1951 - In a Vain Shadow

by James Hadley Chase

  I would have known who it was without seeing the crumpled pheasant’s feather and the rabbit-skin coat. It was Emmie!

  I looked towards the aircraft. The stairway was still in position. A passenger was talking to the checking girl, waving his bands and pointing to his papers. Two uniformed men stood either side of the stairway, waiting to wheel it away.

  Emmie was about four hundred yards from them. An official came out of the reception hall and she ran up to him.

  Her movements were flustered. She caught hold of his arm.

  Somehow I had to stop her reaching the aircraft. I was as good as hanged if she got to it before I could head her off. I ran as I had never run before.

  The official turned and pointed to the distant aircraft. She began to run towards it, her short, fat legs taking her along at a slow jog-trot.

  I increased my speed, racing over the wet grass. She heard me coming and looked back over her shoulder. I reached her, caught hold of her arm and swung her round, ‘Miss Pearl! What are you doing here?’

  Her hat was over her eyes. There was a bruise under her left eye, and in one fat hand she clutched a long, thick envelope.

  ‘Let me go!’

  I hung on to her.

  ‘He’s on board. You’ve missed him! She’s taking off now.’

  The engines started up as I spoke, roared for a moment, and then throttled back. The two men began to wheel the stairway away.

  ‘Let me go! I’ve got to give him this!’

  She waved the envelope in my face and tried to wrench herself free.

  ‘You’ll never do it. Here, give it to me. I’ll get it to him!’

  I snatched the envelope out of her hand, shoved it down inside my coat and ran towards the aircraft.

  The air hostess was closing the door when she saw me.

  I waved to her and put on a terrific spurt. She waited. I came panting up.

  ‘Is Mr. Oppenheimer on board?’

  The girl stared at me.

  ‘Not on this plane, sir,’ and slammed the door in my face.

  One of the uniformed men ran up to me and waved me away. The engines roared and the aircraft began to move. I could see the bandaged face looking at me through the front window.

  Emmie came panting up. She was so breathless she couldn’t speak.

  ‘He’s got it,’ I yelled above the noise of the engines. ‘Look, there he is, up at the front.’

  The bandaged face was still looking in our direction as the aircraft moved of down the runway; a hand waved, then we turned away as the slipstream struck us.

  I stopped at a pub in Amersham and bought two bottles of gin. I knew I would never bring myself to open the car boot unless I was roaring drunk. I had got over my first panic, but I knew I would get the shakes again when I opened the boot and saw him. I had to go through with it, but I couldn’t go through with it sober.

  At least I had fooled Emmie. Luck had been on my side.

  On her way to the airfield her taxi had rammed another car and she had been shot of her seat on to the floor. The smash had shaken her, and she wasn’t her usual sharp suspicious self.

  But once she got over her panic of nearly missing the plane, she began to ask questions. She wanted to know where Rita was. I told her we had been early, and Rita hadn’t waited.

  I knew she was capable of checking with Miss Robinson so I told her Sarek had been angry with me for getting them to the airport forty minutes too soon and I had walked out on him.

  ‘But I hung around because I wanted to be sure he was all right. I feel pretty bad I made such a rotten job of guarding him.’ She looked at me through the thick lenses of her spectacles: a quizzing, curious look.

  ‘Are you going to London?’

  ‘I’m meeting a girlfriend in Amersham. The London bus leaves in a few minutes. You get it over there.’

  She thanked me. All the time her weak little eyes probed my face.

  ‘Well so long, I don’t suppose I’ll see you again.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you will.’

  ‘I’ll give Mrs. Sarek a ring tomorrow. I’d like to know if he arrived safely.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t he?’

  ‘No reason at all. But there’s no harm in showing a little interest, is there? I liked him.’

  ‘I don’t think he would like you bothering Mrs. Sarek.’

  ‘I think I’ve told you before. I couldn’t care less what you think.’

  I walked off, leaving her to stare after me.

  That’s how we parted. She hating me and I hating her.

  But I had fooled her. I was sure of that, and I felt pretty certain I could keep her fooled.

  Four Winds looked sinister and lonely as I swung the car through the gate. The time by the dashboard clock was fifteen minutes past eleven. In another twenty minutes she would have landed in Paris. In another quarter of an hour she would be phoning me.

  I left the car before the front door and carried the two bottles of gin into the house. I gave myself three inches of neat spirit before I even took my coat off. Then I lit a cigarette and sat down before the electric fire. My nerves were still jumpy, and I had a sick, empty feeling inside. I wasn’t going to touch him until after she had phoned. When I started on him I had to make a job of it. I couldn’t risk having to leave him to answer the telephone.

  I remembered the envelope I had snatched from Emmie, and was suddenly curious to see what was inside it. I got up and took it from the inside pocket of my overcoat and carried it back to the fire.

  The envelope contained a flat, wooden box about nine inches long, something like a wooden pencil box kids take to school. I opened it. Inside was a dagger: quite a small thing, almost a toy, but its point looked as sharp as a needle.

  There was a piece of chamois-leather wrapped round the handle, but what made me stare was the brown-red smear on the blade.

  I didn’t touch it, but looked at it, puzzled, wondering what it meant.

  Then I looked inside the envelope. Pushed right down at the bottom was a scrap of paper. I fished it out. It was a cutting from a newspaper. In the centre of the two-column spread was the picture of Boris Daumier balancing Rita on his hand: the same picture I had found in the box in her wardrobe drawer.

  The cutting was a report of a murder: Boris Daumier’s murder. He had been stabbed to death in his flat in Cairo after a quarrel with his partner, Rita Kersh, as they called her. There was no doubt that she had killed him. As many as three people from the opposite flat had actually seen her stab Daumier. Up to the time of going to press, no trace of her had been found, and the newspaper seemed to think someone had smuggled her out of the city.

  No wonder she had been so anxious to get rid of Sarek.

  Obviously he had engineered her escape, and so long as he lived she was in his power. A word from him, and she would be arrested for murder.

  I wondered if she knew he had the dagger. He had probably protected the handle of the dagger with the chamois-leather to preserve her fingerprints. After thinking about it I decided she couldn’t know he had it, otherwise she wouldn’t have dared plan to murder him.

  Well, I knew and I had the dagger now. If she had something on me, at least I had something on her. The balance of power was about even.

  Around ten to twelve the telephone bell rang.

  ‘Frank?’

  ‘Yes. All right?’

  ‘Not a hitch. I’ll be back by half-past one Will you meet me?’ I took out my handkerchief and wiped my face and neck.

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  ‘And Frank ... have you done it?’

  ‘Not yet. I was waiting for your call.’

  ‘Well, do it!’

  ‘As soon as you’re hung up’

  ‘Make a job of it, Frank.’

  ‘Yes.’

  I replaced the receiver, reached for a cigarette and lit it. I had only to get rid of him and I was safe. It was unbelievable.

  I sat for a moment, breathing gently, letting
the gin fumes rise to my head, and swimming away with them.

  I had a drink, I had another.

  ‘Well, I’d better put you away, old boy.’ I said aloud. ‘There won’t be any chess where you’re going.’

  I stood up and walked to the door. My legs were unsteady and the ground seemed to give under my feet.

  ‘Nobody would say you were sober; not even your worst enemy.’

  I started for the front door, but changed my mind and had another drink. That finished the bottle. There was a hot, burning pain in my chest that bothered me. I lit another cigarette while I looked round the room. I couldn’t find any excuse to remain in the room any longer so I picked my way carefully to the barn. I knew exactly what I wanted. Among the junk in the barn was a whetstone, about a couple of feet in diameter with a hole in the centre. It was made for the job.

  I had a lot of bother handling it. It must have weighed over a hundredweight. I had to get the garden barrow to shift it from the barn around the back of the house to the well.

  It was a pretty dark night; no moon and only a few dim stars. The cold east wind blew my hair into my eyes and flapped my coat against my legs, but I didn’t feel cold. I had worked through a bottle of gin, and I had lost the sense of feeling.

  I dumped the whetstone by the wall and took the barrow around to the front of the house where I had left the car.

  Before I opened the car boot, I stood for several minutes, listening. It is only when you make a conscious effort at listening that you realize the country at night isn’t as silent as you think it is. I heard a sudden whirring of a pigeon’s wings in a nearby tree, a distant barking of a dog, the tap-tap-tap of a chicken’s beak against the walls of the hen house and the faint and distant squeal of a rabbit caught probably by a stoat.

  I should have liked to have stood listening for the rest of the night, but I made the effort and opened the boot.

  It was too dark to see him, and I didn’t want to see him.

  I groped into the darkness and my hand touched his face.

  Drunk as I was, that shook me. I started back, collided with the barrow and went sprawling on the gravel.

  For some moments I half lay, half sat, staring at the back of the car, feeling the hairs on my neck rising. This was going to be even worse than I imagined. I got up unsteadily, hesitated, then tinned on the electric torch I had in my pocket.

  I didn’t look at his face, but grabbed him by his coat and waistcoat and tried to lug him out. He was as stiff as a board and I couldn’t shift him.

  I got hold of his legs and puffed until my sinews creaked.

  Then I saw his knee caps were wedged against the top of the boot, and that was the reason he wouldn’t move. I managed to hook a tyre lever out from under him and wrench his knees free. After that it was easy.

  I hauled him into the wheel barrow and carted him around to the back of the house. I knew if I stopped now I would never start again.

  I had to leave him by the well while I went to the tool shed for a roll of wire and secateurs.

  I kept telling myself it would soon be over. And once I had him down there I would be safe. That thought kept me going.

  I collected the wire and the secateurs and went back to the well head. Then I really worked fast. I got him up on the wall of the well. I bound the wire round his waist, his thighs and his ankles. To the other end of the wire I fastened the whetstone.

  Then I gently lowered him into the water and tipped the whetstone in after him.

  chapter sixteen

  She paused outside the gates of the airport and looked to right and left. I waved from the car window, and she crossed the road, walking quickly towards me. She had his overcoat over her arm, carefully folded inside out.

  ‘Let me in. I’m freezing.’

  And she was too. Her face was blue with the cold.

  ‘You’d better drive. I’m higher than a kite. I don’t know how I got here.’

  ‘Is it all right, Frank?’

  ‘You bet it’s all right. He’s down among the dead men in a wet and watery grave.’

  She slid under the steering wheel and draped his coat over her legs.

  ‘I’m cold! People must have thought I was cracked not to have put on the coat.’

  ‘Did you have any trouble?’

  ‘It was easy. The air hostess fixed everything. I didn’t even have to show his passport. They saw the coat and waved me through. They all know him, of course. I went to a nearby hotel and put the call through to you. Then in the darkness of the phone booth I took of his hat and bandages, put them in the pockets of the coat, folded it inside out, and went back to the airport. There was a plane leaving almost at once. It was half-empty at that time. I bought a ticket and here I am.’

  ‘Pretty good.’

  ‘I hadn’t a chance to get rid of the coat. I was scared they would want to examine it at this end, but they didn’t.’

  ‘We’d have looked pretty silly if you had got rid of it. It’s got his money in it.’

  I hadn’t meant to say that, but I was so tight it slipped out before I could stop it.

  ‘I was so scared I didn’t think about the money.’

  ‘I know. That’s how I felt. I’ve got over it now.’

  ‘Did you search him, Frank?’

  ‘Search him? No. It was as much as I could do to get him down the well. He looked awful.’

  ‘You fool! He probably had a money belt.’

  ‘I bet he didn’t. I bet it’s all in the coat.’

  ‘If it isn’t...’

  ‘Here, give it to me. Let me see.’

  ‘We’ll wait until we get back.’

  ‘Wasn’t there anything in the pockets?’

  ‘Do you think he’d carry diamonds in the pockets? Use your head Frank. Are you sure he’s down there for good?’

  ‘Unless that whetstone can float. That’s what’s keeping him down.’

  ‘I wish you had searched him.’

  I wished I had too.

  As we drove through Chesham High Street she said, ‘What happened to Emmie? What did she want?’

  ‘She came to say goodbye. She gave me the fright of my life. Talk about luck! Her taxi hit another car and she got held up, otherwise she would have been on the spot when I – I…’

  ‘You were crazy to have done it, Frank. Why did you do it?’

  ‘I couldn’t stand the thought of all that money slipping through my fingers. I didn’t mean to kill him. I was going to grab the coat and bolt.’

  ‘And what about me?’

  ‘I had that planned. I was going to give you your share later.’

  I looked at her out of the comers of my eyes. She was staring straight ahead her mouth set and her eyes half closed ‘Well, that’s nice to know, Frank.’

  ‘I am not kidding.’

  Another long silence, then she asked, ‘What did Emmie give you, Frank?’

  I was ready for that one.

  ‘She didn’t give me anything. She had some papers to give him. I snatched them out of her hand and ran on ahead to stop her seeing you. I couldn’t give them to the air hostess because she would have come to you with them and might have spotted you, so I made believe I wanted a word with a passenger who I knew wasn’t on the plane. It fooled Emmie all right.’

  ‘What were the papers, Frank?’

  ‘Just records. Names and addresses. Stuff like that. When I made sure there was no money I dropped them down the well.’

  ‘I see.’

  I wished I knew whether she thought I was lying.

  ‘Frank’

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘I’m glad he’s dead.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m sorry we quarrelled.’

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘I did help you, didn’t I? If I hadn’t had that brain wave. If I hadn’t taken his place . . .’

  ‘I know. You don’t have to draw a map.’

  ‘Would you have done the same for me, Frank?’
<
br />   I thought of the dagger.

  ‘You bet I would.’

  ‘It’s easy to say, isn’t it, Frank?’

  The hands of the clock on the mantelpiece showed two forty-five. She had pulled the curtains and lit the table lamp.

  The coat lay on the settee.

  ‘All right, now let’s see what we’ve got.’

  I stood over her as she examined the coat. Her hands paused suddenly above the breast pocket.

  ‘Something here, Frank.’

  I pushed her away. Through the thickness of the cloth I could feel something soft and lumpy.

  ‘Get a razor blade.’

  ‘Get it yourself.’

  Neither of us trusted the other a yard from that coat. I took out my pocketknife and cut into the cloth.

  ‘Fivers!’

  We spread them out on the table: a hundred brand-new five-pound notes.

  ‘I don’t like this stuff. They keep a record of it.’

  ‘I’ll have it if you don’t want it.’

  I grinned at her.

  ‘I don’t dislike it all that bad. Come on, I want the diamonds.’

  We spent half an hour on the coat but we didn’t find anything else.

  ‘All right, all right, don’t get excited. Let’s go over it again; carefully this time.’

  We sat side by side on the settee, the coat over our knees, and we went over it inch by inch, feeling in every corner, pressing the cloth between our fingers but still we found nothing.

  We looked at each other.

  ‘All right, I’ve acted this little scene long enough. You’d better hand them over, Rita.’

  Every muscle in her body went rigid.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What I say. You don’t think you’re kidding me do you? You’ve had this coat for over six hours. Don’t tell me you haven’t been over it. As they’re not in the coat now, it means you’ve already found them. So hand them over.’

  Her face was a study of cold vicious fury and suspicion.

  ‘And I suppose I’m to believe you didn’t search him, you rotten thief! You’ve got them! That’s it! You found them, didn’t you? Well? you’re not going to cheat. . .’

  ‘Hand them over, Rita, or I’ll take them of you!’