Sins Out of School

by Jeanne M. Dams

  It probably wasn’t five minutes later that a car drove slowly along the one public roadway in the Close. The Rose and Crown is an inn—a hotel as well as a pub—and guests have to be able to get there with their luggage, so the public is allowed access along one narrow street. There’s no parking except for inn guests, so I assumed that was where this car was headed.

  But it stopped, just opposite where we sat, and a woman got out.

  There is always some light in the Close, from streetlights and the spotlights that illuminate the Cathedral at night. The light along the roadway was dim, but where it was possible to see at all, no one could have mistaken the form and face of Vanessa Thompson.

  My husband let out a low—a very low—whistle.

  “Yes, isn’t she? I told you. But where’s Blake?”

  I couldn’t tell if there was anyone else in the car. From this distance it looked like one of those murderously expensive models that often have tinted windows.

  We stood and waited, uncertain. Vanessa had stopped directly under one of the no-parking signs. She pointed at it, raised her arms in a shrug, and beckoned to us.

  “No car,” said Alan. “Shake your head, and tell Derek what’s happening. The Rose and Crown’s right down at the bottom of the street, and that blasted rain’s turning to fog. He probably can’t see.”

  I complied. Vanessa gestured some more, finally gave up, and with one more anxious glance at the sign, stepped over the low white chain barrier and walked over to us.

  “Mrs. Martin, Mr. Blake has a frightful cold and is waiting in the Rose and Crown. He said to say he’s sorry to inconvenience you, but you can choose your spot in the pub.”

  She sounded as if she hadn’t the slightest idea what it was all about. Or as if that was what she wanted us to think. I couldn’t decide which.

  I looked at Alan. He nodded. “Very well,” I said, and started across the grass toward the pub.

  “Why don’t I drive you?” said Vanessa.

  At that Alan quite firmly shook his head, and I was about to do the same when the wind rose and the rain changed to a hard, stinging sleet.

  The last time that happened to me, I was walking alone on a narrow road at the top of a rise on Dartmoor, with no house anywhere in sight. I thought I was surely going to die, and I might have, in fact, if I hadn’t blundered against the side of a sort of shed, a low, flimsy building that kept the worst of the wind away until the sleet changed back to rain.

  One never knew how long this sort of weather would last, a minute or an hour, but we certainly couldn’t stay outside in it, even for the few hundred yards between us and the Rose and Crown. We followed Vanessa to the car, heads down, huddled inside our coats, trying in vain to keep dry. When we reached the edge of the grass, I tripped over the chain and nearly fell. I grabbed Alan’s arm.

  That was unfortunate. Alan slipped on the grass, slippery with rain and ice, and sprawled awkwardly, falling with an exclamation of pain.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Twisted my ankle,” he muttered. “Just as well we’re not walking. It’s not serious, but it hurts like the devil.”

  We managed to get into the car, which was warm and luxurious inside, and collapsed gratefully onto the soft leather seats in back. “We’re getting your car all wet, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, this is Mr. Blake’s car, not mine, the official one, you know. Don’t worry about the water. It doesn’t matter, and it’s only for a moment.” Her voice sounded hollow, and I saw that it issued from a speaker. There was a glass partition between the front and back seats.

  She put the car in gear and drove slowly down the street, windshield wipers beating away the sleet. Their noise was the only sound one could hear. A very expensive car, indeed.

  We approached the pub. We reached the front door. We drove past. I objected. “Um—if you wouldn’t mind letting us out at the door, instead of going with you to the car park? It’s behind the inn, anyway, not on down—Ms. Thompson, where are you going?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry if I misled you, but Mr. Blake isn’t at this Rose and Crown. Very common name for a pub, that, isn’t it?” She steered the car smoothly around the curve of the street, which was only a loop issuing from and returning to the main gate to the Close.

  We were still moving very slowly. Alan gave me a look that said “get ready,” and lunged for the handle of the door.

  It was locked.

  “Childproof locks,” said Vanessa in her musical voice. “Such a sensible invention. The door can be opened only from the outside, and before you try it, Mr. Nesbitt, the windows won’t roll down either.”

  Mr. Nesbitt. Not Mr. Martin, as she would naturally have assumed. She’d done some checking.

  “Ms. Thompson,” said Alan, “exactly where are you taking us?”

  “I believe the phrase your wife would recognize is ‘for a ride.’”

  The inside of the car was suddenly colder than the stone bench.

  “Where is Mr. Blake, then?” said Alan coolly, and a little more loudly than necessary.

  I remembered the microphone I was wearing, the mike that would be useless outside the Close. “Yes,” I chimed in, “where is he? Our business is with him.”

  She laughed gently. “So far as I know, he’s sitting at home working on a speech.”

  “At home? In Hampshire? You’re taking us all the way to Hampshire?”

  As the car passed smoothly through the open gate and out of range of the listening equipment, she laughed again. “No, he’s not in Hampshire. Our London flat. To which I am indeed going later this evening. You, on the other hand, are going to quite a different destination.”

  She stopped at the traffic light, signaled, and made a left turn onto the High Street. Her driving was impeccable. “Now, let’s see,” she said conversationally. “This does become the Brighton Road, doesn’t it? I understand there are enthusiasts in America who fancy a dip in the sea at this time of year. I’ve never thought it my cup of tea, but I daresay you two will enjoy it. At least for a brief time.”

  The cold settled in. I could think of nothing to say, nothing to do. But I must, or soon Alan and I would be past thinking at all.

  Alan nudged my foot with his. He looked at me intently, trying hard to communicate something, but I couldn’t read his face. “What?” I said, and my impatience edged a little of the cold away. Surely it didn’t matter what he said to me now, what she overheard, when shortly … I wouldn’t think about that.

  Alan said nothing, and I looked at him even harder. He was breathing fast. And surely with an irregular tempo? That, now—that was a gasp. “Alan? Alan, what?” I had whispered, but I raised my voice. “Alan, what’s the matter?”

  His right hand came up to clutch his left arm, above the elbow. “I can’t—I think I’m—”

  He fell heavily against me, his breath coming in short gasps, his face an alarming purple.

  “Vanessa! Vanessa, stop the car! I think Alan’s having a heart attack!”

  The words that came to those lovely lips were short, Anglo-Saxon, and ugly. She doesn’t care, I thought in despair, she doesn’t care at all, she’s going to kill us anyway, she’ll be delighted if Alan saves her the trouble—and then the car was slowing and stopping and she was getting out, just before we reached the lights of the railway station parking lot.

  The door on Alan’s side opened. Before I could react she had seized his ankles and was dragging him out of the car. She was going to get help after all! Eagerly I lifted his shoulders and pushed as she pulled. It isn’t easy to move a large, completely inert man, but the slippery leather upholstery helped.

  And then he was lying on the ground and I was leaning over him anxiously, trying to get past him and out of the car. Vanessa stepped close to me. “Oh, thanks, give me a hand, will you?”

  She lashed out and caught me on the temple with—surely that was a gun!—and that was the last I knew for some time.

  When I opened my eyes, we were r
olling smoothly, quietly, along a dark, winding road. My head ached violently. Alan was nowhere to be seen.

  I pounded on the window separating me from her. “Why? WHY?” I screamed.

  She was in control of herself again. “There’s no need to shout, you know. I can hear you perfectly well. And surely you don’t really think I wanted him to die in my car,” she said in a reasonable tone of voice.

  “But you were going to kill him anyway, so why did you have to—”

  “This is not a good road, and I must concentrate. Be quiet.”

  I sat back and tried to marshal my forces. What could I do?

  Nothing. My husband was dying, dying of a heart attack and exposure, and I couldn’t lift a finger to help him.

  Frank, my dear Frank, husband of forty years, had died of a heart attack, neatly, tidily, in a nice, clean, warm hospital, and nobody had been able to help him.

  Now I was going to die, somehow. She’d said something about Brighton and the sea. I was going to be forced into the sea, forced at gunpoint to walk out into the choppy, freezing English Channel until the chill paralyzed me and the waves took me, and I might never be found.

  Oh. That was why she hadn’t wanted Alan to die in the car. A body is hard to dispose of. She couldn’t have carried Alan to the sea. Much better to let him die of natural causes, and by a station, too, where some reasonable explanation could be invented. And Vanessa was inventive.

  Now, when it was far too late, I saw the truth. “You killed him, didn’t you? And tried to kill the others. I was all wrong about faking the speeches and all that.”

  “Of course. I don’t know what you mean about speeches, but dear Anthony has neither the brains nor the guts to commit a successful crime. He did drive the car at that roundabout; that’s why the job was botched. The ideas have always been mine. Really, you know, there is no Anthony Blake, in any practical sense. I do it all, the speeches, the ideas. One day I’ll expose the puppet and then I’ll have the glory as well as the power. For now he’s useful, though his stupidity causes trouble from time to time. Now do shut up, dear Mrs. Martin, and let me drive. It’s not far, now, and I don’t want to miss the turn in this filthy weather.”

  It was even less far than she had supposed. I began to realize that the roaring in my head was not simply the pounding of my terrified heart. There was a car close behind us, a car traveling without lights, until suddenly the lights were on, all the lights, including a blue light on top, and the car shot past us, and a voice from a loudspeaker commanded Vanessa to pull over, and there were more police cars, they were everywhere, and in one of them was—surely not Alan?—and I slumped down in my seat and had to be helped out of the car and into his arms.

  36

  IT was the next day before we sorted it all out. Alan knew most of my story, but I needed to hear his, once I’d had a very good night’s sleep.

  “I had to get out of the car, and it was the only way,” he explained. “I couldn’t attack Vanessa with that blasted glass panel in the way. I couldn’t kick out the car window, not with that stupid ankle swelling by the minute. So I had to use my wits. I’m sorry I frightened you so badly.”

  “It was only—Frank looked just like that, you see, when he—Alan, you were purple—” I picked up my coffee cup and then put it down again. My hands were shaking and I needed another pain pill.

  “I was purple from all that gasping, and then holding my breath. I did try to tip you the wink, literally, but I suppose you were too upset to notice.” He sneezed.

  “Upset! I was frantic! But what did you do, once you were out of the car?”

  “Lay where I was, getting extremely cold and wet, until you were out of sight. Then I limped to the station and commandeered their telephone. Derek, fortunately, had stayed where he was rather than try to follow us blindly. I simply told him where Vanessa was taking you, and he was after you at once. I followed in a later car. Derek brought the receiving equipment along in the car, by the way, so we have a lovely tape of everything Vanessa said. It’s unfortunate that you never mentioned names of the victims. Her lawyers will make a meal of that, but the fact that she left me, as she thought, to die, will work against her. I think we have a case.” He sneezed again, and coughed.

  “You’re going to get pneumonia if you’re not careful.”

  “I have every intention of being careful.”

  “And what about Blake?”

  “Blake, of course, claims to know nothing whatever about any of this. Yes, he did get a crank phone call, but he paid no attention. People in his position are subject to that sort of annoyance. And so on.”

  “He’ll get away with it, won’t he?”

  “In a sense. There’ll be very little, if anything, that he can be prosecuted for. But his career is finished, of course. The publicity will put an end to any chance of his getting elected to anything, ever again.”

  “And I expect his marriage is over, too.”

  “You’re probably right. Mrs. Blake may not be terribly keen on having her husband’s adultery splashed all over every front page in the country. I wouldn’t be surprised to see her setting up housekeeping with Amanda and Miriam.”

  “Oh! How’s Miriam? Have you heard anything?”

  “Amanda rang up, actually, while you were still asleep this morning. She—Amanda—is being discharged today, but she’ll go to Gillian’s flat for the time being, so as to be close to the hospital. Miriam’s conscious and there’s no apparent brain damage, though she’ll need a good deal of physiotherapy if she’s to regain full use of her limbs. It’ll be a rough road ahead, but that child knows how to deal with adversity. And with a supportive family as a nice change, I think she’ll do well. I think they both will.”

  The phone rang. I was closest.

  “Dorothy, good! Catherine Woodley here. I wondered—of course Amanda Doyle will be convalescent for a good while yet, and our list of supply teachers is so short—do you think you might be willing to bone up a bit and take the qualifying exams? We’d love to be able to call on you regularly, and the children adored you that one day, and—”

  “No, Catherine,” I said quite firmly. “I’m flattered to be asked, but no.”

  “But—”

  “No. The last time got me involved in a situation that very nearly killed me. Have you read your morning paper?”

  “No.”

  “Read it. Good-bye, Catherine.” I hung up the phone. “There. Aren’t you proud of me?”

  He kissed me and sneezed. “You’ll find another way to get into trouble, but I took you for better, for worse. The difficulty is that I can’t always tell which is which. Hand me a tissue, will you?”