experience for Belle Sullivan.
Ferrars, in the old paint-stained flannels, lounged against the side of the Ford smoking a cherrywood pipe. His long-nosed intelligent face, topped by fair hair which he deliberately makes untidy, wore a complacent expression until he saw who was with us. Then his mouth fell open.
‘Good lord!’ he muttered, and caught the pipe clumsily as it fell. With the palm of his other hand he whacked the side of the car. ‘Belle Renfrew!’
Belle turned round, blindly, and started back into the studio. I caught her arm to steer her back again.
‘It’s all right. Only some friends of ou
rs. They won’t hurt you.’
‘Belle Renfrew!’ Ferrars was repeating. ‘What are you doing in this part of the world? And what have they been doing to you? After all the good times we used to have together –’
‘There’s no Miss Renfrew, sir,’ Superintendent Craft intoned. ‘This is Mrs Sullivan. Mrs Barry Sullivan.’
‘Oh,’ said Ferrars. After a pause, while faint colour stained his cheeks, he added: ‘Sorry.’ After another pause, heavy with embarrassment, he climbed up behind the wheel of the Ford.
‘We don’t wear our wedding-rings,’ Belle threw at him, ‘when we’re on duty at the Piccadilly. The customers don’t like it.’
H.M., in the back seat, was contemplating us with an air of unwonted seriousness. He addressed Belle gently.
‘Ma’am,’ he rumbled, ‘I’m the old man. I’ve notoriously all the tact of a load of bricks comin’ through a skylight. I don’t want to bother you much at a time like this. But I’ve also got a habit of helping lame dogs over stiles. About this story of yours …”
‘You didn’t hear it?’
‘Well … now. You were talking pretty loud. There’s more to being an invalid than just sittin’ and thinkin’.’ Here I handed him the flask, screwing on the cap firmly. ‘If you wouldn’t mind answering me a couple of questions, before the effect of that brandy wears off,’ he went on, ‘it might help a whole lot in the mess we’re in.’
‘Barry never killed himself!’ Belle cried. ‘He just wouldn’t have had the nerve to! And you can ask me anything you want to.’
‘All right. When and where were you married?’
‘So you think I’m a liar about that, do you?’
‘No! Burn me, no! I was only solicitin’ information.’
‘I don’t do soliciting of any kind, thanks,’ said Belle. ‘Hampstead Registry Office, at the Town Hall. April 17th 1938.’
‘Was your husband’s name really Barry Sullivan? Or was that a stage-name?’
‘It was his real name.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because … well, because it’s his real name! He writes it. He gets letters with that name on ’em. He writes it on cheques, when he signs any. I can’t see what more you’d want.’
H.M. looked very hard at her.
‘Did you ever visit the United States, Mrs Sullivan?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Ever travel abroad anywhere?’
‘No.’
‘Ah,’ said H.M. ‘I thought not.’ He touched Ferrars on the shoulder with his crutch. ‘Start her up, son.’
The noise of the Ford’s motor beat out against evening quiet. Ferrars backed up and swung the car round. The last thing we saw was the back of H.M.’s bald head, a malignant gleam in itself, as they moved away up the lane.
TWELVE
I AM writing this in the middle of November, with a black wind flapping at the windows, and black death on the land. In September the bombers came to London. Only a few nights ago, first with Coventry and then Birmingham, they began their attack on our provincial cities. Bristol or Plymouth, they say, will be next.
And it occurs to me, too, how much life has changed and grown pinched since the time I am writing about. Up to the summer of 1940, there was a reasonable plenitude of everything. Petrol rationing provided no great hardship. Food, though partially rationed, remained abundant. You could invite a guest to dinner and never think twice about it.
I was thinking of this in connexion with the Monday night in July when Belle Sullivan first came to stay with us.
We all fell for her, Tom and Mrs Harping and I. She was what the younger generation calls cute, and her large eyes did damage. Belle’s recuperative powers were amazing. When we first got her home there were, as I expected, signs of delayed shock: cold, vomiting, pulse accelerated yet so faint as to be barely perceptible at the wrist. She could eat very little.
But Mrs Harping gave her a bath, and we got her to bed with a hot-water bottle in a pair of Tom’s pyjamas. By eleven o’clock, even though Tom gave her some sulphonal to make her sleep, she was sitting up in bed with needle and thread, mending a rent in the frock which Mrs Harping – unbending amazingly – had sponged and cleaned for her.
Tom liked her; he was even more furiously didactic and insufferable than usual. A little past eleven o’clock, when I was sitting in my bedroom smoking the one pipe of tobacco I am allowed a day, I heard them talking through the closed door of the next room. And there ensued the following romantic dialogue:
‘For God’s sake, woman, if you must talk American, talk real American. Don’t spout this film gabble. They’re not the same thing.’
‘Nuts to you.’
‘And double nuts to you,’ yelled my impolite son, whose bedside manner is noted more for its vigour than for its finesse.
‘How does my hair look?’
‘Terrible.’
‘You go take a flying … look. There’s a tear in the lining of your coat-pocket. You’re the sloppiest damned man I ever did see. Let me fix it for you.’
‘Take your hands off me, woman. I will not be mothered and pawed over by predatory females.’
‘Who’s a predatory female, you ugly son of a so-and-so?’
Belle did not say this heatedly, you understand. She could utter hair-raising words, and indulge in the most intimate franknesses, while speaking in a voice of soft sweetness and even loving-kindness.
‘You,’ said Tom, ‘are a predatory female. All of ’em are. It’s a question of glands. Let me go down and get my anatomical chart, and I’ll show you.’
‘One of those things that make you look as though you’d been skinned?’ Belle’s voice shivered. ‘No, thanks. I prefer my own outside.’ A shadow seemed to come over her. ‘Look, Dr Croxley. Do you know Superintendent Craft?’
‘Yes. What about him?’
Belle hesitated. I could imagine her: the clear-glowing skin and brown curls, the needle and thread in her fingers, the homely bedroom that used to be my wife’s.
‘He says – there’s got to be an inquest day after tomorrow.’
‘Lie back in that bed,’ said Tom, ‘and go to sleep. That’s an order.’
‘No, but look! He says – maybe I’ll have to go on the witness-stand and identify Barry.’
‘Identification is usually done by the next-of-kin, yes.’
‘Does that mean I’ll have to look at Barry?’
‘Go to sleep, I tell you!’
‘Does he look – pretty awful?’
‘You can’t fall off a seventy-foot cliff into three or four feet of water without some injuries. But the doctor who did the post-mortem says there weren’t many. That’s because they were dead and limp when they struck. He says the worst of the damage was caused by bumping against rocks when the current carried them.’
Here I rapped sharply on the communicating wall. There should be limits to medical detail.
‘Now go to sleep,’ he roared at her.
‘I won’t be able to sleep. I’m just telling you.’
But she did sleep, when the sulphonal took over. It was I who couldn’t close my eyes. I twisted and tossed, while the clock kept on striking, and I saw Rita’s face in every corner. Finally, I went down to the surgery in my night-shirt, and got a mild sleeping-draught for myself. This is a venial practice among doctors; not to be recommended. But, when I woke up again, it was past noon on a bright day which put new strength in my veins.
In fact, I felt almost cheerful when I took my bath. Superintendent Craft and H.M., it appeared, had already been to the house to see Belle. The latter had gone so far as to hop upstairs on his crutch. They left word for me to join them at Alec Wainright’s at three o’clock in the afternoon. And, going downstairs for a reprehensively late breakfast, I met Molly Grange coming out of Belle’s room.
I had been wondering how Molly, the quiet and reserved one, would get on with our guest. But one look at her reassured me. Though Molly’s face was a little red, she smil
ed at me.
‘Have you met Mrs Sullivan? Is she up?’
‘Up,’ answered Molly, ‘and dressing.’
‘How do you like her?’
‘I like her tremendously.’ Molly’s face was perplexed. ‘But I say, Dr Luke! Doesn’t she use the most frightful language?’
‘You’ll get used to that.’
‘And she would keep walking past the window,’ Molly said, ‘with practically nothing on. That crowd at the “Coach and Horses” were standing at the windows over there with their eyes popping out of their heads. If you’re not careful, Dr Luke, you’re going to get a very bad reputation in Lyncombe.’
‘At my time of life?’
‘I’ve just taken her in some stockings,’ Molly went on. ‘They were my last pair of silk ones. But, as Belle would say, what the hell? We mustn’t introduce her to father, by the way. He’d have a fit.’
‘What did the police want to see her about?’
Molly’s face clouded.
‘They wanted to know if she had any pictures of Barry Sullivan. She said yes. But it seems the London police have been searching the Sullivans’ flat in town, and they couldn’t find any.’
‘An actor without pictures of himself?’
‘I know.’
‘But, look here, Molly!’ I was beginning to reflect. ‘There must be dozens of snapshots of him out at the Wainrights’. Don’t you remember? He and Rita were always photographing each other.’
‘That’s just it. The police were out there too. And it seems’ – Molly compressed her lips – ‘it seems somebody has deliberately torn up every picture of them, out of pure spite. Can you understand that, Dr Luke? Can you understand anybody hating them so much that even the pictures had to be destroyed?’
The evil was back again. I shall always remember Molly at that moment, with her breast rising and falling, and the edges of her yellow hair kindled from the light of the window behind her.
‘Somebody hated them enough to murder them, Molly.’
She was incredulous. ‘You don’t still believe that?’
She Died a Lady Page 11