Tour de Force

by Christianna Brand

  ‘She was with Inspector Cockrill.’

  ‘From your place under the sun-shed, you could not see that.’

  ‘I see. So I went up to the hotel to find her? I didn’t find her – but I did find Miss Lane?’

  The jewels flashed and sparkled but there was no sign of animation or understanding on the dark, brooding face. ‘El Exaltida suggests, Mr Rodd, that you went to the lady’s room: perhaps spoke her name at the door. Miss Lane heard your voice – her room was next to Miss Barker’s. She came into Miss Barker’s room and found you there. You were holding …’

  ‘Don’t tell me, let me guess. I was holding Miss Barker’s red shawl.’

  ‘That is the suggestion. You had picked up the shawl and you were standing holding it. Miss Lane was in love with you. She would not blackmail you for money, she could not hope to blackmail you into loving herself: but she was jealous and she might blackmail you out of loving someone else. She might threaten that if your affair with Miss Barker did not end, she would tell your wife.’

  ‘That wouldn’t get her very far,’ said Leo. ‘My wife already knew.’

  ‘She knew that you were having a flirtation, no doubt. But did she realize that this time you were planning to leave her?’

  ‘You know all about it, don’t you?’ said Leo. He leaned forward and jabbed out his cigarette in the carved jade ashtray beside the golden cage.

  ‘Everybody knew all about it, Mr Rodd – except your wife. Miss Barker told Mr Cecil, Mr Cockrill overheard her doing so – and there was another eavesdropper there. Long before you came, Miss Barker heard someone on the terrace above her: she said, “Is this him coming now?”’

  ‘Then everyone equally knows that, if I were going to leave my wife anyway, it would hardly be worth murder to keep the news from her for another week or so.’

  ‘Nobody suggests that you killed the woman for calculated reasons. She threatened you. You followed her into her own room – pleading, arguing, quarrelling, we don’t know. She had been writing at her table, the blackmail book and the knife were there. She resisted you, she said ugly things about Miss Barker, perhaps. You lost your temper, you picked up the knife and struck. You still held the shawl and her blood spurted on to it. You had to account for the blood on the shawl – on Miss Barker’s shawl. You spread the shawl on the bed. The rest followed.’ He folded mouse-like grey paws. ‘That, Mr Rodd, is what the Grand Duke suggests.’

  ‘I see. And does he then suggest that I trotted back blithely to the beach and dived in under my cocked hat, to the amazement of all beholders?’

  ‘El Exaltida suggests that if you trotted at all, you trotted as far as one or other of the terraces, hung about there and joined your wife when she drifted up with the rest. El Exaltida understands that Mrs Rodd is not a lady to broadcast to the world that her husband had crept away from her side to an assignation with another woman. She would keep silence; at first from pride, and later on, when the murder was discovered, from …’

  ‘From expedience?’

  ‘From loyalty,’ said the grey secretary with a little bow.

  The Grand Duke moved his hand and the jewelled bird proffered another cigarette and burst again into self-congratulatory song. The secretary slid out of his place, held the enamelled lighter, and slid back. ‘You will have observed,’ said Leo Rodd, pleasantly, drawing on the cigarette, ‘that I have only one hand.’

  El Exaltida folded his own two hands back on his chest; but for the first time he lifted his head and looked Leo Rodd in the face. Leo stared back into the bold, dark eyes. ‘The Grand Duke has missed so little that it will not have escaped him that this was a right-handed blow. It came from above and went down from right to left. But I have no right hand.’ He glanced down at the empty, pinned-up sleeve. ‘I lost it falling off a bicycle in an English lane and for the first time since it happened, I can find it in my heart to be exceedingly glad that I did. So the whole thing falls through.’ He rose to his feet. ‘Well, I’ll be going now. Tell the Exalted One that I have very much enjoyed our chat.’ He gestured to the golden bird-cage. ‘And tell him with my compliments that I wouldn’t be surprised if this little number was dreamed up by a gentleman called Fabergé, in which case it would be of quite incalculable value. The ancestral loot, no doubt; but a charming thing.’

  ‘I am glad you like it,’ said the Grand Duke, and he added in a Voice like poured black treacle: ‘Sit down!’

  The treacle had steel filings in it. Leo sat down. ‘I perceive, Mr Rodd, that you share my interest in objets d’art?’

  ‘I know practically nothing about them,’ said Leo, with truth. ‘But I hope I can recognize Fabergé when I see him.’

  ‘I hope you can. This piece, however, was made by a goldsmith in a shop in Barrequitas; he does them in silver gilt too – they come very much cheaper.’ He snapped thumb and finger at the secretary. ‘Take this thing down and put it in Mr Rodd’s carriage. Come back when I send for you.’ To Leo’s bewildered protests, he held up an enormous, jewelled, deprecatory hand. ‘You must indulge me, senor; it is the penalty of tyranny to be surrounded exclusively by people one cannot respect – I find it refreshing to meet someone I can.’

  ‘Even if you can’t respect my knowledge of objets d’art,’ said Leo.

  ‘I respect the fact that you are not afraid of me, Mr Rodd.’

  ‘Not of you personally,’ said Leo. ‘But afraid I certainly am. Frightened to death.’

  ‘There is nothing to be afraid of. You have your strong right arm to protect you – by its absence. You rightly count on that.’

  ‘Then why am I here?’

  ‘Because I wish you elsewhere – you and your friends. But I must have a scapegoat. I care nothing for what happens when you get back to England, but I must do the thing with some semblance of decency here. My people do not appreciate quixotic clemency; and we are sensitive to the foreign press.’ He leaned back against the flimsy rail of his little wooden chair and once more folded his hands upon his vast chest. ‘Now, Mr Rodd – you did go up to that room?’

  ‘No, as a matter of fact,’ said Leo, ‘I did not.’

  ‘You didn’t? A pity. I genuinely thought you might have. Then the paper-cocked hat …?’

  ‘My wife and I were not on the happiest terms,’ said Leo. ‘We were obliged to share the same sun-shed, to keep up appearances – with one another as much as with anyone else; but we were not feeling what you might call chatty. Nothing was said, nothing was overt or even very positive; we just instinctively kept to ourselves, I think – she lay down at one end, with her legs out in the sun, I lay up at the other end. It got a bit hot and I got drowsy. I’d been holding the paper – a musical score it was – between my face and the sun, looking up at it. I let it fall and cover my face, and dozed off to sleep. It’s very simple really, like all those things; and it happens to be true.’

  ‘A pity,’ said El Exaltida again. He brooded over it. ‘Still – for the sake of argument, Mr Rodd, say you had gone up. Miss Lane hears your voice, she goes into Miss Barker’s room and find you there, you follow her back to hers, still holding the shawl. She retreats behind her table; she has been sitting there looking through the blackmail book.’ He paused. ‘But the book, when it was found after her death, was turned the other way.’ The great dark eyes questioned Leo Rodd’s face. ‘Does that suggest anything?’

  ‘It suggests that I – since you’re talking in terms of my being the man in the room – that I was looking at the book. Open at the page with Inspector Cockrill’s name.’

  ‘Exactly. Which in turn suggests-?’

  ‘It suggested before,’ said Leo dourly, ‘that the woman was answering my threats to kill her, with a reminder that we had a policeman handy.’

  ‘A ridiculous proposition,’ agreed the Grand Duke readily. ‘So much more likely …’

  ‘That I would use it, to counter the threat of blackmail.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said El Exaltida again. He twiddled vast thumbs ti
ll they looked like revolving bananas, diamond studded. ‘And now, Mr Rodd, what have we? A woman at the uttermost end of her tether. She is in love and she knows her love is in vain: worse, she has just made a hideous scene which will alienate even such friendship as her lover has shown her. Moreover, she is by now that hopeless and helpless creature, a blackmailer whose own secret has been discovered – that she is a blackmailer. She has given herself away to this man, she has given herself away earlier, by her outburst on the terrace. What has she got left? She has lost her lover, she will lose such friends as she has, the police of England will now be warned, she has no other means of livelihood. She has nothing left to live for; and there is the knife on the table.’

  ‘I see,’ said Leo.

  Round and round and round went the great jewelled thumbs. ‘You will find, Mr Rodd, that the Duke of San Juan el Pirata is an understanding man. He quite sees the awkwardness of the situation in which you would find yourself. Your would-be mistress dead in her bedroom at your feet with a knife-wound in her breast; your true mistress’s shawl, blood-spattered, in your hands. That you should hastily fling the shawl on the bed, compose the poor creature upon it, sluice yourself down in her bathroom and go quietly about your business, would seem to the Grand Duke no reason to keep you in any kind of custody.’ He lumbered to his feet and his splendid bulk loomed like a navy-blue genie in the tiny room. ‘Well – she has been given Christian burial, poor lady, and that’s more than most suicides get in San Juan el Pirata.’ He held out a great sparkling hand. ‘I should have liked to make your better acquaintance, Mr Rodd, but I quite understand that you feel you should all of you go back to England to-morrow.…’ He moved to the archway and lifted the curtain for Leo to pass through, into the shimmering loveliness of the sunlit courts below. ‘I find all this orientalism very tedious. I like my little study, it reminds me of my toys at Winchester. But you, Mr Rodd, are an old Etonian?’

  ‘Charterhouse,’ said Leo, fingering his open-necked shirt.

  ‘I’m as bad as you with Fabergé,’ said the Grand Duke and went back into his little study and let the curtain fall.

  Down at the hotel, the new courier had collected his Stainless Ones and got them off at last en route for the sights and scents of Venice; and there were new arrivals, a sort of vicious circle, or rather, said Mr Cecil, madly witty, a vicious square – a Belgian count of dubious sex in pursuit of an elderly gigolo in pursuit of a rich South American mama, in pursuit of her daughter who was in pursuit of the Belgian count. ‘The Battle of the Beige,’ said Cecil, gaily; but Louvaine only smiled at him vaguely and wondered for the millionth time when Leo would be back from that horrible palace; and really, she was becoming a bore with her Leo, Leo, Leo, morning, noon, and night and moping round after him, losing her looks, silly thing, just when she needed them most, slapping on her make-up all anyhow, and honestly, that skirt with that top …! ‘Honestly, ducky, I don’t think that skirt with that top, you won’t mind my saying?’

  ‘I know, but the other top’s dirty.’

  ‘Well, but, my dear, one does know about soap and water?’

  ‘I simply couldn’t care,’ said Louli. She wandered away from him, up the wooden steps to the balcony where Mr Cockrill leaned with the rest of the party over the rail, staring, uneasily waiting, out to sea. ‘Don’t you think it’s time that Leo – um, Mr Rodd – came back?’

  ‘It’s a long way,’ said Fernando. ‘It’s steep. The horse goes slowly.’

  ‘He’s been gone for two hours.’

  Helen Rodd looked at the haunted face and stifled her own deep anxiety. ‘It always seems a long time when one’s waiting. I don’t think we need worry.’

  She stood clutching the rail with her narrow fingers, the red head bent, the heavy curled eyelashes shading the terrified blue eyes. Much you care! she thought. Standing there as cool as a cucumber in your beastly, neat print dress, much you care that he’s up there in that white iceberg of a palace, kept there perhaps, not allowed to leave, taking the blame for all of us, getting trapped there, held there, never getting away. And she blurted out, suddenly and uncontrollably, that nobody cared, nobody thought about him, they were all thinking of their own beastly skins.…

  Miss Trapp was scandalized. ‘As Mrs Rodd is present, Miss Barker –’

  She knew that she was behaving badly, was being unjust, was being impolitic, was making a fool of herself; she knew that Leo would be angry, with that bitter, ruthless anger of his, when he came back. But he might not come back; and at the bare thought of his danger, the sick fear rose in her soul, she cried out through rising hysteria that they needn’t worry about Mrs Rodd, Mrs Rodd was far too busy being elegant and cool and putting on her act, to worry about poor Leo.…

  Helen, rather irritably, shook off Miss Trapp’s protesting hand. ‘It’s all right. She’s upset, we’re all upset, she doesn’t know what she’s saying.’

  ‘I know what I’m saying perfectly well,’ said Louli. ‘I’m saying that you don’t care whether he’s in danger or not, you don’t care about him, you don’t love him, you don’t love anyone but yourself.’ And she spat out, beside herself with horror, with horror at the very words she was speaking at that moment, that that was all right too, because Leo didn’t love Helen either, if he had ever loved her, he loved her no longer, he wanted to go away with her, with Louvaine, and be with her for the rest of his life …

  Helen raised her head sharply. ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘Of course it’s true.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Helen, in the cool, proud, almost supercilious manner that masked the deep vulnerability of her heart, ‘very well, then, it’s true. We won’t discuss it here.’

  Inspector Cockrill looked on, much interested. Since his abortive visit to the Barrequitas shop, he had pursued his enquiries into the attack upon her, with complete unsuccess. Under oaths of secrecy – as far as outsiders to their own, increasingly desperate, little group were concerned – he had confided the history of the afternoon’s events; with equally little result. Mr Cecil, Miss Trapp, Fernando had been alone in their respective rooms. Louvaine had left hers only to go to her assignation in the pine-woods with Leo; nor did this furnish any more of an alibi for her than the others had, for she had arrived rather later than he, leaving her ample time to have dropped in on Mrs Rodd, en route. Of all of them, she had had the most motive – or rather she had had some possible ostensible motive, while nobody else concerned had any at all; but several people could testify that she had bought only one knife on the original visit to the shop, she was hardly likely to have concealed a second purchase later on, unless some deep-laid plan had been in her mind; and she had certainly not been to the shop since the death of Miss Lane, nor could one buy the knives anywhere else in the town. It was exasperating to be able to do so little, to feel so hamstrung without his little black bag, the graphite and the foot-rule and the magnifying-glass and all the rest of it, backed up by the vast departments of Scotalanda Yarda. All one could do was to emulate M. Poirot, use the little grey cells and observe the psychological behaviour pattern of those concerned. In pursuance of this sport, he gave a little dig in the ribs to Helen Rodd’s behaviour pattern. ‘Mrs Rodd has had a bad shock this afternoon, Miss Barker, and she’s in some pain. You’re distressing her.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me, Inspector. I’m used to my husband’s – flirtations,’ said Helen. She added with an air of superior pity, that she always liked to avoid scenes, if she could, with the current girlfriend.

  ‘If you know who she is?’

  ‘There hasn’t been much doubt about this one,’ said Helen, looking Louvaine up and down, from the mop of red hair, by way of the ill-matching blouse and skirt, to the vividly manicured sandalled feet.

  ‘Oh, no, of course you’ve known all along,’ said Louli, sarcastically.

  ‘All along,’ agreed Helen, pleasantly. ‘I had a seat in the gallery – up above you – when you opened the attack that night in Rapallo. I
thought you did it very well – and I’ve witnessed a variety of approaches, I assure you.’

  ‘You knew then, did you?’ said Cockie; for if that were really so, what price his theory of this afternoon?

  ‘I’m not deaf and blind,’ said Helen, still pleasantly smiling. ‘I know all the symptoms by now. I watched Miss Lane too – as far back as Milan, Miss Lane got it. Then for a moment in Siena I thought my husband was settling for her, but I soon knew that wasn’t the way of it. If you’d seen your faces, you and Leo,’ she said to Louvaine, ‘that morning in the hall, when you realized you weren’t the only two people staying back from the expedition! And Miss Lane came down all ready for departure, it wasn’t till she knew Leo wasn’t going that she suddenly developed her headache – those two hadn’t planned anything; that was clear.’ She leaned with affected nonchalance on the rail, propped on the uninjured arm, and looked out over the bright sea, fighting to keep the pleasant smile. ‘Not that I cared. You could all go or stay, whichever you liked, and be hanged to the lot of you!’

  ‘So Miss Lane stayed; and be hanged to somebody,’ said Inspector Cockrill. ‘We’ve yet to know who.’ But bang went another neat theory: Helen Rodd had not killed Vanda Lane because she believed in an affair between Vanda and Leo.

  Mr Cecil appeared, making his graceful way up the wooden steps to the balcony, outwardly languid, inwardly agog with curiosity at the raised voices above him. He looked with arched eyebrows at the two tense faces. ‘My dears, how white you look and how cross! Like two Piccasso doves gone belligerent.’

  ‘Mrs Rodd is making a last dovecote stand,’ said Louli. She appealed to him, shaking hands clutching at the veranda rail, literally for support. ‘Cecil – Mrs Rodd won’t believe that Leo and I were planning to go away together. But you know it’s true, don’t you? Didn’t I tell you about it? – that night on the beach?’