He interrupted hastily. ‘Just about that silly rehearsal. It was all nothing.’
‘It went on for a long time.’
‘Not so long as you think,’ he said quickly. ‘We—we really made it up some days ago.’ He added firmly: ‘I have said that I was not really in love with Isabel: but I was “infatuated” with her.’ He looked at her beadily, and added with deliberation: ‘You can understand that.’
‘Why me, particularly?’ said Susan Betchley, suddenly deciding against any more toast.
He smiled at her: kindly, but meaningly—warily. ‘Oh, my dear—do you think I haven’t seen you looking at him? People in love are very sensitive to other people’s love, you know. All these weeks of rehearsals—I’ve watched it coming over you like a—a sort of golden cloud. Every time he turns his blue eyes on you, every time he uses one of his funny little expressions, every time he runs his hand through his yellow hair… Do you think I don’t know that you’re sick with love for him? That you can hardly keep your mouth from speaking his name, just to hear the sound of it: that you can hardly force your hands from touching his sleeve or the place that his sleeve has brushed against as he passed by…? My dear girl—I may have been playing at love, but I played a very good game: I know it all, down to the utmost guttering flicker of despair, up to the topmost pinnacles of hope…’ He looked at her sitting there, with her swarthy face and her upright shoulders and her square brown hands. ‘You’re in love with Brian Bryan,’ he said. ‘Even though you know that he’s a murderer.’
A fly buzzed across the scraping of marmalade in the cracked white saucer; otherwise there was absolute silence at the little table. She said at last, quietly: ‘You too? You’re a friend?’
‘I knew Johnny,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘She murdered Johnny: she and that creature Earl Anderson. It’s nothing to do with my loving or not loving Brian. They killed poor Johnny: and they deserved to die.’
‘You knew him very well?’ said Mr. Port.
‘Not so very well as all that: but I loved him—everybody loved him: he was just one of those people. We were much the same age; we used to play tennis and golf together a bit, and ride together—oh, there was nothing like that in it, I was just fond of him and he looked upon me almost as though I were one of his brothers. He was devoted to his family; and he had a twin that he loved more than anyone on earth. When he was away from them all, he used to like to be with me—he was a person who craved for affection and companionship all the time…’ She stared out of the dingy window into the dingy square. She said again: ‘Yes—I’d protect anyone who killed Isabel Drew.’
‘We’ll shake hands on that,’ said Mr. Port.
Detective Inspector Charlesworth arrived to call for Mr. Port. Mr. Port, like a man going off to execution stepped into the little car. ‘I do hope, Inspector, that you’re not going to be—tactless—with my wife.’
‘I shan’t mention the case to her at all,’ said Charles-worth. ‘I merely want her to confirm what you tell me of your background in Malaya. You must see how difficult it all is for us, with all the records missing: we simply aren’t able to check up on anything or anyone… Yes, I know all about your bank account, but… Yes, O.K., I know all about Miss Betchley confirming your identity… Now, look, Mr. Port…’ By the time they arrived at Hampstead he was exasperated and cross. ‘Any more fuss, Mr. Port, and I shall turn back and leave this to an ordinary plain clothes man, which would be the usual procedure: I came myself because I know your wife’s ill and I wanted to save you trouble…”
The nursing home was a tall, thin-lipped house with an air of prim starchiness: it looked, thought Charlesworth who was not often given to pretty fancies, as though for two pins it would turn upon the neighbouring houses and pop them willy-nilly into bed with unwanted hot-water bottles at their feet. The Matron came to them in the waiting room, and, having failed in her duty, was naturally highly incensed with poor Mr. Port. ‘In spite of my strict orders, there has been a mix-up and one of the daily papers, some sensational rag, has been taken into your wife’s room.’ She stood over him menacingly. ‘A nice half hour we’ve had! Tears, fainting, hysterics—and now our memory has gone right back to where it was! I can assure you, Mr. Port, that this kind of thing causes a great deal of trouble in a nursing home.’
Mr. Port stood staring back at her, almost unable to believe his ears. ‘You let her see a paper!’
‘I cannot be personally responsible…’
‘I gave you implicit instructions…’
‘If gentlemen would refrain from getting themselves mixed up in sordid affairs of this kind…’
Charlesworth left them to it; he walked out of the room and calmly went upstairs. To a nurse he said: ‘Mrs. Port’s expecting me,’ and since this was true, was ushered into a room where a woman sat in a chair by the window. The forced brightness of the atmosphere seemed to drain Mrs. Port of all the little life and colour that were natural to her; but she smiled at him very sweetly. ‘Good morning. Who are you?’
He gave her his own friendly smile. ‘My name’s Charlesworth. Who are you?’
‘I’m Mrs. Port,’ she said. ‘Haven’t you come to see me? Such a lot of strange doctors do.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘And I’m not a doctor. But as I’m here, perhaps you’ll let me stay and smoke a cigarette?’ He sat down on the window-sill with his long legs crossed and smiled down at her. ‘What a silly little room this is,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you longing to get well and get out of it?’
She looked back at him doubtfully. ‘It’s safe in here.’
He was frightened. He was not dealing with a normal person and he was afraid of saying anything that might react unfavourably upon her; he wished with all his heart he had not come: had not embarked, unpermitted, upon this conversation. He said: ‘The world’s pretty safe now: the bad times are over.’ He wished he was quite so sure of it himself.
‘Do you think it would be all right to leave?’
‘Well, I think so,’ he said comfortably. ‘You’d like to be with your friends again? It must be lonely here.’
‘I’ve forgotten my friends,’ she said simply. ‘I’ve forgotten such a lot. Do you know that I just can’t remember anything from the time I was a girl. I remember my wedding, and I remember something of the—the voyage: my husband took me out to—well, he took me away from my home, you know; they say we went to Malaya, but I remember nothing of that. I remember the voyage—not much, just the bits that one would remember, from so long ago. And I remember being on the ship again, coming home. They’ve kept me here all this time trying to help me to remember in between.’
‘I don’t see why you should bother to,’ said Charlesworth, putting into words the only thought that came into his head. ‘You may have had a horrid time in between and so you’ve forgotten it. Why trouble to remember? I should just be happy in the present and the future, get as well as you can, and start all over again…’ (‘This is something-or-other therapy,’ he said to himself. ‘I’m probably doing marvels if I did but know.’ But once again he wished he was so sure.)
Mrs. Port looked at him gravely; he noticed with alarm that her fingers had begun to pleat and repleat a fold in her dressing-jacket. ‘Have you seen the papers this morning?’ she said.
He topped a cigarette of its ash, knocking it carefully into the tray on her little table. ‘Well, I have. A girl called Isabel Drew seems to have been killed. I believe your husband knew her a little. So did I, as a matter of fact.’
‘What did my husband know of this woman?’ He thought it was an effort for her to ask it; there was a nervous dignity in her manner, and the busy fingers worked more quickly, not ceasing in their unrewarding work.
‘Very little, I think,’ he said carelessly. ‘The papers make a lot of that kind of thing: they go for what they think is “sensational” and Isabel was that kind of person. She was always worrying people to get her jobs and get jobs for her friends, and Mr. Port wa
s kind to her and to them all. I understand he had financial interests in the exhibition, and so he brought a little influence to bear: he even took a hand in it himself, just to amuse himself while you were stuck away here. He must be bored, not having many friends in England—and it was a harmless enough way to amuse himself—wasn’t it?’
Her fingers slowed down. She said: ‘Well, I suppose it was, really.’
‘Then a thing like this happens, and the papers get hold of it and, of course, they make a fuss,’ said Charlesworth, reasonably explaining it all away. ‘It sounds ugly and sensational and horrid—but that doesn’t mean that it was: after all, there was nothing on earth wrong with his playing about with this silly little pageant. The girl gets killed, and, of course, he’s dragged into it, and questioned, like the rest: but that’s all there is to it.’ He was not so sure: to salve his own conscience, he offered: ‘I have a few friends on various papers: if you like I’ll do what I can to get them to tone this down a bit.’
Her hands were quite still: lying, pale and quiet, in her lap. She said gratefully: ‘We’d be very thankful to you if you would,’ and he noted with relief that she included the errant husband in her own reaction. ‘It’s been kind of you to explain it all to me. I’d heard of the pageant, of course, and I believe I’ve even met this Miss Drew, though I don’t remember her. Her—her pictures are not very—reassuring.’
‘She was all right,’ said Charlesworth, easily. ‘She was kind and friendly in many ways: she wasn’t too bad… There’s nothing in all that to worry yourself about.’ He looked at her quiet face and quiet hands and feeling highly pleased with himself, heaved himself up from the window-sill and said good-bye. He had learned all he wanted: Mrs. Port could tell him nothing about the Malayan background, and that was that. He said: ‘I must trot off now. It was nice of you to let me sit with you for a minute, and smoke a cigarette. Get well soon, won’t you?’ He turned to the door.
And suddenly the matron was standing there, with Mr. Port, ashen and trembling, at her shoulder. ‘Detective Inspector! How did you get in here? What are you doing here? We thought you’d gone out to the car…’
‘Detective Inspector?’ cried Mrs. Port.
‘A policeman! Mrs. Port—what has this man been saying to you? What have you told him? Mrs. Port…! Mrs. PORT!’
The sound of her screaming, the sound of hysterical laughter, followed him as he fled down the stairs and made his way out of the house and into the square.
And while Perpetua declared to Inspector Cockrill that she had no true knights to look after her, and Cockie stumped off, feeling like a benevolent old pimp to rustle up boy-friends for her comforting, one who would have given his hob-nailed young soul to save her an instant’s heartache, nursed his despair alone and unremembered. Thank God, at least, that Mother was away in Scotland: he could not have endured the boring-in of that gimlet eye, the resolute understanding of that too fond maternal heart. In the shop-window little house with its nightmare of crippled white birchwood and imitation okapi skin, he sat with his head in his hands and tried to blot out from his memory the events of the previous night. And so came back to the scene he had witnessed, the words he had overheard on his way home outside Isabel’s front door: to the plot between Earl and Isabel that would make Perpetua wife of a bigamist: to the story of the blot that had long ago sent Perpetua’s lover to his death: and so, by slow insidious degrees, back to the hateful vision of his beloved held in Earl Anderson’s arms. Sick with repulsion, he thrust it away from him: but adolescent imagination dwelt on it, toyed with it, built it up, adorned it, could not let it be… Sick with himself and his ugly visions, he dragged himself up, went to the bookshelves and pulled down volume after volume: the ‘right’ kind of books, specially bound for his mama in the right kind of leather, elegantly tooled. Thackeray, Trollope, Dickens… Motherdear flicked through the pages of Vanity Fair where the hobbledehoy hero had got his girl in the end: of The Small House at Allington, where the hobbledehoy had failed: of Little Dorrit where poor John Chivery had wandered through the Marshalsea prison, composing a hundred epitaphs for himself. What would George Exmouth’s epitaph be, if… He sat down at Charity’s wrought-aluminium desk, and drew a sheet of her notepaper towards him. ‘Here lies in unsanctified ground the body of George Exmouth, aged only seventeen, who, to save the honour of his lady…’ But it was dangerous to put this kind of thing on paper. He altered ‘his lady’ to ‘a lady’ and then tore the paper into tiny scraps and set fire to the bits with a match. You could not be certain that the police would not search the house.
Perpetua, a little reassured by Cockie’s phone call, went to the door of her room and put out her head. ‘Oh, Mrs. Solly—I’ve had a rotten night and I think I’ll go to bed. Will you guard my door for me?’ The cleaner said cheerfully that that was right, rest was the best thing if you was tired, and, having been up all night with an ailing baby, not to mention the second one’s cough and pore Alfred’s nasty indigestion, more like a lump of lead on his chest it was, herself continued to dust and polish and scrub with unabated zeal. Perpetua glanced at the mat outside her door: the paper and a single envelope—but it was probably only a bill, and she left them both there and returned sleepily to her bed.
Detective Inspector Charlesworth rang up at noon. He was going to Earl Anderson’s flat and it might be helpful if Miss Kirk would accompany him: she would know better than anyone if anything out of the way was missing… Perpetua had spent less time in Earl’s flat than a great many people supposed, but she agreed to go. Charlesworth would call round in half an hour. No—sorry; no news at all of Mr. Anderson.
She wrapped her silk kimono about her and went to the door. The newspaper still lay on the mat and the bill; but with them now was a little round bunch of flowers and a folded note. The note was signed with a B. It said: ‘Perpetua, Inspector Cockrill now confirms that I cannot have lured you into that room. When this was done I was on my horse in the Assembly room and the spare armour as far as I am concerned still hanging on the wall. Please believe this. And why should I wish to harm you? Be no longer afraid. We all look after you.’ Underneath Cockie had written in his well-known indecipherable scrawl: ‘Dear Perpetua, you may trust this young man. He is O.K.’ She put her head out of the door again. ‘Who brought the flowers?’
The cleaner said that it had been ever such a lovely young gentleman, foreign he was you could tell because he wore a mackintosh on such a hot day, and a black hat like Mr. Eden, and he had come rushing in and stood at her door and said: ‘She has not then woken up? Her paper is still on the mat,’ and had thrust the flowers into her hand and said, ‘Tell her I com back,’ and rushed off again. ‘Would the gentleman be in a hurry, Miss?’
‘I don’t expect so, really,’ said Peppi, with a little inward smile at the thought of Brian Two-Times dashing in and depositing flowers on her doorstep as though they had been a bomb and he must hurry off out of the way before it exploded. ‘He just—gives an appearance of always being in a hurry.’ And of course it was true that he could not have attacked her in that little room. For some obscure reason she felt suddenly much more light-hearted. ‘Be no longer afraid. We all look after you.’ It was very kind of Brian Two-Times.
Hugging her kimono about her, she put down the note and the flowers and ripped open the ‘bill’. The envelope bore last night’s post-mark, and it was not a bill. It was a typewritten note and it said: PERPETUA KIRK—YOU’RE NEXT.
Chapter VIII
CHARLESWORTH ARRIVING AT ELEVEN o’clock was sympathetic but frankly excited. ‘We’ll get him by the typewriting: there can only be a few machines that the people concerned can have had access to.’ He sent off the note to Scotland Yard, and himself proceeded with Perpetua and Sergeant Bedd, to Earl Anderson’s flat. ‘Oh, and Inspector I’ve had a note from Inspector Cockrill, and he says that Brian Bryan is quite out of suspicion now, and I can trust him.’
‘Does he, indeed?’ said Charlesworth, interested.
‘Heavenly,’ said Charlesworth. He thought that this dim young creature who last night had looked as colourless and unsubstantial as a cobweb, had suddenly taken on a remarkable new lease of life.
A chauffeur was washing an ancient Rolls in the mews. ‘Good morning, miss,’ he said to Perpetua, glancing up. She was looking very pretty this morning: seemed to do her good, having her paramours doing the vanishing trick. Actors indeed! Earl Anderson published his profession to all the world, considering, and no doubt rightly, that it set him a little apart from his fellows, and confidently believing that on account of it, the Mews accorded him its breathless interest. The Mews, since he was admittedly neither Stewart Grainger nor James Mason and had never been heard of in the Radio Times, simply did not believe that he was an actor at all: but since he frequently had females to see him in his flat, they accorded him their interest anyway. The chauffeur was only too ready to repeat such information as he could offer—already made glib from repetition to Charlesworth’s myrmidons. At just before eleven, Mr. Anderson had walked down to the telephone booth at the corner and after a while had come back and taken the car and gone out again. They had been woken by the return of the car some time after one. The chauffeur did think that later on he had heard footsteps going off out of the mews: but he had been more than half asleep, and it could have been a dream. This final admission had been wrung from him by Sergeant Bedd on an earlier visit, and he repeated it reluctantly with that gentleman’s eye upon him; but he privately believed that there was no question of any dream. He shoved his cap further back on to his head and phewed at the heat: standing here in the hot sun talking to the police, his gesture implied, was thirsty work. Charlesworth left him to supply the need for himself, and with Perpetua went into Earl’s garage, past the little red car, and up into the flat. As he went he said to Peppi: ‘When did you last see him, or hear from him?’
Death of Jezebel Page 9