“Good for you!” said Bill. “Did you see the Professor?”
“Why did you say that?” said Meg. And then, “Yes, I did. But it didn’t look as if I was going to—not at first. I saw the Cannock, and she was in the most awful fuss about the move, and Uncle Henry not being disturbed, and the precious book, and everything. I don’t know how he stands her. She gives me the pip.”
“But you did see him?”
“Only because I sat there, and every time she stopped to take breath I just said, ‘I’m afraid I can’t go away without seeing my uncle.’ I just kept on saying it, and after about the hundred-and-first time she got all pink about the eyes and the tip of the nose—she really is exactly like a white mouse—and she flapped her hands and said, ‘Oh dear, oh dear!’ and went away, and after about ten minutes Uncle Henry came drifting in, awfully vague, but quite pleased to see me, so I was glad I had stuck it out.”
Bill was frowning over something in his own mind. What the Professor wanted was a good sharp jolt, and it wasn’t going to be Bill’s fault if he didn’t get one.
“Where’s this island of his?” he said shortly.
“Well, it’s not a proper island—not a sea one, you know. He told me all about it. It’s just an island in a lake.”
“Where’s the lake?”
“Seven miles from Ledlington—a place called Ledstow. There’s a lake, and a house, and an island. Uncle Henry was as pleased as Punch about the island. The house is on the bank, but there’s a sort of covered bridge that goes over to the island. It was built by an eccentric old lady who thought people were trying to murder her, so she had her own rooms on the island. She used to sleep there and just come over to the house in the daytime. Uncle Henry was most frightfully bucked. The bridge had a door at each end, and once he’d locked those doors behind him it was going to be as good as being on a desert island—nobody could get at him, nobody could disturb him. He was so full of it that after all I didn’t tell him the things I’d gone down there to tell him.”
“Oh, my dear!” said Bill involuntarily.
Meg looked at him, half rueful, half smiling.
“Darling Bill, I couldn’t. He was all pleased and happy. What was the good of upsetting him? It wasn’t as if he could do anything about it really. So I came away, and after that he just faded out.”
“Well, he’s got to fade in again,” said Bill grimly. He was having some tolerably harsh thoughts about Henry Postlethwaite. You can’t stand in the place of a girl’s parents for years and then go off casually to an island and leave her with a disappearing husband and no money. The Professor was a vague old boy, but Bill felt perfectly competent to get through the vagueness and make him sit up and take notice. He restrained the feelings with which he was seething and said,
“I’m going down to see him—probably tomorrow.”
“Oh, you mustn’t!” said Meg quickly.
“I’m going to.”
Meg sighed. Bill was most dreadfully obstinate. If he had made up his mind to go, he would go. And quite suddenly she didn’t want to go on talking about Uncle Henry. She said so before she knew that she was going to say anything at all.
“Oh, Bill, don’t let’s talk about it any more. I—oh, Bill, please—”
She didn’t finish her sentence—she didn’t need to finish it. Her sudden flush and the distressed look in her eyes spoke for her. She wanted to leave all those things which had hurt her. She wanted to get away from them, to forget for an hour, to stop thinking, to take this evening as a respite from endurance, and in that respite to give herself up to all the gay and pleasant surface impressions with which she was surrounded—lights, flowers, music; the sort of food she hadn’t tasted for months; Bill looking at her as if he found her good to look at.… She wanted to draw a charmed circle round this hour and keep it happy. She had been unhappy for two whole years. She wanted her hour.
They had their coffee and rose to go. It was just then that an odd thing happened. A couple who were sitting at the table behind them got up, the man of a flushed amplitude with a hanging jowl and bright greedy eyes, the woman a platinum blonde in a backless dress of silver gauze, hair, dress and skin all pale, all shimmering under the many lights. Bill, at a cursory glance, took her for the next thing to an albino and felt vaguely repelled. Before he got any farther than that, Meg, a pace in front of him, checked suddenly. She turned, and as she turned, he saw her hand go up to the neck of her dress and come down again with a little crumpled handkerchief just showing between her fingers. The handkerchief fell to the floor. Bill picked it up, but when Meg had thanked him and moved on again the couple were still beside their table. The woman was lighting a cigarette. Her eyes were a pale, hard grey. She used an odd shade of lipstick, the colour of—now what in mischief’s name was it the colour of?
Meg went past without a glance, and Bill followed her. Then, when they had almost reached the door, he looked round again.
The woman was holding her cigarette between the first and second fingers of her left hand. The very pointed nails matched the lipstick to a hair. She was looking at Meg, her lips wide in a smile, and all at once Bill knew what her lipstick reminded him of. He knew that, and he knew something else. The two things collided violently in his mind. The lipstick was exactly the colour of a pink zinnia, of all flowers and of all colours the most artificial, and it was those zinnia-coloured lips which he had seen in a taxi beyond Robin O’Hara on that October midnight more than a year ago.
Chapter Five
Bill did not speak until they were clear of the dining-room. The voices, the laughter, the music seemed suddenly to have become unnaturally loud. The whole big echoing room throbbed and vibrated with sound. He and Meg walked through it silently. They came to an archway lined with mirrors, and as he drew abreast of her, each threw a quick involuntary glance at the other. Their eyes met. Bill’s sense of shock was intensified. They came out into the wide corridor, and he said quickly,
“Do you know who she is?”
Meg drew a little away from his. Her eyebrows made a faint, fine arch over the deep blue of her eyes. She said in a small, cool voice,
“Who?”
What was the sense of pretending like that? Whether she liked it or not, he was bound to get at what she knew. And she did know something. There wasn’t a shadow of doubt about that.
“Meg, I’m sorry, but it’s important. That woman at the table behind ours—I’ve seen her before, and so have you. Tell me who she is.”
“I don’t know her.”
“Do you know who she is?”
“It’s quite obvious, I should think.”
“Meg!” Bill could have shaken her. “I’m asking if you know her name.”
“I believe she calls herself Della Delorne.”
There was a most curious sense of strain between them—anger, resentment, pride. Meg’s voice was low and hard. Her hour’s respite was over. Couldn’t Bill let her have just this one evening, that he must question her about Della Delorne? Did he admire her so much that he had to know her name—now, all in a hurry, in the middle of this one hour?
Bill, on his part, was astonished and a little angry. She was the beloved woman, but Lord—the fundamental unreasonableness of women! She had known him for ten years, and she could use that tone to him! It was as if she accused him. His anger rose. Meg of all women in the world to think that he would be caught at a glance by a simpering platinum blonde with a gold-digging eye! He said stiffly,
“Do you happen to know where she lives?”
Meg said “Yes,” in a stiffer tone than his own. Her colour had ebbed right away, leaving the clear, faint artificial tint in pathetic relief. She turned from him and moved quickly in the direction of the cloak-room. The evening was spoiled, but they would have to see it through. She must get her coat, and then she and Bill would sit side by side for a couple of hours hating one another and thinking about Della Delorne.
When they were in the taxi, Bill put his hand on
hers.
“Meg—don’t be angry.”
Meg looked away from him at a whirling sky-sign all scarlet and blue.
“I’m not in the least angry.”
Bill’s hand pressed hers. He said,
“Liar!” And then, “Why does Della Delorne make you angry?”
“I’m not angry—I told you I wasn’t.”
Bill pulled her round to face him.
“Look here, Meg, come off it! I want the woman’s name and address for Garrett, not for myself. You’re behaving as if I’d insulted you. If you hadn’t known who she was, I should have had to find out some other way.”
“Let me go!” said Meg. And then all of a sudden she melted. “Bill, you don’t know—”
“No, but you can tell me, my dear.”
It was she who was holding him now, one hand on his arm, the other on his wrist. Where her fingers touched his skin he could feel how cold they were.
“Bill, I’m sorry—I was a beast—but it came over me. That woman—I saw her—with Robin—twice. He wouldn’t tell me who she was, but other people did. She calls herself an actress. I believe she’s sometimes been in the chorus of a revue—I don’t know. I told you I was going to divorce Robin. That was what I wanted to see Uncle Henry about. Why do you want to know about her?”
He hesitated. The hand on his wrist tightened.
“Was it because you’d seen her with Robin too?” Her eyes implored him. In the half light of the taxi they looked larger and darker than they were. “Did you see her with Robin, Bill—did you?”
Bill nodded, and at once her grasp relaxed. There was a feeling of relief from strain. It was only the old trouble, not a new one. She leaned back in her corner with a sigh. The taxi had come to a stop. There was a block of cars in front of them. Neither spoke until the block broke up. Then Meg said,
“When did you see them?”
“Please, Meg.”
“I want to know.”
Well, it was better to tell her. No good letting her imagine things. He said,
“Well, that’s the whole point, my dear—I saw Robin in a taxi with a woman at midnight on the fourth of October last year.”
“The fourth!” said Meg in a startled voice. And then, “But, Bill—that was after—he disappeared—”
“Yes, I know.”
“He was with Della Delorne?”
“Well, that’s what I don’t know, but I think so. When I told Garrett—”
“You told Colonel Garrett?”
“Yes, of course I did. Well, when I told him, I said I wouldn’t know her again, but just now in the dining-room as soon as I saw that woman, something went click in my brain. I couldn’t have sworn to her features, or her face, or anything. I only just had an impression of her beyond Robin in the taxi, but there was something that made me put her down for—well, for the sort of woman she is. I couldn’t get hold of it when I was talking to Garrett, and I told him I wouldn’t know her again, but when I saw her at the Luxe it came back and I remembered what it was.”
They were held up again at a cross road. The traffic streamed by in a blur of sound. Against this blur Meg said clearly,
“What was it?”
“Her lipstick. Did you notice it? A beastly sort of unnatural pink.”
“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” Her voice was warm and eager.
“Well, that was what did the trick. So I had to find out who it was, because of course I must let Garrett know.”
The traffic ceased to flow past them. They moved again.
“You saw her with Robin four days after he—disappeared!” Meg leaned forward suddenly. There was a note of terror in her voice. “Bill—where—is—Robin?”
The taxi drew up smoothly at the kerb. Bill put his hand on her shoulder for a moment.
“Robin’s dead,” he said. “Garrett is quite sure he’s dead.”
The driver got down from his seat and opened the door.
Chapter Six
The play flowed by very much as the traffic had flowed by, in a blur of sound. The people who went about the stage and spoke their words made as little impression on Meg O’Hara; the inner current of her thoughts moved in too full and bitter a tide. Once she looked at a woman who wept on the stage, and wondered what it was all about, and once it came to her that the play must have been going on for hours, and then she found that it was only nine o’clock. She had thought that she and Bill would have to sit there side by side in a hating, angry silence, but it wasn’t like that at all. Bill didn’t hate her. She had been horrid to him, and he had been kind and patient. But it all felt a long way off—the play, and Bill, and everything. It was a horrid, strange feeling, and it frightened her.
She made a great effort in the first interval, and Bill helped her. They talked about safe, comfortable things like the weather, and the new pedestrians’ crossings, and Chile. Meg found Chile a most reassuring place to talk about. It was such a long way off, so remote from the closing circle of her fears.
After that she was able to follow the play—a little vaguely, a little hazily, rather as if she were watching it through an unfocussed glass, but still to follow it.
When it was over, Bill took her home. They went up to the third floor together in the little lift that you worked yourself. They had been rather silent in the taxi, and they were quite silent now.
When Meg took out her key and fitted it into the lock and the door opened upon the small dark hall, she felt a momentary chill. She had been coming back to this empty flat for a year, but tonight it seemed emptier than usual. A thought looked into her mind like a stranger looking in through the window. If Bill and she were coming home together, the flat would not be cold and empty, but welcoming and warm. That was the thought; but it wasn’t her own thought, it was a stranger looking in. She stepped over the threshold and switched on the light—a bright light in the little closed-in space which was the hall. To her surprise and consternation she felt the colour come burning to her face. She said good-night quickly and shut the door.
Bill took himself down in the lift. He had seen that sudden startled colour, and it had sent his spirits soaring. He hadn’t the slightest idea why she should have blushed, but he did know that she had never blushed for him before. It seemed to him that it was a very encouraging sign. But he did wonder what it was that had made her fly that scarlet flag. It wasn’t as if she could possibly have known what he was thinking, or how hard it was to leave her and come away. Well, perhaps some day they would come home together and he wouldn’t have to leave her. That was what he had been thinking, but of course she couldn’t have known.
He came out on to the pavement and turned to the right. It was a dark night with a feel of rain in the air. He meant to walk to the hotel, and presently he crossed over and took a shortcut down a narrow side street. It was when he was about half way down this street that it occurred to him that there had been someone behind him ever since he had left the flat. It would be a good deal of a coincidence if someone else should at this hour be taking just his way through these unfrequented streets.
He turned at right angles into a paved alley with a row of posts across the mouth of it. When he came out at the other end, he knew beyond a doubt that someone was following him. It interested him a good deal. Did he look sufficiently opulent to tempt a thief to follow him on the chance of getting away with his wallet? But he was sure that the footsteps had been behind him all the way from the flat. Why should a thief have picked him up at the flat? It didn’t seem very likely. O’Hara’s name flared through his mind like a squib. O’Hara, tormenting Meg, spying on her.… No, it wasn’t reasonable. There wasn’t any motive. O’Hara was either dead or alive. Garrett said he was dead, and Garrett didn’t say things unless he meant them. O’Hara was dead. But, for the sake of argument, if O’Hara was alive, he had deserted his wife. And then why should he spy on her. She had been his, and he had chucked her away. He had left her for a year without help, or comfort, or money. All this supposin
g him to be alive. But he wasn’t alive—he couldn’t be. Garrett said that he was dead. All the same, Bill turned out of the alley and made two quick strides of it to the nearest doorway, where he stood pressed up against the door to see who would come out after him.
There were posts at this end of the alley too. It was very dark. He could only just see them, but he thought if O’Hara came out, that he would recognize him. There was a way he had of walking, an impudent confidence, a turn of the head.
The place into which he had come was a narrow street of poor houses, crowding one upon another. He had come up three steps to the doorway where he was sheltering. There was no light in this house, nor in the half dozen houses that were nearest, whether on his own side of the street or on the other. There was nobody afoot the whole length of the street. He began to wonder whether he had been mistaken. If someone were really following him, where was he, and why didn’t he emerge? And then he heard the footstep again, quite near, in a faint stumble as if the foot had slipped on a worn place or stubbed itself against one of the posts. Another moment and someone came cautiously out into the street.
Bill had said that he would know O’Hara, but here there wasn’t anything to know—a shadow standing motionless just clear of the black alley-way, with the darkness confusing height, shape, and outline. There wasn’t any outline. The shadow was one with the other shadows. When he stared at it, he was no longer sure that he could see it at all, but when he looked away and looked back again, it was there, quite motionless, just not merged in the blackness out of which it had come.
He made one step of it to the street level and spoke.
“Who are you—and what do you want?”
The shadow receded a little. There was no answer.
Bill Coverdale came on, but even as he came, there was a flash in the dark, and a report that was deafeningly loud in the narrow place. The wind of the explosion came against his face, acrid with the smell of burnt powder. The top of his left ear stung, and as he clapped his hand to it, the blood ran hot between his fingers. The shadow was gone, and Bill went pelting down the alley after it in a fury of anger. The fellow had tried to kill him. He had the blanketing dark and a sideways stumble over a pot-hole to thank for his life. The pistol had been fired from not more than a yard away.
Dead or Alive: A Frank Garrett Mystery Page 5