by J F Straker
‘Poor old man. I think I know how he felt,’ Elizabeth said.
Occasional sounds had drifted up to them from the hotel, but they had had no significance. Now, quite unexpectedly, faint and seemingly far away, a voice called, ‘Elizabeth, are you there?’
It was Alan. Elizabeth smiled at the tension and anxiety in his voice; it was good to know he could be worried about her. But as she opened her mouth to reply Desmond’s hand closed over it. ‘Don’t answer,’ he said. ‘Let’s keep them guessing.’ He smiled. ‘That doesn’t mean we have to talk in whispers. They can’t hear unless we shout.’
Annoyed, she knocked his arm away.
‘Then I’m going to shout. Don’t be childish, Desmond. This isn’t a game, they’re really worried. And who wouldn’t be, after what has happened here tonight?’
Alan’s voice came again, still faint, more urgent than before. ‘Can you hear me, Elizabeth? Are you there?’
Once more her husband’s hand closed over her mouth; but this time his other arm was about her shoulders, and he held her firmly. Elizabeth struggled fiercely to free herself; she was really angry now. She tried to shout, but his hand blanketed her voice. She had not before realised his strength.
‘Miss Messager.’ This time it was the Inspector’s voice that called. ‘We know you are there, but you may not be able to answer. So listen. As soon as we can get to you we will; in the meantime try to keep away from your husband. He killed Charlotte Lane, and tonight he tried to kill you.’ A pause. ‘Do you understand, Miss Messager? Your husband is a murderer.’
Chapter Fifteen
Angel on a Ladder
Desmond took his hand away from her mouth, his arm from her shoulders. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘I forgot I’d pulled the ladder up. That’s how they know we’re here.’
Elizabeth stared at him, incredulous of what she had heard. She was not frightened; she made no attempt to scream, to cry for help. It was inconceivable that Desmond could be a murderer, had actually tried to kill her; he was her husband, he was in love with her. He was charming and pleasant and — no, not ordinary; that was a word one could not apply to Desmond, it had been part of his fascination for her. But he wasn’t different as she imagined a murderer must be different.
‘Don’t you want to answer them?’ he asked uncertainly. Her silence surprised him.
She shook her head; not in negation, but as a signal of her incredulity. He hadn’t changed, he looked exactly as he had always looked. There must be some mistake. Surely the act of murder would leave its mark on the killer?
‘You don’t believe them?’ He smiled faintly. ‘You should. It’s true, you know. I did kill Aunt Charlotte.’
She was frightened then; not so much at the confirmation of his guilt as at his apparent calmness. He had spoken of murder as though it were of little account. Either he was mad, or human life was no more sacred to him than that of a fly.
And both alternatives implied danger to herself.
Terrified, she edged away from him, her eyes never leaving his face. He made no attempt to stop her; one arm resting lightly along the back of the settee, he lounged in his corner, apparently relaxed and carefree. But there was a glitter in his eyes, a tenseness to his body, that denied the posture. The muscles of his jaw twitched spasmodically.
‘Scared?’ The attempt at a laugh failed, and he abandoned it. ‘There’s no need to be. You’re in no danger from me now.’
Still she did not speak; her throat was too dry, and anyway she would not have known what to say. Neither his calmness nor his assurance of her safety could alleviate her fear. Nothing he might say now would have any significance for her. He could lie or tell the truth as it pleased him; she would not know the difference.
He threw the stub of his cigarette into the fire recess. The action startled her out of her stupor, and she became aware of him as a being. She noticed that his hands trembled slightly as he lit another cigarette. Was his calmness a pose, born of bravado? Was he, too, frightened? Frightened of what? His conscience — or of what lay ahead of him?
‘You might at least say something, if it’s only goodbye.’ He sounded irritable. ‘That would certainly be appropriate. Aren’t you interested? Don’t you want to know what happened?’
Elizabeth nodded. She was reluctant to hear more — fear had dulled her natural curiosity but to keep him talking might delay whatever it was he had in mind to do. She could not believe it was solely a desire for companionship that had prompted him to bring her there.
‘I like you, Elizabeth — in a way I suppose I’m quite fond of you — but I was never in love with you. I married you solely to get my hands on Aunt Charlotte’s money. Didn’t you guess that?’ He paused, apparently anticipating a surprised protest. When she made none, but continued to stare at him wide-eyed and in silence, he went on, ‘And I needed it quickly, I couldn’t wait for her to die a natural death. Not that I’d made up my mind to kill her when I first asked you to marry me; it was Michael’s talk of murder, and the joke we planned, that decided me. With all those red herrings, and so many people involved, I thought I could get away with it. I nearly did, too.’
He was not so relaxed now. He kept shifting his position, and his words were punctuated by quick, nervous puffs at his cigarette, so that his arm seemed to be moving up and down continuously.
Occasionally he moistened his lips with his tongue.
‘You did your best to balk me, you know,’ he said reprovingly, staring at her. ‘I expected you to come back from Cosmeston as soon as you discovered my phone-call was a hoax; I hadn’t banked on your spending the evening there. That meant fewer red herrings to confuse the police.’ The frown deepened. ‘And Michael’s unrehearsed contribution worried me at first — I couldn’t understand how that damned picture came to be missing. Luckily the police were as foxed as I was.’
Memory of that confusion seemed to unsettle him further, for he jumped up quickly and went over to the door, where he stood listening. Then he began to pace restlessly about the room, pausing occasionally to stare out of a window.
To the east a faint lightening of the sky betokened that dawn was not far off.
Elizabeth watched his every move, as a mouse might watch the cat that torments it. When eventually he came to stand directly in front of her she shrank still farther into her corner of the settee.
‘Shall I tell you how I did it?’ he asked. ‘Killed Aunt Charlotte, I mean?’
She shuddered. A faint ‘No’ escaped her, but he disregarded it. Or perhaps he did not hear.
‘The first thing was to cancel the taxi,’ he said. ‘I had to ring several garages before I hit on the right one. But Thursday itself was easy. I made sure you were on the Cosmeston bus, and then I drove in to Tanbury for an alibi with the tobacconist. On the way back I parked the car in the woods east of your lane, walked up to the house, and told Aunt Charlotte that her taxi was stuck down the road and that I’d give her a lift to the station. It was just after six then — she was all set to go. I followed her into the house as she went to put on her coat, and —’ For the first time he displayed some emotion. His face was pale as he spread his hands before him and looked at them wonderingly. Elizabeth saw that they were trembling. Then he laughed self-consciously. He said, with forced bravado, ‘She had a thick neck, didn’t she? I could hardly get my hands round it.’
Elizabeth closed her eyes. His apparent callousness sickened her, and she could no longer bear to look at him.
‘She had less money on her than I expected,’ Desmond went on. ‘About two hundred quid. I took her keys in case there might be more in the safe. Then I dragged her out through the back door and dropped her down the well; and what a weight she was, too! I collected her coat and suitcase and threw them after her; and then just as I was going back to try the safe the front-door bell rang.’ Small beads of perspiration had gathered on his forehead. It seemed that past danger could be more real to him than the present. ‘That really shook me
. But I kept my head. Without bothering to lock the back door, I cut down the lawn to the copse, ran across the lane, and up through the woods to the car. Meeting Bruce at the corner was a stroke of luck. It gave me an alibi of sorts.’
‘Elizabeth!’ Alan’s muffled voice startled them both. ‘Are you all right, Elizabeth?’
She looked beseechingly at Desmond. To her surprise he nodded.
‘Why not? Go ahead, talk to him. Tell him you’re all right.’
Slowly she got to her feet. Her legs felt weak, and for a few seconds she had to clutch at the table for support. Then she walked over to the door. She had to be near it — as near as she could get to Alan and safety and sanity.
‘I —’ Her voice cracked, and she swallowed hastily. ‘It’s me, Alan — Elizabeth. I — I’m all right.’
‘Thank God!’ His voice was fainter, but the relief it expressed was very evident. ‘Is Desmond with you?’
‘Yes.’
She began to cry. Ever since she had known the truth about her husband all emotions had been one with fear. Now they began to sort themselves out; her head ached, she felt lonely and weak and sick. The walls and the ceiling seemed gradually to be closing in on her, and she started to beat at the door with her fists.
‘I’m frightened, Alan,’ she cried hysterically. ‘Please, please come quickly. Please, Alan!’
Faintly from below came an oath.
Immersed in her own drama, she could not appreciate the suspense, the dreadful sense of inadequacy and helplessness that filled her would-be rescuers.
‘Hang on, darling,’ came Alan’s pleading voice. ‘It won’t be long. We’re doing all we can.’
‘That’s enough.’
Desmond caught her by the arm and pulled her away from the door. Elizabeth had not realised he was immediately behind her, and she shrank from him instinctively. She knew it was a foolish action, that it might encourage the sadist in him; but she could not help it.
‘No call for hysterics,’ he said. He led her over to the settee and pushed her, not ungently, on to it. ‘I told you I wasn’t going to hurt you.’
Encouraged by his lack of anger, she stammered, ‘You — you tried to kill me before.’
‘Yes. I didn’t want to, but I could see no alternative. It was the only solution — then.’ The excitement that had seemed to sustain him ebbed, and he said sadly, ‘Now it doesn’t matter.’
‘But why? What had I done?’
‘Nothing. It wasn’t you, it was Dulcie.’ Elizabeth stared at him. Her eyes were still wet, but she was no longer crying.
‘Dulcie? You mean she made you do it?’ she asked, incredulous.
‘Of course not. Dulcie knew nothing about it. But when she found out we were married she refused to have anything more to do with me.’ He sighed. ‘I couldn’t stand that.’
Elizabeth was stunned. That Desmond fastidious, aristocratic Desmond should fall in love with Dulcie had never occurred to her as a possibility. Dulcie was beautiful, yes. But she was also vulgar and promiscuous and cheap, she was . . .
‘That shakes you, eh?’ He smiled crookedly. ‘You must think I’m crazy. Well, so I am where Dulcie is concerned. You may be worth two of her, but that makes no difference. It’s Dulcie I want.’ The smile faded. ‘Once I thought money was more important; that was why I asked you to marry me. I thought, too, that she’d understand, that she wouldn’t shut me out. But she did. She wasn’t sharing me, she said; it would have to be you or her. And when you told me that there was no money, that I’d lost that too —’ He shook his head. ‘That was the last straw.’
His voice was thick with emotion. Elizabeth realised how little she had really known him. That a girl like Dulcie . . .
‘We could have separated, got divorced,’ she said. ‘You didn’t have to — to —’
‘Divorce takes time; I couldn’t wait that long. And a separation would have been useless. Dulcie made that quite plain.’
The sky was greyer now; it will soon be dawn, she thought. Despite the warmth of the room, she shivered. Would they never come?
‘Besides, there was Bruce,’ Desmond said. ‘He knew.’
Yes, there was Bruce; she had forgotten him. Bruce too was dead. He had fallen from her window and . . .
‘Bruce knew we were married,’ Desmond said. ‘Dulcie told him on Sunday night; she was mad at us, you see, and out to cause trouble. Personal trouble, not with the police; she wanted to break up our marriage, and she knew how Bruce felt about you, that he’d hoped to marry you himself. And that made Bruce appreciate how strong a motive I’d had for getting rid of Aunt Charlotte. He got to thinking about how he’d met me at the end of the lane that evening, and he remembered that he’d heard the engine start up a few moments before that. He was pretty sure then that I’d killed her.’
He threw away the half-smoked cigarette. It fell on the carpet, and from force of habit he picked it up and mashed it against the stone grate. When he tried to light another his usually agile fingers were clumsy and ineffective, and twice he dropped the lighter before succeeding.
‘He told me all this when I met him on the common yesterday evening,’ he said. ‘I think he hoped to make some sort of a bargain with me. But we never got to discussing it. When he hinted that he and Dulcie —’ Desmond’s teeth shut with a snap. ‘I hit him then. But he’s tough’ — unconsciously he used the present tense — ‘and it didn’t hurt him. He just waded in and knocked me flying.’ He fingered his still swollen lip. ‘When he heard the police coming he cleared off, after telling me he’d be round to see me later. That’d be my last chance, he said; if I didn’t see it his way then he’d go to the police.’ A lungful of smoke choked him, and he coughed angrily. ‘So when he turned up at the hotel I knew I had to kill him. There was no alternative if I wanted to be safe. Besides, I hated him because of Dulcie.’
Elizabeth was surprised that she experienced little or no revulsion at this further confession. She felt drained of all emotion; nothing he might say now, she thought, could shock her. At first she had thought, How can Desmond be a murderer? He is my husband; I would have known. But now, although still her husband, he was no longer the Desmond she had married. Now he was scarcely human — a strange creature outside her ken, to whom murder was a common-place.
‘And you did?’ she said calmly. How grey his face looked. Was that fear? Or was it the stubble on his chin that made it look so? She had never before seen him unshaved.
‘Yes. When Alan told me he was waiting outside I knew I had him. I went out to the stables for a crowbar, and then came round to this side of the building and called him. It was dark, and he couldn’t see me; as he came level with where I was waiting I jumped out and hit him. I think he must have died with the first blow, but I gave him a couple more to be sure.’
Elizabeth shuddered. It had been one thing to listen calmly to his talk of murder, but less easy when it came to detail and when the victim had been a friend. Yet her revulsion was still not acute. She was becoming so satiated with horror and death that it was difficult to absorb more and still react normally to it.
Desmond walked slowly over to the east window and looked out over the countryside towards Tanbury. Already the dawn was sufficiently advanced to distinguish buildings and roads and trees. But there were no people visible. It was still, most appropriately, a dead world.
‘I hid him in the shrubbery,’ he said, opening the window. ‘After what you had told us at dinner — that Bruce had hated Aunt Charlotte, that he had had as strong a motive as any of us for killing her — I knew I could use him. Later, when the hotel was asleep, I went out and dragged him round to the yard and parked him under your window. I thought it would be assumed he had fallen from it after killing you.’
I assumed it, she thought; did the police? She shivered as the cool morning air reached her. Below, faint and seemingly far away, there were voices that had not been audible while the window was closed. Were they the voices of her rescuers, or merely a
village awakening?
Desmond shivered also, and shut the window. She wondered if the voices frightened him, if they destroyed the illusion of security and inaccessibility that the tower room had perhaps given him. He came back to the settee, and Elizabeth shrank tightly into her corner of it, once more afraid. She was, she supposed, a problem he still had to solve. How did he intend to solve it?
He made no move to touch her. He knelt on the cushions with his back to the room, staring out of the window to the west. To the girl it seemed a symbolic posture — as though he appreciated that with the coming of that particular dawn his own sun was sinking.
‘I never thought I should tell anyone,’ he said presently, not looking at her. ‘Least of all you.’
For a moment she wondered why she had been thus singled out for particular exclusion. Then she knew. It was because he had not expected her to be alive to listen.
It was an unpleasant thought. She said hastily, ‘Why did you —’ and gasped as she realized the probable explanation. She was alive, but he looked on her as one already dead. He had lied to her again. She was a safe confidante, she would be dead before she could pass on her knowledge.
‘I may as well tell some one,’ he said, not noticing her new fear. ‘The police know, you see. I’m not giving away any secrets.’
That calmed her a little, but it did not stop the tears that had welled into her eyes. She had little physical control left.
‘How can you be sure of that?’ she asked.
‘Something the Inspector said. About pillows. Remember?’
Elizabeth fumbled in her dressing-gown pocket for a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes, wondering if she would ever again feel normal and calm and unafraid. If she lived — and that, despite Desmond’s assurance, was something she did not dare to count on — could she go back to being the same person she had been yesterday? Would this long, dreadful night have no lasting effect? It seemed impossible to believe that it would not.
