“Of course not. Why the hell should I?”
“To annoy me when I left you.”
“I didn’t know you were leaving.”
“I’ve searched and searched. You must go and find them for me.”
He finished his whisky and stood up. Whenever she lost anything, it was always he who in the end had to find it. If she searched through a couple of drawers and did not discover what she was after, she rumpled up everything in a sudden fury and refused to look any farther. “Where were they?” he asked.
“With the rest of my jewels. You must have hidden them to annoy me. Go and find them.”
He left the room and went up the curved staircase to the landing and then along the right-hand passage. Her bedroom had been the first one on the right since for the past three years they had slept in different rooms. He went in and crossed to the bow-fronted chest-of-drawers and pulled out the top drawer. In the back of the frame was a small secret compartment in which she had always kept her jewels. He slid the panel along until he could look inside the compartment. It was empty.
He searched through the drawers but found only a collection of rubbish: empty scent bottles, lipstick cases, powder tins, cream jars, and tubes of eye shadow. The large built-in wardrobe contained nothing but shoes she no longer liked and an expensive coat she’d bought but never worn because after buying it she became convinced it made her look fat. The cupboards above the wardrobe were filled with more rubbish. The drawer in the bedside table had in it an assortment of empty medicine bottles.
He heard the slam of a car door and went across to the nearer window and looked down on to the front drive. A man climbed out of a taxi and spoke to the driver, who switched off the engine. David looked at his watch. It was just before seven and this must be Cabbot. He hurried downstairs, arriving at the front door as the doorbell rang.
Cabbot was a small, dark-featured man, with a neat moustache. His black hair was swept back and carefully brushed and his suit fitted with the precision that came only from first-class tailoring. He held out his hand. “Mr. Plesence? It’s very kind of you.”
David shook hands. He tried to place the nationality of the man and failed. His accent, clearer now than it had been over the telephone, had the sharpness of an Eastern American, yet there was an unusual fluidity to the vowels.
“This is a beautiful house, Mr. Plesence,” said Cabbot, as he stepped inside. “I admire the Georgian period because the men of those days rediscovered that the horizontal lines of the Greek columns are very slightly curved and the perpendicular lines inclined to the centre — the columns could only be made to look perfect by these imperfections of line. Or take the radiator of the incomparable Rolls-Royce. This has to be made with slightly curved surfaces in order to appear to be flat.”
“Does it?” said David, astonished by the rush of words. “I know, because they told me so when I bought a Rolls a few years ago — or perhaps I should say that I was permitted to buy one. I greatly admire a company that can create the image whereby a potential customer feels honoured if he is allowed to spend his thousands of pounds.” Examining the other more closely, David saw that the charcoal grey suit was almost threadbare in places. Men in threadbare suits didn’t go around the world buying Rolls-Royces. “Come into the sitting-room.”
“Thank you.” Cabbot walked towards the door, but came to a halt by the painting on the wall which was a portrait in pastels. “Charming!” he exclaimed. “Perhaps a trace too much rococo, but in the modern days of austerity in art, not a great sin. Perhaps it is by that strange woman, Rosalba Carriera?”
“One expert has identified it as a Carriera. A second has declared it to be a very poor copy.”
“Experts can be very annoying, can’t they?” With a quick smile, Cabbot walked on and into the room.
“This is my...my wife,” said David, reluctant to use the word as he introduced Catalina.
Cabbot half bowed. “Enchanted,” he said.
David was struck by the tone of Cabbot’s voice, yet when he looked at the other man’s face he saw nothing but the same bland smile that had been there before.
Catalina muttered a brief, “Hallo,” and lit a cigarette. The two men sat down. “You wanted to speak to me about something that’s important and confidential?” said David.
Cabbot crossed his legs, after carefully hitching up the shiny knees of his trousers. He rested his elbows on the arms of the chair and put the tips of his fingers together. “Mr. Plesence, our very short acquaintance has convinced me you are a man who can appreciate and sympathetically understand a mistake. When I telephoned you earlier on, I believed I had something of the greatest importance to say to you, but it’s turned out not to be so. I’ve come here to apologise to you for the trouble I’ve caused. I thought of telephoning you a second time to explain, but then I told myself that the least I could do in the circumstances was to come and make my personal apologies.”
David’s voice expressed his bewilderment. “But what on earth did you think...”
“Will you be kind enough to allow that to remain untold? The matter is of a highly confidential nature and confidences shared are confidences shattered, as my old English governess so often used to say.”
“But was it business?”
“I’m sorry, I really can’t say any more.”
“How about us all having a drink?” Catalina suddenly demanded loudly.
David hesitated, then asked Cabbot what he would like. Cabbot said a whisky, with water, would be truly delicious. Catalina had another gin and French. She drank it quickly and then, just after David had sat down, said she wanted some celery straws.
“I don’t think there are any left in the tin,” said David.
“Of course there are,” she retorted. She got up before he could move and went over to the cocktail cabinet and brought out a tin. She offered it to Cabbot, who took one of the pencil-thick straws. She helped herself to one and put the tin on the arm of her chair. David did not have one, never having liked celery.
Cabbot remarked on the beauty of the carpet, hanging on the wall, correctly identified it as a Ghiordes prayer mat, and then started to talk at length about prayer mats. It sounded all very learned, thought David, but was in damned bad taste since the man was doing no more than very determinedly airing his knowledge. From the moment he had entered the house, it seemed he had been setting out to show he was a man of taste and learning.
When he had finished both his drink and his lecture, Cabbot said he must be leaving. He thanked David for the hospitality with an exaggerated gratitude that made David wonder whether, for some reason, the man was jeering at him, yet there was nothing on the other’s face but the same bland smile.
David went with Cabbot to the front door, where he remained whilst Cabbot climbed into the taxi and was driven away. He wondered what on earth the visit had been about, shrugged his shoulders and dismissed the episode from his mind. Catalina posed more than enough problems.
Back in the sitting-room, Catalina was standing by the cocktail cabinet. She had poured herself out another gin and was drinking it. Even from the doorway, he could see that her hands were shaking. With a sense of bitter desperation, he hoped this did not mean there was going to be another scene in which she recalled some of the things that had been said under the romantic Caribbean moon. She finished her drink in two quick gulps. “I’m going.” He made his feeling of relief too obvious.
“All you want is to get rid of me,” she shouted. “I’m nothing. I’m the old shoe you want to throw away because you’ve found another one. You’ve ruined my life. I’ve given you my everything and you just trample on me.”
“Shall I telephone for a taxi?”
“I’ll make you pay. Don’t you worry about that. You’ll pay and pay and go on paying.”
He struggled to control his temper. “Catalina...”
“It doesn’t matter what you say. You lied to me and slept with her when you promised me you were in London. Whilst I lay in bed,
thinking of you, praying to the Virgin Mary that you were safe and sound, you were playing with her flabby breasts.”
“I’m not a rich man...” he began.
“Rich? That’s a joke. I’ve never lived in such stinking poverty before. You gave me nothing. For me, it’s always been the tenth best. Yet before I met you, I was used to living decently, like a civilised human being...”
He interrupted her. “I’ve a little capital. Look, I’ll give you three thousand pounds extra if you’ll divorce me.” She poured herself another drink. “Fifty thousand.”
“For God’s sake, Catalina, I haven’t got that sort of money.”
“No? What about your stupid little business? Sell that.”
“I can’t. Be reasonable...”
“It’s fifty thousand or no divorce.” She finished her drink.
He lit another cigarette. Whilst she was in her present mood, there was no hope for him: no hope at all.
Her voice became even shriller. “I suppose you’re off to her again as soon as my back’s turned?”
He said nothing.
She suddenly spoke quietly. “David, darling, you can’t have forgotten our happiness together, the time we knew a greater love than anyone else has ever known. Something that precious can’t just vanish. Let’s find it again? Let’s go on another cruise in the Caribbean...”
“I wouldn’t voluntarily even step across the road with you,” he said, brutally.
She cursed him, in Spanish.
Cabbot was paying off the driver of the taxi, in front of his hotel, when his mouth and throat suddenly began to burn, as if he had just swallowed fire. He gasped from the sudden pain. After a few seconds, it disappeared.
“Something wrong, mate?” asked the taxi driver.
“Just a twinge. You say it’s thirty shillings?”
“That’s right. Had to wait quite a time back there, you know.”
“Of course.” Cabbot took his wallet from his pocket and opened it. There were four pounds inside. He took out two one pound notes and handed them over. “Thank you very much,” he said.
“And thank you,” said the driver, surprised at the size of the tip.
Cabbot walked across the pavement and went inside the hotel. It was a seedy place, catering mainly for the poorer commercial travellers and couples who wanted a room
for an hour, but paid for the day. The reception area was frowzy: the walls needed painting and the carpet was badly frayed. Cabbot remembered with bitterness the days when he had stayed only in luxury hotels.
Once again, his mouth and throat began to bum, and this time there was abdominal pain. He felt sick and suffered a slight attack of vertigo. His heart began to palpitate.
He held on to the counter for support and felt a rising sense of panic. Something was very wrong with him. He hated illness, with a primitive fear. Two men walked past and he saw them look curiously at him. They said nothing. It was not the kind of hotel where people either spoke to each other or offered help.
The attack was longer than the first one, but it wore off. He tried to convince himself that the trouble was only indigestion, but his mind was becoming filled with a nameless dread.
Slowly, he climbed the stairs up to the first floor and as he went up he noticed the filth on the walls with an extreme clarity that was almost sublime in quality. When he reached the landing, the pain and the burning returned. He felt intoxicated and his vision blurred. The sense of a nameless dread increased until he knew he was in the grip of a monstrous evil, evil beyond normal comprehension.
Staggering badly, holding on to the wall for support, he reached the door of his room. With fingers that seemed ten times their normal size, he pulled the key from his pocket and inserted it into the keyhole. He unlocked the door and staggered inside, fell to the floor, and had not the strength to get back on to his feet. The door slowly swung shut, with a drawn out creak. His mouth, throat, and stomach were gripped with ice-shafts of pain, his mind was overwhelmed with the knowledge of its own doom, and yet he had not the will even to try to summon help.
He fainted. The period of relief from pain was short. He recovered consciousness and almost immediately suffered a terrible convulsion during which every muscle in his body seemed to be trying to tear itself loose. He vomited. Some tiny part of his mind told him he was screaming, then lie lost consciousness.
He regained consciousness and was able to breathe normally. There was a hammering on the door, but this meant nothing to him. Nothing in the world existed but the agony that was loose in his body: his body had become the world.
The door was opened. A man looked inside and gasped, shocked by what he saw. Cabbot’s eyes were turned inwards and downwards, there was a rattle in his throat, he was foaming at the mouth, and his breathing was terribly spasmodic.
A second convulsion swept Cabbot’s body and pinned him in its monstrous, murderous grip. He felt as if his body was about to be blown apart by all the air that rilled his lungs and could not be expelled.
A third convulsion was followed by a return of consciousness and an easing in the breathing. Then there was a fourth convulsion. He knew all the torments of hell.
Vaguely, he was aware of men around him, of being picked up and put on a stretcher, of being carried out of the hotel. In the ambulance he suffered a fifth convulsion, more violent than any before, and the tide of agony rose until it shattered his mind and body. He ceased to breathe and he died.
CHAPTER III
The pathologist stripped off his green gloves and green apron, crossed to the cracked wash-basin, and washed his hands. Detective Constable Quenton stood in the doorway. “Any luck, sir?”
“Luck?” The pathologist, a tall man with a face that was long and thin, smiled briefly. “That’s not a word I’d use.”
“I didn’t mean it...”
“Of course not. Well, I can give you the general idea, but nothing more specific. The real answer lies with the lab boys and they’ll have to sort things out.” He indicated several sealed jars in which lay the specimens that would be sent away for expert and detailed analysis. “The dead man was perfectly healthy, considering his age, except for some slight heart trouble which he probably didn’t know he had: the kind that might not have made itself felt for the next ten years. Death was due to poisoning and the poison was a convulsivant. More than that I can’t tell you, although obviously from the speed of events the poison’s very toxic. Your best bet at the moment is to find where he last ate and drank. He’d had some alcohol, although no large amount: perhaps one large whisky or gin. He hadn’t eaten for some hours except for a very small amount of something, which probably contained the poison. If this wasn’t suicide, then the picture could be a drink and some sort of cocktail snack.”
The detective constable hurriedly wrote in his book. He looked up. “Any conclusions on suicide, sir?”
“None. The known facts are completely neutral.”
“How long would you say it’ll be before we know what the poison was?”
“Your guess is just as good as mine. These tests can take weeks if the lab worker doesn't get on to the right line fairly soon. But in this case...I wouldn’t think over-long. The man was clearly only just beginning to feel ill when he was in the foyer, but a quarter of an hour later he was screaming his head off and nearing death. There aren’t that number of convulsivant poisons which take effect so sharply.” The pathologist scratched the back of his neck. “Do you know who he was, yet?”
“Bit of a mystery, really, sir. No papers and very few belongings. He was staying at the Breedon Hotel — that’s out on the south side of town and a dirty hole of a place. His suit was all but worn out, yet it was obviously tailored for him and at one time was a first-class job. No name tabs.”
“Had he been staying long at the hotel?”
“One day. He spoke with a thick American accent.”
“From the look of him, there’s some degree of coloured blood.”
“It can
’t have been a very pleasant death?”
“Probably as painful as you can get.”
“Then it’s not likely to be suicide?”
“That doesn’t follow. People committing suicide sometimes choose incredibly painful ways. Obviously this happens more often when there’s a large degree of mental instability.”
“I’d have to be raving bonkers before I chose anything likely to do to me what happened to him.”
“But who is to say that any method is relatively painless? Perhaps the fraction of time between life and death, even when death comes from a bullet through the brain, is one of unspeakable agony. Only those who die know the answer to that.”
“That’s a hell of a thought, sir.”
“Isn’t it?” The pathologist smiled wearily. “Perhaps it’s one good reason for trying to stay alive.”
The trade mission from Bulgaria arrived at Frogsfeet factory in two chaffeur driven Volga saloons at n o’clock on Tuesday morning. There were three men, one woman, and an interpreter. The woman was large and full of good humour, but the men all seemed to be of a sour disposition.
David met them in his office where they all had coffee and biscuits. The leader of the delegation, a small man with a pointed beard and a pair of grey eyes devoid of any expression, made a speech about the fraternal links between the people of Bulgaria and the people of Great Britain. David thanked him in a much shorter speech. After this, and after a long examination of the model on the side table, the delegation asked innumerable questions on the design of the parlour-shed equipment, the maximum capacity in cows of existing vacuum pumps, the possibility of units of three hundred cows, and the question of cleaning in the pits with the hydraulically operated trap-doors.
Later, the trade mission went round the factory and out to the farm attached to the factory where a herd of sixty milking Ayrshircs gave practical testing to any new equipment and showed in operation equipment already in production. They examined the cubicles on either side of the shed and the central auger which delivered silage from the outside tower silo. They watched a Massey-Ferguson tractor being connected up to the hydraulic unit of the trap-door, which were raised to disclose the operator pits,
A Deadly Marriage Page 3
