Tour de Force

by Christianna Brand

  ‘It’s nice and warm,’ said Cockrill ‘We can sleep in the pine-woods. But it won’t come to that. They’re within their rights in keeping – one of us – as a hostage if they can really pretend to think they’re the guilty party; but they’d make themselves unpopular among the British tourists if they used force to make us go, and that wouldn’t be good for business – as Mr Cecil would say.’

  ‘I don’t see what good you can do by staying,’ said Helen steadily. ‘The Grand Duke has said that you must all go by day after to-morrow, yes; but he’s also said that by day after to-morrow I must be in custody with a good case cooked up against me. Whatever is happening to all of you, it won’t stop that happening to me. And once I’m there …’ And she burst out suddenly that the minutes were passing and there they all sat eating and drinking and not being able to do anything: and that once she was there in that ghastly place, they would all be helpless wherever they were, in England, in San Juan, it wouldn’t matter, they could kill her, they probably would kill her, and nobody would even know.…

  Miss Trapp sat silent, watching her: the caged and the free. For she, Miss Trapp, was free. In thirty-six hours she could leave this place, could go away to where these hideous things did not happen, could there in quietness and peace, await the new happiness that was to come into her life. To be needed – she had said to Helen Rodd that only to be needed was happiness to her, was happiness enough. And now she was needed. Fernando might turn anxious eyes to Miss Trapp at the perils of separation, but Miss Trapp knew that it held no perils for her: as soon as he might, he would follow her – because he had need of her. The knowledge was very sweet to her; and to keep it safe, she had only to go away from this island, as she was free to do, and embroil herself no more in all this uncertainty and dread. It is my first, my only chance of happiness, she thought: the only happiness I have ever known. To keep it safe, I have only to keep silent now.

  And she looked into Helen Rodd’s face, sick with a sort of dry-eyed desperation, and said deliberately: ‘I think there is something, after all, that we could do.’

  The waiters had cleared the half-empty places, had put little bowls of wild strawberries, with bottles of the thick, sweet raisin wine to be poured over them, and pots of sour white cream. Their table was in a corner of the terrace, away from the curious eyes and ears of the other guests. She pushed aside her bowl and leaned forward, her elbows on the table, her thin hands cupped about her plain face. ‘I think,’ said Miss Trapp, ‘that we must all stop trying to seem innocent: and all try to seem guilty.’

  Mr Cecil had never heard, but never heard, of a more repellent idea. ‘Just try to be quiet for a moment,’ she said to him as though speaking to a child. She went on: ‘The Inspector used a phrase just now: he said these people wanted “someone they could pretend to think was guilty”. I think we should all make it impossible for them even to pretend to think that any one person is guilty.’

  ‘You mean we should all confess?’

  ‘Not all confess,’ said Miss Trapp. ‘That would make the whole thing ridiculous.’

  ‘Unless,’ said Louli, ‘we could confess to a sort of mass slaying, I mean not a mass of people being slain by one person, but one person being slain by a mass. You know – there was some hold she had over all of us so we banded together …’ She slapped her hands down suddenly upon the table. ‘And there was some hold she had over all of us. The blackmail book!’

  There was some magic in Miss Trapp this evening, that they should all turn respectful eyes to her, to await her reaction to this proposition. ‘If we all confessed, we should all be thrown into prison,’ said Miss Trapp. ‘and seven people would suffer instead of one. We must not confess about ourselves – we must accuse one another. But the blackmail book …’ She broke off. She took her hands away from her face, they began their automatic groping for the handles of the brown bag. ‘We must help build up cases against ourselves,’ she said. ‘We must each tell what there was against us, in the blackmail book.’

  The blackmail book had remained with the Gerente and not all Inspector Cockrill’s efforts had induced him to part with it even for an hour. He retained, regarding it, a passionate curiosity, that curious, curious, blackmail book with its jottings about each one of them and at the end of each page a figure ringed in ink. He knew what was written on his own page – that page now flecked with its tadpole shapes of dried blood. That he was a Det. Inspec., that he was small of stature, that he looked like an English country sparrow that had somehow got into the blaring sunshine of Abroad, the more absurd because he had tried to adjust his plumage, poor ruffled little brown bird. Etcetera, etcetera. Nothing surely, worthy of blackmail in that? – and yet, at the foot of the page, had been written £50, ringed about. He said, smiling: ‘I can only suppose that Miss Lane thought I was only masquerading as a policeman: I think her suggestion in the book is that I’m not tall enough, that I’m not the regulation height. In fact, I’m five foot eight, which is the minimum, but I stoop badly and I lose a lot that way.’ He thought it necessary to add that she had also said that he looked like a sparrow, mumbled when he talked and had floating false teeth. ‘Anyway, they have a case against me, because the book is known to have been turned on the table to face the murderer, and open at my page. I don’t know what it’s supposed to indicate, but after all they did take me into custody and they’ve never actually said they were satisfied that I didn’t do it.’

  ‘And there’s a case against me,’ said Louli. ‘We can always tell them about the impersonation – I could even do my act for them again. We needn’t mention the business about the diving.’

  ‘We can’t use that,’ said Cecil. ‘Without the diving thing, it’s much too convincing.’

  ‘Well, not tell them about that till the last minute.’

  ‘In face of all this magnanimity,’ said Leo, ‘it’s humiliating for me to have to face the fact that there’s no case against me. Nothing against me in the book, and only the one bloody hand to have done the deed with. Of course we could always cook up the Grand Duke’s suicide thing again, with me as the villain behind the scenes.’

  Fernando sat with his heavy ringed hands drumming nervously on the table edge. ‘For me it is, alas, proved that I cannot have swum from the raft. So no use to confide what was in the book. If anything was in the book,’ he added and shrugged enormously. ‘As to this – who can say?’

  ‘Well, as to this, the Inspector and I can say,’ said Leo, cheerfully. ‘We could rake up a case against you, old boy, don’t worry.’ He explained to the others: ‘After all, it’s not watertight stuff we want, not real cases – only a lot of suspicions that will confuse the issue, as good as the case against Helen anyway.’ He looked expectantly at Mr Cecil.

  Mr Cecil’s strawberries lay untouched before him, the lanterns gently swinging threw splashes of light and shadow across his pale face. ‘What, my turn? Well, actually, my dears, madly eager, of course, to join in, but what is one to say? I mean, there one was in one’s rubber duck, paddling up and down, fast asleep most of the time and cooking to a turn; but not up in the hotel murdering that poor harmless Lane.’

  ‘Harmless?’ said Cockrill.

  ‘Well, harmless to me.’

  ‘Not according to the blackmail book. There was some reference to your “work”; and the sum to be demanded was a hundred pounds.’

  ‘It never was demanded, that’s all I can say.’

  ‘No,’ said Inspector Cockrill. ‘She was killed instead.’

  ‘Not by me,’ said Mr Cecil shrilly. His shirt this evening was of lavender silk to tone with his lavender flannels and he wore a coloured hankie tied round his neck like a cowboy’s, the knot to one side. It was all very chic: and yet, thought Cockrill, beadily watching him, if the knot had been only a bit further back it would have come where another knot comes, just behind the ear – the knot of a noose. And of them all, he reflected, the world could perhaps best spare Mr Cecil. Leo Rodd, Helen Rodd, Louvaine –
they had their faults no doubt, but they were people, real people with hearts and minds to think and feel. Fernando, no doubt, was a rogue, but as Leo Rodd had said a cheerful rogue; and as for Miss Trapp – Miss Trapp to-night was lit with a sort of glory, she took in her ugly hands not just the burden of life but the promise of happiness never before enjoyed – and laid it down for a friend. And not merely ‘to impress someone else,’ either. ‘Perhaps we need not trouble Mr Cecil,’ said Miss Trapp with kindly pity, ‘as he is not quite willing to add his mite. It’s true that Mr Cecil could not have killed Miss Lane. He was in the rubber boat and he was within our sight, or the Inspector’s sight, for most of the time. The Inspector may have missed him perhaps for some little while, ten minutes, Inspector? – or even twenty? But surely not as long as an hour? And, Inspector, you will correct me if I am wrong in suggesting that it must have taken at least an hour to do – all that was done – up in that room that day?’

  Cockie thought it over as he had so often done before: the preceding interview, the actual killing, the arrangement of the dead girl on the bed, the washing of the room, the cleansing in the little bathroom. ‘If not an hour, the best part of an hour,’ he agreed. ‘Say three-quarters.’

  ‘Well, I couldn’t possibly have been gone all that time without your noticing it.’

  ‘No,’ said Cockrill reluctantly. ‘I don’t think you could.’

  ‘So there!’ said Mr Cecil triumphantly.

  ‘So we will leave Mr Cecil out,’ continued Miss Trapp blandly. ‘Each of us has some sort of accusation that can be made against him by another party – later contradicted, perhaps, proved untrue: but enough to unsettle the case against Mrs Rodd, and enough to force them to keep us here on the island while it is sorted out. All except Mr Cecil. We’ll leave him out.’

  ‘You seem to be leaving yourself out too,’ said Mr Cecil. He pushed back the lank hair, he bent forward across the big table, his face narrowed down by the lantern shadows to a sort of pale wedge, his lips curled back from his slightly prominent front teeth. He looks like a rat, thought Cockrill: and like a rat cornered, he struck back viciously for his life. ‘You were being blackmailed, Miss Trapp, what about “the turn of the tide,” eh, what about that? And what about the book? You, Fernando, you know what there was in the book about her, the Gerente read it out to you.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fernando. ‘I know what was in the book.’

  ‘Fifty pounds she was going to get out of you, Miss Trapp, fifty pounds …’

  ‘Rather a small sum to demand,’ said Inspector Cockrill, ‘from one so rich.’

  Miss Trapp began to speak. Fernando put out his big hand and caught at hers. ‘Say nothing!’

  ‘Perhaps what she was blackmailing Miss Trapp about wasn’t worth more than fifty pounds.’

  ‘Then it wasn’t worth murder,’ suggested Inspector Cockrill.

  ‘Miss Lane may not have realized how much Mr Fernando’s attentions meant to Miss Trapp.’

  ‘But nothing Miss Lane could tell Mr Fernando would alter his attentions. Mr Fernando already knew whatever the secret is.’

  ‘He knows now,’ said Cecil. ‘Because he saw it in the blackmail book. But he didn’t know till after she was killed.’ The rat face swung round upon Miss Trapp. ‘You could have gone up to her room and killed her. You were there in your idiotic tent, you could have crept out and up the little path where the rock joins the rise of the land, the terraces; and up the jasmine steps to the hotel. Why,’ he cried excitedly, ‘why have we lost sight of this, why haven’t we thought of it before? She could have done it, she could have done it easily. All she needs is a motive, and the motive’s there.’

  ‘To prevent me from knowing this secret?’ said Mr Fernando.

  ‘It meant a lot to her,’ said Cecil. In face of their stony unresponse, the excitement died out of him a little, the lantern swung in the breeze and its shadows swung with it, leaving the narrowed face wedge-shaped and rat-like no longer, but only rather mean, rather cowardly, a little ashamed. ‘We are all supposed to be making up cases against each other. It was you that suggested it, Miss Trapp.’ He forced a tinkle of deprecatory laughter. ‘Well, this is my case against you!’

  ‘It’s a very good case,’ said Miss Trapp. She looked round the table into their watching eyes, eyes that had been so kind, so grateful, so appreciative, so suddenly friendly – now gone wary. ‘An almost perfect case.’

  ‘It might be,’ said Fernando. ‘But I knew already the secret. Long before the blackmail book appeared, I knew it. So there is no case at all.’

  ‘If you knew it,’ said Cecil.

  Helen Rodd leaned forward across the table. ‘Miss Trapp – you started all this to save me. Couldn’t you – couldn’t you somehow prove that Mr Fernando knew? Do think, do try and tell us something that will prove it. I believe you. If you could just convince these others …’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fernando. ‘You’re right. We must prove it.’ And suddenly he lifted his head. ‘Mrs Rodd – you are the very person. You can prove it yourself.’ He shot out a hand across the table and caught at her hand, clutching it so that his rings bit hard into the bone of her thin fingers. ‘In Siena – that evening, in Siena, try to remember, Mrs Rodd. You walked round by the Duomo, Miss Trapp and I were sitting there by the wall, looking at the old Duomo with its striped leg stuck up in the air. You passed us there, Mrs Rodd, you said, “Good evening,” we said “Good evening,” but perhaps not attending very much; for at that moment, Miss Trapp took something from her handbag and passed it over to me. A letter. You saw that letter, Mrs Rodd?’

  ‘In Siena? Up by the cathedral …? Oh, well, yes, I remember seeing you there,’ said Helen, uncertainly. ‘But a letter …’ She was silent. ‘Yes, I do remember now. You were leaning against the wall and Miss Trapp had her handbag open. I think – yes, I think I do remember that there was something white in her hand.’

  ‘The envelope. She passed the envelope to me.’

  ‘Yes, she passed it to you. It was a little dark,’ said Helen to the others, intently listening, ‘but it could well have been an envelope I saw.’

  Fernando released her hand. ‘I thank you, senora.’ He gave her one of his florid bows, but his brown eyes were filled with those foolish tears that came so easily and might mean so little and on this occasion at least, meant so much. ‘My dear,’ he said to Miss Trapp, very gently, ‘I think now you show these ladies and gentlemen the envelope?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Miss Trapp. She took it out of the handbag and held it in her hand – the good white envelope with the crest embossed on its flap. ‘We had been talking about – about friendship,’ she said, ‘I said that the tragedy of being rich is that one does not know who one’s true friends are. I knew, because I had lost a friend that way – several friends, indeed, in the course of my life. While I spoke, I was clutching my bag – it is a habit of mine I know, a very bad habit. He asked me what was in my bag that made me hug it so closely, and I told him that it held the most precious possession I had. And then, suddenly, in view of our late conversation, I decided to show my treasure to him. This was my secret which, thanks to Mrs Rodd, you now know was no secret from him: no matter for blackmail and murder, anyway!’ And she took out the white sheet of crested writing paper and spread out the few lines before them. It was headed with a Park Lane address.

  Lady Bale herewith confirms that Miss Edith Trapp has been for the past seven years her companion help. …

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE last day. The last hours of their last day on the island of San Juan el Pirata. Perched on the rocky spire of the island, the many-fountained patios of the white palace, fretted to a lacework of marble, dreamed in the sunshine, the cypresses brooded, dark and melancholy, over the pink-starred blue satin of the water-lily pools; and through the courts and the scented gardens they wandered, unhappy and ill at ease, seven heart-sick people, conscious that time was slipping away, slipping away, that nothing was being done and that all
too soon it would be too late.

  Leo Rodd walked with his wife, restless and unhappy. If only I could see him.… Why doesn’t he send for me …? He said at last: ‘I’ll go up to the patio where his office is, I’ll see if I can’t intercept him somehow – this doing nothing is more than I can bear.’ He walked off, a sombre figure among the massed bright flowers, in flannels and dark-blue blazer, the right sleeve pinned up flat to be out of his way. She looked after him with grey foreboding; but whether for herself or for him, she was too dazed with sorrow and dread combined to know.

  Miss Trapp caught up with her. ‘Dear Mrs Rodd – once again I intrude upon your solitude.’

  ‘That’s all right, Miss Trapp,’ said Helen listlessly.

  ‘I left the others, to say a word to you. Just to thank you – for what you did last night.’

  She gave a bleak smile. ‘It was the least I could do to repay you for being such a champion of my rights.’

  ‘Of course it is true that Mr Fernando did see the letter then. You do believe that?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ said Helen. She smiled again, more wholeheartedly. ‘Even though I never went near the Duomo that night!’

  ‘I had no idea, you see that people took me for a rich woman. My clothes, of course, are what one might call castoffs, Mrs Rodd, from my kind employers; I’m not ashamed of that. I’d rather have good things that have been bought for others than the quality I could afford for myself. But of course I don’t care to broadcast the fact among strangers; I admit it was embarrassing that day that Mr Cecil commented upon my hat. My last lady had several things from Christophe et Cie.’ She gave a sad little reminiscent smile. ‘She was very good to me, most generous and kind. This very handbag, Mrs Rodd, was one of hers, and not at all worn when she gave it to me. These are her initials, in gold, actually in gold. I thought I should remove them but, “no don’t, Miss Trapp,” she said, “it would leave a mark on the leather, and monograms are always quite indecipherable, no one will notice that they aren’t yours.” So considerate; she was always considerate.’