She had put some white wine in the refrigerator, made some smoked salmon sandwiches and arranged some cigarettes. They were of an unusual Turkish brand that she imported from Paris and only allowed herself on special occasions, but were otherwise perfectly straightforward. Alice was all off about drugs. As she said herself: ‘You can’t sell baby clothes smelling of pot.’ At college they had all tried everything they could lay hands on but their particular drug was success and they knew how to get it.
But she had known as soon as Kit arrived he wasn’t thinking of Alice.
‘In fashion you can’t spit in the customer’s eye. Cassie can hide behind her buildings.… I think they even like it when she’s rude to them.… Not me, I have to be careful. So I can hold my tongue. But I shall have to tell Cass in the end.’
Loyalty held. Their friendship was under attack but the foundations were still strong.
‘Not yet, please. And certainly not until I’ve told Edwina.’
‘I don’t know how you are going to tell her. What a thing to have to say: Eddie, the man you loved thought he might have killed a girl. There’s the child too. I suppose she has to know. How did you find out?’
‘I’ve always known. We were at school together. Our parents were friends and they kept up when Mrs Croft was widowed and went to live in Northumberland. Of course, she always maintained it was a complete accident Tim killing the girl, but of course it wasn’t. Can’t blame her for trying, though.’
Alice said with the sympathy of one who had made mistakes herself although not on such a grand scale: ‘He must have been very young.’ She was finding it hard to relate this story to the Tim she had known and Edwina had loved. But there had always been something withdrawn about him. ‘I suppose it wasn’t an accident?’
‘It was real murder all right. In all the newspapers. “Teenage sweetheart strangled”.’
‘Poor things. And Tim went to prison?’
‘For manslaughter; the judge sympathised with him. He came out, completed his education, studied law, and buried the past. Told lies where necessary, I suppose. But I knew. He was always a bit older than he looked and he didn’t lose that look but otherwise he was changed. You cannot expect otherwise. I don’t know if it was for the better or not. Knocked all the stuffing out of him in one way but made him more sensitive, nicer, in another. He knew what suffering was.’
‘I always knew there was something. Part of his appeal really, I could always see what Edwina went for. And do you know, darling Tim, I don’t think it would have made any difference to Edwina if she had known. Rather the reverse, probably. She’s very loyal, our Eddie.… But it’s not the best of things to tell her with the baby coming.’
‘I’d keep it from her for ever if I could.’ Kit had his own brand of loyalty.
‘Things have a way of coming out.’ Alice had reason to know, but no need to go into that. She lit a cigarette. ‘And with Luke’s death the police will be prowling around. No, it’s difficult.’ She considered.
They smoked on in silence, then Alice said, ‘Eddie makes a connection between Luke’s death and some nasty telephone calls we’ve been having. You know about those, I suppose.’ Kit nodded, happily ignorant that Edwina had put his name among possibles. ‘She says she’s not frightened, but she is.’
‘And what do you think?’
‘I think I saw a man following her and he fitted the description of someone who went into her shop and asked for her. She thought it was him; I think it was him. Tall, dark spectacles, dark grey clothes.’
Kit looked at her. He would never have called either Alice or Edwina overnervous or overimaginative. ‘And have you told the police?’
‘No. I thought about it, but I haven’t. The trouble is I don’t know how we stand with the police. They seem to think we might have poisoned the whisky Luke drank. They’re working on that, I think. I don’t know how they rate these telephone calls. Whether they even believe in them or not. So I thought I’d keep quiet. I haven’t told Eddie herself, either.’
‘Keep it to yourself for the time being.’
‘I’m not keen to talk to that Sergeant Crail again. Nasty suspicious man. Pity Eddie ever reported those telephone calls. She could just have had her number changed. We all could.’
‘She couldn’t know that Luke was going to die.’
‘No.’
Kit looked at her sharply, but Alice’s face was empty of expression, except worry, and probably his own looked the same way.
Too many violent deaths clustered around Edwina.
‘I don’t trust that policeman.’ Alice’s face had that pinched look that at least one old acquaintance would have recognised. More than ever she wondered what Cassie might or could let out about Luke. Or whether, as she suspected, there was someone else in the wings who could blow the whole thing out of the ground.
Policemen have to learn how to manage people, it is part of their job. You can do it smoothly or roughly. Bill Crail did it smoothly, he chose to do it that way. Or almost all the time – he knew how to use his tough side when he had to. He actually liked people; that was something he usually kept hidden.
At the moment he had the advantage, or possibly the weakness, that he was attracted to Cassie. He could see a lot of things about her that not everyone would go for; she was tough, he suspected she could be devious when it suited her. But then so could he.
Two can play at that game, he thought, not admiring himself for the truth of it.
But behind Cassie’s toughness, perhaps even a part of it, he sensed someone who, never mind all that apparent success and the ease of it, was a little vulnerable. He knew he could use that quality in her. He might use it now for his own ends but later on, if there was a later on, he would use it because he liked her.
He was being very nice. Not aggressive or sinister as policemen knew how to be if they chose. ‘I’m telling you as a friend. I’m worried and you ought to be. If one of you three girls didn’t put the poison in the old boy’s grog, who did?’
Cassie flexed her hands in her lap in the way she often did at work when considering an important problem.
The two of them were sitting over a drink in her sparsely furnished room. Bill Crail seemed unconcerned so perhaps he was used to sitting on a cushion drinking cocktails like those Cassie had mixed. They were an experiment, pale green in colour from the chartreuse and oversweet. She could tell by the look on Bill Crail’s face that he was not enjoying his and she took a silent pleasure in the sight. Serve him right.
‘Isn’t it your job to find out?’
‘And I will. But you could be helpful.’
‘No fingerprints?’
‘No fingerprints,’ he said grimly. ‘And that’s reserved police info that you should not know.’
Cassie was unimpressed. She did not believe he told her anything he did not mean her to know. But she did believe he found her attractive. She also knew he was a liar: he had not known her fellow student at college, he had not known anyone she knew.
‘How well did you know your friend Luke Tory?’
‘We employed him.’
‘And?’
‘That’s about it.’
‘Did you know he was a bit of a blackmailer?’
Cassie sipped her drink, it was nastier than she had intended. ‘Let’s throw these away, shall we? And are you taking me out to dinner?’
‘My question.’
‘I don’t know how to answer. If I say No, I didn’t have any idea, then you’ll think I am a poor judge of character. If I say Yes, you’ll wonder what he had on me.’
‘Clever girl.’
‘And who was he blackmailing?’
‘The only one I know for sure was a young policeman called Miller. But where there’s one there will be others.’
‘Isn’t there some regulation about taking a suspect out to dinner?’
‘I won’t tell if you won’t.’
‘Are you going to take us all out, one after the other? E
dwina and Alice next? I know you’re only doing it to get information.’
‘Not quite the only reason,’ he said, putting an arm around her. ‘There is this.’
This was just for Cassie. Over Edwina hung a tremendous question mark, while Alice frankly terrified him.
Cassie kissed him back, in a leisurely, experimental kind of way: a new experience, a policeman, a new kind of taste. But a good one.
‘Do I taste good back?’
‘Mmm, splendid. Peaches and cream.’ He did not really understand what she was saying, but was willing to try to play the ball back if he could. For him too it was a new kind of game. He extricated himself.
‘Cass, girl, listen to me. You know more about Luke Tory than you’re saying. You all three do. Must do. So try and tell me.
‘Because until you do, you’re doing what the murderer wants. Dancing to his tune. Letting him pull the strings.’
Cassie looked at him, and her gaze removed itself to an infinite distance. He thought he had never seen eyes go so blank.
‘I’ll think,’ she said. ‘Promise. Help if I can.’
Blank eyes, bland eyes, refusing eyes. Could tell, won’t tell eyes.
On that same day, but somewhat earlier, another conversation had taken place in the Garden.
‘I had thought,’ said Bee Linker, ‘of calling my new heroine Alice. The name takes my fancy and it suits her predicament in life, poor child.… She is a dancer who discovers that she has a mortal disease that will stop her dancing, but knowing Alice has rather put me off. I am not like Jane Austen in that respect.’
She waited for Janine Grandy to speak, to see what response she got. Very little. ‘You call her Aline in the first chapter … I’ll change it, shall I?’
Bee continued her thoughts aloud, ignoring Janine’s question which she knew very well was meant as a sly brake on her rather than a real request. Thinking aloud was a luxury Bee Linker had allowed herself since going blind. Janine had developed her own way of dealing with it.
‘Not that I think Alice Leather would really mind, do you? And after all, the girl in Chapter One has made a mistake.… Or had it made for her. Wrong diagnosis.… But I think Alice doesn’t identify with bad luck in any case.’
‘Do you think anyone does?’ Janine was assembling the material just dictated to her as she prepared to go home.
‘Oh yes. A lot of people do. It’s a common affliction.’
‘You wouldn’t call it affection? Or even love?’ For a person or race, Janine was thinking. Although in this case it would be a person. ‘To be willing to share?’
‘With some people, yes. But with others, no, it is definitely a disease, and one that grows upon them like a Cyclops eye. Dangerous, too.’
‘Dangerous for them or for other people?’
‘For both.’
‘You do say strange things. Miss Linker.’
‘Call me Bee, do please. I have asked.’
‘Bee,’ said Janine, politely if warily. ‘You won’t be putting that in your book, I suppose?’
‘Gracious no, dear.’
‘Bee, who do you think killed Mr Tory?’
It was not a totally unexpected question. Whenever you talked about one of them now, even obliquely as with Alice, you thought about the death of Luke Tory. Whether it was murder, or possibly a terrible accident. Whether, accepting that it was murder, the right person had been killed. There was endless room for speculation since facts were short and the police seemed disinclined to add to them.
But all the time the real question people were asking was: had it been one of them? Had Cassie, or Alice, or Edwina, been the poisoner?
In all the little bars, pubs and coffee houses around the Garden the same question was being put and it was those who envied the girls most who asked it most sharply.
Janine thought she had not envied the girls. In some ways she pitied them.
‘I don’t know, and I’m glad that I am not required to find the answer. But I can think of the sort of person who would do such a thing.’
‘What sort of person?’
‘A judging sort of person. A person with a fixed scheme of values. A person who thought they could play God.’ Perhaps all murderers except the very brutal, casual sort thought that, decided Bee.
‘You didn’t like Mr Tory, did you?’
‘I didn’t think about him a lot. He had an unpleasant voice so I didn’t listen out for him,’ said Bee, unconsciously revealing that the answer was No, I did not, and at the same time giving away her other game; that she listened for people, making their own character noise. ‘You just off? I can hear you packing up.’
‘If there’s nothing more I can do?’
‘Not a thing if you’ve got that last chapter safe.’
‘Tucked away.’ Janine patted the tape in her bag.
Reassured by the solid slap Bee said, ‘Finished for the day here then?’
‘More or less.’ She paused, then asked: ‘Will you use all this in your writing?’
‘Good gracious no, dear.’
‘Nothing about the murder?’ They were all calling it that. ‘I mean, it must creep into the way you are thinking and that will influence the way you write?’
‘Not really.’ Bee was amused by the idea, which confirmed her belief that Janine was not a reader.
‘But it’s a mystery and you often have a mystery in your books.’
‘Not often a murder. There was a death in The Golden Fountain, but I like a mystery rather than a killing. The great mystery we have here, to my mind, is the telephone calls. Yes, the telephone calls are the puzzle.’
‘Are they?’
‘You had heard about them?’
‘Oh yes. We all have.’ The grapevine had been at work.
‘I wish I’d heard one. I’d know the voice again. Wherever I heard it.’
‘Disguised.’
‘I’d know it.’
Janine said, ‘I heard that Edwina thinks he called at the gallery; that he was actually seen.’
‘Ah yes: the man in dark clothes. People who are seen mean to be seen. Don’t you agree?’
‘Do you think Edwina Fortune is like that?’
‘No. Edwina certainly has an affliction but it is not that. Edwina’s affliction is that she attracts love. It can be a great curse to a girl.’
‘You do say strange things.’
Janine relinquished her smile. No doubt Bee was aware of this too. ‘About a week today? I’ll telephone to confirm I’ve got the two chapters ready.’
‘And I’ll have the next chapter ready.’
Janine nodded. ‘I long to know the plot.’ She gathered her papers together. ‘I’m off then.’ She had had an operation in the last year, and liked to get her rest; she had a strict regime of health.
‘Could you do a little errand for me, dear?’
‘Try to.’ Janine had a natural caution. Life had taught her that she needed it.
‘Go across to Miss Drury. Or Dover – I can never recall which is which. Anyway, the one who makes the bran bread, and tell her we would like to order a dozen rolls for Friday.’
‘But I could do it on the telephone.’
‘Well, it’s on your way. You could just call in.’ She felt for her purse. ‘Just give them this, would you? I usually pay in advance. I don’t fancy they do too well.’
‘I want to get to the post office before it shuts.’
‘Afterwards, perhaps? Could you?’
It was a windy, wet day and Ginger and Pickles were huddled behind their stall, wrapped in waterproofs and drinking something which might have been herbal tea but was, in fact, good strong mocha laced with whiskey. Everyone had their moments of weakness.
They saw Janine Grandy walking towards the post office; they knew who she was, of course, but since she was not a regular customer they took only a marginal interest in her movements.
‘Not coming our way,’ Pickles passed a judgement, as she sipped her drink.
/> ‘No,’ said Ginger as she considered pouring in some more whiskey. There are days when you need it; this was one. Whisky had had a slightly bad name in their circle since Luke’s death, but not with Ginger and Pickles; they had simply (silently but unanimously) switched to Irish.
‘Those poor girls.’ Ginger sipped her brew. ‘Wonder how they feel.’
Cassie, Alice and Edwina were now ‘poor girls’. Had they known, they would have been angry. Everyone, certainly Ginger and Pickles, knew about the telephone calls and the man who had followed Edwina. Also that they were suspected of the death of Luke. They did not know all the details but they could put together a good picture.
‘Terrible,’ said Ginger. ‘Like me.’
‘Got some news?’
‘I’m worried about Edwina. I saw her going into the antenatal clinic today. Hope there’s nothing wrong with her or the baby.’
‘Trust you to be there.’
‘The public library is opposite,’ Miss Drury reminded her friend. She changed her library book every day.
‘And is that the news?’
‘No.’ Miss Drury’s face changed. She was no longer Ginger, laughing and quarrelling with her friend, nothing serious, but had become an anxious, middle-aged lady who was really worried. ‘Something I saw.’
‘Come on now, don’t blather. What is it?’ Then Pickles groaned. ‘I sense trouble.’
‘Now don’t go telepathic on me, dear.’ But it was a mechanical blow in their usual shadow-boxing, without heart in it. Ginger’s mind was elsewhere.
She put down her mug, considered refilling it, and decided not.
‘You know that instant-photography booth that stands in the Happy-Hour Market? They sell tourist junk now but it used to be bananas.’
‘I know. I had my own phiz done there last year for my passport when we were going to Bayreuth.’ Miss Drury and Miss Dover were ardent Wagner lovers and last year had made their long-saved-up-for visit to the English Ring. They had liked it, but then they greatly admired Sir Peter Hall too; they had once sold him some Bulgarian yoghurt.
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