Death of Jezebel

by Christianna Brand

  ‘She wasn’t to know that,’ said Charlesworth. ‘She couldn’t foresee that your horse would bolt and you’d come through.’ He thought out carefully why Miss Betchley should have put on the armour. ‘That bead curtain—it dangled and swung in the draught through the arch. Just possible that the audience might have seen her as she passed across the room from the door to the doorway of the tower. And then, Isabel herself—better, just in case anything went wrong, just in case she didn’t die outright, that she shouldn’t recognize her assailant. And the murder itself: suppose Isabel were to struggle, suppose for a moment they were to appear at the window of the tower and be seen—suppose that anything unforeseen turned up—then the armour, an impenetrable disguise, would have been a Good Thing.’

  Click, click, went little bits of the puzzle, fitting themselves neatly together. Only bits of the outside background though. Cockie pushed them to one side of the frame. Charlesworth went on. ‘And something unforeseen did happen. The White Knight came hurtling through the arch when she was less than half-way across the room. She stood still, petrified with the shock: and he looked at her blankly, interested only in keeping his seat on his horse. A piece of armour, against the wall—there was nothing much out of the way about that.’

  ‘Except that when I came back through the room after letting Miss Betchley in,’ said Brian, ‘thiss armour was against the wall, true, but the helmet was on the peg eighteen inches above it. Was I not perhaps surprised that suddenly the neck had become so long?’

  ‘You needn’t have noticed it. And after all, I did the same thing just now, and none of you realized that one of the suits of armour was actually wearing its helmet.’

  ‘Just now you were one of twelve suits of armour,’ said Cockie. ‘Then there was only one suit, in an otherwise empty room.’

  ‘Well, say he was busy with his horse: he just didn’t notice it, that’s all. And he had no time to be observant: the weight of the armour and the unexpectedness of the whole thing was too much for him and he toppled off and gave his head a frightful bonk and lay, flat out for a minute, on the floor. She saw what had happened: she scrambled out of the armour, left it propped against the wall and hooked up the helmet over it, and dashed across to the door. Once on the other side, she began to hammer and yell as though she couldn’t get in. He staggered up and went and opened it, fumbling at the bolt in his half dazed condition: probably she held the door from the other side and he had a job to pull it open. He was still very muzzy. Maybe he genuinely thinks the bolt was shot. Maybe he doesn’t. But either way—it was not. Miss Betchley had been in the Assembly room since the knights had ridden through and had murdered Isabel and thrown her down, and come back and let herself through that door.’ He looked like a tortoise, very earnest and concentrating fiercely, his head sticking out over the circular metal rim of the armour’s neck.

  ‘But then,’ said Perpetua in her sweet, vague, just faintly stupid way, ‘who was it that I heard whistling?’

  He turned on her sharply. ‘Whistling?’

  ‘But I told you, Mr. Charlesworth: “Sur le pont d’Avignon”. All the time I was lying bundled up in the cloak in that horrible little room.’

  Charlesworth relaxed the tenseness of his position at Miss Betchley’s side. ‘Ye Gods, Miss Kirk—has it just entered your head to point this out?’

  She eyed him limpidly. ‘Well, no. I’ve been thinking of it all along. I was waiting for you to work it all out and show that Miss Betchley could have done it, and then show how she couldn’t after all because all the time Isabel was being killed, she was sitting there whistling.’ She added gently: ‘As I told you.’

  Inspector Cockrill was far too busy to repay Mr. Charlesworth’s earlier glance of triumph. Click, click, click went the pieces of the puzzle, sorting themselves out, arranging themselves into little groups to be fitted later into their proper places. Miss Betchley had an alibi, then, for the time of Isabel’s murder. So had Perpetua who had been locked up in the little room. So had Brian Bryan, to which alibi several thousand people could testify. And Mr. Port had an alibi for the time when Earl Anderson’s murderer had been in a telephone booth in Piccadilly, luring him out to his assignation with death. And Motherdear…

  Charlesworth was passing the whole thing off, ever so careless and all-for-the-fun-of-finding-out. He offered cigarettes all round, and fumbled in his pocket for his lighter. There was a twist of paper there. He could not think where he had got it from.

  He had got it from George Exmouth’s home and on it was written: Here, in unconsecrated ground, lies George Exmouth who for the honour of the woman he loved…

  Perpetua could not get to sleep that night. Brian Two-Times had seen her to her door and there had kissed her hand and said good-night and gone off down the road, with his odd, rather bouncing stride, the black felt hat on the back of his golden head and the mackintosh flapping half-way down his calves. There was something just faintly comic about him, once the compelling charm of his nearness was removed: something just bordering upon the pathetic, because he was so cool and gay and certain of himself, so serenely unaware of the utter unsuitability of an Anthony Eden hat and a long flapping mac on a midsummer day in town. Perpetua, lying awake in the hot night, wondered to herself whether this really was something to be welcomed—this metamorphosis of her strength and stay into, a sort of grown-up little boy, that nobody but his mother could love because he was boastful and self-confident and a bit of a show-off, and had big, knobbly knees. She smiled to herself tenderly in the half dark of her room. Brian Two-Times might have knobbly knees, but he had nice hands: hands that made your heart turn over with a little bonk, when they took your own. All foreigners kissed people’s hands of course: but nevertheless it was nice to have your hand kissed by Brian Two-Times, standing in your doorway, looking up at you as he bowed over your finger-tips with friendly, smiling, shining heavenly blue, blue eyes…

  She could not sleep. She got up at last and put on a pair of slacks and a jersey. The room seemed incredibly small and stuffy: she must get air. Quietly, so as not to wake the sleeping house, she let herself out of the big front door. The clock of a Bayswater church struck one—two—three.

  The streets seemed very strange. Perpetua’s nights-out for the past seven years had ended at closing-time. Earl had been a great one for sitting about in pubs chattering away impersonally to a vast circle of acquaintances whose names he did not know, whose concerns were of no interest to him, whom he never saw or thought of outside ‘the local’. At half past ten or eleven, they had wandered back to his flat or to Perpetua’s room, and there made tea or coffee. When Earl was in town, it was more or less a routine. But now the streets were not like the streets she knew. They were so silent: and so empty. On the doorsteps, little groups of milk bottles huddled with their dirty white collars, waiting for the roundsman to collect them next morning and take them off to be washed and spruced up and sent out on duty again… In the areas, the dustbins spilled forth unsightly contents, relentless reminders of man’s mortality: now and again the still air gave a tiny sigh, and a whiff of decay was borne away upon the breeze. The plane trees rustled, whispering a message from the dustbins: ‘All is rottenness: all is death…’, the high street lamps cast shadows in angled walls that seemed as black and bottomless as eternity. A couple reeling home late from a party were swallowed up by a dark doorway: already the glow and the rapture were fading—to-morrow there would be sick headaches and queasy tummies… Beauty vanishes—beauty passes… Only the cats were heedless and unafraid, darting across the patchwork shadows of the streets on plush-cushioned, soundless paws. What threat had death and decay and nothingness?—to a sleek, suave gentleman with nine lives before him and every one packed with adventure that had nothing to do with death—on the contrary!

  Perpetua wished that she had not come out. The air was refreshing but a new sense of danger pressed on her as stiflingly as though she had been back in her little room. If I were a cat, and each of the
threats a life, she thought, I should have only six lives left. And then there had been the attack in the dressing room, and the—the head… I must have died a death each of those times. So that’s only four more. And if a threat is a death—four lives isn’t very much between me and eternity. Between the threat of murder and—murder. She swung round suddenly and began to retrace her steps as fast as she could go: and then the very fact that she was hurrying seemed in itself a frightening thing, and she slowed down her footsteps. Clop, clop, clop went her heels on the pavements in the quiet night.

  Somebody was following her.

  All of a sudden she knew it: knew that the sense of danger had not been born only of the night and the breeze and the shadows—knew that an inner ear had heard first what her ears now too clearly, too terrifyingly clearly, heard. The pad, pad, pad of feet on the pavement: following her.

  If she stopped for a moment—would the following feet stop too? But she did not dare to stop. Her footsteps quickened, she broke into a little, shambling, terrified trot, jerking her head over her shoulder now and again, to stare back into the secret shadows through which the footsteps padded relentlessly. On a thin, high note a voice cried suddenly: ‘Perpetual’

  ‘Perpetua stop! I am the murderer!’

  She began to pray, running along, stumbling along, her feet like lead dragging themselves at what seemed a snail’s pace over the mile-long pavements. ‘Oh, God! Not this—not all alone out here in the dark, don’t let me be killed, don’t let me be strangled all alone out here in the dark…Don’t let me see his face staring at me, waiting to watch me die…Don’t let me see his hands, coming at my throat…’ To have lived so long, to have thought and dreamed and planned and suffered so much, and now to come so swiftly and suddenly to this—to be cut off in a brief moment of horror, alone out here in the dark…She thought of Isabel, turning to see the murderer standing there balefully in the shadows of the tower: of Earl, frozen in a moment of cold terror by the change in a pair of friendly eyes… ‘Oh, God, save me! Save me! Don’t let me die…’ Behind all these doors people lay sleeping, kind people, friendly people, sane, safe, protecting people—all unaware that a few yards from them a girl ran past their doors, too terrified even to scream out for their aid. She came at last to her own little street and as she turned into it, it seemed to her that suddenly the following footsteps ceased. Sick with relief, sick with reaction, she moved on her faltering legs towards her door: and gasping and sobbing turned in at the little porch and fumbled in her pocket for the key.

  Two hands came out of the darkness and grasped at her and pulled her down. The shadows closed in.

  Chapter XI

  IN HIS MODEST HOTEL, Inspector Cockrill moved uneasily on his unfamiliar bed. London! Not content with waking you up at the hour to tell you the time, a hundred noisy clocks reminded you of it every quarter: and now it was half past three and he tossed and turned in the stifling heat and cudgelled his weary brain with his jig-saw puzzle… But would even the completed puzzle—with nobody getting any credit for it outside Scotland Yard—compensate his colleagues in Kent for his non-attendance at the conference? He moved his head from side to side on the hard pillow. In an attic room across the park, Brian Two-Times muttered a name in his sleep: and at their hotel near by, Miss Betchley sat, a substantial, pyjama’ed ghost and scribble-scribble-scribbled on a little pad, and Mr. Port lay like a pudgy corpse in his narrow bed, very still, staring up at the invisible ceiling, sick to the heart with fear of all that had been discovered, of all that must surely soon be discovered, all that would happen when the truth was known… Isabel was dead; and Earl was dead; and Brian Bryan slept, and Edgar Port watched and Susan Betchley scribble-scribble-scribbled through the night: and George Exmouth stood shivering in the shadows of a Bayswater door with a fainting girl clasped in his reedy arms.

  He found the key of her door in her pocket and opened it silently, and, half dragging, half carrying her, took her to her room. He had been there once or twice, and every detail of the house was printed like a photograph on his brain. A second key opened her door. He lugged her in and heaved her on to her bed. When she came to, she found him sitting over her, and her hands and temples cold and wet with the water he had splashed there to bring her back to life. He was dreadfully white: his thin hands trembled sickeningly. He said, in a whisper: ‘It was I who killed Earl Anderson and Isabel. I couldn’t sleep. So I came to find you.’

  She looked about her wildly for help, for some sort of weapon with which to defend herself. It was only George Exmouth after all: hardly more than a child, poor, thin, shivering, white-faced boy, and yet—one had heard that lunatics were cunning and strong… And if Earl had not been able to defend himself—nor Isabel… She pulled her drifting wits together and decided upon conciliation. She put out her hand to him, nervously. ‘But—you wouldn’t hurt me, George?’

  He took her hand; and tumbled forward, half across the bed and burst into a torrent of tears.

  She sat quietly, letting him hold her hand. ‘Don’t cry George! Don’t be so unhappy, George. Tell me everything and we’ll see what can be done about it…’ Broadmoor, she supposed, was what would be done about it: poor mad, terrified, terrifying boy…

  He raised his head at last. His face was all slobbered with tears and she took the damp cloth with which he had brought her back to her senses, and gently wiped it clean as though he were a child. ‘There now—tell me.’

  ‘I was going to the police,’ he said, trembling. ‘I couldn’t bear it any longer, and I was going to the police to confess. I thought I would come past your house, Perpetua, and—and say good-bye to it. I’ve been here often in the night. I’ve seen the light in your window and I’ve walked about staring up at it: and when the light’s been out, too, Peppi, I’ve walked and walked and at least felt that I was near you.’ He put his poor, tired, hot head in his hands and said miserably: ‘I love you so much.’

  ‘Oh, George!’ she protested.

  ‘You must have known, Perpetua? You couldn’t not have known? Why, every thought I ever have is for you or about you. When I go to bed I resent going to sleep because I shan’t be able to think of you… Sometimes I dream, but the dreams are always terrible. I suppose I’ve—sort of reversed things: during the day I’ve been living in exquisite dreams; in my sleep I’ve known the miserable truth. You don’t love me, Peppi, do you, and you never could? I’m just a gangling schoolboy to you, I’m just a mother’s darling without any experience or any poise or any grown-up sense… You can’t believe in your heart, that I’ve got a real mind that works and thinks and puts two-and-two together and—suffers: you can’t believe that although my heart’s only a boy’s heart it’s as capable of agony as any man’s. Calf love’s just a joke, isn’t it? And this is only calf love—I know that. To you I’m just a great, lumping, lumbering hobbledehoy with big hands and feet and clumsy manners, incapable of understanding or feeling or heartbreak, incapable of anything delicate or sensitive… Just that poor kid George, tied to his mother’s apron strings, a lout of an adolescent schoolboy, with a bit of a pash on Perpetua…’ He broke off at last and was quiet, sitting on the edge of the bed with his face turned away from her, and his hands hanging dejectedly between his bony knees.

  Perpetua was appalled at the bitterness and pain in his voice. She said: ‘Nobody ever seems to know anything about other people’s suffering. But perhaps you and I can understand each other a little bit because we’ve both of us had such a bad time. I’ve touched rock bottom, George, you know. They say that remorse is the worst hell of all: and my suffering has been remorse. It’s true that I haven’t taken any notice of you, it’s true that if you’ve loved me all this time I haven’t bothered about it, I haven’t even troubled to realize it… But I’ve never bothered about anything, or realized anything: I’ve been too much wrapped up in my own suffering to care. So you see that it wasn’t because you’re young; and goodness knows it wasn’t because you were a hobbledehoy as you call yourse
lf: it was because there was something wrong with me—not because there was anything wrong with you.’

  He raised his head: something of the stark misery left his red-rimmed eyes. ‘I see,’ he said.

  She was alone in here, shut up in this little room with a murderer: and if he was a murderer it could only be that he was mad. I must calm him down as much as I can, she thought, and then get him to follow up his idea of confessing to the police… She went on talking to him, quietly and kindly, holding his thin hand in her own. ‘But now things are different for me, George, and if you’re patient and battle through this, perhaps they’ll be better for you too, soon. You’ll forget me—because after all, I am a lot older than you—and you’ll meet someone too that you can love, instead of me.’

  He withdrew his hand sharply. ‘Do you mean that you’re in love with someone?’

  ‘No, no,’ she said quickly. ‘It isn’t that. I only mean…’

  But he cut her short. ‘You are! You are! You’re in love with that fellow Bryan. I hate him, I hate him, but you, you’re in love with him…! It wasn’t because of Johnny Wise that you didn’t care about me: it was because of him.’ He grasped at the light counterpane of the bed and tore at it ruthlessly with crooked fingers. ‘You love him, and I’m nobody—I’m nobody to you, because you’re in love with that horrible fellow… I hate him. He stood there to-day, sneering at me, contemptuous of me because I made a mistake and said that that woman was a man… Well, she might have been a man. She looks like a man, her voice is deep like a man’s—it was a perfectly sensible idea. And I—it’s true that I clutched at her dress but I didn’t tear it, I didn’t do anything, there was nothing to sneer and mock at me about.’

  ‘Brian didn’t mock at you,’ she said patiently.