1951 - In a Vain Shadow

by James Hadley Chase

  ‘You don’t kid me. He wouldn’t dare take diamonds out of the country. He’s scared of his own shadow. They’re watching for boys like him, and he knows it. He’d get fifteen years if they caught him. He wouldn’t have the guts!’

  ‘So you think he was a spineless fool like you?’ she squeaked, jumping up. She looked horrible. Her fat face was red and moist, tears squirted out of her eyes and ran down her cheeks. ‘For years he’s carried hundreds of diamonds to Paris. He hid them in the buttons of his coat.’

  My heart turned over, and I felt the blood drain out of my face. The one place I hadn’t checked and they had to be there!

  In the buttons of the coat! I remembered them now: big, thick buttons, six down the front, six inside, four on each sleeve.

  ‘Well, that’s pretty smart.’

  My voice sounded as if it was coming out of a long tunnel.

  ‘And he was smart! Now, get out! I don’t want you coming here anymore! Get out and stay out!’

  ‘Well all right, if that’s how you feel.’ I opened the door. ‘Anyway, good luck, Emmie, something tells me you’ll need it.’

  She kept her face hidden in her handkerchief, and she was still snivelling as I walked down the passage to the head of the stairs.

  I went into a pub in Shaftesbury Avenue and bought myself a double whisky. I was still shaky from the shock, and I wanted to steady myself, and think.

  I would have to work fast. I would need some sort of grapple and a hundred foot or so of line. I would have to get Rita out of the house. I would have to fish up the coat, get the buttons of and sew them on my own overcoat. Then I would have to phone for a taxi to come out and pick me up and take me to the station. I would have to bustle Netta into getting ready, and I would have to fix air passages for her and me to New York.

  It was unbelievable luck that Emmie had blurted it out as she had done. But I had been convinced all along that once she was sure Sarek had gone for good she would let the cat out of the bag. And that yam I had told her about Rita refusing to give him a child had clinched it in her mind. It had supplied the motive for him going off with another woman.

  I cursed myself for dropping the coat down the well before examining the buttons. But with the grapple I should be able to get it up again. It would be easier to fish up Lie coat than get Rita away from the house. I would have to be very careful how I did that.

  I decided to have a word with Netta right away, and went over to a phone booth and called her.

  ‘It’s Frank ...’

  ‘Why, darling...’

  ‘Let me do the talking. I think this deal’s in the bag. Now, listen, Netta, I want you to fix air passages for us to New York. Get them just as soon as you can. If we can leave the day after tomorrow that would be fine I want to be of in two or three days.’

  I heard her catch her breath.

  ‘But darling ...’

  ‘Just do what I say, and don’t let’s have any back-chat.’

  ‘But, Frankie, we can’t possibly go in two or three days. I have my flat to let. There’re a hundred and one things I have to do. I have four appointments this week I can’t possibly break!’

  ‘That’s too bad. Looks as if I shall have to go on my own, it’s up to you, Netta. I’m going before the end of the week, and if you can’t come, then you'll have to stay behind.’

  ‘But darling...’

  ‘That’s the way it is.’

  ‘I’m coming with you whatever happens.’

  ‘Then get cracking. Never mind the flat. To hell with your appointments. I thought you wanted to marry me.’

  ‘All right, darling, I’ll manage somehow.’

  ‘Get the tickets and I’ll pay you back. I’ll phone you some time tomorrow and see how you’ve got on. If you can’t get an air passage, then we’ll go by sea. Whatever happens we leave before the end of the week.’

  ‘Frank, nothing’s happened, has it? I mean you - you’re not in any trouble?’

  I grinned fixedly at the mouthpiece. Trouble was an understatement.

  ‘Don’t fuss. There’s nothing the matter; only when I make up my mind to do a thing, I like to get on with it.’

  ‘But it all seems such a - a rush...’

  ‘Look, do you want to come with me or don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, of course I do, Frankie.’

  ‘Well, do what I say and shut up, will you? I’m in a hurry. I’ll phone you tomorrow,’ and I hung up.

  I got back to Four Winds soon after three o’clock. She didn’t come out to open the gate, and she didn’t show herself when I had driven the car into the garage.

  It was my fault. I had forgotten to telephone her. She was bound to be suspicious and angry.

  I opened the front door and walked into the sitting room.

  She was lolling on the settee, staring into the fire, her face as hard as granite.

  ‘I wondered if you came back.’

  ‘All right, now don’t let’s start fighting. I tried to phone you, but I was out of luck. It’s a funny thing but when you want to use the phone in London you can never find a booth or if you find one, someone’s using it.’

  ‘Don’t make it worse by lying.’

  ‘I’m not lying. Don’t be so damned touchy.’ I took of my overcoat, tossed it on the back of a chair and sat down opposite her. ‘I’ve been trying to raise money. All right, I know I should have phoned you, and I’m sorry I didn’t. I’ve been pretty busy and worried, and whenever I remembered to phone you, I couldn’t reach a telephone.’

  ‘Does all this mean you didn’t get the money?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. The fella I went to see was away. I hung around his place nearly half the night. I went again this morning, but he still hadn’t shown up. I think he knows what I’m after and is keeping out of my way.’

  ‘So you’ve come back with nothing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She gave me a cold, sneering little smile.

  ‘You couldn’t have been very nice to her if she turned you down.’

  ‘Now, cut that out! That’s all you think of. We’re in a mess, can’t you see that?’

  She swung her legs of the settee and jumped up.

  ‘You’re a dirty, rotten cheat!’

  I wanted to hit her, but I knew that wasn’t the way to play it.

  ‘For God’s sake, Rita, be sensible. I know what you’re thinking. Nothing like that happened. I swear it. I spent all yesterday and today hunting for money!’

  ‘And all night as well?’

  ‘All right, if that’s how you feel, then go to hell. I’m not going to talk anymore.’

  She stood glaring at me, but I met her eyes and after a moment or so she must have realized this wasn’t getting her anywhere.

  ‘If ever I find out ...’

  ‘I know; I know. I heard you the last time. What are we going to do for money’?

  ‘We’ll have to cash those fivers. You should have taken them to London with you.’

  ‘Oh, no, we don’t do that. That’s the last thing we do. I want to be absolutely certain Emmie doesn’t know the numbers of those notes before we put them into circulations They could hang us.’

  ‘Then get him out of the well and see if the diamonds are on him. What’s to stop you doing that?’

  ‘I’m not touching him unless I’m certain they are on him. Use your imagination. It would be a hell of a job to get him up. Now, listen, Rita, you can find out about the diamonds.’

  ‘I can?’

  ‘Yes; you can see Emmie. Go to her tomorrow. Tell her the tale. Tell her you haven’t a penny - ask her what you’re to do. Ask her if Sarek left her any money. Try to borrow from her. She may talk. Tell her you saw him put the fivers in his coat and does she know anything about them.’

  She stared at me for a long and uncomfortable moment.

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose I’d better do that.’

  Later in the evening I went up to my bedroom to get my last packet of cigarettes. When I
opened the drawer I saw at a glance she had been searching among my things. I opened other drawers. They had all been disturbed. I stood for a moment staring round the room, a chilly feeling of uneasiness creeping over me. Then I locked the door, went over to the bed and pulled the bedclothes away and lifted the comer of the mattress.

  I had hidden the dagger in the mattress: the dagger with which she had killed Boris. I pushed my hand into the slit I had made and groped about in the horsehair. I groped feverishly…

  But it had gone.

  chapter nineteen

  I hoped she would catch the eight fifty-five, but she didn’t. She said the eleven-fifteen was quite early enough. She intended to go straight to the office and return immediately after she had talked to Emmie. There was no point, she said, in getting there too early.

  I ached for her to go. I would need every minute I could get alone to fish up that coat. It might take me hours, and I was seething with impatience and a kind of sick terror, although I concealed it from her.

  She certainly was in no hurry to go. She fed the chickens and cleaned out the geese. She made the bed and dusted the sitting room. She washed up the breakfast things. The hands of my watch crawled on, and my impatience mounted.

  ‘If you’re going to catch that train, you’ll have to buck up.’

  ‘You seem very anxious for me to go.’ She paused as she rinsed out the coffee pot and gave me a cold, searching stare.

  ‘I have an hour yet.’

  ‘I am anxious. I don’t make any bones about it. If Emmie...’

  ‘Go away and don’t fidget me.’

  I went into the barn and chopped wood. I had to do something or I’d have gone crazy. I kept having to wipe cold sweat of my hands and face, and there was an awful cringing sensation inside me. I couldn’t keep my mind of Sarek, rotting under a hundred foot of water. Suppose the grapple caught him, instead of the coat?

  Around twenty to eleven she came out of the house, dressed in her fur coat over black slacks. Her copper-coloured hair was done up in a green scarf. I suppose she looked pretty good: whenever she dressed herself up she looked good, but I was beyond all that now. I was frightened of her, and you don’t want to sleep with a woman who frightens you.. All I wanted was to see her drive away, and to know I had seen the last of her.

  I came out of the barn to open the farm gate.

  ‘I’ll probably catch the two forty-five back.’

  That barely gave me five hours.

  ‘Make a job of it, Rita. Make her talk.’

  She pressed the starter and the engine fired.

  ‘I’ll make a job of it.’ She gave me a jeering little smile.

  ‘Don’t get into mischief while I’m away.’

  Somehow I managed to grin.

  ‘Fat chance I have of getting into mischief here.’

  ‘There’s the milkman and the baker to come. You’d better take a small loaf.’

  I felt the muscles in my face stiffen, but she wasn’t looking at me. I had forgotten the milkman and the baker. The milkman came around eleven-thirty and the baker about two.

  ‘Okay. Well, good luck, Rita, and so long.’

  So long, with any luck, forever.

  ‘Goodbye, Frank.’

  And goodbye, with any luck, forever.

  She drove rapidly down the lane. I stood listening, as she shifted the gear lever through the gate to top. When the hum of the engine died away I ran to the barn where I had hidden the grapple I had brought down with me from London.

  I had half an hour before the milkman was due. I could make a start. I took the grapple and the coil of thin cord round the back of the house to the well. I hadn’t been near the well since it had happened. For some moments I stood looking at it, feeling cold and sick and frightened.

  I kept wondering how he looked down there under all that water, and then it crossed my mind that he might have broken loose from the whetstone and had floated to the surface. I wondered, with growing terror, if, when I took of the cover, I’d find him there on the surface.

  I dumped the grapple and cord down beside the well and raised the cover. My fingers were slippery with sweat and I was shaking like a leaf as the cover came of. A dreadful fetid smell came out of the well as I lowered the cover to the ground: a smell that turned my stomach and drove the blood out of my face. Holding my breath I edged forward and peered down into the dank opening. The water was as still as glass, reflecting in its blackness the boughs of the overhanging yew tree; floating in the water was the frog. It lay on its back, its yellowish belly blown up the size of a cricket ball, its arms and legs stiff in death.

  The frog frightened me almost as much as if it had been Sarek. Even in death it seemed to me to be acting as a sentinel; guarding the dead man at the bottom of the well.

  I had to get it out. I couldn’t use the grapple with that horror floating before me, and the thought of touching it sickened me.

  I returned to the house. I had to have a drink. I knew I was wasting precious time, but I had to have a drink if I was going through with this job.

  I found two inches of gin left in the bottle, and I drank it neat. It didn’t touch me. I raked around in the cupboard and found another bottle of gin with about half an inch of liquor in it. I drank that. My hands were shaking and my heart was pounding so violently, I could scarcely breath.

  I fetched a long-handled mop from the kitchen, and as I was about to open the back door I heard the milkman drive up.

  I waited, continually wiping my face and hands, and breathing in short, quick gasps. When I heard him drive away, I went down to the gate and collected the milk. Then I started round to the back of the house again, carrying the mop.

  I knelt on the wall of the well and pushed the mop head gently into the water. The frog floated away. I tried to trap it in the woollen strands of the mop, but every time I got near it the movement of the mop in the water sent it farther into the darkness.

  I waited for it to come into sight again, but it didn’t. The smell from the well nauseated me, and stirring the water with the mop seemed to make it worse. I decided to leave the frog where it was. So long as I couldn’t see it, I could manage.

  I hoisted up the grapple. The tips of the hooks were as sharp as needles. There were five of them, separated by two short steel rods. I fastened one end of the line to the ring in the grapple and gently lowered it into the water. It was heavy and went down as fast as I could pay out the line.

  ‘Hello, there; what are you up to?’

  The whole of my body recoiled in a shuddering start. I let go of the line. I was so frightened I couldn’t even bring myself to see who it was.

  ‘What an awful smell. I say, something ought to be done about that, you know.’

  Slowly I turned my head without moving my body and looked over my shoulder; not breathing and as cold as ice. He was standing a few yards from me; the clerical collar looked very white in the thin winter sunshine; his long, inquisitive nose a little red from the wind.

  ‘I hope I didn’t startle you. I rang the front-door bell, but no one answered.’

  I didn’t say anything; I couldn’t. My mouth was dry, and my tongue curled back like a strip of dry leather.

  ‘Have you lost anything down there?’

  I had to say something. I opened and shut my mouth, opened it again and managed to get out: ‘Yes’.

  ‘You ought to be careful, you know. That smell’s dangerous. You could get typhoid from water like that. Perhaps I can help you?’

  ‘It’s all right.’

  He was beginning to look uneasy. He didn’t seem to like my stillness.

  ‘There’s nothing the matter, is there?’

  I stood up.

  ‘No; you startled me.’

  ‘Yes I’m afraid I did. I’m very sorry; it was stupid of me. I didn’t really expect to find you here. Now about this water. I shouldn’t be surprised if someone hadn’t drowned a dog in there. I remember when I was in Nairobi a horse fell down a wel
l. Of course, it was a much bigger well than this. I was there at the time. The poor brute trod on the well cover and it broke. I shall never forget seeing it go down. And oddly enough a friend of mine had a similar experience in Patagonia. Only he told me they got the horse up; although of course they had to put it to sleep.’

  I just stood there like a dummy, half-suffocated by the banging of my heart, and unable to think; my mind blank with panic.

  He joined me at the well and peered into the water.

  ‘Bless my soul, there’s a frog in there; what an enormous brute. Is this your line?’

  Before I could stop him he had taken hold of it and given it a quick jerk.

  ‘Hello! I seemed to have hooked something. Gracious me! It’s a tremendous weight.’

  I took the line out of his hand. The touch of my cold, wet skin must have startled him, for he took a quick step away from me.

  ‘What do you want?’

  My voice sounded as inhuman as the voice of a ventriloquist’s dummy.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘What do you want? I’m busy. Can’t you see I’m busy?’

  ‘Well, yes, you certainly look busy. What have you lost down there? That’s heavy, you know. Shall I help you haul it up?’

  ‘No, I can do it. It’s a sack of potatoes. Just tell me what you want.’

  ‘Well, I wanted to see Mrs. Sarek.’

  ‘She and Mr. Sarek are in Paris.’

  ‘Are they? I thought I saw her in the village this morning in the car.’

  ‘She was on her way.’

  ‘How nice to be in Paris in the winter. I remember my late bishop telling me...’

  ‘I don’t want to hear what your bishop told you. I’m busy.’

  ‘Oh. Well, of course, I mustn’t keep you.’

  ‘Goodbye. I’ll tell Mrs. Sarek you called.’

  ‘I wish you would. I seem so unlucky never to find her in. Actually I wanted to ask her if she would care to give a little donation towards our organ fund. We are trying...’

  I took out a pound note and thrust it into his hand.

  ‘Here, take this, and let me get on with my work.’