“She does seem balanced on a very sharp knife edge,” I said.
“A very savage Eve, indeed.” He paused. “Are you truly certain you want to go ahead?”
“Yes, I am. As I told you in the bar at the Taoro, I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life.”
42
When Miss Hart’s maid had announced that Grenville and Violet had arrived, I was dreading the encounter, but they both greeted me as though my visit to Mal País had passed without incident. I knew I would never be able to forget that horrible image of the hulking form of Grenville pressing down on top of Violet. Perhaps Violet had not told her father what I had witnessed and had chosen to try to erase the knowledge from her mind. I suppose that was one of the ways she had coped with the ghastly situation. Wasn’t there anything I could do to help her? Perhaps when all this was over, I could confront Grenville. I dreaded doing so, but the only other option was to go to the police. And that would be distressing for all concerned, particularly poor Violet.
“I’m so sorry we missed the tour of the studio,” said Grenville. “I had a problem with Consuela again.”
“Not her son, I hope?” asked Helen, leading us into the dining room. She did not wait to hear Grenville’s answer to her question. “Anyway, you’ve seen my work dozens of times before. All except for my new piece, which I’ll show you after dinner if you like.”
Helen directed us to a large, rectangular dining table, which she said was imported from England. It was set with a beautifully worked lace cloth, the kind I remembered Mrs. Brendel saying she wanted to take back home. She would never get the chance now. I thought of her body in that bath in the Taoro, the red marks on her neck, the pearls strewn across the marble floor. I felt a sense of anger rising within me, a physical feeling that manifested itself in a slight flush of my cheeks.
“We’re very informal tonight, please sit anywhere you like, but I do hope you appreciate the flowers,” said Miss Hart, gesturing to the overladen vases of red roses that decorated the table. “I got them from the gardener at the Taoro.” She turned to me and asked whether I had received any Valentine’s Day cards. When I replied that I had not, she gave me a smile of pity. “Never mind,” she said, glancing at Davison.
As we began to take our seats, Dr. Trenkel wheeled Edmund Ffosse into an empty place at the table. Violet came to sit by him, so I chose to sit on his right. Davison sat across from me, between Professor Wilbor and Rupert Mabey. Dr. Trenkel took a place opposite Gerard Grenville, while Helen Hart and Guy Trevelyan sat at either end of the table.
“We haven’t had a proper chance to talk since you arrived in Orotava, Mrs. Christie,” said Edmund Ffosse as I opened out the linen napkin and spread it across my skirt.
“Yes, I’ve been rather busy,” I said. “I was afraid that when I first arrived I wouldn’t find the island particularly interesting, but in fact it’s proved the opposite.”
“Indeed,” he said. “And how is your writing going?”
“Slowly, I’m afraid. I need to get down to some serious work when—”
“When . . . ?”
“When I can find the time,” I said.
“Ah, yes, time—the one thing I no longer have,” he said wistfully. Violet reached towards him and clutched his hand, pain etched into her face.
I wondered as he said these words whether he knew what might happen next. Of course, Edmund Ffosse might simply have been referring to his medical condition, but still . . .
“ ‘To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven,’ ” I said, quoting from Ecclesiastes.
“ ‘A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted,’ ” Edmund continued.
I carried on with the passage in my head. A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up . . . A time to keep silence, and a time to speak. Soon it would be a time to tell everyone the truth.
“Are you a religious person?” asked Edmund.
“I believe faith can provide one with a certain degree of comfort in times of difficulty,” I replied. “And what about you, Mr. Ffosse?”
“Yes, I too find it a great solace,” he said. “But there are other sources of comfort to be found, aren’t there?” He looked at Violet, who gazed on him with utmost devotion. “I’m sure you’ve heard about our difficulties,” he said, turning back to me. “I just wish I had met Violet a few years earlier, then perhaps we might have been able to enjoy some time together before this wretched illness started to do its damage.”
The maid began to serve the soup, a light consommé.
“Where did you live before you came to Tenerife?” I asked.
“London,” he said. “But doctors advised me to leave because of my condition. They told me to find somewhere with a warmer climate. And so I came here.”
“But it didn’t help?”
“It did at first—in fact I thought Dr. Trenkel had gone some way to curing me—but then I suffered another attack and this time . . . well, it turned out to be much more serious.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.
“But we haven’t given up hope,” said Violet, perhaps a little too brightly. “There are other doctors besides Dr. Trenkel. I thought we’d try Switzerland or America. I’ve heard of some successes in both places.”
“Perhaps, my dear, perhaps,” said Edmund, clutching her hand again.
From down the table I caught Grenville casting a disapproving look at his daughter. I wondered if the occultist had divined a sense of what I knew.
“Aren’t you eating, Mrs. Christie?” asked Helen from the head of the table. I hadn’t touched my soup, not because I feared it to be poisoned—the maid had served the consommé from a large tureen—but because the prospect of what I had to do had taken away my appetite.
“I’m feeling a little off-color,” I said. “I’m sorry. Since the discovery of poor Mrs. Brendel, I haven’t quite been myself.”
“Of course, you must be feeling dreadful,” said Edmund.
“I hope it’s not a resurgence of the same illness you had while staying at Mal País?” said Grenville. There was a barely disguised touch of malice in his voice. “The English constitution is quite a delicate one.”
I signaled to Davison—we had agreed earlier that I would lift my right hand to my left earlobe as a sign—and set the plan in motion. He was to improvise so as to bring about some kind of diversion or disruption. Davison outdid himself by standing up and tipping the hot consommé into the lap of Rupert Mabey.
“Oh, my!” Mabey shouted.
“I’m so careless,” said Davison as he reached out and tried to dab the soup away with his napkin.
“Get your hands off me, you—” Mabey snarled before stopping himself. So perhaps he did know something of the nature of his brother’s friendship with Davison. “I can do it myself, thank you very much.”
All eyes were directed to the scene. Helen Hart jumped up from her place and rushed to help. In that moment—when attention and been diverted away from me—I opened my handbag and extracted what I needed. A second or so later I reached under the table and jabbed a needle into Edmund Ffosse’s thigh. He cried out not so much in pain as in astonishment. With his hands on the table he tried to raise himself up—although his body was emaciated, his arms were strong—but as the drug raced through his system, he found it difficult to move. He opened his mouth to say something but couldn’t speak, a realization that brought a look of horror to his face.
As I moved to stand up, I felt something grip me. Edmund’s hand had clasped itself around my left wrist. I tried to free myself from him—the drug should have started to work by now—but he held on to me, with fury burning in his eyes. With my right hand I started to claw at his fingers, but he remained as fixed as a limpet on a rock. As the cutlery fell to the floor, the guests turned their attention away from Mabey and Davison to the other side of the table.
“What on earth is going on?” shouted Helen.
“Mrs. Christie—is something the matter?” asked Guy as he stood up.
I took a deep breath. “I’m afraid to have to tell you that I’ve killed Mr. Ffosse,” I said, feeling the man’s grip on me weaken. “I tried to think of another way, but in the end it was the only solution.”
Everybody fell silent and looked at me with astonishment.
“You have done what?” screamed Helen, the first person to speak.
“I have given him an injection of morphine.” As the drug began to work its way through his system, Ffosse’s arm dropped away and his head fell forwards. I stepped back from the table and held up the small syringe and the vial of the drug. I put on the calm nurse’s voice I had learnt from my time with the VAD during the war. “The effects will be fatal. His lips and fingernails will start to turn blue. He may soon start to vomit, have difficulty breathing, and could possibly have a seizure. He will then no doubt fall into a coma, and although death will inevitably follow, it will be pain free.”
Sets of eyes stared at me with a mix of bewilderment and fear. One of the servant girls dashed from the room, no doubt to fetch help. I hoped Núñez would be waiting near the house as we had agreed.
“I don’t understand,” whispered Violet, deep in shock. “Are you the one responsible for all these deaths? For the murders?” Her face looked frozen, almost as if it no longer belonged to her.
“I’m sorry, Violet,” I said softly. “But it was the only way.” I reached out to touch her hand.
I braced myself for what was to come. Instead of lashing out at me, as I had expected, Violet did not stir and sat there at the table like one of the porcelain dolls of my childhood. It looked as though the life had been drained from her. From across the room came a noise, half human scream, half animal cry, which eventually formed itself into words.
“No!” screamed Helen. The look in her eyes was wild now, beyond the point of control. “Edmund! No!”
She ran towards me, pushing the others out of the way. “What have you done?” she demanded.
I repeated what I had said earlier, in as calm a manner as I could. Helen bent down and cradled Edmund’s head in her arms, dabbing his mouth with a napkin.
“Dr. Trenkel, Dr. Trenkel,” she shouted. “Can’t you save him?”
Davison placed a hand on Trenkel’s shoulder and whispered something in his ear.
“What’s going on? Why won’t anybody help?” Helen hugged Edmund’s limp body to hers, and for a moment the scene was as poignant and pitiful as a pietà I had seen at one of the museums in Paris. “He’s dying—dying! My love—my dear love . . .”
At this, Guy roused himself. “Helen?” He walked over and tried to ease Helen away from Edmund’s limp body. “Are you all right?”
“Don’t touch me!” she screamed, the spittle spraying from her mouth as if she were some base creature.
Guy’s response was stiff and awkward, as if he couldn’t allow himself to talk freely. “I know this is awful to witness—and I really can’t understand what is going on here, why Mrs. Christie has done this—but you seem to be in shock. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Of course I know what I’m saying—can’t you see?”
“What?” His eyes were confused and beads of sweat had started to appear on his forehead.
Her laugh was loud, cruel. “You’ve always been so obligingly dim, Guy. So easy to manipulate. So pliable.”
He reached out to touch her again, but she pushed him away with a force that was frightening.
“Calm down now, Helen,” he said, panicking. “Take a deep breath. Have one of your little pills.” He turned to me. “In the meantime, we must get Núñez over here right away. It looks as though the person who has been responsible for those crimes has just confessed.” He looked around the table at the fellow guests, who seemed confused and lost, like an audience who had stumbled by mistake into a theater showing a horrifying gothic drama. “I think everyone heard Mrs. Christie, didn’t they?”
At the mention of my name, Helen reared up like something possessed. Her eyes burned with a fury that was frightening. Then, a moment later, she launched herself towards me. Her hands—strong, powerful hands used to working with marble and stone—were around my throat. They pressed down on my neck with an almost supernatural power. I felt my face reddening, my eyes bulging. I couldn’t breathe. I tried to open my mouth to speak, but words would not form themselves on my lips.
“You’re going to die for what you did to him,” she screeched. I felt her hands pressing harder around my throat. “You’re not going to get away with this.”
Davison moved quickly forwards and was about to wrench Helen from me when, with her right hand, she whipped out the small chisel from the pocket of her jacket.
“If you touch me, she’s dead,” she screamed as she raised the chisel above my head. Its sharp edge glinted in the candlelight. With her left hand she continued to press down hard on my throat.
“Miss Hart, I have a gun,” said Davison, as calmly as he could. He took a pistol from the inside pocket of his jacket and pointed it at Helen. “If you don’t release Mrs. Christie this moment, I will have no choice but to shoot.”
In that moment my senses became heightened. I heard every little whisper, each intake of breath.
“What?” said Guy. “No, please, God, no.”
“This is terrible. What on earth is happening?” cried the professor.
“Is Mrs. Christie—surely she can’t be—” asked Violet again, bewildered.
“Yes, I see—it’s beginning to make sense at last,” said Gerard Grenville slowly.
“Stand away, I said,” Davison repeated, his voice deep and authoritative. “I will not tell you again. Miss Hart.”
Davison and I had talked about what he should do if such a situation arose. He was to aim for a shoulder or a leg, but I knew that, even though he reassured me that he was an expert with guns, such a shot would also put me at risk.
“Please! I must insist. Drop the chisel and step away. I’m going to count to three.”
Helen pressed down harder on my throat with her left hand and brought the chisel closer to my face. The look in her eyes was one of pure hatred.
“One . . . two,” said Davison.
I felt the cold blade dig into my skin.
“Three.”
“Helen!” shouted Guy.
In that moment, just before Davison fired the gun, I saw Guy rush across the room and throw himself over Helen. There was a scream, followed by a stream of blood, some of which splashed across my face. Davison grabbed me and pulled me out of the way before he wrenched the chisel from Helen’s hand. The relief of pressure from my neck was immense, and I took in great gulps of air. Guy, holding his shoulder, collapsed onto the floor, while Helen fell back from the scene, the ugliness of it all hitting her suddenly.
“I did it all for you, Helen,” gasped Guy, his eyes squeezing tight with pain. Blood started to spread across his white shirt. “If it hadn’t have been for you, I wouldn’t have done any of it. First Gina, then that girl on the ship. Oh, Helen, I wish—”
“Stop talking, you stupid man!” spat Helen as she saw Núñez and two of his colleagues rush into the room.
“I wish we’d never started it,” said Guy, panting. “None of this would have happened. But you said it would be simple. First of all, you said we should put poor Gina out her misery. She was in a desperate state. It could be seen as an act of charity, you said. But then it all went wrong. It got so messy. We would need to put people off the scent, you said. We needed another woman, someone who could stand in for Gina.”
Everybody looked confused. It was not surprising. They had all been told that Gina had jumped off the ship. It was time for me to do some explaining.
“And that’s exactly what you found, didn’t you, Mr. Trevelyan?” I said, slowly recovering my voice. The words grated across my throat, e
ach one a nasty little stab of pain. Davison passed me a glass of water, but drinking did little to ease the discomfort. Yet I had to speak. “It wasn’t Gina who jumped off the ship, was it? The girl who you killed had a name. She was called Susan Saunders. You were very clever in choosing someone who had the same heavy build as Gina. I wonder how you found her? Perhaps you waited outside cheap revue shows in Soho, hoping to spot a suitable subject. And one day you saw Susan. It was easy to charm her, I suspect. You bought her a few drinks, said you were sweet on her. Of course she fell for your good looks and fine breeding. Did you promise her something? She had always harbored hopes that one day she might become a ballet dancer—every little girl’s dream, I suppose—even though she was far too overweight for that. Whatever the case, I’m sure she had a bright future ahead of her, a future you and Miss Hart cut short.”
“I’m sorry . . . I’m—” Guy clenched his eyes shut as the pain and humiliation coursed through his body. “Doctor . . . please help. I’m bleeding.”
Davison whispered something to Trenkel, who with a guilty expression knelt down by Guy’s side and examined him. He pulled back his shirt and revealed a gunshot wound to his right shoulder. “He is losing a lot of blood, the bullet will need to come out, but the wound is not fatal,” he said. “I can give him something for the pain.”
“I think we need a little more information from him first,” said Davison.
“All this is ridiculous,” said Helen, trying to recover her composure. She looked nervously at Núñez, who was at the back of the room. “He’s out of his mind. He’s talking nonsense.”
“Far from it,” I said. “He’s telling the truth—probably for the first time in a long while.”
Helen Hart looked as though she might launch herself at me again. However, she ran her fingers through her blond hair and remained still, fixed to the spot. At that moment, I think she realized she had played her last hand. There was no place to go. But she was not the type to throw herself at the feet of the inspector and beg for mercy.
“And what do you know of being a woman?” she spat at me. They were cruel words, ones that she knew would sting me. “Standing there, all high and mighty, without a true or deep feeling in your body. No wonder you have nobody to love you, apart from your ‘friend’ here.” She gestured towards Davison in an effeminate fashion. She had gone too far now.
A Different Kind of Evil Page 27
