Stop that, he told himself – don’t think of her.
He parted the curtains slightly so that he could watch her more easily. He could see the back of her head, and her legs, very shapely in their pale, sheer tights, stretched out on the sofa, her tweed skirt a little rucked up. Now and then she stretched out an arm for her glass; he noticed her ring catching the light from the lamp.
She had finished eating. The last of the wine had been poured into her glass.
It was time.
Ronald could scarcely breathe for the excitement that caught his whole body as he moved forward from the shelter of the curtains, keeping in the pool of shadow behind Dorothea. Holding the knife in his gloved hand, moving silently, he came round to face her.
Dorothea was feeling pleasantly woozy after plenty to drink and her hot meal, which in the end had been quite tasty. She was not paying much attention to the drama on the television screen, almost dozing. Suddenly there was a figure in some sort of mask and helmet standing very close to her. The coffee table was pushed aside and the wine bottle fell from it, rolling over the floor, spilling dregs.
Terror filled Dorothea.
She saw a black-clad arm and a gloved hand waving a knife. Eyes, above a dark scarf, glittered at her.
Both hands came up to her breast and she gave a shocked, choking shriek.
At once he hit her on the side of her face with his gloved left hand; the knife, in his right hand, still pointed down at her.
‘Be quiet,’ he snarled.
Tears of pain filled Dorothea’s eyes. She put her hand to her face. Blood pounded in her ears; she felt sick and giddy with horroRonald grinned behind the scarf that covered his face. He had learned the effect of pain.
‘Lie back, Dorothea Wyatt,’ he said in his assumed voice. ‘Lie back, and you won’t be hurt.’
He knew her name.
‘What do you want?’ she croaked, almost petrified with fear. She made a huge physical effort to breathe deeply, attempting to steady herself. This was a burglar. Was he alone?
‘Lie back,’ he repeated, still looming over her.
‘The silver’s in the dining room,’ she said, her voice shaking.
‘I don’t want the silver,’ said Ronald. ‘You know what I want, Dorothea Wyatt. Undo your blouse.’ He’d see them again in a moment, those white, soft breasts. He moistened his lips under the concealing scarf. He’d wrench it off later; he’d have to – this time, he meant to experience bliss.
Very slowly, Dorothea moved her hand to the top button of the wool blouse she wore under a heavy mohair cardigan. There were several silver chains around her neck.
The man meant to rape her.
She was still trying to clear her head but what she had drunk, and now shock, made her confused. She struggled to think coherently and into her muddled brain came the memory of the raped and murdered woman in Fletcham, about whose death George Fortescue had been questioned.
This was some dreadful sick joke. Someone who knew her had dressed up to frighten her, make her think he was the murdering rapist.
Who could do such a thing? Could it be George? If it were, all she need do was laugh and tell him to stop being silly.
But it couldn’t be George. George would never have hit her. And George knew he did not have to threaten her.
‘How did you get in?’ she asked, and she tried to sit higher against the cushions on the sofa.
Ronald laughed. It was a harsh, eerie sound, quite without humour, and Dorothea, listening to it, was more frightened than she had ever been in her life. This was physical terror, basic and primitive.
‘You showed me where you kept the key yourself,’ said Ronald, and forgot to alter his voice.
Dorothea was staring at him. She saw the glittering eyes and the knife still pointing down at her. Then she remembered: she recalled fumbling for the key under the water butt and Ronald Trimm accompanying her into the house; she saw herself pouring him sherry and his hand reaching out for the glass; and she saw his hand at the till the day before, snapping her cheque into it, a squat hand with pale ginger hairs on the back.
She had turned him down, and this was his revenge. It was Ronald Trimm who stood here, frightening her, trying to make her think he was the murderer of that other woman. She’d been stabbed, so he’d brought a knife, and he’d disguised himself to add to the terror – very successfully.
Working this out brought a warm surge of relief, but it also brought a feeling of immense rage. How dare he scare her like this?
‘Mr Trimm!’ she exclaimed, and she sat upright. ‘How silly, dressing up and trying to frighten me. Well, you’ve had your little joke. Now take off that ridiculous hat. How foolish you look.’ And she laughed, a brittle, nervous laugh, but a laugh, none the less.
He had given himself away! He had mentioned the key and she knew who he was! And she had stopped cringing in terror. She was laughing at him! It was all going wrong.
‘You turned me down,’ he said.
‘Let’s talk about it,’ said Dorothea, struggling to control her laughter, which was bordering on hysteria. She’d got herself into this, acting recklessly that time. Somehow she must save this idiot’s face, and any honour she might have left. He couldn’t mean to force her at knife point.
But he had hit her. And he was pointing a knife at her now.
Thoughts crowded into her mind. The woman who was murdered had been an antique dealer. Ronald Trimm dealt in antiques. But surely he could not have been the killer? She wouldn’t be frightened of Ronald Trimm.
Yet there was madness in those eyes as they glittered at her.
‘You need a lesson,’ he said. ‘Undress.’
Ronald Trimm, Dorothea told herself; that’s who this is – Ronald Trimm. She would not be vanquished by Ronald Trimm, whatever he may have done, and she could not think about that now. She struck out with her left fist, hitting his arm hard in the crook of the elbow with the side of her hand, at the same time drawing her legs up to her body, preparing to kick him.
The knife fell from Ronald’s hand and he had an awareness of her coiling herself up like a spring, resisting him.
Behind her head, the lamp on the table burned.
Ronald picked it up and crashed the base of it down on her head. It was made of marble, and one blow was enough to silence her for ever. In the last long second of her life, Dorothea knew that this was the killer the police were seeking.
19
Ronald stared down at her. The blood seemed to be everywhere. She lay quite still, mouth open, her blue eyes staring at him. Her arms had fallen back; her wool blouse clung to her body.
He was still holding the lamp.
He let go of it, simply opening his hand round it, and it fell to the ground, the bulb shattering. The lamp rolled a little way.
Ronald looked round, in panic. What now? Was she dead? He bent over her, and could detect no movement, but he did not touch her. He hadn’t meant to kill her, only to silence her, to stop her mocking laughter. But she’d recognised him; she’d attacked him. Now she couldn’t tell anyone about it.
He’d backed into the coffee table, and Dorothea’s tray had fallen from it. The empty wine bottle lay on the floor, the glass nearby. A thin trickle of burgundy oozed over the carpet. Apart from this, and the lamp lying on the carpet with the broken glass from the bulb around it, the room was orderly. Should he make it look like a burglary? Break open a window, somewhere? Ransack the place and take some of her precious objects? But what would he carry them away in? A burglar must come equipped with bag or holdall. He did not know that an experienced thief would probably use pillowcases from the beds.
He wouldn’t know what to do with the stuff, if he did take anything. He couldn’t get rid of it through his normal contacts. And the sooner he got away from here the better. He’d go home as fast as he could; Nancy would say he had been at the shop, at work, and had come straight home, if anyone asked. But they wouldn’t. No one would suspect him.
Ronald folded his knife and put it into his trouser pocket; then, not looking at Dorothea again, he went from the room into the hall, unlocked the front door, and let himself out.
He stood there in darkness. She’d turned off the porch light when she came home. He took his small torch from his pocket but he did not dare turn it on. He must get away, fast. He felt hot, suddenly sweating inside his dark clothes.
His raincoat and hat! He’d almost forgotten them!
He groped his way round the side of the house to the rear, and found the bush where his things were hidden, forced now and then to use the torch sparingly. He put on the raincoat and hat. It wouldn’t be safe, after what had happened, to risk meeting anyone in the village; he must go over the fields, but he’d never been that way before.
He picked his way over the garden to the fence by the tiny light of the torch which he turned on and off for quick peeps at the ground.
He was walking across the field when he thought of the unlocked front door. If he went back and locked it from the outside, what would he do with the key? Drop it in through the letterbox? Surely that would look odd?
Perhaps, when she was found, the police would think she had left it open for someone she knew to come in – George Fortescue, for instance. Wasn’t that likely?
He felt better, thinking of that, and walked on, stumbling over the field, shielding the thin beam from his torch with his hand, using it only to avoid the worst pitfalls in the rough ground he crossed. A hedge loomed up black in front of him, and he had to work his way along it before finding the stile. In one field some steers blundered up to him, puffing and snorting, following him, their breath warm and sweet, their tread heavy, alarming him.
He reached the last stile, and saw the headlights of a car coming down the road. He snapped off his torch and crouched down, waiting until it had gone by. Then he climbed over and hurried back to the shop by the back way, meeting no one.
His shoes and trouser ends were covered in mud. He washed the shoes at the sink and removed his trousers to soak off the mud; better to explain damp trouser ends to Nancy, if he couldn’t somehow hide them from her, than muddy ones. He unlocked the bottom drawer of the desk and put the black sweater inside it, with the knife and the balaclava helmet.
Then he went home. It wasn’t yet ten o’clock, but it felt as though most of the night must have passed.
Nancy came out to meet him when she heard his key in the door. He must have had a bad time with the books; he’d never been as late as this on a Friday before.
‘You must be hungry, dear,’ she said, as he took off his raincoat and hung it up in the hall.
‘I slipped down to the Plough for some sandwiches,’ said Ronald. ‘Just to tide me over.’ It was his alibi, so that the truth of his working late would be established if anyone asked. ‘I found the mistake in the books. It was a silly one and meant so much cross-checking. I must take care it doesn’t happen again.’
Nancy knew she could have found it herself in half the time. She was a much better book-keeper than Ronald; in fact, she was better at most things than he was, but a good wife didn’t draw attention to her own superiority in the interests of preserving masculine pride.
‘I’ll get you your dinner,’ she said. ‘Though it’s quite dried up in the oven. And I’ll make some tea.’
‘I’ll just go and wash,’ said Ronald.
While she was putting the kettle on, he quickly changed his trousers. He bundled the damp ones into the airing cupboard, and his shoes too. She wouldn’t go looking for anything in there tonight and he would take them out in the morning. The shoes were good ones, so they’d probably be not much the worse for their treatment when he’d given them a good polish.
Later, having eaten his fish pie and peas, followed by plums and custard, he undressed in the bedroom while Nancy creamed her face at the dressing table. She patted her fleshy jowls, a small plastic cape round her neck, in a green quilted dressing gown above a long-sleeved frilled pink nightdress. She believed in keeping herself pretty for Ronald. He was very tired, physically tired, after his walk across the fields, but he felt safe. It was good to be here at home with Nancy, who always took care of him.
Later still, in bed, he heard her even breathing as she slept. She gave her familiar little snore. It was as if nothing at all out of the way had happened.
He was still unappeased. He did not sleep for some time, bothered by lusts of the flesh which seemed much worse now than ever before.
In the small hours of the morning, heavy clouds massed in the sky and later it began to rain, obliterating the traces of Ronald’s passage over Dorothea’s lawn to the fence separating the garden from the field.
It was still raining in the morning. George had planned a game of golf with Bill Kyle, who thought he should be kept occupied in as normal a way as possible but, with the heavens spilling, they had to agree to cancel it.
George wondered how to spend the day. It was no use washing the car, a task that could be spun out some time by anyone determined enough to make it last. The paperwork for his committees was all up to date, and he’d delivered the Liberal Association’s newsletter.
Daniel telephoned after breakfast. Because of the weather, plans he’d had to take Vivian for a country ramble had gone wrong. She’d grown up in an urban area and her ignorance about country ways, though in a sense charming, must, he felt, be corrected. But Crowbury was rural; her education could be pursued whilst at the same time they checked up on his father. They planned to come over, he said.
George had been thinking that he’d go along to the golf clubhouse for lunch; now he abandoned that idea quite cheerfully. He’d go up the village and buy food for the young people, sausages or something easy to cook. The girl would do it.
He set off in the car, because it was raining so hard, and with a certain bravado, not sure if he would be greeted with snubs. He’d not been out in the village since those letters came. There had been some more, but there were none this morning.
There was a small queue at the butcher’s. George tacked himself on to the end of it. His turn came at last, and he bought two pounds of the butcher’s own special make of sausage, and a large piece of veal and ham pie. They might stay overnight, together, he surmised, in the modern way, in Daniel’s room. He supposed they knew what they were doing.
While his sausages were being weighed, a young woman whom he knew vaguely by sight was attended to by the butcher’s assistant. With her, there were a small boy and girl who were behaving unusually well for modern children, standing quietly, the boy holding a shopping basket. George was aware that the woman was staring at him. He took no notice, paying attention to the sausages he was buying. She might be an anonymous-letter writer.
But, as he accepted his parcel and turned to leave the shop, he glanced at her warily, and saw that she was gazing at his hands, in which he held the sausages and pie. She looked up then, and caught his eye, and smiled. Her pale, thin face was transformed by the radiance of the expression she now wore.
‘Good morning, Mr Fortescue,’ Valerie said. ‘Terrible weather, isn’t it?’
George was amazed at being spoken to, for even the butcher had been quite perfunctory in his manner. He responded warmly and they walked out of the shop together. Valerie said she was going to the greengrocer’s, and George realised that he should go there too; Daniel and Vivian would want fruit and so on. He held the door open for her and, when he had bought some apples and bananas, gave each of the children a banana. People in the shop looked very surprised. He drove home feeling almost cheerful for the first time since Angela’s departure.
After unpacking the shopping, he thought that it might be a good idea to invite Dorothea over to lunch. She’d really been very good to him. If she didn’t care for the menu, she could do something about improving it.
He tried her on the
telephone, but there was no reply. It was unusual for her to be out and about so early; perhaps she was in the bath. He waited a while and then tried again. After several attempts, there was still no answer, and George felt a niggling unease, though he couldn’t explain it to himself. She had probably broken with custom, got up early, and gone off for the day.
At half-past eleven, he drove round to the Manor House to make sure.
As he turned up towards the house, he noticed the curtains were drawn at all the windows facing the front. Was the lazy woman still in bed? She might have been plastered the night before and be sleeping it off. Well, if that was the case, it was time she roused herself. She was going to pieces, he decided. What she ought to do was get a job to give her an interest; other middle-aged women seemed able to do it. He snapped off this thought, as he remembered Angela’s defection.
No one came when he rang the bell.
He walked round to the back door. It was securely locked. A bottle of milk stood outside, the cap nipped by tits and the milk level lowered.
George went back to the front door and tried ringing again, but nothing happened. The curtains were drawn at the window of the bedroom he thought was Dorothea’s, overlooking the garden, and feeling rather foolish, he threw gravel up at it, but there was no response.
She must be sleeping very heavily. He’d called her name, and generally made some noise.
He went back to the front door and tried the latch. The door opened.
George went in, and saw that the lights were on. He could hear the radio from the sitting room. She must have been in a state to go to bed and leave things like this.
‘Dorothea?’ he called.
No answer.
Pausing from time to time to call again, George went upstairs and, with some trepidation, opened the door of the room that must be hers.
Her bed was made, the coverlet neatly drawn up. George frowned. He went from room to room, repeating her name, but she was not to be found.
Hand of Death Page 17
