by Ellis Peters
‘Prodigal parent I’ve got,’ said Hero, gallantly playing up to him. She didn’t even look round for Hans Selverer; he’d be gone long ago, and in any case, he’d shown pretty clearly, for all his half-hearted denials, what he thought of her, and on what terms he wanted to continue his association with her. Nobody, thought Hero sadly, is getting much out of this deal. ‘You come home tight and dent my car,’ she said warningly, ‘and see what you get.’
Sam and Codger followed them out to the Bentley. It was early November, and moist and mournful, with a thin slime on the streets and a thin mist in the air, so that all the lights had faint grey aureoles round them. The decorative trees that fringed the semi-circular forecourt of the theatre had long since turned crimson, and there had been no frost as yet to bring down the leaves; but the sodium lighting and the moist air took from them all their colour and texture, and they hung shivering like faintly luminous grey rags on the branches, silent and sad.
In the apron of light the Bentley stood drawn up at the foot of the steps, with Tom Connard idling beside it, his great hands in his pockets, his enormous jut of bony brow ape-like over the kindest and most knowing eyes in the world. The cigarette that clung to his lower lip was whipped smartly out and trodden into the thin mud as soon as he saw his skipper approaching. The details of their relationship were laid down by Tom, not Johnny; Johnny had never been a stickler for the hierarchies even in the Navy, and not much of a respecter of ranks and persons himself, for that matter.
There were still a few other cars about the forecourt, just warming up and switching on their sidelights to drive out to the road. And there was Musgrave’s black Austin, pulled right round into a strategic position close to the exit end of the sweep of tarmac, where he could make a quick, smooth and unobtrusive departure at whatever moment he pleased. Even the lights tailed out there into dimness, and the glisten from every moist surface of road and coachwork and kerb and masonry tended to blend the car deep into its background.
Midway between the Bentley and his own car, Musgrave himself stood on the bottom step talking to two of his men. As though on an expected signal, he broke off his colloquy as Johnny reached the pavement, and walked away towards his Austin at a brisk but casual pace.
Johnny’s thumbs pricked. The way the car was positioned might be the fruit of experience and instinct, the lingering until he came and the departure when he came might mean nothing but that Musgrave wanted to assure himself that events were pursuing their normal course this night as on other nights. But added together they suggested a more exact and deliberate concern with his movements than he liked to contemplate. For himself he didn’t care, it could hardly matter less how much sleep Musgrave lost over him; but the little, folded thing in Gisela’s bag turned his heart sick when he thought of it.
‘You’ve only got me tonight, Tom,’ said Hero. ‘We’re swopping cars for once, Johnny’s going on the town.’
‘Very good, miss,’ said Connard, generously giving way so that Codger could open the door for her.
‘No, the front, Codger, love, I’m going to ride with Tom. That’s finel’ She turned back for a moment to offer Johnny a chilly cheek. ‘Good night, darlingl Good night, Gisela!’
‘Hey, how about your keys?’ said Johnny.
‘In the car. I garaged it, so I didn’t bother to bring them out.’
Codger slammed the door firmly upon her, pulled to make doubly sure his work was good, and stood back, beaming. The Bentley pulled away. Round to the left the black Austin had its lights on and its engine running and was heeling round very, very gently towards the road. It let the Bentley go by, halt at the exit, and turn majestically into the open road. It had seemed that the Austin was about to follow, but it did not. Its exhaust continued to breathe faint blue fumes for a moment, its engine to purr experimentally, then it was drawn more closely into the side again, and the hum of the motor ceased. In a moment the driver’s door opened.
So that was it. And now they knew where they stood; but at least Hero was off home out of it. He didn’t want her, he wasn’t interested in her. As soon as he saw that she was alone in the car apart from the driver, he abandoned the Bentley. He was waiting for other game.
‘The bastard!’ said Sam softly between his teeth, watching him start back towards them. The two plain-clothes men had turned and mounted the steps into the theatre to keep the watchman company. It wouldn’t be difficult to find something that ought to be said, in ordinary courtesy to the owner of the place.
Johnny thought of Gisela and himself shut into the car shoulder to shoulder, as close as lovers and as far apart as the poles, unable to communicate, unable even to face this danger as one creature, as they had always faced everything from their first flight together in the dark. Always they had had that unity. Even the broken, shocked creature he had snatched out of the ambushed transport had instinctively fastened in him the last remaining root of her faith in man, from which the whole marvellous plant had sprung again. Now they had nothing. He, who had always taken it for granted that he would be the first person she’d come to for help, was powerless now to help her.
Suddenly such a desolation of rage seized him that he shook from head to foot, and the approaching figure of Musgrave quivered before his eyes like a broken reflection in a pool.
‘Blast him!’ he said through his teeth, in a muted howl of frustration and despair. ‘I wish somebody’d do me the favour of knocking him off!’
For that one instant he meant it; it was like a convulsion of pain jerking through him, turning his blood to gall. Then it was ebbing, and he shook with the feebleness and shame it left behind. He licked his lips, and the bitter taste of sweat was there, and his forehead was dewed with cold.
‘You don’t have to worry, son,’ said Sam at his shoulder, only just above his breath. ‘There’s nothing he can do. You hear, Johnny?’ A hard old fist rapped at his ribs behind, knocking home the text. ‘You’ll be all right,’ said Sam.
‘Famous last words,’ said Johnny, with a grin that hurt him, but looked all right.
The weakness and nausea ebbed away after the mutilating rage; he took hold of the affair as it was, and stopped thinking of what it should have been, because Musgrave was very close now, and there was no time left. He didn’t think anything was due to happen here; he thought Musgrave was more interested in letting them go their own way for the moment, and waiting for things to happen of themselves, provided always that he was there to see. But because of the ribbon in Gisela’s handbag the danger was acute. She couldn’t be left alone with Musgrave now, not even for the time it took to fetch the car round from the garage.
‘Sam,’ he said, in a voice now quite calm, ‘would you mind giving Norrie a ring and asking him to bring Butch’s car round? And don’t you bother to come out again, it’s chilly out here.’
Luckily Musgrave probably hadn’t learned enough about the Leander Theatre yet to realise how out of character it was for Johnny to ask to have his transport brought round for him at all when Tom Connard wasn’t there; ordinarily he’d have been round the corner himself after it, like a terrier after a rat. But those were the aspects of things that Musgrave didn’t pick up so quickly.
‘We’ll be all right,’ agreed Johnny softly, and returned Sam his nudge in the ribs to start him up the steps.
He looked round then for Codger, but Codger had already disappeared. He’d be back; no good telling him not to bother, shutting Johnny safely in the car was one of the main moments of his day, and he wouldn’t care which car it was, either.
‘I think I ought to tell you,’ said Musgrave, blandly arriving, ‘that I’m leaving a man here overnight. You’ve no objections?’
‘No, I’ve no objections,’ said Johnny. ‘Would it be indiscreet of me to ask whether you’re expecting something to happen?’
‘Not expecting. But no harm in hoping. And he can put in his time studying stage furnishings, without the complications of rehearsals and performance going on all ro
und him.’
‘He has my permission to poke wherever he fancies. I hope he likes his tea strong? That’s the way he’ll get it if he hasn’t brought his own. Or there might be stout, if he’s lucky, Martin isn’t a beer man. What is this, a last fling?’
‘We never give up,’ said Musgrave, with a not unpleasant smile. ‘I know you gave me a blanket permission to go ahead at the beginning, but I thought I’d just mention it.’ He drew back a step, his eyes slipping smoothly from face to face. ‘Good night then, Mr Truscott! Good night, Miss Salberg!’ And yet another step. He was turning on his heel as he said: ‘A very creditable performance tonight.’
‘The patronising bastard!’ said Johnny under his breath, a faint but controlled gust of the old fury shaking him. He had it in better focus now, he knew that by rights it did not belong to Musgrave. But the ache within him would not be eased. She stood silent in his arm, so pale and mute and calm that he could not bear it. If only she’d let him in!
The Aston Martin came sliding sweetly round into the arc of tarmac, and Norrie, who looked after all the cars and lived over the garage, hopped out of it grinning with pleasure, and held open the door for them. Poor old Codger was missing his treat; in his own way he’d complain of it for days, and everyone would have to devise new excitements for him in compensation. Johnny expected him to come darting down the steps anxiously at the last moment, but he must have been somewhere out of sight and earshot, safe with Sam, for he did not appear.
Musgrave was just climbing leisurely into his Austin as the sports car slithered by and halted at the exit. Very nice timing, hardly a pretence at all, only a cloak of decency for the benefit of both hunted and hunter. Not a disguise, merely clothing. It argued at least a kind of respect for his opponent.
Johnny swung the car left, towards London. Traffic was light, and the moist night curiously silent. They might have been a thousand miles from the city, and yet all the unpeopled trappings of town life were strung along the way, eerie and pale, livid in the ghostly lights on either side of them. A few walkers on the footpaths, but so few that they, too, were muted and distant, like ghosts.
‘Speak, girl!’ said Johnny, his eyes on the mirror. ‘How will I know I’ve got a woman with me, if she won’t talk?’
The Austin had rounded the curve into the road after him, and was following sedately on his tail, not bothering to lie close.
‘He’s following us,’ said Gisela, small and still against his shoulder.
‘I know. Don’t worry, I can leave him standing once we’re in the decontrolled stretches.’
He was driving very demurely, because he had to think as well as drive, and because he wanted her, with all his heart, to take this opportunity of confiding in him. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for her, if only she’d let him, but she was still mute, she asked for nothing.
What was he to do if she still shut him out? What was he to do about this woman of whom he found he was so damned fond?
If she wouldn’t talk, that made his thinking all the more urgent. She had lied, and she was hiding evidence. Not evidence that would in itself convict anyone of murder, but extremely suggestive evidence, none the less; and more damning than the thing itself was the act of hiding it, and the persistence and length of her silence about it. The ribbon had been torn from the baldric of the sword used to kill Chatrier, and it had Chatrier’s blood on it.
And it had been found where only she could have hidden it.
So the provenance of the thing alone made it legitimate to begin to reason from the premise: If she killed her husband …
He went on from there; the Austin all the while following him at a civil distance.
If she killed her husband, then it cannot have been after she entered the arbour, for from that point on she was with Nan Morgan until after Tonda fell over the body and screamed. That is absolute, whatever objections there may be to it.
Therefore Figaro was dead before she entered she arbour.
But he sang his two asides afterwards. No, he didn’t, because he couldn’t have done, he was dead, that’s given. Correct the former statement: Somebody sang his two asides after she entered the arbour. There was no doubt at all that Figaro had sung his aria himself, for he had had the stage to himself and been in full view of hundreds of people until the end of it, when he retired into the trees. Only those two lines from hiding could have been sung by someone else. Could they? By another baritone, even a good mimic, as so many singers are? Yes, in this case they could. Angry, sardonic asides, hissed in a half-tone, with hardly more personality than a whisper. Yes, another baritone could have done it.
Hans Selverer.
Too clearly, too positively, Johnny saw the whole course of that evening. A joint revenge. Gisela had picked up the rapier as she had said, but she had not disposed of it as she had said, she had quite simply brought it down into the wings in her voluminous skirts, walked into the darkened pine-grove and used the sword on Chatrier, and then calmly gone on-stage; and Hans, with two short lines, had given her an alibi afterwards. Hardly more than five minutes in all had been gained by that act, but it had been enough to place her well clear of suspicion. Perhaps an instantaneous conspiracy, all achieved in those few minutes, perhaps an impulsive act on the spur of the moment, undertaken by Hans of his own volition.
There remained a number of unanswered questions. Why did she take the baldric away with her afterwards? There was blood on it, yes, but all the same, why didn’t she just drop it with the scabbard, beside the body There was nothing in the thing itself to connect it with her more than anyone else. If she’d left it there, what would it have told the police more than they knew already? Bloodstain and all?
‘He’s closing up on us,’ said Gisela, her chin on her shoulder, her eyes narrowed against the following headlights. The street lighting was thinner here, they had left the shops and cinemas behind, and were threading row upon row of suburban dwellings, with elaborate pubs on every crossroads; but still in such a ghostly quietness. The country has no such solitudes as the less frequented urban spaces at night.
‘I know,’ said Johnny bitterly. ‘And I’m doing forty. He’s a cop, he can afford to shove it up above the legal figure, but he needn’t think he’s going to get me picked up for speeding.’
He couldn’t read anything in Gisela’s voice; she merely made the remark as though she had gathered from his manner that he might be interested, as though the whole thing had nothing to do with her.
And what resolution and self-control she had shown throughout, simply hiding the ribbon in the best place available to her, and then for a whole fortnight never casting even so much as a glance in its direction, never making the fatal mistake of trying to recover it until the next performance of Figaro ensured that she could do so in privacy. And now to have it actually on her person the very night when Musgrave chose to keep her under observation!
If I weren’t here, thought Johnny, she could quite simply wind the window down and throw the thing out, once we pull away from Musgrave over the heath. By the time it’s lain in the gutter overnight and had a few wheels or feet over it, nobody’s even going to stop to look at the colours, much less pick it up. The roadmen would sweep it up with the rubbish, and nobody any the wiser. But she can’t do it, because Musgrave isn’t the only one who mustn’t know. I mustn’t know. And I can’t tell her that I know already, not only because I’m ashamed of spying on her, but even more because having trespassed once doesn’t give me any right to trespass again. And he thought again, my God, what am I going to do if he decides to take a chance and pick her up tonight, before she has an opportunity to get rid of it?
The derestriction sign waved its bar dexter at him. The lights, strung thinly here like gold beads on a chain, made scattered islands of radiance in a thicker haze between the trees of the open heath. The houses fell away, and left them in a startling urban solitude.
The Austin was close now, but lying decorously back from the Aston’s tail. Johnn
y’s foot went down smoothly, and the little car leapt forward like a hound let off the leash.
He was drawing steadily away when he saw in his wing mirror an abrupt and unaccountable convulsion seize the Austin’s lights. They lurched sideways towards the verge, recovered for an instant, and then suddenly plunged wildly across the road at speed, out of control.
Gisela turned in the passenger seat, her fingers cold on his arm, her eyes flaring.
‘Johnny, what’s happening? He can’t …’
Tyres screamed ineffectively, sliding on the moist road. The crash shivered the night’s quiet into fragments. A broken beam of light bowed into the bottom of the hedge; the second eye was blinded. Another crash, dull and echoless, like metal crushing under an enormous foot, followed the first. By then Johnny had braked fiercely, and had his door open and was out of it and running back along the road almost before he had cut the engine. Shuddering, the quietness came back, settling like a startled bird reassured. Only Johnny’s running footsteps troubled its placidity. The Austin was still enough now.
Gisela clawed her way out of the car and ran after Johnny, her handbag clutched under her arm; even in emergencies women cling to their handbags.
She saw Johnny come close to the crumple of metal that was the Austin, and baulk at what he saw. He heard her coming behind him, and turned to catch her in his arm.
‘Go back! Please! This isn’t for you.’
‘Yes,’ she said, panting, ‘I’m all right, I can help. What happened to him?’
‘God knows!’
He put her behind him, he had no time to argue with her. He turned to the shattered car. It had hit the lamp standard head-on, and wrapped its broken face about the metal base until the bent shaft was nearly hidden in the crumpled sheets of black paintwork and chrome. The left headlight dangled loose from the wreckage, spilling wiring, like a gouged-out eye. The upper part of the standard had snapped clean off and dropped across the roof of the car, crushing it. The front passenger seat was collapsed like a tin can in a press; but when Johnny darted round to the right-hand side he saw that the driver’s door lolled open and undamaged, scraping the ground, and a huddled figure prostrate on the road was just dragging his feet after him from the interior of the car.