‘You don’t even know where it is?’
For the first time ever, she confessed it. ‘Well—I might. But I couldn’t tell anyone; and certainly I could never get it back—God knows, I’d give it to them if I could.’
‘Yet you’re so frightened of these people?’
‘I’m helpless,’ said Sari. ‘I couldn’t get it back. And that’s the end of it.’
‘And of Aldo? There has been a divorce?’ said Phin, rather anxiously.
‘Oh, yes, or an annulment. I suppose’, said Sari, as Mr Charlesworth had earlier suggested to Etho, ‘they just bought the Pope a new cathedral or something. In fact they must have, because they’re marrying Aldo off to this Italian girl. Which, like I say—is why they now really must have the ring. So you do see!’
He still did not see very much; but he wanted the dinner to end, he wanted to leave the restaurant and the other people there, to be alone with her again. They went out to his car and he drove her home and came up to the flat with her and was with her there till the early hours. But in all that time, they spoke of nothing but their love.
Nothing about murder. Nothing about police investigations. Nothing about the storm and the fall of the tree...
Nothing about that dreadful thing that had lain with stiffened angled arms and legs, with the deep red rose slowly, slowly, sliding down from the hunched shoulder beneath the pale blue, shiny plastic mackintosh...
She had known very little of happiness in her difficult life. Pleasure yes—a sort of feverish pleasure, all the nonsense, the laughter, the extravaganza of often rather tiresome jokiness; but of happiness, very little. And now that she had found it, with an all too typical withdrawal from reality, she blotted out all else, refused to let ugly subjects interfere...
A storm raging, teeming rain, coat collars pulled up, hat brims pulled down, voices, screaming, blown aside by the wind—neither for one moment connected the other with the meeting at the fallen tree.
9
‘ETHO?—YES, QUITE SAFE, ap-solutely soundo.’
‘All still a bit shattering, Rufie? Do we just stick?’
‘Yes, well... Bugs everywhere, my dear, one wouldn’t be surprised...?’ suggested Rufie uneasily and hurried on to say, as though they had been referring to no other subject, that the new boyfriend had turned up last night and stayed till dawn.
‘What did you think of him?’
‘I’ll tell you something,’ said Rufie, laughing, ‘he didn’t think much of me!’
‘On the stuffy side?’
‘You can say that again; but fallen for her, hook, line and thingummy.’
‘What does he make of recent events?’ said Etho.
‘My dear, will you believe it?—he doesn’t realise she’s involved. Never gets to see the morning papers, far too busy, from the moment he met her, to sit down to a nice read of The Times... She muttered to me to shut up, not to say a word about it.’
‘She hasn’t told him?’
‘You know Sari, Etho. She’d just blot it out. One thing at a time.’
‘Especially if it’s sex.’
‘It’s more than sex this time,’ said Rufie. ‘He’s even free for matrimony.’
‘Poor Rufie!’ said Etho, who, himself playing it ever cool and detached, nevertheless had ears and whiskers to recognise the tremor in other hearts.
‘Well, yes—poor me; because one doesn’t quite see oneself in a ménage á trois with Devigne, Esquire, F.R.C.S. Of course, God knows, I’d grudge her nothing; and she’s dreadfully in love, poor love. But it’s something else I rang about.’ He recalled, however, the possibility of bugged lines. He said in Italian: ‘You do speak the lingo?’
‘I picked up a bit in Rome that time. I didn’t know you did?’
‘Yes, well, ditto.’ He seemed to have contrived to pick up little more than an excellent accent, but it was enough to convey the history of last night’s adventure with the rose. ‘And now she wants me to trail off down to Wren’s Hill looking for a man with a red rose and a Halcyon car. Of course I never meant it last night, I was high as a kite—’
So Etho rang up Sofy—he involved himself not at all in their exploits, looking indulgently on, but was no part of them—but Sofy had no car and moreover would be easily recognised coming out through the throng of reporters; rang Charley but Charley was at the hospital, working; rang Nan, but Nan was just that minute on her way out to an extremely important engagement. The fact was that Nan had meanwhile been set upon by her own eight best friends and submitted to a lecture: what on earth did she think she was doing, running around with all this riff-raff, what would Bertrand have thought of her? And now—involved in a murder, actually a murder, some sordid affair being headlined in all the worst of the gutter press... ‘I have to meet my solicitor, you see,’ said poor Nan, obediently bound for coffee and buns at Fortnum’s, a little shopping with Mavis and then bridge at Lillian’s. ‘So I simply must go.’
Etho’s ears and whiskers twitched again but he said that yes, yes, of course she must go; he’d get hold of Pony...
Pony would have been only too delighted to oblige. His place within the circle of the Eight Best grew increasingly precarious but, despite Bobsie and Ronsie, his pursuit of Rufie seemed to grow more steadily as Rufie’s regard, never very great, grew less; and here would have been an excellent opportunity to build up points. He was alas, irredeemably engaged for the latter part of the morning, but came forth with a suggestion—he would most willingly go to Heathcliffe Heights and help Sari escape in the wig and mud-make-up, drive her to Sofy’s and then lend them his car to drive on. In the splendid grey Ferrari, then—Pony really did seem to have simply everything!—she and Sofy prepared to set off. ‘First just a quick dash into your wee, though, Sofa, and return myself to normal...’
‘Don’t you think you’d do better to stay as you are? In disguise, I mean.’
‘Oh, how bright of you!’ said Sari. ‘And no one knows you down there, I can shelter in the lee of the Jade Elephant and we shall be practically invisible.’ Except to their Followers, she said, but this time calmly. ‘Don’t worry, it’ll only be a couple of Size Twelves, and with them on my tail, I nowadays actually feel safer.’
Sergeant Ellis, in fact, took only size nines on the neat little feet at the end of his too-short legs and he it was who, with only one of the original Size Twelves, now trailed them in the quiet black police car. ‘You had a rough time yesterday, take it easy today,’ Chief Superintendent Charlesworth had said to him benignly, handing him this tricky assignment on a plate. ‘Nice run out into the country.’ Rufie had indeed been not too far wrong in doubting the entire privacy of calls from the flat in Hampstead. A gentleman had been on duty, quite competent to milk from the halting Italian a proposal to go down to Wren’s Hill today in search of a Halcyon car; and—the story of the red rose. A constable on duty outside the flats on the night following the discovery of the murder, had had his own Size Twelves on the mat before Mr Charlesworth for reporting only the snatching up from a flower-bed of some car keys, and failing to observe the rose.
Ginger, therefore, relaxed comfortably, letting his subordinate do the driving; ‘And don’t strain yourself, Bill, we know they’re making straight for Wren’s Hill...’
And nor did Sofy strain herself, branching off the motorway, tooling along happily while Sari, her immediate aims predictably forgotten, drooled on happily about her love. ‘This time, Sofy, it’s real. It’s real. For both of us. I mean, I really do think that this time, it’s for ever.’ The early morning blur common to her awakenings had long misted away, her happiness shone like a star. ‘You don’t know, darling! A man all of your own who loves you and really sort of—cares about you! To feel safe at last...’
‘I’m glad for you, darling,’ said Sofy, who now would never know that kind of safety in all her life. It would be terrible if Sari got married and moved away from them all; but who could grudge her all the goodness that might be coming to her at last
?—beautiful, sweet Sari, so giving and deserving of love. She ventured: ‘He actually is divorced?’
‘Free as air. Of course there’s this absolutely monster child complete with monster Nanny and I fear that nothing will induce him, not even me, to pack them off to Mummy where they long to be; but I’ll tell you one thing, darling, not one week will I spend at Hilltop or whatever, with wild originality, it calls itself.’ She embarked upon a lively description of Phin’s house. ‘Even a bar in the corner of the drawing-room, decorated with ever such amusing figures of drunks; and someone, who could only be departed Ena, has painted on them little black Mandarin moustaches and large straw hats, so whimsical! can you imagine?—presumably to fit in with the Chinese decor or Persian or whatever it is—’
‘Persians don’t have Mandarin moustaches?’
‘Well, but there are camels and the Chinese don’t have camels; or do they?’ She broke off suddenly: ‘Sofy—quick, over there, turn in at that pub!’
A small pub-cum-restaurant, done up very chichi, with an outside sign, THE HEAVENLY ANGEL.
And standing outside The Heavenly Angel—a shining black Cadmus 3000—a Halcyon.
Sofy wrenched the Ferrari across the road, to the momentary discomfiture of Ginger and Bill, a mite too close behind. ‘Go by the side door, Sofy, there’s parking there too and we can creep in that way.’ Sergeant Ellis, reconnoitring for a not too obvious concealment, saw that they stationed themselves round a corner from the bar. He despatched the constable to telephone to Charlesworth for advice, ordered a pint of bitter and settled down to keep watch, from his nook.
The place included a restaurant for lunches and dinners—(‘Tomato soup and scampi for the yobbos, Sofy, and madly enterprising pates for the discerning, what’ll you bet?’)—and the bar, with a woman serving before the gantry and a young assistant. Otherwise it was empty but for a blonde perched curvaceously up on a stool, with the carefully careless tendrils of hair known in the tonsorial profession as turds, and a pretty little face lit by a sort of not un-engaging childish silliness. A miniature poodle sat solemnly on the stool beside her, its fur brushed into clouds of silky white. ‘A Pimm’s for me,’ she said to the barmaid (‘My dear—how predictable can one get?’) ‘—and his usual, please.’
‘His usual?’ said the girl, bemused.
‘Oh, I’m sorry—you’re new here. A little drop of sweet Martini for Monsieur Pow, poured out into—’ the older woman, accustomed, passed over a shallow ashtray. ‘Pow, short for Powder-Puff,’ she confided as though keeping it out of the dog’s hearing. ‘Well, he does look like one, doesn’t he? Or Pouf as the boyfriend wittily calls him and one must admit that he does seem just a tiny bit That Way. Monsieur Pouf—trés gai!’
‘A French poodle, you see,’ said the older woman, evidently familiar with this gambit, helping out her young assistant.
‘Yes, he is and too utterly Left Bank, he doesn’t believe in anything, do you, darling?’
In the L of the room, Sari and Sofy made sicking-up motions into their hands. ‘My dear, one word more of all this tweetiness and I shall go ap-solutely beresk!’
‘Well, fancy!’ the barmaid was saying, rather wretchedly.
‘But talented! Sing your song, darling, till your Uncle gets back from the ‘phone. Sing for the lady!’ She sat the tiny creature into a begging position and began to croon, solemnly conducting him with a newspaper rolled into a baton. The poodle lifted up its damp black nose and soulful almond eyes and now and again emitted a low moan. ‘So come on, now—our song!’—and she sang in a high, fluting voice, rather sweet on the ear—
‘Cerulium was beautiful, Cerulium was fair,
She lived with her grandmuzzer in Gooseberry Square,
She was my ducky-doodleums but now, alas she
Plays kissy-kissy wiz an officer in the ar-till-er-ee!’—and fell into a tinkle of laughter. ‘Oh, darling, beautiful! Only—your accent, we simply must practise and practise...’ A clock chimed the half hour. She glanced up at it. ‘He’s a long time. Who can he be ringing up? One of his damn women, I suppose.’ She unrolled the newspaper and began plucking off little pieces from the corners. ‘He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not—’ But a man appeared from around a corner and she jumped down from her stool and flung her arms about his neck. ‘He loves me!’
Sari’s true love. Phineas Devigne.
Sari said very quietly: ‘Oh, Sofy! In his buttonhole—that’s the same red rose.’
Ginger made a mad dash for the police car. The Halcyon was turning out of the drive, on to the road. ‘Get after him! But don’t let him suspect.’ The girl with the poodle emerged, looking shaken, climbed into a smart little sports car and drove off in the same direction. Bill said, accelerating, ‘It’s the man we saw yesterday, Sarge. At the pub, The Fox - after that fuss about the car keys being stolen. Never seemed to have seen her before, Morne, I mean—but took her in charge and went off with her. That’s the same man. Only he was driving a Rover, then.’
‘Well I’m damned!’ said Ginger.
‘Comes rushing out, gets into this Halcyon and drives off. White to the gills, he was; carrying a newspaper flapping open...’
‘The girl had the paper. He took one look at the headlines—went, like you say, white as a ghost, said some word to her and bolted out. I think she thought he’d done his nut.’
‘I’d rung Mr Charlesworth like you said. He said to stick with the car—if it seemed at all promising, stick with the car and play it by ear, he leaves it all entirely up to you.’ Bill, eyes on the road, jerked his head back towards the place they had just left. ‘What about them two? Miss Morne?’
‘I think she was absolutely thunderstruck, seeing him there. And yet she seemed to be there—well, spying; and now if you say that she knew him... It’s all a bit complicated,’ confessed Ginger, rolling in his seat a bit—the Halcyon was making very good time along the narrow road; his mind registered that the man drove as though he were well familiar with its twists and turns. A couple of miles on, he said: ‘Here’s where the tree fell, Bill.’
‘Yeah, well we saw it yesterday, me and George, following them down to The Fox. Rummy business that!’
It was all a rummy business—so rum as to almost blot out its own ghastly centre—that pitiful Thing, crammed down behind the driving seat of a shining new Halcyon car with, as it now seemed, lying on the dead body, a dying dark red rose...
And now—a gentleman with a Halcyon car, who wore in his buttonhole a dark red rose.
Nanny met Phin in the hall and stared up, leerily, into the haggard white face. ‘My goodness—you look gashly! Had a shock, have you?’
‘What?’ he said, his hand clawed across his forehead. ‘A shock? Yes—yes, a bit of a shock.’
‘Heard the news at last, then? That Miss Sari Morne of yours... Time you come in last night,’ said Nanny, ‘or call it this morning—and rushing off out again, first thing, well, you wasn’t esackly at leisure to settle down to a read of the papers?’
He only half heard her; said dully, ‘Yes, I got an early ‘phone call, I had to go out.’
‘Ringing up all night, they were. And what could I say—you wasn’t back yet.’ She looked him over again, vaguely puzzled. ‘It seems really to have shook you up. She never told you—?’
‘No, I...’ But the front door had remained open and two men now appeared there. ‘Who the devil are you?’
‘Sorry to disturb you, sir. Police, sir. Sergeant Ellis,’ said Ginger, sufficiently recovered to be settling into one of his roles, whipping out the credentials, tucking the badge away again, the quiet, confident young officer, pouring oil with one hand, busily stirring up trouble with the other—‘and this is Constable—’
‘What on earth are you doing here?’
‘It’ll be about the murder,’ said Nanny, eagerly. ‘You knowing Sari Morne and all.’
He made no protestation or denial; simply said in that dull way, ‘You’d better c
ome in then,’ and led the way through to the sitting-room. Sergeant Ellis perched his round behind on the edge of a chair, gazing around with simple admiration upon the Bad Habitat. Phin pulled himself together. ‘Nanny, ring the hospital and say I’ll be held up—’
‘Tell the Register to get on with it?’ prompted Nanny, bossily familiar.
‘The Registrar,’ he corrected automatically. He went over to a small bar tucked away in a corner, decorated rather amusingly, to Ginger’s mind, with little moustachio’d figures in appropriate stages of drunkenness. ‘I’m sorry, but I must get myself a drink.’ He lifted a bottle with an interrogatory glance; Ginger, palm forward, held up a disclaiming paw, observing, while the victim went about his business with a trembling clink of glass against glass, that he had a fine garden here, sir, hadn’t he?
Phin turned away from the bar. ‘Yes, well you haven’t postponed a radical hysterectomy for a nice horticultural chat?’
Ginger would have liked nothing better: deep, velvety crimson—fragrant—vigorous growth—tendency to mildew... ‘It’s your Josephine Bruce, sir. Lovely dark colour, haven’t they? Always wear one in your buttonhole, do you, sir?’
‘Buttonhole? What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Well, you’ve evidently heard about this murder? And, on the woman’s body—’ He broke off. ‘You won’t mind if my chap here takes a few notes, sir?’
‘Notes? What about? What’s all this got to do with me?’
‘You do own a Cadmus 3000, sir, a Halcyon?’
His face grew very cold. But he came straight to the point: ‘You’re not suggesting that I was the man who changed cars with—Miss Morne—at this fallen tree?’
‘If anyone changed cars with her. The body was found in her own car.’
‘God knows, I don’t mean to suggest—’
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