Rose in Darkness

by Christianna Brand

  Eleven o’clock! Etho said slowly: ‘Inspector—Rufie left my place soon after eleven. He wanted to be back before Sari got home. And he did get back before she got home, she’d been held up by the fall of the tree and he was already waiting for her in the flat. So—’

  Rufie roused himself from his terrible lethargy, sitting strained forward in his chair, white hands grasping the arms, white face thrust forward. ‘So,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t have moved the body into the other car. The other car wasn’t yet there.’

  On the couch, Sari sat up very straight: very straight, very tense, the bright colours of the tight-fitted painted pants shifting under the soft, transparent over-all gleam of the flowing gown. ‘Rufie?’

  The thin, nervous white hands spread out, palms upwards, in a sort of appeal to credulity. ‘Do you honestly think I could do such a thing—to her? Shift the blame from myself—to her? I could have—chucked it out somewhere along the edge of the heath, done anything, gone out afterwards, if you like, she always takes sleeping stuff, gone out by the Visitors’ Stairs, taken the car out again in the dark and the rain, tumbled the body out somewhere. But for God’s sake—not put it in her car...!’ He said to her: ‘It’s all right, darling. Of course I didn’t do it, God knows you’d never believe I’d do such a thing... Put the body in your car...!’ And as her face grew ever more taut with fear, the great eyes gazing back to him in an agony of doubt, he cried, ‘It’s all right, darling, don’t worry any more—I’m safe!’

  But if Rufie was safe... Oh, my God! her heart cried out, what about Phin, what about Phin? The police ‘would be seeing Phin again’, were half suggesting that when he swapped with her car in the course of the Sunday picnic, the dead body might have been in the boot of his own.

  And she heard her own voice saying: ‘But of course then, Rufie, I told you about the exchange, I told you it wasn’t my car.’

  To those that knew and loved him, it was as though a brush passed across his face, expunging the look of apprehension, relief—painting there instead of a terrible pain. He said in a dead voice; ‘Oh, Sari—!’

  Etho left her side, went over swiftly and sat on the arm of the big easy chair, took one of the shaking hands in his own and held it, hard and comforting, as though it were a child’s. ‘It’s all right, Rufie, you’re all right, you’ll be safe.’

  But he had forgotten his fears for himself. He repeated in that voice of bleak agony: ‘Oh, Sari—!’

  ‘I didn’t say anything,’ said Sari, but in her eyes there was something—terrible.

  ‘You said without saying it,’ said Charlesworth, ‘that rather than risk driving the body out, disposing of it somewhere which mustn’t be too close to home—it would be safer and more muddling, especially when you still had the Juanese to blame for everything strange that happened—for him just to go down the fire-escape outside his bedroom and—now that he knew it wasn’t your car—put the body into the stranger’s car.’

  Now he became alive again to his own safety. ‘But I didn’t have any body in my car, I didn’t kill her, I swear, I swear, I didn’t have her in my car...’

  That terrible look, that dead look in Sari’s eyes. ‘You did when you left Wren’s Hill,’ she said. ‘I saw you with her, following me.’

  ‘Following you?’ said Rufie stupidly.

  ‘Dodging me. Slowing down, catching up with me again—’

  ‘We weren’t following you, Sari. Just the other way about—I was trying to keep out of your sight.’ And realising what he had said, he fell against Etho’s arm and cried out, ‘Oh, my God!’

  Charlesworth stood up. ‘I think Mr Soames, we mustn’t go on with this, here. I’m going to ask you to come with me to the police station.’

  He clawed at Etho’s arm, clinging to him like a child. ‘I didn’t kill her. I swear I didn’t, I swear!’

  ‘She was in your car with you?’ said Charlesworth.

  ‘She started on about Angelico. He was... He wasn’t even gay, I just... She started in the cinema; to shut her up there, I agreed to drive her home. She went on and on. In the car, I mean; vile things, horrible things, so—ugly. And dangerous for him, such things being spread around about him. It made me sick, I thought I would go mad. I stopped and rolled a cigarette; I knew it was stupid, I’d already smoked that evening and when I’m hopped up I know I do crazy things. But I did and then I drove on and it was worse, her voice went on and on...’ He was white, shuddering, sobbing it all out at last. ‘And then there was a roar and a crash and I knew that behind us a tree had fallen and I thought of how it might have fallen on the car, I felt as if it had, as if the car was crushed and I was caged in with her there... I couldn’t bear it one moment longer, I just opened the door and pitched her out into the night. She ran after me, screaming at me but I slammed the door shut. A car passed me going in the opposite direction and I think I vaguely thought that they might pick her up but anyway I didn’t care, I just drove on, anything to get away from her voice going on and on... But I didn’t kill her. I just drove away and left her there.’ He had shifted from the shelter of Etho’s protection, came slowly to his feet, stood swaying. He did not look at Sari. He said to Charlesworth, ‘Yes, if I could come with you and you could write it all down? I think it would be—I don’t know—cleaner.’ Charlesworth put a hand on his arm but he shook it off. ‘It’s all right, I’m coming with you. I want to come.’ Without a backward glance, he went with them. Sari fell against the heaped, wild cushions on the couch and burst into a storm of terrible tears.

  Silence, silence in the big room, broken only by the sounds of exhausted sobbing. The room that Nan had admired in its clutter of beauty and a sort of mad utility, the lovely possessions, the drips of melted wax from the Batik work on Rufie’s unfinished nightie, the patch on the rich carpet where someone had once spilt a bowl of spaghetti—brilliantly disguised (‘All we can do is make a Feature of it, darlings, like they say in the magazines. Rufie, we could paint a little pond with a goldfish in it, visitors would always be carefully stepping over it, think it was a pool of water, though what could a pool of water be doing in the middle of a carpet?’)—the sewing machine, pushed into a corner because of the party, but still on the floor—where once the famous Sofa-cover kaftan had been turned into a flowing blouse, bright with flowers, that Sari could wear to Rome for the especial enchantment of a half-witted crippled child... Etho went across and opened the tall windows to lean out and look down into the yard. ‘They’re taking him to the police car. He’s walking between them. They’re not holding him. I think he wants to go.’

  She roused herself. He came across and offered her his handkerchief. She said at last: ‘Will they believe him?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Etho.

  She got up and went herself and stared out the window at the diminishing twinkle of the tail lights of the car; and standing there, framed in the autumn twilight, the soft evening breezes stirring the gossamer gown, the frame of hair the only touch of bright colour in all the softness, said: ‘They’ve gone.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Etho, standing across from her as though some intangible obstacle held them, now and for ever, apart.

  ‘What will they do with him?’

  ‘They’ll what is known as grill him,’ said Etho. ‘And you know, Rufie’s such a very thin little slice of bacon, almost transparent, no substance to him; he’ll grill easy.’ She was silent. He said, still standing there, away from her:

  ‘So, Sari—we can’t let this go on.’

  Her hands gripped the edge of the heavy curtains framing the tall window. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Darling—it has to be said at last. You’ve often said that I know you, I understand you. That’s true. Solon turned me over to know you and understand you, you were precious to him in those days, he cared very much about you and for many reasons. So—it was my business to know you and understand you. To find out.’

  Doom entered her panicking heart. ‘To find out-? About me?’

/>   ‘Your childhood was terrible, Sari; I’ve known all that. The wicked aunt—dragging you from one clinic to another all over Europe in search of her health... But it was your health, wasn’t it?—your mental health, your emotional health. And then, suddenly, she died, too suddenly, I suppose, to have made arrangements for your guardianship, only leaving your money carefully tied up, but nothing personal for you, yourself. She’d come down to the convent in Tarquinia to die, and you were still there, being looked after by the nuns. But you ran away and Solon found you and we arranged with them to offer you film work. They didn’t like it but they had no control over you, all they could do was to try to explain to us as much as they dared—after all, these were your own personal problems—and promise you a refuge if ever you needed them...’

  She stammered: ‘You’ve known all this?’

  ‘As much as they believed they should tell me, Sari. For your own sake. And of course things did begin to get too much for you, you went back to them, they got you to come to their clinic, psychiatrically they were treating you. But then Aldo ran away and the whole thing blew up in your face. It brought on a serious breakdown, they kept you with them...’

  Her back was to the light, he could not see how her face for a moment softened. ‘They are angels,’ she said. ‘They make you believe in God.’

  ‘But you had to come away at last, you had to begin to live again. Solon valued you still, you might still have worked again—it was Aldo and all that over-excitement with Aldo that tipped the scales. And Solon valued you, as I say, he wanted me to watch you. I talked to the nuns, they thought I’d be understanding and take care of you. I encouraged you to come back to England where I could keep an eye on you—and I watched you. Secretly—you were like a forest creature that would scamper off out of sight if you were startled; you wouldn’t stand being watched and controlled, they explained that to me. And I had no control over you, nobody had. I had to stand by helpless and witness the decline in you, Sari, the terrible decline. I encouraged the nonsense about Luigi, knowing that you went back each time to Tarquinia, saw your psychiatrist, got a new handhold from the love and understanding—the overt, acknowledged understanding—of the nuns who had cared for you. But by then...’

  ‘By then it was out of their power to help me any more. Out of my own power. I couldn’t help myself.’ She said rather grimly: ‘And you knew that too?’

  ‘The lovely, funny great big painted safari-bags, Sari, the famous quick wees—into the public loos, stash away the empty bottles where nobody could know they were yours; now and again a quick dose too, when you were in need of one. “Gladdies” they call them at the moment, don’t they?—I suppose it was Gladdies you were still on, taken with alcohol. Vodka, not to smell too much on your breath. And the dartings into chemists’ for all that endless cotton-wool, how clever you were, turning it all into jokes against yourself, that distracted people’s minds from suspecting anything! Cotton-wool—and some Gladdies when you’d run out and couldn’t get to the shops on your own. But you had to go alone on your visits to the doctor, to half a dozen, dozens of different doctors, for all I know, to rip off a few forms from their prescription pads; it’s often not difficult and after all, you’re an adept at shop-lifting aren’t you? That wasn’t you Sari, once, not when we first knew you; but with the drugging the moral sense was going, stealing things was just a bit of fun.’ She was terribly still now, the pale, shimmering figure with the candle flame of her hair, but it had to be said, he ploughed steadily on. ‘Fill in the prescription for the Gladdies, perfectly innocent stuff on its own, only not to be taken with alcohol—all the poor bloody kids are using them these days... And all the time, the slow deterioration of character, my poor Sari, that comes with these things—breaking down, breaking down, never able to love for very long, exposing your inner self, not knowing you were doing so, to people who didn’t recognise or understand but just—lost their love for you and drifted away. And now, my dear—there’s nobody left but me.’

  She mumbled, dry-mouthed: ‘You said you would always love me, you said you would do anything for me.’

  ‘And I have,’ he said. ‘Up to a limit—anything. I’ve let people suffer—I let you turn against Charley, I let you turn against Sofy, I let them suffer and only, behind the scenes, did what I could to help them; and I’ve let Rufie suffer. But—up to a limit. And neither I nor you can let Rufie suffer any more.’

  Clutching at the long, heavy curtains, hanging on them, her slight weight tearing them slowly from the rails that held them. She stammered out: ‘It was all... From the beginning ...It was the Followers.’

  ‘It’s been your obsession, my poor Sari. Out of God knows what childhood experience; I suppose they tried, all those psychiatrists, but they could never uncover it. That’s why I loved you and stuck to you and tried to take care of you. It’s been an obsession, you couldn’t help it, all your life has been this escape from the Followers... All your “crutches”—the drugs, the whipped-up hilarities, the friends who might help you to forget until this something—almost terrible, in you, frightened them, though they didn’t understand it, and drove them away. All the great loves who were going to save you and keep you safe for ever—culminating in Phin. You hadn’t yet fallen out of your faith in Phin; you were afraid to the bottom of your soul that this murder business would lose Phin to you. Once they’d demolished the idea of the Juanese followers—’

  ‘There were others,’ she said in a strange, dead tone. ‘Before and during—always. It wasn’t just the murder, it wasn’t just the Juanese. But tonight, something happened. If the Juanese followers had been all imagination—then the rest might have been imagination too. And they had been imagination: that night, in the storm, they hadn’t been Followers—only Rufie in his little black car and Vi Feather with red gloves on her hands...’ The flat voice faltered. ‘Red gloves, red hands, looking like—like...’

  Like blood. Phin’s car turning at the fallen tree and going on towards London. Vi Feather turned out by Rufie into the storm; creeping into the back of the car while they two crawled under the tree, stood exchanging identifications. Rising up behind her, those two bloody hands outstretched in explanation and appeal...

  What had happened then? What had happened then? Blotted out, thrust deep down into the subconscious in the long engrained habit of thrusting out of sight the unwanted, the frightening, the thoughts one could not face, the memories unendurable...

  The shuddering halt of the car, the mindless reaction: fighting off the bleeding hands, forcing it all down out of her sight... The mindlessness, driving on through the storm while oblivion closed in over it, buried it deep down in the matrix of a total forgetfulness, that even later recognitions would not bring to the surface. Driving home, stopping the car, leaving it without a moment’s further thought, just as one would have done anyway, keys swinging in the ignition, dashing through the rain to the warmth and comfort of home, to Rufie, to safety—safety from the Followers. Nothing, nothing left in the conscious mind but the old obsessional fear of the Followers. But the Follower had been Vi Feather with her bleeding hands... And she was falling, falling... An aeroplane falling, tumbling out of the sky, they were screaming, tumbling all about and screaming, Mummy and Daddy were clutching at her, screaming... And the thunderous jolt and the breaking apart and the all-obliterating explosion—and the flight from the nightmare of red flame shot through with yellow and blue, blazing, blazing up as high as the sky... And the blackening figures dancing and screaming among the flames. Running away, running away, saving herself, leaving Mummy and Daddy dancing and screaming in the flames, burning, burning——Mustafa

  ISBN 978-1-4532-9045-3

  This 2013 edition distributed by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media

  180 Varick Street

  New York, NY 10014

  www.mysteriouspress.com

  www.openroadmedia.com

  EBOOKS BY

  CHRISTIANNA BRAND

  FRO
M MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

  FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA

  Available wherever ebooks are sold

  Otto Penzler, owner of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan, founded the Mysterious Press in 1975. Penzler quickly became known for his outstanding selection of mystery, crime, and suspense books, both from his imprint and in his store. The imprint was devoted to printing the best books in these genres, using fine paper and top dust-jacket artists, as well as offering many limited, signed editions.

  Now the Mysterious Press has gone digital, publishing ebooks through MysteriousPress.com.

  MysteriousPress.com offers readers essential noir and suspense fiction, hard-boiled crime novels, and the latest thrillers from both debut authors and mystery masters. Discover classics and new voices, all from one legendary source.

  FIND OUT MORE AT

  WWW.MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

  FOLLOW US:

  @emysteries and Facebook.com/MysteriousPressCom

  MysteriousPress.com is one of a select group of publishing partners of Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

  Open Road Integrated Media is a digital publisher and multimedia content company. Open Road creates connections between authors and their audiences by marketing its ebooks through a new proprietary online platform, which uses premium video content and social media.

  Videos, Archival Documents, and New Releases

  Sign up for the Open Road Media newsletter and get news delivered straight to your inbox.

  Sign up now at

  www.openroadmedia.com/newsletters

  FIND OUT MORE AT

  WWW.OPENROADMEDIA.COM

  FOLLOW US:

  @openroadmedia and

  Facebook.com/OpenRoadMedia