Fog of Doubt

by Christianna Brand

  ‘What on earth’s to become of her?’ said Cockie.

  ‘Oh, God only knows.’

  ‘I was thinking last night that Ted Edwards might have made an honest woman of her; but that was while he still thought she was a dove deceived by an elderly eagle with the aid of strong drink.’

  ‘He had no illusions by the time dear Melissa had finished,’ said Tilda.

  ‘Green-eyed envy,’ said Cockie, drawing on his cigarette.

  ‘Thank God Thomas wasn’t there—it would have broken his heart.’

  ‘He’ll have to know some time,’ said Cockie.

  ‘Well, yes, it must all come out in the questions and things. Poor darling—one more horrible shock for him. But different from—last night; I mean, that was vile, that screaming little neurotic of a Melissa and Rosie rolling about in mock faints and things, and Tedward looking like death.…’

  ‘The little minx!’ said Cockie.

  ‘Little nymphomaniac, more like.’

  ‘I meant all these stories: all true, Matilda, you see—but each one selected to suit the confidante of the moment; and most brilliantly. You might be expected to sympathize with an affair of first love, two young things in the grip of their emotions; Tedward got the betrayal by the experienced roué, the old lady got the story of the strong silent man, sweeping her lit. and fig. off her feet.’ He shook his head, the smoke of his cigarette curling up thin and blue between his brown fingers. ‘She’s a lot more shrewd than one gives her credit for. One’s always noticing that.’

  The baby had eaten its apple and had its teeth cleaned and now lay back in her arms and began its ritual goodnight crooning. ‘Sorry, Cockie, about this frightful row, and the awful part is that I have to join in too.’ She sang rather tunelessly the first lines of a song called Three-mice-unable-to-see … ‘Now you sing, darling, so that mama can talk.’

  ‘More pleess,’ said the baby.

  ‘No, no, you sing, baby sing.’

  ‘Potty, potty, pot-ty,’ sang the baby.

  ‘Well, all right, though not quite the theme one might have chosen.’ She shushed it for a moment at the sound of soft footsteps on the stairs outside and called out, ‘Rosie?’

  ‘I’m going to my room,’ said Rosie’s voice. ‘I don’t want any supper.’

  ‘You needn’t think I’m going to bring you any,’ called Matilda, through the door, ‘because I’m not.’

  Rosie was understood to reply that she didn’t want any, thank you, she had just said so; and they needn’t think they could treat her like Lady Godiva one minute and start bringing her supper and things the next! ‘She means send her to Coventry, I suppose,’ said Matilda, shrugging. ‘Let her get on with it!’

  ‘Porty, porty, por-ty,’ sang the baby, showing off; it looked at Cockrill shyly from the corners of its eyes but he disregarded it ruthlessly. ‘What on earth can Rosie have been writing to Tedward about?’

  ‘I suppose she wants to know whether or not to support him in this “confession” of his. It looked, last night, as if she’d agreed to, though she didn’t actually say anything; still, she didn’t deny it.’

  ‘She didn’t show any great astonishment,’ said Cockie. ‘They’d obviously discussed what he was going to say.’

  ‘It must be all a nonsense,’ said Matilda uneasily. ‘I mean, sometimes I think I’d welcome anything that would set Thomas free, but to think that Tedward really was a murderer.…’ She got up and the baby’s singing increased in volume and silliness lest by any chance she should be imagining that it was ready for its bed. ‘You don’t think, Cockie, that it could have been done that way? Or do you? It was your theory in the first place.’

  Cockrill got up too and the chair rocked backwards and kicked him violently in the backs of his legs. ‘Damn this infernal thing! Oh, beg the child’s pardon!’ He jabbed out his cigarette on the nursery mantelpiece and hurriedly flapped away the ash with his cuff. He said: ‘I don’t know what I believe, Matilda. There’s no question of my having a theory—I saw that the thing with the telephone might have been cooked and I proved that it could have been cooked—that’s all. As you say, it all rests with Rosie.’

  ‘And then who’s to know whether Rosie’s speaking the truth?’ She plonked the baby down in its cot where it sang porty-porty-porty in a sillier voice than ever and went off into peals of self-conscious laughter; and said, wearily, tucking down its waving legs: ‘I wonder what my poor darling’s doing now!’

  Her poor darling was at that moment sitting very unhappily on the edge of the bed while the gentleman of the broken glass bottle, who had taken a fancy to him, sat very close beside him and poured out his confidences. ‘Schizophrenia, you see, Doc.—that’s what’s the trouble with me. You being a doctor, you’ll understand better than what these louts of coppers seem to do. Schizophrenia—invalided out of the army with a touch of it, I was, and I daresay it’s got a bit worse since then.’ He seemed quite delighted about it. ‘Carve up the lot of you, I wouldn’t be surprised, if I got into one of me moods.’

  ‘Good,’ said Thomas. ‘That would save the hangman a lot of trouble.’

  But they would never hang Thomas. They’ll never hang me, thought Thomas. They could keep him here as long as they liked and meanwhile the truth was slipping away, slipping away with every hour that went by—little facts forgotten, little truths overlooked, conclusions confused, deductions made more uncertain: all silted over, hidden away, finally obliterated by the sands of all-concealing time. They can keep me here as long as they like and when it suits me to march out, I have only to say a word; and even then they can’t do anything to me—I haven’t confessed to the murder, I didn’t tell any lies, or none that they can prove. Only about the car. And about the car, I can simply say that I’d forgotten; Tedward will bear me out, Tedward can prove that, though I never set eyes on Raoul Vernet till I came in and found them all standing over his dead body in the hall, I may still have got blood on my shoes and so into the car.… They would never hang Thomas; Tedward knew the truth about him, Tedward, in their own good time, would see to that.…

  And they would never hang Tedward. They’ll never hang me, thought Tedward, standing at the window of his lonely room, looking out at the leaden grey of the canal. They wouldn’t charge him while they still held Thomas, and they wouldn’t release Thomas until they were very certain that the case against him had collapsed or until the case against himself was proved beyond all possibility of doubt. They’d never hang Thomas and they’d never hang Tedward. When Thomas was good and ready, when he gave the sign that his willing self-sacrifice might now come to an end, then he, Tedward, had only to speak a word, to say that he’d forgotten about Thomas’s car—and Thomas was free. That he himself had forgotten all about the car, had built up a case against himself to confuse the issue, to help Thomas, to delay things and muddle things up.… That now it was unnecessary because he had suddenly remembered—fool that he was!—about the car. As for himself—Rosie had no more waited in the car than he had. She had been close at his shoulder when they went together into the hall of the Maida Vale house and saw Raoul Vernet lying there dead on the floor. Whether they would have taken Rosie’s word for it or not, that was the truth—and they could never prove otherwise; their case against him was just a nonsense; a desirable nonsense from all but the police point of view, since it confused the issue against Thomas, against the person that Thomas was trying to protect.…

  But they would never hang old Mrs. Evans, anyway.

  At home, in the house in Maida Vale, Mrs. Evans had decided to help out, during the utter demoralization of Melissa, by making a little something towards the evening meal: just some nice, simple Crèpes Suzettes. She had started very early in the afternoon so as to give the batter time to stand, but somehow it was all going rather slowly and the place seemed an absolute mass of flour. Flour was not what it had been in her day, thought Mrs. Evans, distractedly flapping clouds of it off the table with the skirt of her overall; it seemed
to fly about most dreadfully. And there wasn’t an orange in the place and not a drop of liqueur; and really Matilda had been unreasonable about her taking just a drop, just the merest half bottle of the baby’s government orange juice. Muttering fretfully to herself, she trotted about the kitchen, plunging everything into ever worse confusion. The crèpes were little and round and wafer thin, but they did seem to be mainly composed of large holes which must surely be wrong? Struck by an idea, she went over to the kitchen looking-glass and, with a certain amount of manœuvring, removed the lace cap from her toupée and tried the effect of a pancake there instead. It was terrific: one would patent it at once, the advantages were indubitable—her mind played gaily with a whole series of brilliant advertisements: no outlay on costly Rose Point or Honiton, no washing, no ironing, easily disposed of (by inward consumption), invaluable if overcome by hunger on a long train journey or stranded in a desert, just the thing in time of famine.… One would make a whole stack of them on a Monday and work one’s way through. ‘A pancake a day Keeps the laundress at bay!’ thought Mrs. Evans and, enchanted by these flights of fancy, forgot all about her disablement and put up her right hand to take the pancake down from her head. But the hand fell back; and, as she jacked it up with the other and slowly scrabbled the lace cap back into position, the laughter died out of her bright old eyes. The police wouldn’t be such fools as not to cotton on, sooner or later, to the fact that never for one moment, from the stairs or anywhere else, could she have lifted those feeble arms and felled a man to the ground. They would never hang old Mrs. Evans for this crime or put her in prison or even a loonie bin. I’ll have to think up a better one than that, she thought, if I’m going to keep him safe.…

  And they would never hang Melissa. Melissa crouching on her divan bed in her basement room, wept and gloomed and was sick with dismay and despair—but only because of the hideous things she had blurted out last night, only at the thought of her own betrayal of what, after all, had been sacred confidences, only because of the horrified, the incredulous, the sorrowful looks she had brought to the faces of those who had never been anything but kind to her. Not for any fear of herself, not for terror lest one day she must hang by the neck till she was dead. For, after all, she had only to say one word; had only to speak one name to clear herself—had only to blurt it out as last night she had blurted out the chronicle of Rosie’s sins—had only to tell them the dreadful truth as the murderer had, in so many words, confessed it to her. Melissa could give the murderer away, confession and all: they would never hang her.

  Or Damien Jones: they would never hang Damien Jones. For the police knew nothing of Damien Jones, knew nothing of Damien’s sudden tendency to limp, knew nothing of how wearily Mrs. Jones’ pet lodger, Mr. Hervey, dragged himself up the stairs after his long day’s work, collecting subscriptions for his insurance firm; knew nothing of any meeting in the house in Maida Vale, that night of the fog. The police would never associate Damien with this crime at all, for only one person could tell them that he had been there, and that person would never breathe a word of it. They would never hang Damien.

  And they would never hang Matilda, for Matilda had no sort or kind of motive to murder Raoul; and if she had killed him, would never for one moment have permitted her husband to suffer in her place. It was as simple as that. They would never hang Matilda for this crime; and they would never hang Damien and they would never hang Thomas and they would never hang Tedward; and they would never hang old Mrs. Evans and they would never hang Melissa. And they would never hang Rosie.…

  Inspector Cockrill went upstairs to Rosie’s little room. Rosie lay back against the pillow, with only the street lamp shining in from outside to illuminate the room, and said in a dying-away voice that she felt very ill and would he please go away.

  ‘I will when you’ve answered me one single question,’ said Cockie, standing over her bed in the darkened room. ‘Only you can help us, Rosie; only you can say whether Tedward could have killed Raoul Vernet or whether he could not. I don’t say “whether he did kill him”, I say “whether he could have”. Now, tell me the truth.’

  ‘I feel very, very ill,’ said Rosie. ‘I can’t answer any questions. Please go away and leave me to sleep.’

  ‘This is me, Rosie, not the police; not officially the police. You called me in, yourself, to help you all. I can’t do a thing for you unless I know the truth. I don’t for one moment believe that Tedward could have killed Vernet, all in a half-minute like that; but unless you tell me in one word whether or not he went into the house alone—I’m stuck, I can’t go on. Now, tell me the truth.’

  Rosie flopped back against the pillows and closed her eyes. He put out his hand and caught at her shoulder and jerked her to a sitting position. ‘Don’t play games with me, Rosie; don’t play for time. I’m not going to leave this room till you give me an answer.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Rosie, querulously. ‘Please go away.’

  ‘Did Tedward, or did he not, go into the house alone?’

  She turned her head from side to side on the pillows and gave a sort of hollow moan. ‘I feel terrible. Please go away and let me sleep.’

  ‘I’ll let you sleep the moment you’ve said this one word—yes or no.’

  ‘I’ve taken something,’ said Rosie. ‘I’m too dopey. I can’t talk.’

  He hammered with his clenched brown fist on the table by her bed. ‘Stop play-acting! Yes or no?’

  ‘Yes or no—what?’ mumbled Rosie, passing a lax hand with a gesture of exaggerated weariness across her face.

  He pulled down her hand. ‘Yes or no—did Tedward come into this house alone?’

  The hand dragged limply out of his; she said at last, ‘Of course he did,’ and moved the hand again and laid it with a childish gesture which, in the dim light he could only just discern, upon her heart. ‘Go away, please, Cockie, and let me sleep. Now I’ve told you. Yes—he came in alone.’ Her eyes closed, her hand slid softly down and rested against the turned-back edge of the bedclothes. ‘Good girl,’ he said, and went away, satisfied.

  They would never hang Rosie; for Rosie had cried wolf once too often and one who might, even then, have saved her life, had come away all unsuspectingly and left her to die.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  INSPECTOR COCKRILL, shocked temporarily into old age, tottered to the telephone and asked for Charlesworth. To him he said, briefly: ‘You’d better come over. Rosie Evans is dead.’

  ‘Dead? Rosie Evans? How can she be dead?’

  ‘She’s stopped breathing,’ said Cockie in a blind rage and slammed down the receiver.

  Matilda, sick and sobbing after a night of horror, walked through a round of necessary duties in a stupor of sorrow and remorse: of sorrow for the young life suddenly ended, for the beautiful body lying so still, out of mischief at last, and in peace, of sorrow for Thomas who must break his heart all over again; of remorse for hasty anger, for too little understanding, too little patience, too little love. In the office, Tedward sat with his head in his hands, as colourless and motionless as stone. Downstairs, Melissa wept noisily and cooked up a drama about it’s all being her fault, upstairs old Mrs. Evans sat by the dead girl’s bed and gave herself over to the quiet grief of those who have seen the passing of so many friends. The doctor whom Tedward had called in during the night, paced up and down the long drawing-room with its unlit fire and said again and again that he was most frightfully distressed, Mrs. Evans, that he had done all he could, that by the time he saw her, it was already too late … Matilda brought him coffee. ‘I’m sorry it’s only this; there’s no one to cope except me.’

  ‘My dear Mrs. Evans, for goodness sake don’t think of me.’

  ‘I’ll try and scramble some breakfast together later.’

  ‘Please don’t worry about me,’ he said again.

  ‘You’ll tell Inspector Charlesworth.…?’

  ‘I shall have to tell him I think it was some kind of ove
rdose; some kind of abortifacient. I can’t not tell him.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Tilda, hopelessly. ‘You’d have thought we had enough to bear, wouldn’t you?—without …’ She stopped. ‘Without Rosie going and landing us in for this,’ she had been going to say.

  Charlesworth arrived, anxious and nervy, concealing it in a flurry of jerky activity, of questions, notes, orders, cancellations, reprimands. The doctor introduced himself. ‘Under the circumstances, Dr. Edwards didn’t feel that he ought to handle the case himself, certainly not on his own. He seems to be a close friend of the family; and then all this murder business.…’ It was self-explanatory. ‘I think he was right.’

  ‘What time did you get here?’

  ‘Two o’clock this morning. Mrs. Evans heard her moving about some time after midnight and went up to her; but I gather she was pretty far gone even then. Frightful retching and vomiting and all that. They’d done a lot already when I got here, but it was hopeless.’

  ‘Did she say anything, do you know?’

  ‘Not to me; she was past it by the time I saw her, and I think by the time Mrs. Evans found her. They don’t seem to know what happened, anyway.’

  ‘She was supposed to be having this illegit. How could she have got hold of an abortifacient?’