More Dead Than Alive (David Mallin Detective series Book 15)

by Roger Ormerod

  “Because he was killed first,” she snapped.

  “Now there,” said Abel, a little hurt I thought, “is where everybody seems to be getting confused. There’s absolutely no evidence that Konrad Klein was shot in this room, no blood, no bullet. Only a fired gun, and with logical evidence of where that shot went, and evidence that there was no second one. And it seems certain, now, that he had a prepared method of getting out of an apparently sealed room safely. So why not accept the obvious, that he did leave this room alive, and was shot elsewhere? After a week in the sea, a body’s so…” he coughed, glancing at Clarice. “…the medical crew cannot be sure to a day or two, in those circumstances. And so… I don’t think we need to become too involved with illusions and the like. This is a straightforward shooting. I only wish I knew where it happened.”

  Which was doubtless why, when he withdrew his team, they left the gun behind.

  Nine

  I look back at that time as a turning-point, not only with the case – which took on a completely changed aspect – but in personal relationships and my own basic philosophy of life.

  Clarice’s admission that she had connived in fraud with her husband came as a direct blow to me. This had been a theory only, and I’d been able to thrust it to the back of my mind as unacceptable. But suddenly it was true, that I’d been used and deceived. This fact I found difficult to accommodate emotionally, as it involved a friend. But the really terrible thing was that it was reflected in my own precious relationship with David.

  Perhaps I had taken his truthfulness too much for granted. His basic existence had always seemed to rest on a search for truth. But now, having been proved to be too trusting, I found myself watching him for reassuring evidence of its continuing existence, touching his arm to attract the warmth of his smile. I felt like a lost child, and perversely could not live with the uncertainty of the proof, but had to leave him and wander alone for long periods.

  At the same time, I was aware that David and George were no longer working together as a tight team. David now pursued the emotional side issues for clues, whereas George persisted stubbornly in his idea that Konrad had been killed in that room.

  The atmosphere became frigid. Nerves were strained, and no facet of our lives seemed normal. And I realized, bitterly, as one does when apparently excluded from human contact, one of the most dreadful ironies of the situation. Clarice, in finally admitting her shock on hearing that Konrad’s body had been found, had sacrificed her friendship with me for the greater glory of innocence of his muder. I wondered how much this admission had been an act too.

  This occurred to me much later in the day. Clarice had left with the police to identify Konrad’s remains; a gruesome thought. I did not see her return, and deliberately kept my distance so as not to meet her. I put on a coat and went out on to the battlements.

  It was cold, and rain like sea spray, it was so salty on my lips, lay moist on my face. The cloud layer was thin and broken, and as the sun set it caught red and gold glints in the frayed edges. I had walked several times all round the castle’s perimeter, and then stood in the shelter of one of the smaller towers which marked each change of direction, waiting for the comfort of the sunset’s glory, its reliability. I thought of Clarice… and became aware of movement farther along the battlements.

  I did not deliberately conceal myself, simply stood still. It was a man and a woman. The light was failing, the shadows chasing up the walls. Then they turned, and the flowing sun lit their faces. A skirt flared in the wind and Sundry put up his hand to his hat brim. Their voices were tossed away and a seventh wave crashed high over the rocks, but I could see they were in dispute. He put a hand on her arm, and then, furiously, Clarice whirled on him and I saw his head jerk back with the blow.

  I stood. She came past me in a furious whirl, her head high, a scarf held tight over her hair with both fists firm in the silk. When I looked again, fearing he would follow her, there was no sign of Sundry.

  I went to tell David. He had spoken to me about possible betrayal. He had said that it was a dangerous thing to fake one’s own death and trust to a wife to handle the money, especially one such as Clarice. And he’d said that as she might have a lover around, especially in view of Konrad’s own relationship with Amaryllis, then the proceeds might be a fair temptation to make sure the death was not a fake after all.

  Well, I could now tell David that the lover was Sundry – or I would have done if I could have found him. George, I knew, was up in the Tower, and David should have been talking intimately with one of the suspects, searching for hints. I couldn’t even find the suspects. So, disappointed, I slowly climbed the Grand Staircase, intending to return to my room, and at the point where one’s vision reaches above the level of the Gallery, I paused.

  David was just closing behind him the door to Amaryllis’s room.

  I turned and walked down again. He couldn’t have seen me or he would have called my name. Or would he? I walked blindly into the lounge, where Anthony was standing, moody and despondent.

  On seeing I was alone, he brightened. He sat me down and his personality irradiated me, and I was cold. He ran through a gamut of his conjuring tricks for my entertainment, and I could not respond. He put on a record for me, and grossly parodied his father’s illusion of the magic doll – to La Boutique Fantasque of all things – and if he expected me to dance the doll he was wildly mistaken… and yet, such was the strength of his personality, wildly facetious now, that I did indeed find myself in his arms, and my grotesquely stiff movements might well have been those of a dummy. For some reason, he was calling out encouragement in a choked foreign accent, and at last, the bizarre humor of it began to flow into my limbs, and I actually found myself moving in an impromptu dance to the beat of the music. I did not notice the door open. I turned only when the scream splintered the mood.

  Amaryllis threw herself at Anthony. They went over together in a shattering of minor furniture, Anthony crying out. Her skirts were round her thighs. I ran in to try to separate them, and she turned her face up, distorted with hatred, one arm flinging me away. She was going for his hands, I saw, nails to his eyes so that he naturally protected them, then sinking her teeth in his fingers like a wild animal shaking the kill.

  He screamed. Blood spattered her dress. His eyes were all terror, with spittle on his lips. Then he fought one hand free and did the only possible thing, drawing his fist back as far as possible and striking her full in the mouth.

  She was unconscious when I reached her. Anthony dragged himself away, and to his feet, his face wild. He was staggering.

  “Keep that bitch away from me!”

  I smoothed the hair tenderly from her forehead.

  “Get David,” I said.

  “Go to hell!” And he slammed out of the room.

  She moaned and moved her head. Her lips were split and blood was trickling down her chin. I struggled with her to a settee and managed to lift her onto it. Her eyes opened, glazed, and she said distinctly:

  “You bitch! You’re not getting away with it.”

  I turned as the door opened, half rising to my feet. David did not at once notice Amaryllis.

  “What’s going on, Elsa? He was crying.”

  “Help me with her, David. She’s in shock.”

  He came and looked down at her. Her eyes cleared. She ran her tongue along her lips and smiled at him. “Hello there.”

  “She’ll be all right,” he said.

  “She is all right, damn her.”

  She was staring at me. I turned away. “We’ll have to get something to bathe her mouth,” I said numbly. “Will you fetch it or shall I?”

  He reached over to turn me to face him. Amaryllis moved, swinging her feet to the floor. Now her voice was slurred, but rational. “Don’t worry, I’ll do it myself.”

  I could only stare at her in indecision, unable to find any enthusiasm. She was not steady on her feet. David helped her to the door. He opened it, and would have hel
ped her all the way up to her room, but her tone was decisive. “Leave me alone. I can manage.” We both knew that that was for my benefit.

  I sat where she had warmed it and David stood over me.

  “Now, what’s all this?”

  “There was a fight. Anthony – for once – wasn’t teasing her. But she went at him…”

  “That’s not what I meant. You, Elsa. Your attitude.”

  I looked beyond his left ear. “You were in her room.”

  “I was looking for something.”

  “I hope you found it.”

  “No.”

  “I searched everywhere for you, and couldn’t find anybody…”

  “I saw her go out.”

  “It didn’t seem she’d been out.”

  “For Christ’s sake!” he shouted. “What’s the matter with you…”

  “You were in her room. Looking for something.” My voice caught and I couldn’t go on.

  “I was looking,” he said stonily, “for her uniform, her outfit, or whatever you’d call it.”

  “Oh, yes? Going to stage one of your wonderful reconstructions?”

  “Yes, if you like. If you like.”

  “Oh, not for my benefit, David. Not that.”

  “She was not there. I searched. I couldn’t find it.”

  I looked at him then, David baffled and angry and hurt. “Then go and ask her now.”

  “Oh, God.” He turned away.

  “I’m going up.”

  “Wait a minute.”

  I didn’t wait because I was uncertain suddenly, and afraid. I ran out of the room and into George’s arms.

  “What’s this?” he said, sweeping me up. Oh, the glory of those certain arms! “Elsa, you’re crying.”

  He carried me like a child over to David, and in his great naive innocence, he offered me to him, grinning, the great baboon, and handed me to my husband.

  “I could never handle crying women, Dave. Here.” David took me in his arms, because he couldn’t do anything else, and held me tightly against him, but only to hide my distress from George, and I could feel him shaking through and through.

  George said: “I was looking for you, Dave. Got something to show you. Come on up.”

  “We’re coming, George.”

  “Not me,” I whispered.

  “Oh, yes.” Suddenly his voice was light. “Daren’t trust you out of my sight. Come on, George, let’s see what wonders you’ve performed.”

  Ten

  I don’t know how I managed the stairs, George leading, David behind. George chattered cheerfully. Very sensitive, George is. I owed him a kiss, I decided.

  “Eight-inch steps,” he said over his shoulder. “I measured ’em. Been measuring everything. D’you know how high that room is? Twelve feet. That’s eighteen steps to the next floor level, or to the roof if you like, ’cause there’s no other window above it. Here we are.”

  We stopped on the little landing in front of the door to Konrad’s room.

  “I thought,” George said, “that I’d go up on the roof. I mean, we’d got to eliminate all chance of him having a rope hanging from the roof and climbing up there out of the window.” He shrugged. “Come on.”

  We climbed, round and round. You lose touch with direction and height. Then we were standing on another, more extensive, landing. The wall was blank in front of us. Six inches above George’s head there was a trapdoor with a huge, rusted – and now broken – padlock hanging from it.

  “Not a chance that the trapdoor’s been used,” said George. “I had to force it – the padlock was rusted solid. Did you count ’em?”

  “What?” asked David.

  “The steps from the last landing.”

  “No.”

  “It’s twenty-three, Dave. Should be eighteen, and that to the roof. So it’s five too many, that’s over three feet, plus the distance from this landing up to the trapdoor, another seven feet. Ten feet in all. Where’d they go, Dave? There’s ten feet not accounted for between the ceiling of Konrad’s room and the roof.”

  “And no window,” I offered, feeling a bit better by then.

  “Good girl,” said George. “Let’s go down again.” We did, until he stopped us. There was no landing. “Took some finding,” George admitted. “Disguised, so there’s no landing, which’d give the game away. About here, I think. You simply push it – ah, here we are.”

  A five foot by two foot opening moved away from us, the whole curved surface of stone swinging on hinges. George went first. Total blackness faced us, cut by his torch rays.

  “No electricity in here,” he called. “Just a sec’.”

  A flame flickered. He lowered the chimney, and the light of an oil-lamp climbed the walls. We stepped inside, David and I.

  The room was smaller than the one beneath us, partly because the curve of the stairs was walled in completely, but it was round, as the other had been. With no window, and the door closed behind us, there was a weird lack of orientation.

  The iron bedstead might well have stood at any angle. The table and single chair required no specific relationship to wall or bed. There was a cupboard, storage I supposed, and a spirit stove. I saw crockery, neatly stacked on a shelf, itself incongruously straight against the curved wall. There were no facilities for washing, none for fresh water. A large plastic container could have contained water, but it would probably be stale.

  The bed was neat, army style with their sort of blankets firmly tucked in, an uncrushed pillow lying above them at the head.

  “His hidey-hole,” said George proudly.

  The only concession to comfort was a six by three rug with an Axminster weave in dull grey, now completely ruined by a large and irregular stain in its center.

  George said: “It’s obvious the place never got used. It was set up for a few miserable days of occupation, but there’s not one food packet been opened, and the kettle’s never even been boiled.”

  “He didn’t get time,” David observed. He dropped on his knee beside the rug, touching the stain tenderly. “Dry now.” He stood up. “We’d better call the police.”

  But George hadn’t finished. His eyes were bright, waiting for David’s attention. At last, he spoke.

  “No point in that, Dave. You don’t think I’d come running to you like a daft kid as soon as I found it! I’ve spent two hours in here, searching. But… no bullet. And we know the bullet went straight through him. So… where is it?”

  “And the shell case?”

  “That too.” George nodded. “He wasn’t shot in here, Dave. He never reached here, for the simple reason that he was killed in his room below.”

  David seemed annoyed at George’s fixation. “We’ve been through all that. There was no shell case in there either.” Then his eyes opened. “No shell case, George, and we know one shot was fired. Into the cabinet.”

  “Oh!” George was casual. “I found that one.” He plunged his hand into his pocket and felt around, finally producing it proudly. “Against the wall, under the dummy Konrad threw there.”

  “Then how the hell can you say that Konrad was shot down there? We’ve got that one shell case, with the gun jammed before the second could be fired. And that bullet went through the side of the cabinet into the dummy…”

  “No,” said George.

  “What?”

  “Dave, you don’t think I’ve been wasting my time, do you! It was a theory. It had to be tested out. So I took that dummy apart. And there was no sign of a hole in the suit it was wearing, and no sign of one in its innards. Dave, mate, we’ve got to start rethinking.”

  “But, George, for heaven’s sake, think now! That bullet was stopped inside the cabinet. Konrad can’t have been inside. We’ve got to accept what Abel said about the blood. So what stopped it but the dummy? That’s what it was there for, dressed like Amaryllis, to take her place. Talk sense, man. He can’t have been shot down there.”

  “But if he was alive, then he left his room. He didn’t ge
t out of the window alive, because he could not have climbed down on to the rocks. Okay, Dave? And he can’t have climbed on to the roof. And if he managed, somehow, to leave by the door, he couldn’t have gone down the stairs, because of the chance that he’d have met somebody coming up. So he’d have to come up the stairs, and where else but to here? And, Dave, he wasn’t shot here.”

  “The carpet…” I whispered, my stomach queer.

  “In spite of the carpet, Elsa,” said George firmly.

  “So he came here, hid a while, and left – and was shot somewhere else.” David was tersely emphatic.

  “And didn’t even sit down? There’s undisturbed dust on the only chair, and the bed coverings are absolutely smooth.”

  “Tidied…” I began, but they both looked at me. It was not a woman we were discussing.

  “So… what?” asked David. Oh dear, he did sound so depressed.

  “He was shot in the room below. The rug was clearly brought here from where he was shot. Not only would it be tricky to get it to here from anywhere but the room below, but if he was shot in that room, it would be necessary to hide that fact. And this is the only place it could be brought.”

  “But, George… Oh, Lord, George, then we’re back to finding how his murderer got out of there.”

  “With the rug,” he agreed cheerfully.

  “Oh, blast you, George!”

  “I wonder if anybody’s thought of dinner,” said George.

  Eleven

  But of course, the police had to be contacted. George dutifully performed this task, then headed for the ballroom, and his anticipated meal.

  Clarice, apparently, had completely abandoned her duties as hostess, and the salaried help had deserted us, as far away as the police would permit. Amaryllis had firmly shut herself away, which just about left the responsibility to me. Hanging around looking hungry but useless were Sundry and Anthony, who brightened when he saw us approach.

  “Martin’s doing something in the kitchen,” he said.