Tour de Force

by Christianna Brand

  And if the mother were mentally unhinged, had for many years been incurably insane, if there were that sort of instability in her family – might not this to some extent explain the business of the blackmail? After all, clearly enough there was no need for Vanda Lane to make money by this means. He remembered saying to Louvaine on the day of the murder, that Miss Lane had merely enjoyed seeing her victims wriggling on the hook; one might ascribe that to a not very pleasant human failing, but to go to the length of extorting money, or even only playing at extorting money that one could not possibly need, argued a mind surely not entirely sane?

  It was the hour of the siesta. In and out of the long line of rooms, the new arrivals swarmed like a hive of bees through the sweltering heat of the afternoon, settling themselves in. In number two, Mr Cecil lay, unbeautiful in sleep, his pale mouth open, his pale hands flopping, his sunburnt arms flecked with delicate shavings of peeling skin, his doors fast bolted and locked against the prowler with the Toledo knife. In number four, Inspector Cockrill sat, short legs dangling, on Louli’s white bed and thought and thought and thought. In number eight, Mr Fernando curved a heavy arm about the thin shoulders of his lady love and assured her that thus he would protect her from lurking danger, now and throughout their lives; and Miss Trapp, trembling in his embrace, reflected that this was the price one had to pay for the love of a good man, and wondered if, after all, it were not going to prove too high. In number seven …

  In number seven, Helen Rodd picked up brushes and combs and mirrors and jars from the dressing-table and, with shaking hands, tossed them into her travelling case. Leo, sitting on the further of the two beds, struggling with his tie, looked up and said sharply: ‘What are you doing?’

  She went on packing. ‘I’m taking my things. I’ve told them at the desk that I’ll move into number five to-night.’ She gave a small, cynical shrug of the unhurt shoulder; it was part of her make-up that when most her spirit cried out in pain, she must repel pity with a show of unfeelingness. ‘After all – it’s vacant now.’

  He said stupidly: ‘Moving? Into number five?’

  ‘It’s only for to-night. We’ve all got to leave to-morrow.’

  He was absolutely still for a moment: then he lifted his hand again and continued to wrench at his tie. ‘I see. So this is It?’

  She jerked open a drawer and began to lift out the contents, the nighties and the nylons and the hand-embroidered lingerie, intimate paraphernalia of a woman of wealth and taste. ‘It isn’t anything. I don’t know what’s going to happen, we must discuss that afterwards. But I can’t go on sharing a room with you, Leo: going to bed, getting up, dressing, undressing – all the time knowing that you’re looking at me and cursing me in your heart for being me; wishing to God that I was – that I was Her.’ And she tumbled the lovely things into the case and blurted out suddenly, all defences down, that she had never in all her life known one moment of unkindness, of unlovingness, of humiliation – until she had known him; and she could bear no more. ‘Do what you like about it, Leo, leave me, marry her, cook up a divorce case, do what you damn well please about it: but do one thing or the other, don’t keep me hanging around like a tiresome but necessary servant till it suits you both to dismiss me.’ She added, lifting her face and looking at him for a long moment: ‘Or get rid of me in some other way.’

  ‘What do you mean by that, Helen?’

  ‘I mean that I’m not going to share a room with you, that’s all.’ She crushed the things down into the case and closed the lid. She said more quietly: ‘I’ll see you through, I’ll help you with your arm, I can come along any time you need me – I won’t let you down. But I’m going to the other room.’

  He had pulled off the tie at last and he sat with it dangling in his hand across his knees. He had gone very white. ‘Well, I don’t understand that last crack; it doesn’t make sense. But anyway, why all this now? Because of what Louvaine said to-day?’

  ‘She said that I killed Miss Lane – well, I don’t care about that, I didn’t and that’s all. But she said other things that you weren’t there to hear.’ She had fastened the case and now stood still, just balancing her finger-tips on it, looking him in the face. ‘She says that if you ever loved me, you no longer do. She says you two are planning to go away.’

  He said nothing, sitting looking down at the tie. ‘I’ve always known about your affairs, Leo: I’m not a fool, you know. But I’ve also always known that they were just affairs. If this one’s different, why didn’t you say so straight out?’

  ‘How can I say anything straight out?’ said Leo. ‘I don’t know myself.’

  ‘She says it’s all planned.’

  ‘Nothing’s planned,’ he said wretchedly. ‘Damn it all, I’ve only known her a week.’

  ‘She says it is planned.’

  His face took on the old, familiar, impatient scowl. ‘Dear God – women!’

  A sick hope rose within her, but she forced it down. ‘Don’t try to be kind to me, Leo, don’t “let me down lightly”. I’d much rather be told.’ She added bitterly: ‘I assure you I shan’t make a scene; or any objections.’

  He put his hand up to his head. ‘I don’t know, Helen. This beastly murder’s changed everything, everything seems different now, it’s all sort of – well, I don’t know, mixed up and ugly and distorted, it’s as if the sunshine had suddenly gone out of the place.’ And he thought of Louvaine, Louvaine with her bright head and the gay, sweet smile, suddenly bursting out like a virago, with her accusations against Helen; of her repudiation, coming back from the funeral, of pity for the dead woman they had just left in a lonely grave; of the little jokes and absurdities that in the first days had held such tender charm for him and now seemed often only silly and unkind. ‘It’s the murder,’ he said. ‘It colours everything.’ The night before it had happened, he had held her in his arms and thought the world well lost for her indeed; but now, if he could recapture the magic of that evening – would it be the same? ‘I’m not trying to deceive you, Helen. I don’t understand it myself. I’d tell you if I knew.’ And yet, he thought, even as I say the words, I am deceiving her. For he knew, as he had known in the first moments of his surrender, that there in his arms he had held the one woman in the world for him, the true love of all the loves of a lifetime, the heart of his secret heart. ‘God help us, Helen, I just don’t know how on earth it’s going to end. I did love her; it was something real, that I couldn’t help – people say that, but now and again it’s true. It was true for me; and I can’t pretend that when all this filthy business is over and we’re back to normal, it won’t be like that again. To be utterly honest with you – I hope it will; I can’t help hoping it will – it was something so wonderful, you couldn’t not want it again.’ He looked at her in pity and tenderness. ‘Try to understand, darling. It’s not that I haven’t loved you, I always have, even though I know I’ve been unkind. But I suppose there are degrees of love; and this other love was something different from yours and mine, something we just didn’t know existed,’ He raised his head and looked into her bleak white face, so bemused with his own dreams that he did not see the draining away of the last dregs of her hope. ‘If it comes back – I just can’t fight against it. Meanwhile, be patient with me and try not to mind too much.’ He gave her the most truly spontaneous affectionate smile that she had had from him for many days. ‘In my own way, if you can bear to accept it from me, I love you and need you as much as I always have. This other thing – if you’ll try to understand that it’s sort of over and above, it doesn’t affect my loving you and needing you …’

  ‘To do up your shoe-laces,’ she said.

  He bowed his head. ‘Well – that I suppose I deserve. But in fact it’s nothing to do with my bloody arm.’

  ‘Or my bloody money?’ said Helen.

  His face grew black as thunder. ‘Or with your money. After all,’ he said, with ugly self-mockery, matching his cynicism with her own, ‘Louvaine’s rich. And you’ve got me
conditioned to living on my wife’s money, haven’t you?’

  ‘The only trouble with your wife’s money this time is that it now appears that the goose that really laid the golden eggs is dead.’

  ‘Well, you needn’t worry,’ he said. ‘We won’t trouble you.’

  Her finger-tips whitened with the pressure as she steadied herself, half fainting, against the dressing-case. Then she lifted it off its chair, opened another and tumbled in the contents of another drawer. He bent to untie his shoe-laces, and she thought: When he comes to do them up again, he won’t be able to. He could go to Louvaine; but Louvaine would not know the special way of doing them so that they could be easily untied with one hand. Never mind, she thought, bitterly, that’ll be a happy excuse to go to Louvaine again. She closed the case and put it on the floor beside the other. ‘I’ll leave the rest of my things; I take it you can bear to have them around till we leave to-morrow. If we leave to-morrow.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t we leave to-morrow? The Grand Duke’s arranged it.’

  ‘The Grand Duke hasn’t yet had a chat with your girl friend.’

  ‘She was overwrought,’ said Leo, briefly. ‘She said what came into her head.’

  ‘She said it very convincingly. She said that I went up to the room that afternoon to have it out with her; and saw Vanda Lane standing in the doorway, and thought it was her.’

  ‘She couldn’t see herself,’ said Leo. ‘She couldn’t see her own hair. Even with it pulled back, you couldn’t mistake the colour. You wouldn’t really have been taken in for a minute. And anyway, as you rightly say, the Grand Duke has not had a chat with Louvaine about it; and can’t wait to get rid of us all to-morrow morning. You are in no danger whatsoever.’ He flung himself back on the bed, put his arm over his face and composed himself to sleep. ‘Now, if you’ve finished your furniture removals I will take my siesta. I hope you’ll be comfortable in number five. Au revoir.’

  She picked up the cases and went into the little passage leading past the bathroom to the corridor. After a moment she returned, still carrying them. She opened the balcony door and looked out, but she did not go. He roused himself to say, with calculated irritability: ‘Well, what is it now?’

  She had put the cases down, one on either side of her, and she stood very still. The light from the half-closed shutters threw narrow lines of shadow across the white dress and the set white face; and for a moment he had the ugly fancy that it looked as though she stood behind prison bars.

  And outside the door, open upon freedom – shiny black hat, dark cape, gleam of silver inlay on old black steel, drowsing at his post in the heat of the afternoon sun, stood a guard of the San Juanese politio – caging her in.

  Chapter Twelve

  INSPECTOR COCKRILL, with Fernando as interpreter, rushed up to the prison. The Gerente, a sick and sorry man, turfed Lollita off his knee and held out the hand of fellowship to his blood brother. For now, said the Gerente, things were very bad for them all, they were all at the mercy of El Exaltida and who could fathom the capricious vagaries of the great ones of the earth? Two days ago he, the Gerente, had been under orders, upon pain of God knew what appalling penalties peculiar to San Juan el Pirata, to produce from among the Inglese a subject suitable for immediate execution upon not too outrageously inadequate grounds; to-day he had presented himself, a-quiver with excitement, before the Exalted One and confided all he had seen and heard as he followed Senor Rodd up the steps to the balcony on their return from the palace. And behold! – were there thanks, was there praise, had there been perhaps a hint or two of splendid decorations to follow? – no, indeed, cried the Gerente, hammering himself upon the forehead and chest with such knock-out blows that he was obliged to resort to reviving sips of arguardiente, no indeed! El Exaltida it seemed, had meanwhile made other arrangements. Was he, was the Gerente, a magician that he should see through walls, listen across the vast acres of the Grand Ducal palace, read himself into the secret mind of authority? – or what mystical attribute was to divine for him the reasons why Senor Rodd had looked pleased with himself as, nursing his golden bird-cage, he had sat silent through the homeward drive. For the senor could speak no Juanese, as they all knew, and the Gerente no English, and nothing had therefore been explained to El Gerente of the plot hatched up in the Grand Duke’s room. What more natural therefore than that, ceaselessly alert in the service of the Politio, the Gerente should seize upon the proof of guilt exposed before his very eyes at the moment of their return to the hotel, and, pausing only to share it with such friends and members of his family as he encountered upon the way, rush up to the Palace with the news. But, El Exaltida … He shuddered at the bare memory of the great jewelled fists raised above the splendid head and brought crashing down among pens and papers and exquisite bric-à-brac on the wooden desk. ‘He says El Exaltida was angry,’ translated Fernando, en précis, for the Inspector. ‘He says that he smashed a golden bird-cage like the one Senor Rodd had. He says El Exaltida keeps a stock of birdcages, to hand out as favours to visiting foreigners. He says some are gold and some are silver gilt, according to the status of the expected visitor. He says …’

  ‘What did the Exleteeder say, that’s all I care,’ said Cockie.

  ‘He says El Exaltida said that he must tell no one about the Senora Rodd being the murderer, that if nobody knew, they could keep to the suicide theory still, and let us all go.’

  Cockrill raised his head with the light of hope in his eye. ‘Well, then, what’s he worrying about? Let him tell no one.’

  ‘He says he’s already told everyone,’ said Fernando simply.

  The Grand Duke, upon hearing this had, it appeared, sworn for ten full minutes by the Gerente’s own watch, reaching such heights of inventive invective as had made the blood run cold; had thrown a blotter, an inkwell and a carved jade ash-tray at the Gerente’s head and, scoring a near miss with this last, had suddenly recovered his temper and lapsed into a sort of bland affability which for some reason had been far more frightening. Very well then, said the Grand Duke, let the Gerente continue with the affair of the Senora Rodd. True, a reason had been found for letting the Inglesi go, an outwardly tenable solution had presented itself and he, the Grand Duke, had taken advantage of it to rid the island of a troublesome business which might interfere with the tourist, and so indirectly with the smuggling, trade. But now, thanks to the – initiative – of el Gerente, said the Grand Duke, smiling terribly upon his hapless servant, this solution was no longer useful. San Juan had her reputation to uphold, she was not to be presented in the world’s press as a poor little backward island, unable to manage her own legal and criminal affairs, permitting the escape of a murderer through over-long adhering to a suicide theory which – through el Gerente’s initiative, repeated the Grand Duke, smiling again into the Gerente’s bleached face – everyone now knew to be nonsense. Let the Gerente handle the affair in his own way as he had taken it upon himself to interfere – er, to intervene. And this time, let there be no mistake. Let the Gerente walk carefully until he had arranged for such proofs as would satisfy any future enquiries from abroad; let a guard be set over them all, until the woman could reasonably be arrested and thrown into prison and the rest be packed off home. In due course, they would hang her or, if the British wished otherwise, simply forget her and let her die a natural death – they never lasted long under prison conditions, said the Grand Duke comfortably, especially the women; and thus the whole wearisome business would be closed, and demonstration made to the outside world that here in San Juan el Pirata, they were not barbarians.…

  ‘You are going to arrest Mrs Rodd?’ said Cockrill, horror-stricken.

  Fernando translated. The Gerente shrugged helplessly. Orders was orders, Fernando translated back.

  ‘But the whole thing is nonsense.’ He pursued, with elaborations, the argument Leo Rodd had put before Helen earlier that afternoon. ‘Tell him Mrs Rodd couldn’t possibly have mistaken Miss Lane for Miss Barker. Point out to hi
m about the colour of the hair. The conditions were the same on each occasion, there was strong sunlight, if Miss Lane had answered her door, she would have been standing just as Louvaine Barker was standing to-day. She wore her hair scraped back into a bun as a rule, you might not have seen much of it; though even when Miss Barker pulled hers back, you could still clearly see its colour. But Miss Lane had been bathing, she’d pulled off her bathing cap, her hair was all about her shoulders, the Gerente saw it for himself when she lay on the bed; and all the darker for being wet – you couldn’t in that light, even in the light of the room, have mistaken it for red hair. And Mrs Rodd would be looking for a girl whose most noticeable feature is a thick head of flaming red hair.’

  Mr Fernando looked down uncomfortably at the stolid gold rings on his fingers with their diamond and ruby chips. ‘I confess, Inspector – this morning, I thought she was Miss Lane. I did not observe the colour of the hair.’

  ‘Then you must be colour-blind,’ said Cockie, coldly.

  ‘Perhaps Mrs Rodd is colour-blind?’

  ‘Women are never colour-blind,’ said Cockrill. ‘Or practically never. It’s a rule of nature. And anyway, Mrs Rodd isn’t: I’ve checked.’

  The Gerente spoke in Juanese. Cockrill said quickly: ‘Anyway, say nothing about it to him. It won’t help in getting Mrs Rodd out of this mess and that’s all we want for the moment. Just say what I told you.’

  Fernando translated obediently in his stumbling Juanese, the Gerente replied, Fernando gabbled back excitedly, the Gerente flung helpless hands wide and shrugged hopeless shoulders. ‘He says, Inspector, that he cares nothing for red hair or dark hair, he saw for himself that Miss Lane looked like Miss Barker, he saw that Miss Barker was accusing Mrs Rodd, he has orders to arrange the whole thing by day after to-morrow.’ The Gerente spoke again and he translated solemnly: ‘He asks me to request you not to make things more difficult for him, by bringing forward these facts which do not fit in with his case.’ He too shrugged helplessly. ‘I’m afraid they have quite decided it shall be Mrs Rodd.’