Two small components, light as air, of Mr Charlesworth’s collage floated across his line of vision and out again. He grabbed at them mentally, but they were gone. Oh, well, he thought, I’ll switch off and they’ll come back to me when I’m not thinking about it. He brought Mr Soames back to cases. ‘If Miss Morne is telling the truth, then this is the stranger’s car?’
Well of course, said Rufie, staring. One had to believe that now. How else could...? He made a gesture of repugnance. ‘How else could—it—have got there? Poor Sari just drove back not knowing it was there.’
‘But how could this woman’s body have got into his car? He was coming back towards Wren’s Hill. The woman was working there in the cinema.’
‘I suppose’, said Rufie intelligently, ‘that a cashier doesn’t stay till the end of the evening. After the feature film started, she’d pack up, hand over the takings and go home. And if he—well, met her, or took her, or whatever you like—beyond where the tree fell later, on the London side—’ That, suggested Rufie, could be why he was in such a panic to get on.
‘Turning his car over to an unknown woman, complete with dead Miss Feather in the back of it?’
‘And then doing a bunk? You may never hear from him again.’
This possibility had not escaped Mr Charlesworth who had already set on foot suitable arrangements; though in view of Sari’s total lack of any help in identifying the stranger, it had hardly been a promising outlook. Yes, he’d given her a ‘phone number but the paper had got all wet, you couldn’t make it out properly and the wrong people kept answering, so she’d chucked it away—he’d get in touch with her. As for his appearance, he’d been tall but otherwise she’d no idea what he had looked like. They’d both had their hats pulled down over their ears, coat collars turned up, heads bent down to keep the wind from absolutely blowing their eyelashes back into their eyes; it had been pitch dark and teeming with rain and most of the time they’d had a vast great fallen tree between them, branches and the lot. There was nothing in the way of personal property in his car, as there had been nothing in her own; neither car could have been on the roads for more than a week or two at most. So all that was a great help! Charlesworth’s men would be coping with fingerprints and all the rest of it, and of course they would soon check on the owner of the car. But by that time, as Rufie had said, the stranger, if he existed, might be anywhere.
If he had existed. Mr Charlesworth, with regrettable reluctance, gave himself over to consideration of the possibility that he never had existed—that this was Sari Morne’s own car.
Vi Feather had come up out of the past—the somewhat mysterious past with its marriage into an unwelcoming nobility, its history of nameless threats and followings. She had asked for money. Blackmail? But then would Sari have mentioned it?—there had been no need. Unless of course she had known, though she now denied it, that someone had been listening who might later inform on her. ‘Contents of handbag?’ he said, slightly challengingly to Sergeant Ellis.
But Ginger by name, ginger by nature; the sergeant was by no means always playing games. He listed without troubling to refer to the paper he held, a collection of Miss Feather’s possessions: cosmetics, toilet tissues, comb, mirror, plastic coin purse, unremarkable for anything but a universal grubbiness. There had been an imitation leather notecase with odds and ends of paper in it and a single pound note. There was a good deal of small change loose in the bottom of the handbag, and a crumpled note, pushed down at one side. That sounded as though money had in fact been handed over and thrust, perhaps hastily, furtively, into the handbag; but Miss Sari Morne would hardly be susceptible to blackmail to the tune of a single pound note. On the other hand... First instalment? A ‘refresher’? Had Vi perhaps waited outside the cinema—for her outer clothes had been wet through—and then made the demand? Been in the car perhaps from the beginning, from the beginning of the drive home?
‘Result of telephone call to the pub, sir,’ said Ginger, turning over the pages of another report. ‘Landlord looked into the car, took a particular interest because it was the new Cadmus Halcyon. Looked well into the interior; can swear there was nobody there, and no body either, not even lying on the floor behind the front seat, or he’d have seen it.’ The lady had brought the car close up to the door so as to have the shortest distance to run in out of the rain, and he’d been able to see all over it. Looked with special interest to see what leg room there was at the back: a lot of these posh cars failed in that. Agreed that a body might lie there unobserved by the driver, unobserved by anybody getting in and out of the driving seat—especially hastily, coming in out of the dark in all that storm; but when the car drove away from his pub, there’d been nothing there, nobody there.
Hidden in the boot then, perhaps? But why move it from that hiding place to another so much less secure? Ginger with maddening efficiency whipped out the relevant report. No sign whatsoever—in this brand new, unmarked car—of anything ever having been in the boot, let alone a body, the clothes soaked with rain.
She hadn’t been killed in the car. Strangled, but not in the car: not, for example, killed in the front passenger seat and hauled or pushed over to lie in the back. No: she had, they thought, been dead before she was put there. The murderer had opened the offside door and pushed in the body as far as it would go, and then, most likely, gone round to the other door and dragged it the rest of the way. But she had definitely been dead by then; perhaps quite a long time dead. Speaking off the top of his head, said the doctor, and without benefit of post mortem—she had died some time before midnight.
She had been out in the storm. The rain had run off the shiny surface of the plastic mac, but the mac was smeared with mud; shoes, woollen gloves, even the horrid matching little woollen cap, all thick with still damp mud. Hair tousled, hanging over her face. A hand-to-hand struggle? Well, could be. But equally, a struggle through the storm, stumbling, tripping perhaps, throwing out a gloved hand to stop herself from falling, actually falling, muddying her coat, the woolly cap tumbling off, being clapped back again over the streaming wet hair...
But where? But when?
Waiting by the roadside? Had Sari found her waiting by the roadside, somewhere between the pub and home—and leapt out into the rain and strangled the woman and dragged her into concealment at the back of the car? But why do such a thing? Why not leave the body where it fell? Why strangle her anyway?—with a big, powerful car at one’s disposal, with a storm of rain to wash away all signs, why not just run the woman down and leave her lying? ‘Call Mr Soames back here a moment,’ said Charlesworth.
Rufie had sat all this time at the far end of the room in a dream of abstraction, his white face, like the face of a mime, expressionless, almost witless, staring into space. Charlesworth said: ‘When Miss Morne came in last night—of course she would have been wet through?’
‘Soaked,’ said Rufie. ‘I had to rub her down like a horse, poor love, and a great double brandy, a thing she simply never touches in the ordinary way.’
‘And covered in mud?’
‘Well, her boots of course, and they were clean when she went out, I did them for her myself this morning—she’s so naughty about her things and they’re so gorgeous, all that lovely leather, Gucci, you know; madly expensive but I always tell her, it’s so much worth it.’
Such devotion to Sari’s wardrobe might well prove instructive. ‘And her beautiful leather coat?’ said Charlesworth, guilelessly. ‘I noticed it hanging up to dry. Muddy too?’
‘Well, not to say muddy, but all smeared with green, and scraped, too tragic. Which shows how wicked it was of me’, said Rufie, ‘not to have realised that it was true about the tree. It must all have come from pushing through to the other side. And her gloves too, the leather all scratched.’
Had Vi Feather fought back for her life, against the choking hands in their wet leather driving gloves? ‘A good thing Miss Morne happened to be wearing—them,’ said Charlesworth, rather unhappily.
‘I only mean that she might have got her hands scratched.’
‘Oh, that would have been too awful!’ said Rufie. ‘Her hands are so perfect.’ His own right hand had two or three strange little scratches across the back of it and he very, very surreptitiously pulled down his cuff to cover them. But he was immeasurably thankful for his beloved Sari. ‘You see she did force her way past the tree, after all. She did meet the stranger. It isn’t her car,’ he said.
She came into the room. The long legs were slender in their tight blue jeans, the brilliant green woolly, deliciously top- heavy above them. Her hair stood on end, lit from beneath with its extraordinary glow. She held out a long pale green card to Charlesworth. ‘You kept saying the log-book,’ she said. ‘This isn’t a book. It’s just a sort of bit of paper.’
‘But it tells us the registration number of your car,’ said Charlesworth. ‘And the engine number.’ He turned away and glanced down into the yard. He said at last: ‘The tree fell across the road? And you met this stranger? And you swapped cars?’
‘I told you,’ said Sari.
‘And subsequently a dead body is found in the car.’ He took her arm and held her while she stood beside him, staring down at the big, shining black Halcyon, out in the open now with the police still milling around it. ‘Miss Morne—look at the number plate. That’s your own car,’ he said.
6
AND DOWN IN WREN’S Hill, Nanny was ringing up Mummy. ‘I’ve got a bit of news for you dear, I think she lives in Grenwidge.’
‘In Greenwich?’
‘Well, breakfast time this morning, Ena Mee suddenly comes out with, “Where’ll we go for our picnic, Daddy?” “Picnic?” he says. “You promised to take me for a picnic today,” she says—never a word to me, of course, never a word to Nanny who’s got to get the samwidges and that. Well, he looks a bit sick, you could see he had something else up his sleeve, he’d forgotten about the picnic, but she starts creating, “You always break your promises!”—and “Mummy would take me if she said she was going to,” ’ said Nanny, contributing a touch of flattering embroidery which both of them must recognise to be totally false. ‘So he says, “I can’t,” he says, “I’ve got a case to see,”—always the same old excuse. So Ena Mee, she sets up a hullabaloo, so he sits there thinking and at last he says, “Well, look, all right, I was supposed to be going to Grenwidge to see this patient, so what we’ll do, we’ll take our picnic to Grenwidge Park, and I’ll drop in and see the patient and you and Nanny can wait just a few minutes.” Ena Mee says no, she wanted to go to the zoo’, but, “It’s lovely in Grenwidge Park,” he says, “you can sit on the hill and look all the way down to the river.” “What, after all that rain last night?” I says. “Why not a nice restrong?” but no, we can take the tarpauling and a picnic it has to be. And I have to say,’ admitted Nanny, ‘it turned out a nice day after the storm, and not all that cold.’
‘Yes, well obviously it was all an excuse to go to Greenwich. So, Nanny, what about Her? He parked you there and just went off and left you?’
‘Well, he had to tell her he couldn’t manage it after all, I suppose. But pretending it was a patient—But it wasn’t a patient,’ said Nanny, shrewdly, ‘I know him! Just come back and says after all that trouble, the patient had gone out, so he just left a message. And I bet she had too, he looked that upset!’
Goodness: thought Ena, listening with only half an ear. Greenwich? She had an idea, though only a very vague one, as to the identity of the lady concerned. That there’d been any lady before she’d left him, was certainly not the case, though she had made considerable parade of jealousy at his seeing all those females and under such intimate conditions, in his consulting rooms. But afterwards... Well, Phin was a bit of a one for it; and doctors, especially gynaecologists, had to be very, very careful about dalliance with their patients; and, especially again, with young married patients. If she could discover that Phin had been up to something of the sort, then the law would be willing to hand Ena Mee back to her Mum. Not that Ena had the smallest intention, whatever Nanny might imagine, of lumbering herself again with a six-year-old child, and Ronald would certainly never stand for it—but by pretending to want her, she could blackmail lots and lots of lovely lolly out of Phin. Ronald was loaded, but had proved not all that generous, after all, in doling it out to the little woman. ‘Well, so what did you have for the picnic then, Nan?’ (Greenwich Park. She must be one of his Harley Streeters, sent to him by a general practitioner. The hospital where Phin was consultant was in North London, which was why he chose to live out in Hertfordshire; and Greenwich, after all, just about slap opposite, a good twelve miles away, the other side of London. The lady would not come to him via a North London hospital. A small contribution to Mr Charlesworth’s collage floated through Ena’s cunning mind; she was unconscious that it was this that had prompted her to ask what they’d had for the picnic.)
‘Oh, well, the picnic,’ said Nanny, flattered. One of Mummy’s charms had been that she always said that Nanny’s fixing-uppings for all special occasions were so marvellous that she would leave everything to her—by which Ena in fact meant all the work and trouble. ‘Well, you know what our young lady is about a picnic. Them little soft rolls spread with Lipter cheese. Wouldn’t touch them if you gave them to her in the house, but for a picnic—Lipter cheese it has to be. “But, petty,” I says to her, “Nanny hasn’t got any Lipter cheese.” “You can get it in the shop,” she says; and Sunday, but no flies on our young Madam, “The dellycatessing’s open on Sundays,” she says. Well, I ‘d been up half the night, dear, what with my tooth, but never mind that, down to the shop poor Nanny has to go, trit trot...’
‘And after all that,’ said Ena, unwilling to pass on to further unlimited detail, ‘he goes off and leaves you on your owns?’
‘Yes, and what am I supposed to do?’ said Nanny, ‘—sitting there on a bit of tarpauling with the picnic basket—nothing but a lot of grass and trees, and as for river, well, I don’t call that a river and about half a mile away, right down there below us.’ Nanny came from the wilds of Essex and had a deep contempt—especially now, having gone to all the grand restrongs with Madam—for any but the urban scene. ‘Not even a decent shop, to look in at the windows.’
‘Poor Nan! And how long did he leave you there?’
‘Oh, well,’ admitted Nanny, and it did come a bit flat at the end of all that, ‘I can’t say it was so very long. I suppose it just seemed longer. “You bin a long time,” I said to him and “A long time?” he says, “Exactly ten minutes,” he says, cross as two sticks he was: I thought to meself, so she hadn’t waited in for you after all? I thought—’
Ten minutes. So if they’d been up at the top there, it must be one of the houses just across Blackheath—well, just somewhere round there, anyway. ‘It really was ten minutes, Nanny?’
‘Yes, well, about that,’ confessed Nanny. ‘I looked at me watch. And then what d’you think? “I don’t think much of this place,” says Ena Mee, well, pore child, I don’t blame her; and, “Oh, don’t you?” he says, calm as a cucumber, after having driven all that way. “Well, let’s do something else,” he says, “let’s go to the zoo, after all, we can have our picnic on a bench there,” he says, “and give what’s left to the monkeys...” All that sweat down to the shops for the Lipter cheese!—and then of course she doesn’t eat two bites of it, much rather feed it to them rangatangs.’
‘So he didn’t see his bird after all?’ said Ena, disappointed.
‘Well, no.’ And what was more, added Nanny, feeling that one might as well get it over with in one go, she might have been wrong after all about his going off to see Her every Saturday evening. He really did seem to have bin to the cinema; last night anyway. She’d played a trick or two on him and he’d never got caught out, not once.
‘Oh, lor’!’ said Ena, gloomily. She’d seen a blue mink stole and Ronnie wouldn’t divv
y up: she’d been counting on a spot more blackmailing of Phin, via Ena Mee.
7
BY SEVEN O’CLOCK, THE police had gone—they had all gone, Etho and Nan, loving and clucking, and Sofa, recovered from hysteria and full of apologies, and Pony, profuse with departing bows of sympathy and regret and Charley; and now the euphoria had long passed away and Sari sat with Rufie on the great, endless couch, arms round one another, knees up to their chins like two sad monkeys huddled together on a branch. ‘Rufie, it is true, it is true, the tree did fall, I did meet the man, I did swap cars with him...’
Checks had been made with the local police and it was a fact that at some time before half-past ten the night before, the great elm had fallen. ‘Dovey-darling, you don’t think—? Well, I mean, yes, we know a tree did fall across the road. Suppose—? Well, if you’d just that second passed, it would have been such a ghastly shock, don’t you think you might have—well, imagined in your mind what would have happened if you’d been just a minute earlier: and then perhaps—?’ His voice trailed away wretchedly. It was never safe to suggest to Sari that something she said might not be true. And then, again, they’d never believed all those stories about her being in danger, and yet here was Vi Feather murdered—and just a couple of hours after Sari had been speaking to her. ‘But why poor old Feather, darling? Why should they—why should anyone—want to kill her?’
‘But of course,’ said Sari. ‘I told the policeman. They thought it was me.’
Dread dropped like a plummet in Rufie’s heart. ‘Oh, my God, Sari! But you don’t really believe—?’
‘What else? I’ve kept telling you all. And as you yourself say—why poor wretched Vi Feather?’
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