Tour de Force

by Christianna Brand

  ‘Who wouldn’t be a husband if he knew …’

  ‘That the tide of fortune was about to turn,’ said Cecil, triumphantly.

  And it had been Miss Trapp who had insisted so importunately that Vanda Lane should retire to her room that day. Of course, reflected Cockie, himself retiring to his room and throwing himself on the four-poster bed for the siesta, there would be no intention to murder – not then. Get the girl out of the way for the moment, would be her impulse, till one had time to think things out; and very neatly she had gone about it, with every sign of concern – and it was true, as he recollected it, that the concern had sounded oddly impersonal, oddly Insincere. Then, safe for the moment, the bathe. And after that … He could picture the poor thing, crouching in an agony in her nudist camp for one, deciding at last to creep up and see the girl, to discover for herself the real extent of the danger; to plead, to promise, to threaten; at last – to kill? The book turned on the table perhaps by the blackmailer at the first threat: beware what you do, there’s a policeman among us.… But, blind with rage at the blighting of hopes so lately grown infinitely dear, she would lunge forward with the suddenly snatched up knife. He thought of the improvised catafalque of the bed, the outstretched figure, the hands composed, the outspread hair. The work of a woman, her mind deranged by horror of what she had done? But there had been little sign of derangement in the methodical removal, in the bathroom, of stains of blood. He reflected again that it had been convenient for a murderer that they had all been, wearing bathing dresses which could be washed with impunity and would cause no comment if they appeared still damp; and thought wistfully of Scotalanda Yarda, of post-mortems and fingerprints and analysis of garments for traces of blood.

  Mr Cecil was not one to keep his mouth shut when he was excited about anything. Mr Cockrill, having ventured out as far as the raft, was sitting sunning himself there after the siesta that afternoon, when he was approached by Fernando, rolling out from the beach like a well-baked golden porpoise, hoisting himself up beside him and turning upon him an agitated, round brown face. ‘Inspector, forgive me, I trouble you, but I am in a great worry, I have heard bad news. Inspector, I ask you now as man with man – is this true?’

  ‘Is what true?’ said Cockie.

  ‘This which I have heard: to me it seems impossible that anyone can think of such a thing.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Cockie.

  ‘Ah, ha, Inspector, you refuse then to answer me, you avoid my question?’

  ‘I don’t avoid your question at all – I simply don’t know what your question is.’

  ‘Then I must ask it again,’ said Fernando, heavy with irony. ‘And here it is, I ask it, please this time to listen, Inspector; do you believe that Miss Lane was killed by – Miss Trapp?’

  ‘By Miss Trapp?’ said Inspector Cockrill. ‘No, I don’t.’

  Mr Fernando was absolutely flabbergasted, ‘You don’t believe this?’

  ‘No, certainly not. I’m quite sure she wasn’t killed by Miss Trapp.’

  ‘But I thought – I heard – I understood that you had built up a Whole case against her?’

  There was something black and wet and shiny on the raft near Inspector Cockrill’s hand. He picked it up idly and looked at it as he talked, turning it over and over, not thinking about it. ‘There’s a big difference, Mr Fernando, between building up a case and building up anything else. When you build – for example, a house – you start with a certain number of bricks and if you need more you get more; and if there are any over, well, you put them aside, you use them up some other time. But in building up a case, you must work only with the bricks that you find on the scene of the crime – and if there are not enough, then your case falls down; and if there are any over then, once again, your case falls down. There are two bricks left over in the case against Miss Trapp, two bricks that try as I may, won’t fit in anywhere: and so the case against Miss Trapp falls down.’

  It was almost pathetic to see the relief, the incredulous joy and relief on that bland, round face: the dawn of doubt, the dawn of conviction, the sunshine of gold teeth flashing in a smile as broad as the break of day. To Inspector Cockrill’s horror, two huge tears gathered in the soft, brown eyes and rolled, unimpeded and unashamed, down the sunburned face. ‘Two bricks?’ said Fernando, foolishly babbling. ‘Two bricks?’

  ‘One brick is the red shawl. Why should Miss Trapp have laid out the dead body on the red shawl? How would she have got the shawl anyway, why should she have gone into Miss Barker’s room?’ The other brick, the real brick, the gold brick as one might say, was the brick that he had placed under all their noses, when he described the scene of the murder to them: the brick they had failed to recognize as relevant at all.

  But Fernando did not really care two hoots about the bricks. ‘I am so thankful, Inspector, for this poor Miss Trapp. One word from you about this, and … you understand, Inspector, El Gerente grows impatient, already there is trouble about the murder, the hotel is complaining, bookings are cancelled and this island lives largely upon the tourist trade. There has been an order from – from higher up,’ said Fernando, glancing back nervously to where, literally higher up, the palace of the Grand Duke sat on its pinnacle of rock. ‘The matter is to be cleared up without more delay, the murderer is to be found and the rest of the suspects must be sent home at once and the whole thing wiped over and forgotten. I tell you, Inspector, the Gerente is very anxious – very anxious indeed.’ The complaint was evidently catching for he added in a Voice of positive awe: ‘El Exaltida has decreed.’

  ‘Oh, has he?’ said Cockie, deeply interested.

  ‘So the Gerente must strike soon; and, Inspector, the choice is not very great. You are out, for El Exaltida has said that he does not wish for trouble with the British police who might put the island out of bounds for tourists. Miss Barker is out, because we know that she was with you. This left Miss Trapp, Mr Cecil, Mr and Mrs Rodd, and me. Now you most happily say that Miss Trapp is out. I also am out, so that leaves only those three.’ He looked not unduly downcast at the thought of their plight.

  ‘Why are you out?’ said Inspector Cockrill bleakly.

  ‘I?’ said Fernando, incredulous.

  ‘Was not Miss Lane trying to blackmail you too? There was a figure against your name in the book.’

  Mr Fernando shrugged deprecatingly. ‘No use, Inspector, to blackmail a man with no money.’

  ‘Unless he has – rich prospects,’ suggested Cockie.

  He shrugged off that one too with an odd little smile. ‘In any event, Inspector, I could not have done it. I lay all the afternoon here on this very raft, you say it yourself.’

  It was a large raft, built at two levels with a sort of wide step on two sides of it. Now in the light breeze blowing up over the glinting blue sea, it rolled a little, breasting the gentle waves. ‘I saw you sunbathing on the raft. I didn’t see you leave the raft and I didn’t see you swim back to it, it’s true. For this reason, I assumed at one time that you’d been here all the time; in my anxiety to look after everyone’s interests, I assumed a good many things, too readily. But if you watch this raft carefully from the terrace for an hour, as I’ve since been careful to do, you’ll realize that most of the time – especially in a breeze like this – you need not actually see the whole surface of the raft at all.’

  Mr Fernando’s smile faded, he sat deflated, his hands on his knees. ‘But, Inspector …’

  ‘I don’t say you did leave the raft. I just say that you can’t so definitely count yourself out. You could have left. You could have swum to the shore, to the little beach on the further side of the rock, you could have gone up to the bathing cabins from there and so on up the steps to the top terrace and to her room. I don’t say you did,’ repeated Inspector Cockrill, ‘but I do say that you could.’

  From far out to sea, Leo Rodd drifted lazily back from a solitary swim, his head dark against the breeze blown blue. ‘Inspector –
just glance over there, just lift your head for one moment and then down again. Can you miss him? Can you miss a swimmer, can you sot see the dark head bobbing, a blot where all is so blue? You did not sleep that day: how was I to have known that anyone would sleep, was I not to suppose that all might be alert, looking out idly over the nice blue sea? How could I have dared to swim half across the width of the bay to the rock, knowing that, by any or all of half a dozen people, I would almost certainly be seen?’

  ‘There is such a thing as underwater swimming,’ said Cockie.

  Fernando made a rude noise. ‘Who, Inspector – me? From here to that rock?’ He leapt to his feet dangerously tilting the raft. ‘Come with me, Inspector, we go into the hotel, we ring up Gibraltar, you speak therewith my friends. Ask them, here is a thing that a man’s friends can say in a jiffy, here is no pretence: ask only, “Can Fernando Gomez swim under water a distance of even five yards?” Ask at my swimming club – in Gib. we all go, all my office, all my friends, to the swimming club. Here is a thing they must know.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ said Cockie. It was true that here was a thing that members of a swimming club could say about another member, one way or another. A man can swim under water or he cannot; and Mr Fernando, failed half-blue for swimming at his university, was not one to have kept this talent dark from his admirers.

  Inspector Cockrill swam by no means under water himself, but with a style retained from his boyhood gambollings along the coast of Kent – reared up half out of the sea, practically horizontal, and hitting out wildly with his hands at the surface of the water, like a dog. By this means, leaving Fernando to dash off, reassured himself, to reassure his lady-love, he propelled himself shorewards and, as though casually, intercepted Leo Rodd as he swam in. ‘Here you are, Mr Rodd – I believe this belongs to you.’

  It was the black rubber mask with its corked breathing tube from Leo Rodd’s frogman’s suit. ‘Good lord, thank you,’ said Leo. ‘I’ll lose the thing one of these days, I’m always leaving it washing about on that raft.’ He still had the black rubber fins on and, like a seal, flopped along in them across the hot sand. ‘Come and lie in the sun and dry, Inspector, and tell me what’s all this nonsense about poor Miss Trapp.’

  Inspector Cockrill, unwontedly communicative, outlined the cases – now largely exploded – against both Fernando and Miss Trapp. ‘Fernando couldn’t have swum from the raft right across to the rock without my noticing him,’ he ended. ‘He kicks up a spray like a fountain every time he moves in the water and I remember it was like that, way back in Rapallo, it isn’t an act that he’s put on since all this blew up. So he’d have had to swim under water. Well, either he can swim under water or he can’t: he says he can’t, and offers to confirm it, and I believe it’s true. So Miss Trapp is out; and Fernando is out …’

  ‘And then there were three,’ said Leo, narrowing down the list of suspects as Fernando had done, but with considerably less complacency. ‘Mr Cecil, my wife, and me.’ He sat with a towel hung across his maimed shoulder and stared out to sea. ‘Well, I never was awfully fond of that Cecil,’ he said.

  ‘Mr Cecil was floating up and down in a rubber duck,’ said Mr Cockrill. ‘In the sight of all.’

  ‘You wouldn’t say that the rubber duck popped round to the far side of the rock for a short time?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say it didn’t,’ agreed Cockie, readily. ‘But not for a long time. Not for half an hour.’

  ‘It certainly would have taken half an hour to – to stage that thing up in that room?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Cockie. ‘And to get up there and down again. Probably longer, far longer; but at the very least and narrowest calculation half an hour.’

  ‘Which would narrow things down even more?’

  ‘It would appear to,’ said Cockie. He asked, offhandedly: ‘Where is Mrs Rodd this afternoon?’

  ‘She didn’t come down to swim. She was still asleep when I left so I didn’t disturb her.’ He did not add that Louli Barker had besought him to meet her during the siesta hour, that he had taken advantage of his wife’s being asleep to slip off quietly to the pine-woods and there go painfully through a reconciliation scene that had been truly happy and satisfactory to neither of them. He leaned on his one arm, lying twisted sideways on the hot yellow sand. ‘Inspector: let me get this straight? By no silly chance are you suggesting that my wife …?’

  ‘Then there were two,’ said Cockie. ‘You calculated it yourself.’

  ‘And I’ve got no right arm.’ He gave a sort of snorting half laugh, unconvincingly unconcerned. ‘Of course you don’t really believe she had anything to do with it?’

  Inspector Cockrill sat up on his narrow hams, feet flat on the sand, knees raised, hands dangling between them holding the inevitable untidily smoking cigarette. ‘I have to be impersonal. I simply consider facts.’

  ‘Well, the facts are that my wife was under the sun-shed with me the whole blessed afternoon. She never moved.’

  ‘You can’t be sure of that. You admit you were sound asleep.’

  ‘And you admit that you could see her there.’

  ‘I assumed,’ said Cockie wearily, ‘that I saw her there. What I actually saw, was the rope soles of a pair of yellow espadrilles. I could see the roof of the sun-shed and the shoes sticking out at the far side, towards the sea.’

  Leo Rodd made an impatient gesture. ‘She could have got up while everyone on the beach was asleep,’ insisted Cockrill, steadily, ‘and moved along under the wall – I wouldn’t have seen her there – and up the corner path to the cabins. The only time I need have seen her – if I’d been looking, only I was not for that moment – would have been while she crossed to the wall: just a few feet. Everyone else was asleep.’

  ‘How could she possibly have counted on that?’

  ‘I don’t suggest for a moment that she did, Mr Rodd. The same thing applies to everyone: it isn’t suggested that the murderer went to Miss Lane’s room with any preconceived intention of killing her. He may have left the beach, originally, with no intention of seeing her at all; wanted to go to what Mr Cecil calls the huh-ha, or something. He probably left the beach quite openly, it was probably the merest chance that I didn’t see him go, and that everyone else was asleep. But he will have noticed on his way, that they were asleep – and he couldn’t see me, from below, sitting reading on the terrace; so – having, on an impulse killed the girl – he would take advantage of their being asleep, to creep back to his place.’

  ‘Why come back at all?’

  ‘It was a risk,’ agreed Cockie. ‘But the murderer might think the risk worth taking – and so it’s proved. The alternative would be disastrous: to be without an alibi when everyone else was known to be on the beach.’ He added that in Mrs Rodd’s case, she would probably have taken particular care even when she was – quite openly, as far as her intentions went – leaving the beach: so as not to waken her husband.

  Leo Rodd’s fist was clenched on a handful of warm sand: that broad and beautiful musician’s hand that would never again find its full satisfaction in creating music. He said stonily, ‘And then?’

  ‘The supposition would be that then Mrs Rodd, having gone up to the balcony, either on a private errand or intending to see Miss Lane, did in fact see her and – again, I emphasize on an impulse – killed her.’

  ‘You suggested the same fable about Miss Trapp but Miss Trapp’s out because she wouldn’t have gone to Louvaine Barker’s room and got the shawl. Well – that applies to my wife as well as to Miss Trapp.’

  ‘Except,’ said Inspector Cockrill, with some temerity, ‘that Miss Trapp could have no – no grudge against Miss Barker.’

  ‘You mean …?’ His hand tightened so that the sand was squeezed out through the close lattices of his shaking fingers. ‘You want me to believe that to – to throw the blame on Louvaine …?’

  ‘I only say,’ said Cockie, ‘that that may be a counter to your objection.’

  ‘But …
’ He shook his head impatiently. ‘Inspector, Helen simply isn’t like that. I mean – well, you’re insisting on facts, and it’s a fact, a positive fact, that it’s not in her character to do such a thing. You’ve got to take character into account: and it would be out of character for her to even think of an unworthy thing like that, and what’s more, utterly out of character to have struck out and killed the girl. Why should she, to begin with? She had nothing against Miss Lane, there wasn’t even anything against her in the blackmail book – on the contrary, there was a suggestion of wanting to be on her side, sneaking to her about Louvaine and me – at a price, it’s true, but that’s neither here nor there. Of course, you may say that Helen would be revolted, she might strike out at the creature; but I tell you, and it’s true, it counts, she’s just not that kind of person, she’s not one to lash out if she’s angry or insulted …’

  ‘Or in danger?’ said Cockie.

  ‘But in danger of what?’

  ‘Of losing what she most values,’ said Cockie. He extinguished his cigarette, grinding it with unnecessary violence into the sand between his bare feet ‘Mr Rodd – Vanda Lane was in love with you. Everyone could see it; everyone could see her watching you, listening to you, skirmishing to be at the same table or in the same party, scheming to speak to you, even a few trivial words. One didn’t catch Miss Barker doing these things; she was frank enough goodness knows, but not to all and sundry – she concealed the affair between you because there was something to conceal. Miss Lane didn’t try to conceal it – because there was nothing to conceal. I’ve seen her myself, we’ve all seen her, those first evenings – slipping along after you, hoping, I suppose, to meet you somewhere “by chance” and get some word or some sign from you.’ He looked at the battered stump of the cigarette, unseeingly, and tossed it away from him. ‘Vanda Lane was in love with you.’