She sat forward and looked into his face to see if he was lying. It was a manœuvre of the nursery and he met her stare with eyes which just then were like an animal’s without the spark behind them.
“When you look like that there’s no one there,” she said, “but that’s not true always. Sometimes when I look into your face, Gerry, I can still see the lively boy that old Freddy and I were so fond of.”
“That’s right, Polly, while you love me I’m alive and kicking.” He sat back on his heels once more. He was deeply relieved and was laughing, but the strange dark colour had not entirely faded from his face. “When you look in my eyes, darling,” he said, “d’you know what you see? You see yourself. You’re the life in me.”
“No I don’t.” She spoke with sudden vigour. “I see you, my boy. There’s not much that’s for ever in you, Gerry, but there’s still a man there and not a snake, please God. I’m afraid, though, terribly afraid. Gerry, I know about the gloves. That glove we saw in the paper was your glove, one of the pair I gave you. You shot those people in Church Row.”
It was his own turn to shrink away. The dull, orange blush returned but this time he did not bother to make denials.
“If you knew, you connived, you approved,” he said, and added, since even to his own ears the accusation sounded absurd, “you hid your eyes. You’re like that. You deceive yourself very easily. You keep all that crashing junk of Freddy’s because you think it must be wonderful, since he collected it, yet you know perfectly well that it’s vulgar, tasteless and a bore. Anything goes if it’s done by someone you’re fond of, that’s your creed.”
“That isn’t true. You’re changing the subject. You’re trying to muddle me. Oh, Gerry, they’re going to catch you.”
He cocked an eye at her. “They won’t, you know.” Now that she was reacting as he had thought she might if ever she discovered him, he dropped his attack. He appeared completely confident. “I’m careful. I’m like a good racing driver. I never take a risk. I’ve got no ties and no rules. I’m so safe it’s boring.”
She sat listening to him, horrified and absorbed. It was as though, on looking at last at the Gorgon’s head, it had indeed turned her to stone. She was dead to the gay room, to the fleeing children, to the blessed ordinary programme of sleeping and waking, lost in a single dreadful effort to comprehend.
“But it was Matt threatening to prosecute that scared you. And in Church Row you shot because you were frightened. All you did you did in panic, Gerry.” She was appealing to him in the teeth of her own intelligence to make the mitigating claim.
He sat on the rug frowning, as if he found the recollection shadowy.
“Church Row was the beginning,” he said at last. “That was the start. That didn’t count. The others were different.”
“What others? Gerry … there hasn’t been another besides poor Matt?”
“What? No, of course not. There hasn’t been any, ever.” He was laughing at her, treating her as he had done a thousand times before over less important issues. “You are inventing all this. This is in your mind.” He was thrashing about, turning this way and that. “It’s hysteria, old dear. Dreams.” He paused suspiciously, warned by her expression. “What have you remembered, Polly?”
“Listen.” She was struggling to control her breathing. “A Superintendent of police came here today.”
“Oh. What did he want?” He spoke lightly and she found his assumed casualness terrifying.
“Nothing, as it happened. He was disappointed, I saw it. Some witness was confused about where he had seen two wax figures before and the local police thought he might have noticed them in our museum.”
“Did you tell him I’d taken them?”
“No. He wasn’t very interested in what had happened to them. All he wanted to know was if they had ever existed. If I know the police they’ll be sending the witness along to see if the place recalls anything to him.”
Gerry sat looking at the fire, his eyes round and without expression, his lips parted slightly.
“A chance in eight million,” he said softly. “Tenacious clots, aren’t they? It won’t help them. I may have to alter things down there a bit to stop argument, but even if I didn’t they couldn’t prove a thing.”
Polly did not speak at once. She was huddled in her chair where she seemed to have shrunk as her suspicions became relentless certainty. Only her blue eyes were still very bright.
“That night when it rained you sent me the taxi,” she said at last. “I knew that in my heart. And when I got the postcard telling me quite unnecessarily that you were somewhere else that night, I was even more certain. But I wouldn’t, I couldn’t believe it. That country ’bus with the old wax figures in it to stop questions, that was the sort of idea, you’d have, Gerry. I thought that when I first read it, but I shut my eyes to it. I sat here and prayed to Jesus that I was getting a bit touched, living alone imagining nonsense.”
He put a hand on her arm and shook it not without kindness.
“You ruddy silly old thing,” he said softly. “Why don’t you shut up?”
She did not answer him and after a while he went on. He spoke very reasonably and in an intimate conversational way, as if he were making a business confidence.
“I’m in no danger at all, Polly. There’s never any need to worry about me. You see, I’m careful and I’m thorough always, every moment of the time. I keep my feet on the ground and my eyes open and I never forget a possibility. I’ve never needed an alibi, yet I’ve always had one you know. Besides, I have no sentiment to make me shrink from any move when the need arises. Even if a miracle happened and the police came to suspect me, they’d never prove anything. I clear up as I go.”
Polly rubbed her hands over her face as if to brush away cobwebs.
“But to kill,” she whispered. “To murder, Gerry.”
He scowled and scrambled to his feet. He was red and irritable.
“That’s a damned silly term. Murder is a word, a shibboleth. People get killed every day and sometimes it’s called murder and sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes it’s war and sometimes it’s accident, sometimes it’s … well, it’s just the logical conclusion of a sequence of events. You’re trying to make something metaphysical of it, setting it up as the one unforgivable crime. That’s hocus-pocus. If you’re prepared to strip everything else from a man, why not finish the job logically and take his life? You’re going to sit there and tell me God wouldn’t like it, I suppose. Is that it?”
Polly struggled to sit up in her chair and there was a flash of the old authority in her eyes when she faced him.
“I don’t know about God,” she said, “but I can tell you one thing. It’s men who won’t have murder. God’s first commandment doesn’t concern murder, but it’s the first crime in man’s law all right. If a man is a man with a spirit, and not a poor beast who hasn’t one, he won’t put up with murder even if he’s a murderer himself. Men who murder turn against themselves and commit suicide by giving themselves away. They don’t want to, but they can’t help it. It’s in the make-up, born there. You said you were finding it boring. That’s the beginning.”
“For God’s sake, Polly, be quiet, and don’t talk such cracking rot.”
“I can’t. Murder will out, Gerry. That’s what it means.” There was a moment of stillness after the words like the silence after a thunderclap. The terrifying idea took the man by surprise and he escaped into anger. He swung away from her with an effort which contracted the muscles at the sides of his temples and drove the blood out of his face.
“It’s time for these,” he announced, turning to the drinks on the table. “I’ve also learnt to keep my temper, old girl. That’s lesson A. No anger, no feeling, nothing to get in the way.”
He handed her the beaker which was on a saucer and frowned as he saw that some of the milk had spilled over.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “The old hand isn’t as steady as it ought to be. Drink up. I put some wh
isky in it.”
Polly took the beaker obediently, her glance resting on his face. He looked older than she had ever seen him, she thought, the lines deeper, the muscles more pronounced. There was sweat standing out on his forehead and she was relieved to see it, despite her sense of paralysed dismay. She comforted herself; at least he was alive to it all, still there.
She sipped the milk and made a face, but drank it down as if it were medicine.
“You shouldn’t have done that. It’s filthy,” she said absently. “The kid must have put sugar in as well, or salt or something, and the whisky makes it worse. Look, Gerry, I’ve been thinking. Whether you like to believe it or not, sooner or later we’re going to need money for the lawyers. They won’t all be like poor old Matt. They’ll have to be paid. Well, I’ve got it, and when you need it both Freddy and I would never hesitate….”
He made a gesture of blind exasperation but she persisted.
“Don’t look like that, dear. We’ve got to face things. I’m telling you this because I want you to know I’ll see you through, so don’t do anything barmy like trying to run for it, or … or … thinking you can do again what you did at Church Row. You can’t shoot your way out all the time.”
She sat looking up at him, the empty beaker on her knee. She was mild and gentle and kindly, and her affection for him transfigured her face. He remained staring at her, an extraordinary conflict growing in his eyes, part apprehension, part eagerness, part passionate despair.
“You’d have given me away,” he burst out at last, dropping on the rug before her, putting his arms round her, and peering into her face. “Admit it. You couldn’t have helped it. You and the kid between you, you’re like glass. You can’t hide a thing. Can you? Can you?”
Polly closed her eyes tightly and opened them again. An expression of childlike astonishment had appeared on her face.
“I can’t see you properly,” she said. “It’s funny. I feel … oh, Gerry! The milk. What have you done? What is it? The chloral? It was still in the chest.”
“Darling, it’s all right, it’s all right. Don’t be frightened. It’s only a little. Only enough to put you out.”
He was agonised, weeping even, suffocated by the relentless compulsion. Polly looked very earnestly and stupidly into his face, so close to her own.
“I … am the last thing you love,” she said thickly, struggling with the drug as its waves broke over her. “If … you … kill me, Gerry, you will lose contact with … your kind. There’ll be nothing … to keep you alive. You’ll wither like a leaf off a tree.”
Chapter 20
BETRAYAL
ANNABELLE CAME QUICKLY down the fire escape in the rain, her cautious feet making no sound on the wet iron. Richard saw her white face in the darkness and heard her sigh as her hand touched his shoulder. She let herself drop gratefully into the arms he held up for her, and returned his squeeze with a wholeheartedness which warmed him with a glow to last a lifetime.
“What happened?” He was whispering but she made a warning movement and he seized her bag with one hand and, putting his other arm round her shoulders, led her round the back of the house under the single lighted window. In the few minutes he had been waiting he had explored the position and had discovered that, as he had feared, to return the way he had come was going to be impossible. However, the narrow path led through an archway into the adjoining plot where the museum stood, and he suspected that apart from the entrance to the collection there was a second way out through the gardens to the other road at the back of the houses.
By now it was raining hard in the city way, which to Annabelle’s country ears was extraordinarily noisy, the water drumming on the roofs and gurgling in pipes and gulleys. They could just see the path, white in the gloom, as it ran round beside the kitchen door just below the little passageway which led from the house to the collection. Then it followed the museum buildings, presumably right round to the entrance.
As they came round the arch and huddled under the wall he bent closer to her.
“Was Gerry there?”
“Yes. Waiting for us when we got in. What do you know about him?”
“Not enough. What happened?”
“I don’t know. He was just furious to see me. I thought he was going to kill me.”
Richard grunted. “I don’t think it’s quite as sensational as that.”
“I do.” Annabelle’s practical young voice quivered. “Aunt Polly was petrified about something. Richard, I think we ought to tell the police.”
“No, we won’t do that.” His smile was wry. “I’ve had one little chat with the police about being on enclosed premises tonight. I don’t think we’ll risk another. No, you stand in this doorway and try and keep out of the wet, and I’ll go and see if there’s a back gate to this place.”
He left her standing in the shallow porch of the side door to the museum, the one through which Gerry had come that morning to turn off the ‘Crossing the Bar’ mechanism for her. As she leaned back against it, getting more and more wet, it occurred to her that she did not remember Polly locking this door when they had gone round fastening up together after Superintendent Luke and Mr. Campion had left.
She tried the handle cautiously and was rewarded by a waft of warm camphory air as the door slid open. She remained just inside, waiting for Richard.
He came at last and stepped in gratefully beside her. His face was glistening with water and there was a cape of damp on his shoulders.
“Thank goodness for this,” he said softly. “We’ll have to wait for a bit, I’m afraid. The whole blessed place appears to be surrounded by police. There’s a carload just under the wall in front here and at least two bobbies are hanging about in a sort of alley which leads from this to the other back gardens.”
He could not see her but he felt her shiver in the dark.
“Are they after that man?”
“I expect so. We’d better keep absolutely quiet in here until the hullabaloo is over, and then I promised I’d put you straight on a train.”
“What will they do? Rush the place?”
He did not answer. Polly’s final injunction had returned to him.
“What are you worrying about?” Annabelle was removing her coat. “I should take off yours, if I were you. If we’re not to be caught and questioned, there’s no reason why we should get cold. How just like Aunt Polly. She knew it was going to happen and wanted to keep me out of it, I suppose.”
“That’s the important thing.” Richard seemed to have made up his mind. “We’ll shut this door and lie low. They must know he’s here, mustn’t they?”
“Of course they do.” Annabelle had seated herself on the edge of the centre dais. “Otherwise they wouldn’t be here, would they? Come over and wait. Would you care to sit in an elephant or a giraffe?”
While the two were settling themselves, on the opposite side of the road, in a bed-sitting room in one of the unrestored houses a little lower down the street, Mr. Campion, Superintendent Luke and Detective Sergeant Picot from the Barrow Road Station, in whose Division they were now operating, were listening to Miss Rich. This was Polly’s old neighbour whom she had expected to find when she went down to the door to answer Richard’s ring.
The bed-sitting room was on the ground floor directly beside the entrance and its large window was separated from the pavement by the deep chasm of the basement area. It had just emerged that Miss Rich was in the habit of deriving what light she needed during the night from the street lamp outside.
“I sit here in the dark looking out of the window and listening to the radio.” The educated voice with the deprecating laugh in it came to them out of the shadows. “If you like to draw the curtains I’ll turn on the light, but you’ll see much better what I mean if you’ll pick your way over here and stand behind me.”
She had been a schoolmistress. The tone was unmistakable and they obeyed it, stumbling across the cluttered room to find her, a thin figure in a dark gown lyin
g on a high couch which had been arranged very carefully beside the window.
“There, you see,” she said with some pride. “I can see all the houses on that side of the road, the pillarbox on the corner, and just a little tiny scrap of Edge Street itself. There is Number Seven, that’s the wall by the dining-room window, and that’s where I saw the man get over, as I told the constable.”
“Yes, I see, Ma’am.” Luke was bending down behind the couch to share her angle of vision, and Mr. Campion, whose eyes were unusually good in the dark, was able to save a wavering column of books, boxes, and what he strongly suspected to be dirty plates as he stumbled against them.
“Put everything on the floor,” said Miss Rich over her shoulder. “I have a woman once a week who cleans me right up. Then I start again. Now this young man, who was a stranger to me as I told you, walked up to the house soon after Mrs. Tassie and a girl, who I think is her niece, came in. He spent five minutes in the porch, where of course I couldn’t see him, and then to my astonishment he came hurrying out and actually climbed over the wall. Had I had a telephone I should have used it. But I haven’t. I know nobody I wish to ring up, so I spare myself that expense.”
She paused reflectively.
“I might have shouted, I suppose. However, I didn’t. No one in this house is very helpful. I knew Mrs. Tassie had a man over there to protect her, and a great schoolgirl who would probably have done something if necessary, so I waited a few moments when to my relief a constable came by. I rapped on the window and as you already know he stopped and I went out to the door and spoke to him. Well, I haven’t seen your men go in yet, Superintendent.”
“No, Ma’am—you haven’t.” Luke could be as bland as she was. “It’s the man who was waiting in the house as Mrs. Tassie came in, he is the fellow we are interested in. Do you know what time he arrived?”
“Jeremy Hawker? You’re interested in him, are you? Oh.” Her face was in the shadow but each man could have sworn he saw thin lips folding tightly after the final word.
Hide My Eyes Page 20