by Burke, John
Arthur came up the slope. The Borough Surveyor toiled after him, musing pessimistically with his head sunk between his shoulders.
“Arthur, that might have … it’s not safe, you mustn’t …”
“Thank you, Mrs Johnson,” Martin was saying, but she hardly heard him.
A woman came down the path. Nell stiffened. The shape and the movement brought back into focus her brief memory of the woman in the trees, scuttling away after the boulder had started to move.
Mrs Hemming said: “What is it now? Whatever’s happening?”
Nell stared at her. She said: “Was that you … up there, in the trees?”
“Me? I’ve just come from the kitchen.”
“Nell” — Arthur’s hand was on her arm — “what’s the matter?”
“Nothing. That is, I thought I saw … in the trees, just before … but it couldn’t have been.”
Couldn’t have been, she said to herself. Mrs Hemming wasn’t going to roll huge chunks of rock down on her only son. “Nell,” said Arthur: “go home.”
“But I…”
“Martin, would it be too much of a nuisance for you to drive Mrs Johnson home and then bring the car back here and leave it for me?”
“Of course not, sir. A small recompense for having my life saved!”
“Arthur, I’m perfectly capable of driving myself home.”
“And then how do I get the car back here?” His hand moved up to her shoulder. He kissed her and said firmly: “Go home, my pet. Run off — before your shivers and shakes bring the whole place down round our ears.”
Nell allowed herself to be taken home.
At lunchtime Arthur was grave, his mind utterly wrapped up in the problems of Fernrock. “It’s going to be a very tricky job,” he said. “Very dicey.” The Borough Surveyor was talking of evacuating the hotel. Some of the guests were already leaving of their own accord. Mrs Hemming was telephoning the other Lurgate hotels to find alternative accommodation.
“Poor Betty,” said Nell. “On top of everything else!”
“It never rains but what it pours.”
“Perhaps I ought to come over and see if I can help.”
“Leave it till the late afternoon,” said Arthur. “Then we can come back together.”
She knew that he had hardly tasted his lunch. He was drawn back to the work in hand — eager to be at it again.
The afternoon dragged. At half past five she went over to Fernrock and watched while four men with tapes and little hammers and painted poles and sextants swarmed over the terraces. At least, she thought they were using sextants: she had always been interested in Arthur’s work but had been careful not to pick up surface technicalities or jargon which would irritate rather than please him.
At six o’clock Arthur said: “Another half-hour yet. Why not go in and breathe sweetness and light over Mrs H? Wasn’t that the purpose of the visit?”
“Don’t be too long.”
“I’ll come and break the bad news over the carpet as soon as I can.”
Bracing herself against the inevitable antagonism, Nell went into the hotel.
“A fine kettle of fish,” said Mrs Hemming.
Martin put four glasses and a bottle of sherry on the table. He was taking out the cork when the door opened and a pink-cheeked girl peeped round it.
“Mrs Hemming — sorry, but there’s two more making a fuss. And some others want to go, but they’re all right. I mean, they’re being nice about it.”
Mrs Hemming went out.
Martin poured three glasses of sherry and handed one to Nell.
“Quite a day,” he said. “Three sorts of people. The ones who think it’s our fault that the cliff has given way; those who are terribly nice about it, but want to get out just the same; and a few who say they’re here and this is where they’re going to stay — but what about a rebate?”
Mrs Hemming must have dealt brusquely with the latest batch of refugees. She was back in less than five minutes. She sat down, scowled at the sherry, drank some of it, and ran her little finger along her lips.
Without any preamble she said: “And on top of it all we had that reporter here. Snooping about, just like before. Hoping it’d be worse than it was, I’ll be bound. He’d sooner there’d been a few folk crushed to death.”
“If there’s anything I can do,” said Nell, “I do hope you’ll…”
“And asking about that … that Peter … Peter Blythe, he called himself.”
“Asking what?”
“If there were any fresh developments. If he could have a talk with him.” Martin said: “You didn’t tell me this.”
“And I didn’t tell him anything, either. What’s it got to do with the papers? They’ve done enough mischief already.”
“How did you get rid of him?” asked Nell quietly.
“Told him the chap was away. No idea where he’d gone. I said he wasn’t in and I didn’t know when he’d be back, and it was none of my business anyway.”
Nell sensed that Betty Hemming was close to breaking point. Everything had gone wrong. Now the hotel was threatening to tumble about her in pieces. Soon she would ream, or throw something. Better if she could only break down and cry, and let someone else take over.
Martin leaned towards her, trying to force a smile. “Come on, Mum — you know you’re the guilty party.”
“Me?”
“You locked him in. Starved him to death, and then got rid of the body.”
Mrs Hemming couldn’t make even a pretence of treating this as a joke. “Locked in? He’s still got the key with him, wherever he is. And he didn’t pay his bill before he left. Didn’t pay his bill — just walked off with the key.” Her indignation was overflowing. That Peter should have walked off with the key of his room was somehow the worst affront of all.
Her anger was so spontaneous that it damped down a terrible doubt which had begun to flicker in Nell’s mind.
Would Mrs Hemming have been capable of…
Well — of what?
She couldn’t let herself frame it too bleakly.
Eliminating Peter Blythe. Eliminating. That was the nearest she would let herself approach it. It sounded more everyday and excusable, less violent, that way.
A telephone tinkled. It was the first time Nell had realised that there was a two-tone grey phone in the room, tucked way behind a photograph of a man in military uniform.
Mrs Hemming lifted the receiver. She listened, said, “I’ll come out,” and put it down. “Somebody else,” she said, her throat tight and strained.
She went out once more. When she returned, Arthur was with her. He had presumably wiped his feet at the door, but now trod very cautiously towards Nell as thought cowed into taking the minimum possible number of steps, and those on the tips of his toes.
“Well?” said Mrs Hemming.
Martin filled the fourth glass and passed it over. Arthur nodded his thanks. He drank and put the glass down with heavy deliberation.
“We’ll need a few more tests. It’s a matter of stabilising the cliff or the hotel. Or perhaps both. Or neither.”
“How can it be neither?”
“There’s been some subterranean erosion, by the look of it. Infiltration from the sea, round the far side of the bluff. There may be some caves under the hotel — or just some nasty holes. If the cliff can be held, we may be all right. But whatever happens, we’ll have to check the hotel — foundations, walls, stresses, the lot.”
“More money for the Johnsons,” said Mrs Hemming.
Martin said: “Mum…!”
Arthur sipped at his drink again. He put his free hand in the small of his back and groaned slightly.
“But it’ll be all right, won’t it?” said Nell as confidently as possible. “It can all be straightened out somehow.”
“All of it?” said Mrs Hemming. “The cliff — well, the Corporation’ll have to do something about that, I grant you.” She shook her head vigorously but without meaning. �
�And the hotel — well…”
“You’re insured?”
“Of course I’m insured, but the mess — the loss of custom, the inconvenience … oh, it’s too much. And anyway there are more important things, aren’t there? Where’s that Peter whatever-he-likes-to-call-himself? Where’s he got to, that’s what I want to know.”
Martin looked levelly at Arthur and said: “Did you give him any money?” Arthur hesitated.
“Well?” demanded Mrs Hemming. “Did you or didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“That little cheat. Liar. And you gave him money. Money that by rights belongs to…”
“Martin won’t suffer,” Arthur interrupted her. “I promise you that.”
“How much? How much did you hand over?”
“That’s my concern.”
“By paying him,” said Martin, “you were admitting that you accepted his claim.”
“I saw no alternative. I didn’t want a stand-up fight — legally, I mean.”
“But he was a fraud,” cried Mrs Hemming.
“Old Farnham was convinced.”
“Old Farnham! A fat lot he remembers about anything. You handed over what he asked for” — she took up the refrain of money, money, money — “and with all that to play about with, he couldn’t even pay his bill before he left.”
If they were to demolish the hotel, thought Nell, half a century from now … or next week … would they find Peter Blythe’s corpse in the cellar?
“I wanted the whole damned business settled,” said Arthur fiercely. “Settled. Written off. I don’t know who was married and who wasn’t married, and how many children and grandchildren there are scattered over the face of the earth. I do know I’ve had a bellyful of riddles. I’ve paid him off. I had to do it. And he’s agreed not to worry us again.”
“Probably having one hell of a time in London right now,” said Martin.
His mother flailed to and fro as though on the verge of having a fit. “He’ll fritter it away. All be gone in a few months. Then he’ll be back for more. You mark my words: he’ll be back.”
“I wonder,” said Martin. “I wonder if we’ll ever see him again.”
That infernal wind was rising again. It rattled the window and soughed round the side of the hotel. The room remained warm and stuffy. Mrs Hemming’s anger, near to hysteria, added its own burning heat to the atmosphere.
Of course, Nell continued to reassure herself, Betty Hemming couldn’t have had anything to do with the disappearance. Devotion to her son, yes. A puritanical fanaticism about those who had been wronged and those who had sinned.
Her obsessive neatness, her whole constricted background, a flame of terrible righteousness — yes, all right, all of that. But she wouldn’t have killed. It wouldn’t help; she must have known that.
But if Peter had come back, flourishing his cheque, telling her about it flamboyantly or slyly, saying he was off on his way to the bright lights, the good food and the drink and the world he could now afford to buy…
No. That sort of thing didn’t happen among one’s friends. Friends … Well, people close to one; people brought closer together by the impending marriage of their children.
The evening was darkening early. Storm clouds settled down over the bluff and along the promenade. Mrs Hemming got up to put the light on.
Some of the remaining guests hurried up from the seafront as rain spattered against the exposed side of the hotel. They could be heard trudging and mumbling across the hall.
“I don’t know what to make of it all,” said Mrs Hemming. “And all this just before the wedding.”
This, too, had been in Nell’s mind. She had not wanted to make the opening, but now that it was offered she could not resist saying:
“Do you think we ought to postpone it? Just until this is all settled.”
“Postpone it?” said Martin.
“Just for the time being.”
“No.”
“When everyone’s so upset…”
“I must say I’d feel easier in my mind,” said Mrs Hemming.
Nell hastened to accept this alliance. “We’re all so worried, and we really could do with a few weeks’ breathing space while we sort things out — make sure of things.”
Martin said: “I’m sure of everything that matters. So’s Brigid.”
“What I meant was, it would all be so much happier all round if we had absolutely everything else tidied up.”
“You never did want Brigid to marry me, did you?” said Martin.
Arthur said: “Now, Martin…”
“It’s true, isn’t it? You’ve kept getting in the way, taking charge of things, making things difficult. Now you’re grabbing at a last-minute excuse. Stay of execution, that sort of thing. Hoping for a last-minute reprieve?”
Nell said: “I only want what’s best for Brigid. And with things as they are…”
She was interrupted by the dull but penetrating boom of the dinner gong. Again there was a shuffle of feet, a murmuring across the hall.
Mrs Hemming glanced at the clock. Half her mind reached out instinctively towards what might be going on in the kitchen and the dining room. Normally at this time of the evening she would be on duty, watchful, ready for problems, instead of just sitting here. She looked unhappy, incapable of giving her full attention to one thing or the other.
At this juncture Detective-Sergeant Campbell arrived at the reception desk and was duly shown in.
The sergeant was a polite, slow-spoken man. He had met Arthur on several occasions when dealing with thefts from various building sites, and more recently when courteously asking a few questions about the corpse of Walter Blythe.
Today he had come to see Mrs Hemming, but seemed pleased rather than disconcerted by the presence of the Johnsons. Perhaps they, too, could help him.
Crime in Lurgate was usually petty, but Campbell was not a man to be upset by mysteries of greater dimensions.
He wondered if Mrs Hemming could tell him anything of the whereabouts of Mr Peter Blythe.
Mrs Hemming bristled. “What’s it got to do with me?”
“He was a resident in this hotel.”
“For a time.”
“I understand he has disappeared.”
“Who says so?”
“Hasn’t he, then?”
Arthur said: “Where did you get this information, Sergeant?”
“That young chap from the Chronicle was here earlier, hoping for an interview.”
“Him!” said Mrs Hemming.
“He was informed that Mr Peter Blythe was out and that the time of his return was not known. When he talked to one of the maids…”
“Which one?”
“When he talked to one of the maids,” said Campbell inexorably, “he learnt that Mr Blythe has in fact been missing for two days. Yet I understand his luggage is still on the premises.”
“If a guest wants to go away for a few days, it’s not up to me to make a fuss about it.”
“This is no ordinary guest, Mrs. Hemming. I think we can say that without contradiction?” Campbell impassively studied each of their faces in turn. “But however unusual the person concerned, and the circumstances involved, is it usual for you to have no idea when a guest will be coming back, when your bill is likely to be paid, and whether to put the luggage in store or leave it where it is?”
Mrs Hemming laced her fingers together in her lap. They tightened. Abruptly she burst out: “He could afford to do just what he wanted to, couldn’t he? Mr Johnson seems to have set him up nicely. Very nicely, thank you. He’ll be off to buy new luggage, I shouldn’t wonder. Flashy stuff — I can just see it. Why should he want to come back here? He’s got what he came for.”
Campbell turned to Arthur. “You gave this Mr Peter Blythe money, sir?”
“A cheque.”
“For how much?”
Arthur hesitated. Nell found that she was holding her breath and watching Mrs Hemming’s anguished fa
ce.
At last he said: “Twenty thousand pounds.”
Mrs Hemming let out a howl of despair.
“He asked for fifty,” said Arthur. “I told him I thought that excessive. He agreed to take twenty thousand and go away.”
“Blackmail?” said Campbell.
“I wouldn’t call it that. No. It was a straightforward request. He felt it was his right.”
“And you, sir?”
“I had offered to make restitution. I wanted the matter concluded, I accepted his claim, I paid. I could have said no; I chose to say yes.”
“He didn’t threaten?” said Campbell wistfully. “No question of extortion?”
“None.”
“You think he might come back and ask for more?”
“Just what I said,” cried Mrs Hemming.
“He won’t get any more,” said Arthur flatly. “I’ve done what I believed right. I don’t have to do any more. I told him so. He understood.”
“I see. Yes. Does look as though he’s whizzed off to splash his money around, doesn’t it?”
The telephone rang again. Mrs Hemming reached back automatically for it and dully murmured: “Yes. Where? Oh, I’ll be right up.”
Martin looked at her enquiringly as she went to the door.
“More rats deserting the sinking ship?”
“Room twenty-two wants me to go up personally.” She shook her head. “Window coming in, I shouldn’t wonder. Or they want dinner served in the room at no extra charge.”
Martin was suddenly on his feet. “Just a minute. Room twenty-two — that’s his room. Unless you’ve let it to someone else today?”
“Of course I haven’t. His bags are still there — and it’s still locked.”
“He’s back, then.” Campbell looked disappointed.
Martin went past his mother, and pushed her gently back into the room.
“Let me do it.”
“I want some words with that young man,” she said.
“No. Leave it to me.”
From where she sat, Nell could see him cross the hall to the foot of the stairs. The door swung open. Mrs Hemming stood irresolute with her hand on the knob.
Detective-Sergeant Campbell rubbed his knuckles uneasily along his chin.