Queen's Pawn

by Victor Canning

  On the pages of her notebook, couched on her lap, white against the folds of her green dress, the Pitman hieroglyphics flowed from her pencil. He stopped now and then, teasing at his scrubby moustache, seeking for some phrase, forming it in his mind before moving on, the skin under his raised chin red and contorted like the face, his other hand outstretched to his glass of milk, finger and thumb, like some claw, sliding slowly up and down the long length of engraved crystal.

  She knew quite well that the Paris conference held only part of his thoughts. From the moment they had got into the car, all the way down and all through dinner, up to this moment here, she had known that something else was in his mind. At dinner, over his spinach and poached eggs, he had had something of the air of a small boy who knows something and debates whether to tell. He never drank wine but he had insisted that she have a half bottle of Chablis with her grilled sole. He had been kind, considerate, almost abnormally polite, and when they had risen to go into his sitting room for coffee, his hand had taken her upper arm, guiding her, his fingers sliding up the inside of her arm, close into her armpit with an even pressure that could have been a caress or the confident hold of a friendly warder. Yes, something was in his mind and she knew that when it came out it might be followed by blow or embrace.

  He dictated, ‘ I spoke to Monsieur Lacouvre about the delay in the Nantes installation. It was his opinion that the earliest we could expect it to go on stream would be next March, but that full production would depend on the dependability of bulk supply of components from the main accessory contractors in.…’

  Outside, Belle, she told herself, are two men waiting to come in. Sarling would never see next March. They were out there in the darkness of the park, in some shrubbery, cloud above, mist moving around them with damp fingers. Two men who were absolutely sure of themselves, their plan and their own ability. But until she went to the window, showed herself and slipped the catch they must remain in the darkness. If she never went to the window, they would wait and then go away and this man would go on living for another term … but it would only be a term for the two outside would return again and again. From a school run by nuns, from a pub at Headington, from sliding slowly down the aisles of Marks and Spencers to lift a cheap tin of talcum powder, from brief love-making at a West-End hotel, weekends at Brighton, submission to Sarling, and complete possession by the one outside, how had she come to this? Sitting here, waiting to let death in. Not death. Murder. A hundred newspaper headlines and paragraphs from the past flocked over her like a cloud of birds, and the same query from the past kept running in her mind—‘ How do they ever do it? How do they ever get themselves to that point?’ And now she was at the point herself and still didn’t know.

  ‘That’s all.’ Sarling finished dictating. He came forward in his chair and propped his elbows on the desk, face resting between his fingertips, the tortured skin pushed upwards, narrowing the eyes.

  ‘You’d like me to type it now?’

  ‘No. When we get back to London tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘You don’t like working on a Sunday?’

  ‘You know I don’t mind. I just thought we were staying down here.’

  ‘We’re going back tonight.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Do you, Belle?’

  ‘You want me to order the car?’

  ‘In a moment. You can drive me up. We shall be going to the City first.’

  ‘Very good.’ There was an unexpected relief in her but she did not show it in her voice. How long would relief last? The two men outside would go away. But they would come back.

  Sarling looked at her in silence, holding her with his skin-creased eyes, embarrassing her, preparing her perhaps to be unsettled into truth by swift attack.

  ‘Belle, how far have Raikes and Berners got with their plan to murder me?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ The name Raikes was the key to the easy, immediate response. Not from her must come anything that would hurt Raikes. In a fraction of time, like the swift wheel of a mirror reflected distantly by the sun, her mind and heart were glass-bright with images of him; his fingers through her hair, his body covering hers in possession, her arms around him in protection he might never know he wanted or had even had; Raikes in her with all his passion of ownership, yet owning nothing because she was closed around him, hiding him, cherishing him and shielding him, knowing that protection too was ownership.

  ‘Belle, I said how far have they got?’

  ‘Would he be likely to tell me?’

  ‘If he wanted your help, yes.’

  ‘Well, he hasn’t asked for it—and he wouldn’t get it if he did!’

  Sarling smiled. ‘I wonder—anyway it doesn’t matter. Raikes wants me dead, but he can’t touch me so long as I have his file and photostat.’

  He tipped back in the chair suddenly, holding himself with big hair-backed hands on the arms, and talked over her head, ignoring her, dismissing her, his dialogue with an absent man … the man who waited outside unknown to him, but who was for him in this room now, real and a threat, but more than that a beloved antagonist, the challenge between them a strange joy to him. ‘I have to die. But first the file and the photostats must be in his hands. Given that, death follows. But I need Raikes and I am not letting him go until he has helped me to what I want.’

  Sarling let his chair drop back, and shook his head at her. ‘You can’t deceive me, Belle. You’re helping him—because you’re in love with him. That’s why I’m taking the photostats from here tonight. They’ll go into the City office safe until Monday morning and then into a bank vault. The files must be kept handy at Park Street because Raikes will soon need them.’

  Do that, she thought. Yes, do that, and close the door against murder. Not even Raikes and Berners could tackle a bank vault, though, God knew, Raikes would try and find some way … some faked authority from Sarling. But that was so far ahead she could give it only passing lodging in her mind.

  Sarling stood up. ‘Did you tell him how the safe here and at Park Street worked?’

  ‘Even if he asked how could I? I don’t know.’ Anger spurted in her, covering her deceit, as she watched him move across the room, the back of his velvet smoking jacket marked in shadowed creases from the chair.

  He half turned to her, smiling, the monkey grimace showing uneven teeth. ‘ You’re an intelligent girl. You would only have to watch me and detail my actions to him. He would work it out. Has worked it out, hasn’t he?’

  ‘I know nothing about what he’s done.’

  ‘Liar. You know everything about him. He owns you and you are glad to be owned, glad to give him your love though he doesn’t care a tuppenny-damn about it. You’ve become a stupid woman, Belle. You’ve let yourself fall in love with a man who, give him cause, would think no more of killing you than he does of killing me. So’—warmth, almost paternalism, rounded out the syllable—‘I must protect you. Next week I’m sending you to America. To the New York office. You’ll be there for six months. You’ll enjoy that, won’t you? You’ve always liked New York when we’ve been there before.’

  ‘I don’t care where you send me. That’s your privilege. But I’m hurt at your thinking that I … well, that I’d have anything to do with a thing like this.’

  ‘Like what, Belle?’

  ‘Like helping any man to murder you. For God’s sake, what do you think I am?’

  Calmly, turning from her, moving to the oak door that hid the strong-room door, he said, ‘ Exactly what you are. A woman willing to give her love to the first man who offers her the chance of freedom. You should thank me. Belle. He’d have given you nothing in return. Except perhaps death. Oh, yes, I’m sure that he’s thought of killing you once he gits rid of me. He would have to. He’s that kind of man. He wouldn’t be content with anything less than complete security in the life he’s planning for himself in Devon. Haven’t you ever thought of that, Belle?’

 
She stood up. ‘No, I haven’t.’

  Back to her, opening the oak door, Sarling said, ‘ Just ring down and have the car brought round. You can drive. And you’d better let Baines know at Park Street that we’re coming back. Tell him we’ll be late. He needn’t stay up for us.’

  The oak door was open now. Belle walked away, around the desk, towards the house telephone on a small table by the wall. She watched him put up his right hand and slide the protecting plate aside on the strong-room door. Then he put up his left hand and pressed his thumb on the polished surface of the inner plate. Before he pushed it into the door recess which contained the photo-electric cell, the little eye all too ready to call Stranger in the house, he turned to her and held up his left thumb, smiling.

  ‘Tell him when you see him on Monday that I’m no longer a walking key for him to steal. In another four hours he’ll have to break into a bank vault. Watch his face when you tell him. You won’t see any of this thoughts touch it. But I know what he’ll be thinking. How is it to be done? How? That’s the kind of man he is. That’s the kind of man I want.’

  He turned back and pushed the inner plate over. A few seconds later, the strong-room door slid back into the right hand wall with a sound like the long, slow sigh of a tired old man.

  Belle stood there and watched him go into the strong room. Two feet from her was the curtained window of the study. All she had to do was to move, pull aside the curtains briefly, slip the window catch, stand two seconds with her back to the world aside, and then walk to the telephone and order the car.

  I can’t do it, she thought. Not now when Sarling was so near the truth, so much on guard. Don’t, Belle, don’t. He’ll understand, agree the risk was too great. Another time, another place or perhaps, because that was what she really wanted, no other time, no other place. Never. Never to move away from design and desire into action. Two small steps to the window. That was all he asked of her. No, she couldn’t do it. Knew now that she had never been going to do it. No, no, no, no! The silent protest was vehement in her as she moved towards the window.

  In the darkness they were so still, rooted in watchfulness with the long proving sureness of their intent like a great tap running down through them into the wet earth, that they could hear behind them in the shrubbery the stir of uneasy, night-roosting birds, starlings bunched for comfort, pheasants with sleep-bound muscles holding claw and toe rigid on rough bark. Now and then came a slow shake of wings and breast feathers against the silent loading of mist drops. High overhead a jet streamed unseen through the clouds, planing down for some distant field, whistling on a low note with relief at a journey near done. The clock that was his brain told Raikes that it must be nine. Confirming, from across the park and the fields, the sound of a church clock bell began to come through the moisture-laden air.

  For an hour they had stood there without speaking. No need for words between them. All the speaking had long been done. They inhabited this house, this park and this night with the familiarity of a given birthright. On the darkness thickened darkness which was the long stretch of the house, a hundred yards away, no shape or detail visible, he could paint from memory every feature of mullioned window, weathered cornice, pilastered and pierced parapet, the lead veins of heavy, Edwardian water pipes, the twisted, ancient ropes of autumn-pruned wistaria like a boarding net over the walls to take him to the run of the first floor balcony. Main bedroom, bathroom, guest bedroom, bathroom, big hall window light, study.… Just one broad signal of light from the study and they would be moving, Berners alongside him, homburged, top-coated, white silk scarf untidy around coat collar and neck, shadowed face, scrubby moustache, the Sarling familiar.

  Away to the right in the darkness which was the house, near the roof, a window light went up and a silhouette stepped forward and drew curtains. Servants’ quarters, some maid sitting on her bed now, pulling off her shoes, flopping back, idle hand reaching out for transistor and Radio Luxembourg, for cigarettes and lighter, to lie and dream open-eyed of some pop star where, fifty years before, in the Alverton servants’ quarters, Mrs Hamilton, then Jennie Jago, had dreamed of Mr Right and where, twenty years later, catching him and one of the maids had boxed first her ears and then his and then, no doubt, in the privacy of her bed with Hamilton had shook her head with slow laughter and said ‘Little bastard, only thirteen and already wanting to be at it. You men.’

  Then, through the darkness, the signal was made. The curtains were pulled in the study, a shaft of light, rigid-sided, then suffusing and dying into the mist, held the movement of a figure he knew, the movement of a hand and then the turn of a back, silhouette unmoving momentarily and then the curtain falling back. The light died, leaving a grey shadow on his retina.

  He reached into his pocket and drew out the cotton gloves. Touching Berners, no word passing between them, he began to move, pulling on the gloves, keeping to the lawns, avoiding the gravel paths until the last four-yard stretch across to the house. He was near enough now to make out the bulge of the bow of the great mullioned ground floor window. Beyond the window lay the dining room. He could have listed every item of furniture, silver, painting and glass within.

  He moved to the right hand side of the window, gravel right up to the wall, no soft, winter-turned flower bed to take footprints. The main stem of the wistaria was a foot in diameter, twisted taut in growth like a rope, and the thick lateral runners made easy footholds for the climb. He went upwards feeling the arthritic-shaped fingers of the pruned spurs brush against his face. Stepping over the low balustrade at the top of the window, he stood on the balcony roof and waited for Berners to follow him. Berners came up, the slow movements of white gloved hands faint ectoplasm in the darkness. They stood together for a moment unmoving, letting the darkness and the night move round them, sensing it for danger and then, satisfied, they moved along the roof run. Main bedroom windows, bathroom, guest room, hall window, and now the barest sliver of light at the edge of one of the study windows. The centre pair were two feet six inches wide, four feet high. One of them, bronze catch free, was open half an inch.

  Raikes put his finger under the metal frame and pulled the window open, stepping through with the movement, brushing the curtain aside, moving on into the familiarity of the room, dazzled for a moment by the soft lights, recovering, and seeing it all in tableau.

  Belle was standing by the telephone, half turned to him, one hand raised holding the receiver, her face white, frozen with anxiety, her dark painted lips half open. The far door to the upper landing was shut, paper with handwritten notes lay on the desk blotter, the spherical, milky-grey alabaster paperweight floated on the red leather like a dead planet. A great pot of flame-coloured azaleas stood on a mahogany torchère near the strong-room oak door.

  Behind him he heard Berners enter and felt the brush of his sleeve as he passed him, moving straight across the room to lock the main door; Sarling in shape and appearance already beginning to supplant the real Sarling.

  Belle put the receiver back on its rest and nodded to the strong room. Raikes crossed to it and met Sarling coming out, a green file box under one arm. Raikes slid his arm round the man’s shoulders, taking advantage of his surprise, and eased him clear of the door and into the room.

  Raikes said, ‘ If you shout no one will hear you.’

  Almost without concern, Sarling said, ‘No doubt you know the room is soundproof.’

  Berners, coming back from the door, said, ‘I could tell you what firm did the work and how much you paid.’ He took the box from Sarling and put it on the table.

  Belle said, ‘The photostats are in the box. He was taking them to London tonight—to the office safe. I’ve just rung for the car. I’m driving him.’

  Sarling, rump against the edge of the desk, calm, trapped, showing no fear, though fear he had, looked at Belle and said, ‘While we talked … all the time, you knew they were outside?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He shrugged his shoulders, faced Raikes and said
with his grotesque of a smile, ‘ She served you well. I hope you suitably reward her.’

  Raikes reached into his raincoat pocket and pulled out the gauntleted driving, gloves, handing them to Sarling.

  ‘Put them on.’

  ‘You have another strong room to open?’

  ‘You know we have. With any sharp edge you could mutilate your left thumbprint.’

  ‘I’d already thought of it.’

  Sarling drew on the gloves and Raikes tied his hands together in front of him, wrapping the soft manilla length tight but not constricting over the leather. When Sarling died there must be no bruise on him, no chafed skin.

  At the desk, the green box in his hands, Berners said, ‘It’s locked.’

  ‘The key is in my right pocket.’

  Raikes reached into the smoking-jacket pocket for the key and handed it to Berners.

  ‘Check yours and check mine.’

  Berners opened the box and began to check through a pile of small envelopes, each one labelled with a name.

  Belle said, ‘There’s mine, too.’

  Sarling laughed. ‘They’ll keep it. You’re only changing masters, Belle. There’s no escape for you.’

  Berners pulled an envelope from the pack and, without looking at Belle, handed it to her.

  Sarling said, ‘ They’ll still have your file.’

  Belle, fingers teasing at the envelope in her hands, said, ‘Can’t it be done differently? Andy … surely you can make some arrangement now?’

  Raikes choked down a sudden desire for anger at the use of his name. What a stupid bitch she was.

  ‘All the arrangements have been made.’

  He moved Sarling from the desk, unwound the long length of climbing rope from his waist and began to knot a harness for Sarling’s body, a cradle to lower him into the darkness.

  Berners said, ‘They’re here.’