No Hearts, No Roses

by Colin Murray

  Ghislaine stood there for a moment, with what the Americans call the thousand-yard stare in her eyes. Then she knelt beside me, put her hand to my face and asked if I was all right.

  I croaked something out and put my hand on hers. We sat like that for a long time before she spoke again.

  ‘Do you remember,’ she said, and I saw some tears in her eyes, ‘when you strangled that German sentry in the goods yard just outside Caen?’

  I managed a slight, painful nod. I remembered all right. It was the worst thing I have ever done in my life. We sat in silence as the clock ticked away minutes of my life that I would never have again, and so very nearly never had at all.

  ‘I hated you then, and I hated the war that turned us into monsters. Afterwards, I saw your eyes. They didn’t gleam like Robert’s or Luc’s after a kill. They were sad, and your hands were trembling. You are not a monster, but you did a monstrous thing.’ She paused. ‘I thought all that was in the past, and now I have killed again.’ She started to sob quietly, then she sniffed and rubbed her hand across her eyes, pulling herself together. ‘Why was this man strangling you?’ she said.

  ‘Because,’ I croaked out, ‘I knew something he didn’t wish anyone else to know.’

  She nodded and stood up. ‘What do I do now?’ she said.

  ‘You meet Robert and go back to France,’ I said. I stopped to cough harshly. I needed water, but I couldn’t ask Ghislaine to fetch any. Fingerprints on glasses could hang someone. ‘You drop the gun in the Channel, and you forget you ever came here.’ Suddenly, I remembered something. ‘The taxi,’ I said. ‘Is it still out there?’

  ‘No, the driver insisted I pay him, and he left. So I came to find you. I could hear the sounds of a struggle, and the key was in the lock, so here I am.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  She bent down and kissed the top of my head.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Now you have to go. Walk a little way and then take a taxi, when you can find one, back to the hotel. Leave with Robert and the others. I’ll rest here and call the police in an hour or so. By the time they start investigating you should be on the boat. I’ll tell them I was unconscious and don’t know what happened. They probably won’t believe me but, with luck and a closed mouth, I’ll get away with it.’

  I wasn’t kidding about the resting. I was feeling awful. I lay back and closed my eyes.

  When I opened them again, another half hour of precious life had ticked away and she was gone.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  They kept me in hospital overnight, ‘for observation’. I think the police may have suggested it so that they knew where to find me, but I wasn’t complaining. The bruising on my throat was considerable, and I had trouble swallowing. The young doctor was more bothered about the bump on my head, but finally satisfied himself that I wasn’t keeping a fractured skull from him.

  I’d remembered to tidy up a little, smudging any fingerprints Ghislaine might have left on the key and any door handles, before staggering down to the nearest call box to phone the police. I hadn’t had to exaggerate my weakness, and they’d sympathetically booked me on the first ambulance to Bart’s and had only taken the briefest of statements. At first, they assumed that I’d had an accomplice who’d done the shooting, but then worked out that he would have taken me with him. Then they wondered why I hadn’t been shot as well. I hoarsely pointed out (admittedly, untruthfully) that I’d been unconscious at the time and maybe whoever it was had thought I was already dead. And they left it at that.

  Inspector Rose and his plump sergeant came to see me in the morning, just before I was due to be released, as I was finishing dressing. The inspector was carrying a paper bag with two Easter eggs in it. He put it down on the bed.

  I had the distinct impression that he didn’t believe much of what I told him, but that may have been because I knew that some of it was untrue and felt guilty. And I did have a lot to feel guilty about. As he said, I may have helped clear up one murder, but I’d left him with two unsolved killings. ‘Doubled my workload,’ he said.

  All I could do was apologize and claim, again, to have been unconscious when the killings took place. He took out his pipe, but didn’t light it. I noticed that he was wearing a spotted blue cravat and a double-breasted blue blazer, instead of bow-tie and suit. It was Sunday and he was in mufti.

  ‘We can’t even be sure about the time of the shooting,’ Inspector Rose said. ‘Apparently, there’d been a car backfiring all over the place, and the locals must have taken the shots for backfires.’

  I shook my head sadly on his behalf as I folded my tie up and slipped it into my pocket. My neck wouldn’t take kindly to such sartorial flourishes for a few more days.

  ‘The only thing that is clear is that no one thinks you fired a gun. No powder marks or anything.’ He paused for a long, lugubrious sigh. ‘Worst of all, no gun.’

  I shook my head sadly again. His sergeant glowered at me.

  ‘We’ll find him, though,’ Rose said. ‘Rest assured, we’ll find him and hang him. We always do.’

  I nodded sagely, but this didn’t satisfy the sergeant. He still glowered at me.

  ‘Are you sure that this, er, Cavendish killed the other boy?’

  ‘Well,’ I croaked, ‘he did say so before he put the belt around my neck.’

  Inspector Rose nodded and clenched his pipe between his teeth. ‘Did he happen to say why?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘funnily enough he didn’t. But I think he was jealous. He was in love or something with Jonathan Harrison. And saw Richard Ellis as a rival, I suppose.’

  Rose tched-tched, and his sergeant looked uncomfortable and even sourer.

  ‘A crime of passion then, as the French say,’ Rose said.

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said, worried at the reference to the French, wondering if he knew something.

  He took the pipe out of his mouth and smacked his lips. ‘Dear, dear,’ he said, ‘what are we coming to?’

  He sniffed and looked at the quiet corridor outside my little alcove. It had four beds in it, but mine was the only one occupied.

  ‘Well, Sergeant,’ Rose said, ‘we’d better be on our way. Tony probably wants to get on home, and I’ve my grandchildren to see.’ He picked up his paper bag. ‘Oh, by the way, Tony, you must have some important friends. My chief had a call from one of them. He was told to play it softly softly with you. It seems there are others with an interest in you, and they have some kind of priority.’

  ‘Others?’ I said.

  He tapped his nose. ‘The people you do a little work for.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, completely baffled. I couldn’t really see Enzo carrying any weight with Scotland Yard, and certainly not Les.

  ‘I was told to tell you that Andrew sends his regards,’ he said.

  ‘Oh,’ I said again, this time with a sinking feeling in my stomach.

  ‘Bye,’ he said. ‘And if you could spare the time to pop in later in the week and give us a proper statement, I would appreciate it.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  The sergeant stabbed one last evil glare at me, and they left.

  Les, Charlie and Daphne were all waiting for me by Les’s Wolseley just outside when the doctor discharged me a few minutes later. It was warm again, and I blinked in the bright sunshine. Then I closed my eyes and let it wash over me for a few seconds.

  ‘Blimey, Tone,’ Charlie said when he caught a glimpse of my livid bruising. ‘What did they do? Hang you?’

  ‘Tried to, Charlie,’ I said. I smiled at them all. ‘Thanks for coming to collect me. I’m a bit dodgy on the old pins just at the moment.’

  ‘No problem, Tony,’ Les said. ‘Anyway, Daphne insisted.’

  ‘I’ve brought you some chicken soup,’ Daphne said. ‘For your dinner. From the look of your neck, you’re going to have trouble even getting that down you.’

  ‘Thanks, Daff,’ I said.

  Les solicitously ushered me into the back of the car,
and he and Daphne sat either side of me.

  I told them as much of what had happened as I cared to on the journey back to Leyton, which meant that Ghislaine didn’t get a mention.

  Les looked very thoughtful. ‘Miss Beaumont won’t be at all happy,’ was all he said.

  ‘When is she ever?’ Daphne said a bit too sharply.

  ‘Come on, Daff,’ I said. ‘Be a little sympathetic. Her agent and her boyfriend . . .’

  She sniffed dismissively.

  My bare office felt sad and empty. The tray with the remains of the tea I’d drunk with Ghislaine and Jerry was still on the table, and the smell of her horrible cigarettes still lingered.

  I could hear some music coming from downstairs. Nothing I recognized, but it was modern and mournful, so Jerry wasn’t feeling great.

  I put Daphne’s Thermos with my soup in it on the table beside the tray and saw a note from Jerry lying there. I picked it up and slumped into my grandfather’s old chair.

  The chair groaned under me.

  The note asked me to call Miss Beaumont, ‘please’.

  I sank down further in the comfortable old chair.

  I wasn’t out of the woods yet. There were no tidy conclusions, and repercussions were certain to come from Jameson and his colleagues and from Inspector Rose. My messy and muddled life would continue for a while yet, but I might, just, get away with it.

  In the cinema, the credits would roll now and my mother would turn to my father and say, ‘So what happens now?’ He would shrug, ruffle my hair, wink at me and say, ‘Life continues. As before. Only, everyone is sadder and wiser.’

  Maybe Bernie would sell the diamonds for enough money for me to take Mrs Williams – Ann – to Paris. I’d always wanted to show her the place, but I’d never had the wherewithal to do it in the style I’d like: posh hotel and good restaurants with nice wine.

  Perhaps I’d look up Ghislaine. Although it might be better not to. There were things that neither of us wanted to be reminded of. Monstrous things, like violent death.

  Fluffy slid sinuously around the door, padded across the floor and rubbed up against my leg, purring like a low-flying bomber.

  Funnily enough, though, all I could think of was something Les had said. He’d been thinking about Miss Beaumont’s latest picture, the romantic historical. ‘Well,’ he’d said, looking more like a sad-eyed, jowly hound than ever, ‘maybe you can work some magic with her, Tony, otherwise it looks like there’ll be no Hearts and Roses for a while.’

  I reached down and stroked Fluffy.

  Time to pretend that I was sadder and wiser and make some telephone calls. There was Mrs Williams – Ann – to apologize to and hadn’t Manny invited me for a meal this Sunday? Or was that in another life? I could bring my own chicken soup.