BODY IN RIVER
Following an autopsy the inquest was resumed yesterday in Bath into the death of a woman found in the River Frome near Oldbury twelve days ago. As yet the dead woman has still not been named. She is described as being in her early twenties, 5 ft. 4 in. tall, with short brown hair and brown eyes. On her left arm just below the elbow she wore a small tattoo depicting a dove in flight. Police are anxious to hear from anyone who might recognize such a description.
The pathologist who carried out the autopsy stated that death was due to drowning and that in his opinion death had taken place less than twenty-four hours before the body was discovered. The young woman, it is stated, had an extremely high level of alcohol in her blood. Dressed in jeans and a black sweater, her body was found under a bridge on the 8th of September. The coroner recorded an open verdict. Police say that although there is no evidence of foul play routine enquiries will continue.
I sat staring at the article.
The tattoo of the bird. I had seen it. In my mind I relived once more that incident during my last minutes at Woolvercombe House when the young woman had run to my car, desperate and begging me to help her. Once again I glimpsed her bare arm as McIntosh pulled back her sleeve; I saw again the tattoo just below her elbow.
She had tried so hard to escape. And now she was dead.
* * *
All through the rest of the day I kept thinking of the dead girl.
Who was she? What had she been doing at the house? Why had she wanted so desperately to escape from it? She hadn’t been a nun, that much I was certain of. But then why had she—and the others—been dressed in nun’s garb?
I didn’t have answers to these questions, but I was certain that the dead girl was the one I had seen at Woolvercombe House. Therefore, if the police were continuing with their enquiries I should contact them and tell them as much as I knew.
When I left the shop after closing time, though, I’d still done nothing about it. And I realized I wasn’t going to.
To become involved again now could only bring everything back, stir it all up again. And I wanted to forget it. I had been involved before, somehow, but that involvement was over; my own part in that business—whatever it had been—was finished—and it must stay that way. No amount of words to the investigating police could help the girl now, I reasoned; she was dead, and nothing would change that.
In the past I had succeeded to a degree in putting the whole strange affair out of my mind, and I would do it again. True, the questions would remain unanswered, but I didn’t care. I didn’t want to know the answers, I said to myself; I never wanted to know them.
I stopped at a litter bin on the street corner and opened my briefcase. Taking out the newspaper I dropped it in amongst the rest of the garbage.
Finished.
Chapter Sixteen
Monday, 28th of April.
I glanced across at the calendar where I’d circled in red the possible dates of Ilona’s return. It would take place, she had told me, sometime between the 10th and the 17th of May.
I had written to her regularly and fairly frequently over the weeks. I’d had little to relate, though, apart from the activities of myself and the children, and my letters seemed to me dull and prosaic—particularly when compared with those I received with their full and vivid descriptions of foreign people and places. Still, I said to myself, there could be no progress at all without communication, and our communication—such as it was—would do until we next met.
Originally I’d expected her to return in December—at which time it was planned that she’d spend Christmas with us. Perhaps then, I’d said to myself, I’d get everything sorted out and come to some decision as to where I was going and what I wanted. But in the middle of December had come her letter from Warsaw with the news that she wouldn’t be able to make it back after all—not yet, anyway. The company hadn’t been able to make up the lost time in the shooting, she said, and as a result the schedule had been extended by almost three weeks. She would now, she added,—as soon as Napoleon was finished—have to go straight on to her next assignment. And even then the new production company would have to engage someone to fill in for her for three or four days. ‘It’s hellish,’ she wrote, ‘and I must have been mad to let myself in for such a slog. Still, we live and learn . . .’ Definitely, though, she said, she’d be returning in the spring, and until then she’d be making ‘no more commitments’. She underlined the last three words.
And now her return was imminent.
As she no longer had her own place to go to I had written that she was welcome to stay in the flat while she looked around for something permanent. And she had accepted the offer, saying that she’d be glad of it—she was sick of hotels. Now, though, I began to wonder whether in my haste I’d done the right thing. Still, she wouldn’t be staying for very long, I reminded myself, so even if things didn’t work out between us the matter of her using the flat wouldn’t have to prove a disaster . . .
I lit a cigarette. The shop had been closed for half an hour and I could relax in the quiet before I got down to work. I moved to the window and looked out. There had been a storm last night but now the roads were dry again. I thought of how, last evening, Simeon and I had walked out together into the wind, before it had reached its height and before the rain had come. We had gone onto the common where the gales had whipped the tree-tops, flattened our clothes against us and snatched away our voices so that we’d had to yell to be heard. We had loved it. Now only a few broken slates and endless pieces of scattered paper on the road below showed that the storm had ever happened.
I turned from the window and faced my easel. On it sat a new portrait of Simeon. I’d started it over the weekend. Over the next few days, I hoped, I would get it finished.
For now, though, I took it down from the easel and placed it leaning against the wall below the old painting—now framed—of the girl with the long red hair. Rosalind—that pale memory of my past that now only had substance in this frame. My memories of her were so fleeting and vague; I had ephemeral visions of her standing on the sea-front at Brighton, turning to me, laughing, the wind catching at her hair and blowing it across her cheek; I saw her in the bedroom of the flat where I’d been staying. The images in my mind’s eye had no meaning now, though—they were like faded photographs from an old album, all belonging to another time and another place. The picture now served simply to illustrate the progress I had made with my painting over the years, and it was for this purpose that I had framed it and hung it on the wall. Over the past months I had spent less and less time at my easel and I wanted to give my faded spark of interest a little breath of air . . .
* * *
Someone was ringing the doorbell. I put down my brush and moved to the window. Pushing it up I leaned through and looked down. I couldn’t see anyone; whoever was there must be within the shallow porch. I lowered the window. As I did so the ringing of the bell sounded again. I went down the stairs and along the passage to the front door. As I opened it I stepped back in surprise.
‘Catherine . . .’
She faced me on the front step looking dishevelled and distraught. Her coat was pulled over her swollen body; her hair hung loose and unkempt.
She didn’t say anything, only gazed at me for a moment with relief in her eyes. Then, as I stepped aside she moved forward into the hall.
Chapter Seventeen
I made tea in the kitchen and carried it into the studio. She was there just as I’d left her, sitting in the carver, staring ahead, hands clasped over her belly. As I held out the cup and saucer she started slightly as if coming out of a dream. In her face I saw nervousness, and what appeared to be a look of haunted desperation. She drank until the cup was empty. When she put it down I saw that her fingers trembled slightly.
‘Would you like more?’
She nodded. ‘Please . . .’
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As I refilled the cup she said dully, ‘I phoned your home. Your daughter, I think it was—she said you were here. She gave me the address . . .’
I watched her as she drank again from the cup. ‘What about something to eat?’ I asked. ‘Are you hungry?’
‘I haven’t eaten anything since last night.’
It was with these words that her remaining resolve disintegrated. The next moment she was bending down her head and sobbing without control. I stooped beside her, took the cup and put it down. Laying my hand on her shoulder I stayed there, leaning over her as she wept.
After a time her sobbing eased and when at last she was quiet I pulled another chair closer and sat down.
‘All right,’ I said gently, ‘why don’t you tell me what’s wrong . . . ?’
Eyes closed she said brokenly, ‘I’m sorry to have done this—come to you like this, I mean. I didn’t know what else to do. I had to go somewhere.’
‘Why?—What’s happened?’
She didn’t answer, and I added: ‘Is it something to do with your great-aunt—Miss Stewart?’
After a moment she raised her head and looked at me.
‘She’s not my great-aunt,’ she said. ‘I’m not related to her in any way. I’d never set eyes on her before last year—or any of those other people in that house.’
‘—But—but then what were you doing there?’
With a shrug she said simply: ‘A job.’
‘A job—?’
‘Yes. I was—hired.’
I shook my head. It didn’t make sense. ‘Catherine,’ I said, ‘what’s all this about?’
‘Like I told you,’ she said, ‘—I was hired.’
‘—As a nurse . . .’
‘No, I was never a nurse. I was an actress.’
‘An actress?’ I was sounding like a parrot. ‘—I just don’t understand.’
She looked at me sadly and gave a little shake of her head. ‘Of course you don’t understand.’ After a pause she went on: ‘You see—I was an actress—and last spring, while I was working with a small rep company I got a note from Mrs. Weldon.’
‘You knew her?’
‘No, I didn’t. But that’s how it all started—with her note being delivered to the stage door. She said she’d seen me in the play I was doing, and asked if I’d meet her. She said she had a job I might be interested in doing. Well, that was enough for me—so—we met. She talked to me for a long time—to find out about me, I suppose—and the way I felt—which was pretty low just then, I can tell you.—Although I’m a pretty good actress I just wasn’t getting anywhere, and I was pretty disillusioned with the whole business.’ She shrugged. ‘Anyway, it was then that she put her proposition to me.’
‘Which was?’
‘—That I go to that house in the country—and play a part—that of Miss Stewart’s great-niece. I was offered twenty thousand pounds. Ten thousand pounds there and then and a further ten thousand when the job was finished.’
‘Twenty thousand,’ I said, shaking my head in wonder. ‘But what was the purpose of it?—playing such a part?’
‘It isn’t finished yet. Not till I’ve had the baby . . .’
‘—That was the job—You agreed to have a child for them . . .’
‘Yes.’
I looked at the swell of her body beneath the tight fabric of her dress. I did swift calculations, and then said:
‘Your baby . . . the father . . .’
She just looked at me.
‘Of course,’ I said. I gazed at her for a moment then got up and walked to the window. I stood with my back to her, staring out over the street. ‘So all that,’ I said at last, ‘was—arranged.’
‘—Yes.’
‘All of it. Your coming to me in the night . . . all those nights . . .’
‘Yes, it was all planned . . . They planned everything.’
I turned around and looked at her.
‘You and I—when we made love it was—was in accordance with some previously worked-out design . . .’
She nodded as she answered, but not meeting my eyes. ‘Very carefully worked out.’
‘Yes,’ I said after a while, ‘—it all makes a kind of sense—seeing that it was a plan—a design. And I can see it goes back further. They got me there for that purpose. And they did it by appealing to my—my vanity, my ambition and my—disappointment—the regret that I’d never made it as a painter. I should have guessed that there was something odd going on when they offered me so much money.’ I shook my head disparagingly. ‘In my—vanity, of course, I believed it was my talent they were after—my ability as a portrait painter. But they didn’t want that ability at all. They just wanted my presence in the house . . .’
My new knowledge made clear to me now the reasons for so many previously unexplained things. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘of course! They wanted me there, and they also made sure that I stayed there—until my function was fulfilled. That evening when I planned on going out—to Bath; they stopped me going—fixed my car so that it wouldn’t go. Yes! They didn’t want me getting up to mischief in a strange city—being on my own and away from home. Who knows—I could have—have met someone else, some attractive young woman; and that was a possibility that had to be prevented. They had to keep me ready all the time—for you.’
She looked at me in silence.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘—and they didn’t take any chances, did they? I was so well—primed. The great feeling of sympathy I had for you—’ I paused. ‘Were you being ill-treated by Hathaway—?’
‘No.’ She shook her head.
‘Not at all? What I saw from my window?—the sounds I heard from my room?—the bruises I saw on your wrist . . . ?’
‘None of it was real. It was all part of the act.’
I nodded. ‘And those other happenings . . . the times when you didn’t turn up for the sitting—the excuses you gave . . .’
‘They weren’t true. All that about feeling ill—falling down the stairs, or reading to Miss Stewart—none of it was true. You were getting on too well with the painting. You had to be slowed down.’
‘Until I’d done what they wanted.’
‘Yes, until then. They had to keep you there till then.’
‘Yes . . .’ More and more of it made sense. ‘The keys of my car were never lost. They were simply put aside until I was allowed to go. And Hathaway—he never did leave the house.’
‘No, he was there all the time.’
Although so much was becoming clear to me it was too much to take in all at once. I just stood there in the middle of the floor and wondered at the engineering of the whole project. They’d used me like a musical instrument and, knowing their instrument well, had got exactly the tune they were after. That massage Carl had given me—that too had all been a part of the design—along with the drink he had dispensed—which obviously had been some kind of powerful aphrodisiac. So carefully he had worked on me that night, and I, primed for sexual arousal, had been brought to doubt my masculinity. So, with that fleeting doubt planted in my mind it was pretty certain that I would jump at the first opportunity to prove myself . . . And then later, of course, Catherine had come to my room and I, ready and raring to go, hadn’t recognized her subtle seduction for what it was. I had performed just as they had hoped and expected. Now into my mind came a brief picture of those three passionate, all-consuming sexual bouts. How I had performed . . .
But what had it all been for—the result? I stared at her for a long moment then said: ‘I was picked for this; I was chosen. But why me? I can understand paying a woman to conceive and carry a child—but what I don’t understand is why they chose me to be the father—and were so determined to have me.’ It was bewildering. I had been drawn into some strange scheme and manipulated at the will of others. And this girl—she had helped in that m
anipulation . . .
I turned away from her and caught sight of my reflection in the long glass next to the easel. I stared at my image. I looked at the curving nose, the long jaw, the large mouth and the protruding ears. A graceless face, I thought—and I had so readily accepted that she had come to me of her own desire . . . Angrily I turned back to face her. ‘So what do you want here now?’ I said harshly. ‘Obviously not what you got last time. What is it—have you decided you’ve had enough of that place?’ I paused and added bitterly: ‘You’d better go back or you’ll lose the rest of the money.’
‘I don’t want it.’
‘Shame.’ I shook my head in mock sympathy. ‘Still, you’ve got ten thousand out of them, so you haven’t done too badly out of the deal. After all, it must have been pretty much like a free holiday. Good food, nice place to stay. All you had to do was play some poor idiot along and get him to fuck you a couple of times!’ I spat the words out at her, the rage so high in me that I felt the pricking of tears behind my eyelids. Turning away I added, my voice heavy with loathing, ‘You make me sick.’
She said after a moment: ‘—I can understand how you feel.’
‘Can you? I doubt that very much. You used me as much as they did.’
‘Yes—but you see I didn’t know you then. It was easy to agree to—to con somebody who was without any identity. And that’s how you were before we met. You were coming to the house to paint my portrait and I had my job to do . . .’
‘And you did it very well. Brilliantly.’
She shook her head. ‘No—it’s like I said—I didn’t know you then. Then when I’d begun to it was too late.’
‘Sure it was,’ I said shortly, and then: ‘Why are you giving me all this crap!’
‘Please—listen—’ She spoke tearfully. ‘I got myself into a situation and—there was nothing I could do but go through with it. And I liked you—so much. And in a way liking you made it easier for me. It was easier to go to bed with you—someone I liked and trusted. I hated conning you, but at the same time I was glad it was you. It made it easier and more difficult—at the same time.’
The Reaping Page 13
