by MARY HOCKING
No one followed her. But this did not bring any relief because now danger seemed to lie ahead, in the doorway of a shuttered shop, in an alleyway, hunched in a telephone kiosk.
As a child, it had been ‘you must always come through the well-lit streets’. She made for Scotney Avenue. The hands on the clock in the post office were at a quarter to three when she turned into The Avenue. The wide street, livid in lamplight, was empty. It had the look of a place which is waiting for something to happen. On the opposite side of the street, the church of St Stephen the Martyr rose high above the surrounding buildings, massive and dark, save where the great rose window winked in the moonlight like the eye of a Cyclops. Immediately beside her, a traffic light turned from red to green, and farther on another light responded and passed the signal on, ‘something human this way comes’. She crossed the road and began to walk down The Avenue, past food shops with closed notices hanging up, jewellers’ with grilled windows and an antique shop with portcullis drawn across its entrance. Nothing stirred behind the barricades; the daytime people had evacuated the area. Whatever might happen, they did not want to know about it.
Something was wrong, perhaps it was herself. The street was so large whereas she was getting smaller with every step she took. A dark road tunnelled off ahead of her. She turned into it. The shops here were no bigger than booths in a fairground. Most of the wares would be out on the pavement in daytime, but now they were inside; Stetsons, studded leather belts, ponchos, kimonos, dresses feathered and fringed, all penned inside until the day’s charade began again. Dustbins blocked doorways and it was necessary to walk carefully. Even so, she stumbled over a pile of old newspapers and had an encounter with an angry cat. Farther on, she nearly fell over a pair of old boots. As she paused to get her breath back, the boots drew away from her and tucked themselves beneath a shapeless bundle of clothes lying between a dustbin and the door of one of the shops. Hannah walked away, avoiding pity like a snare.
The buildings grew more dilapidated. Through one window she saw a rent in the roof and a jagged piece of sky beyond. She regretted taking short cuts but dared not turn back. Now, she was in a no-man’s-land of vacant sites cordoned off by wire mesh fencing. On a wall at the side of one of these sites a slogan had been painted, the words no longer decipherable. The pavement had dwindled to an asphalt path which even at this hour sweated in the heat; she felt it give slightly beneath her heels. To her right, there was a long, low corrugated iron structure which looked as though it might be a relic of war-time occupation. As she walked towards this apparently derelict place, something stirred on the other side of the wire mesh. It was delicately done; she was aware only of two eyes which bobbed forward to wait for her to come abreast of the gate leading to the site. The gate was heavily padlocked. As she came to it, the guardian of this mystery snuffled to show that he had picked up the scent of her fear. For a time, he paced beside her. When she moved out of his territory, she could hear him grumbling in his throat.
She came to another main road, livid and empty as Scotney Avenue, save for a police car in a bus bay. The two policemen encapsulated in the car watched her speculatively as she crossed the road. She turned into a street lined with squat, semi-detached houses. She was committed to the dark streets now. In front of her, a tattered creature, unidentifiable as man or woman, proceeded jerkily down the street, one foot in the gutter and one on the pavement; it was engaged in a tirade of abuse which rose to a shriek whenever the uneven method of perambulation resulted in a more than unusually severe jolt. As Hannah edged by, the creature caught its foot on an uneven paving stone and lurched against her. Terror and guilt, the combined product of a lifetime of such misadventures, found vent in an accusation – so set about with profanities it was barely understandable – that Hannah had tried to shove past. A touch of a hand in the dark, a friendly word, might have made an end to the scene; but Hannah walked away. Behind her, the voice rose in unexpectedly lucid comment on this uncharitable behaviour. ‘You’re the devil! You pretend to be so fine, but you’re the devil. Don’t think I don’t know you’re the devil. . . .’ She hurried on and was soon out of ear-shot; but a rank smell had got into her nostrils and remained with her.
Ahead, there were lights and intermittent traffic sounds. She was near the main road which circled Gloucester Park. She could see the trees in the park stretched against the sky and a moon thin as the Cheshire cat’s grin. She began to run past parking meters rearing up like caterpillars. Lomax could get little sense out of her when she arrived at his house.
She was too confused to find a beginning at which she could start her story. If she could have done that, it wouldn’t have been so bad; a cause from which all this unpleasantness derived might have offered the possibility of an eventual restoration of order. But when she tried to tell Lomax what had happened, the thing which came first to her mind was the person next door. A drop-out, a tramp, it didn’t matter who he was or why he was there. It was the fact that he was there and she had not realised it that was so terrible; they had been living within a foot of each other, night after night, for weeks, perhaps months. And outside? When she leant from her window at night to look at the stars and dream her dreams, it was all down there; the bundle huddled by the dustbin, the guardian of the derelict hut, the tattered creature who knew about the devil. . . .
Lomax gave her brandy, wrapped a blanket round her and let her talk. Many people haven’t the patience to wait, if you hesitate they find words for you, not the words you want; he waited for Hannah to find her own words. Eventually, her ramblings brought her to Rodney Cope who had killed Pauline Ormerod. This no longer seemed so important, it was something left on the surface of her mind; she was able to talk about it more rationally than the things which had happened since.
‘When I told him I had seen him with Mrs. Ormerod, he didn’t say anything and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck begin to rise, as though someone had come up behind me and touched me with the tip of a finger. I didn’t know how we were ever going to look at each other again. But we did.’ She ran a forefinger lightly round the rim of the brandy glass. ‘It wasn’t that his eyes were wild, or anything like that. . . . they just accepted that I knew he had killed her. I don’t think I would have known, I’d have found a way out of knowing, if only he hadn’t looked at me like that.’
Lomax said gently, ‘Where did you see Mrs. Ormerod and Cope?’
‘Coming out of a cottage in the marshes near Picton’s Quay, months ago, at the end of March. I never mentioned it because it was a special place to me. I thought of it as my territory and I didn’t want him to invade it. But I suppose really it was I who invaded his territory.’ She leant against Lomax’s shoulder, suddenly spent; she had run her race and touched the tape, it was all over as far as she was concerned.
But later, in bed, the other things came back, and most vividly of all, the creature who had recognised her as the devil when she walked away. She could not explain this to Lomax, but her need for comfort communicated itself. There was nothing he could do to drive out the terror because the terror was real and he was as powerless against it as she. And yet, inexplicable as the terror, human warmth worked its miracle, and as he held her close she was gradually eased of fear.
Lomax did not sleep all night. He had suspected that Cope had killed Pauline Ormerod, and yet murder seems so unlikely that one’s intelligence continues to protest against the facts. Fear can accomplish more than reason. As he lay beside Hannah, he was convinced beyond all doubt that Rodney Cope was a killer.
‘I think you should go straight to the police,’ he said the next morning. Hannah was still in bed; he fussed with the breakfast tray to conceal his nervous impatience.
‘I’ll go if you like, but they won’t believe me. I’ve been before.’ She buttered a piece of toast before she explained about the statement she had made regarding the incident in Mario Vicente’s restaurant.
‘I see.’ Lomax thought about this while he poured coffee
for himself. ‘In that case, they may be sceptical; but the important thing is that the knowledge should be shared.’
‘Yes, I see.’ She sounded apathetic. While she ate, she looked towards the window. She said, ‘Another fine day.’ She thought about Rodney Cope and wondered what it must be to have done something so irrevocable, to wake one morning and think ‘last night I killed a woman’, not to be able to turn over and try for a better dream, to have to drag that into the day with you and all the subsequent days. For a moment, she seemed within a hair’s breadth of understanding; but it was too much for her, she couldn’t hold on to it. She said, ‘I don’t feel well. I’d like to stay here.’
‘You’ll feel better once you’re up.’
She looked at him reproachfully and he kissed the tip of her nose. She closed her eyes.
‘I don’t think I can face everyone.’
‘I’ll be with you.’
‘You won’t be at the office.’
‘The office!’ he said sharply. ‘You’re not going back to that office.’
She did not answer. Her face assumed a vague expression, like that of a deaf person who has switched off the hearing aid. She pulled the clothes back and swung her feet slowly over the side of the bed. ‘I’d better wash.’
He began to speak and then thought better of it. She looked very strained, as though she might burst into tears at an unkind word, yet stubborn enough to resist all argument.
When she came downstairs some forty minutes later, she gave him a tentative smile while her eyes pleaded to be spared reproof. She said, ‘I’m ready at last.’
He said, ‘Hannah, let’s try to be sensible about this. . . .’
‘I won’t go to the office today,’ she said quickly. ‘I’ll wait until I can see Neil; then I’ll tell him that there’s not enough work to keep me occupied full-time. And anyway the room is too hot. I’ll suggest I work at home. I can’t come to any harm that way, can I?’ She looked at him anxiously, dreading argument in the way a woman does when she has no intention of being persuaded by it.
He turned away and stood by the window, drumming his fingers on the sill. In the last seven hours his feelings for Hannah had changed so much that the woman who had delighted him only a few days ago seemed a stranger. The woman who now stood before him caused only pain, but she was a part of himself. His thoughts about her were confused, his impulses tended to violence; he wanted to shake some sense into her, to shout that she was his, that she had no right to risk something that belonged to him. He was bewildered, ashamed, and a little frightened.
She said meekly, ‘Shall we go to the police now?’
‘Hannah!’ He turned to her, distracted. ‘What is the point of this nonsense. What good can it possibly do?’
‘I’m not trying to do anything,’ she muttered wretchedly. Life had seemed a dangerous affair last night, and she had seen that there were some warnings one could not afford to ignore. Now, she didn’t see anything very clearly and there was a thinness about life. Sufficient unease remained, however, to hold her to her purpose, if it could properly be called ‘her’ purpose. Who was she, anyway? She dragged words out of confusion. ‘This is going to be a bad time for Neil. I must keep in touch with him. I can’t walk away and forget him.’ It didn’t sound convincing, even to her. She said, ‘Don’t be angry with me. Will. You must help me.’
‘Yes, all right.’ He put his hands on her shoulders and they stood close for a moment, thinking their own thoughts. ‘All right.’ He felt they both needed time for reflection.
On the way to the police station, he asked cautiously, ‘How do you feel about sleeping at your flat?’
‘Not too good,’ she admitted.
‘You could stay with me, but I’m often out very late.’ He thought it unwise for her to be with him, since he himself might qualify for Cope’s attentions.
‘I know a married couple in Pelham Square,’ she said. ‘I could go to them. I’ll say the flat gives me claustrophobia in the heat.’
‘Won’t they think that odd?’
‘They’ve got all sorts of wrinkles in their own personalities, so they accept other people’s oddities.’
Braithwaite was not at the police station. They saw the sergeant who had taken Hannah’s previous statement; he listened impassively and promised to report to Braithwaite when he returned. Afterwards, Hannah went to see her friends in Pelham Square. When he got to his office, Lomax telephoned Neil Moray’s office. Rodney Cope answered the telephone.
‘I hear that you were friendly with Mrs. Ormerod,’ Lomax said. ‘I wonder whether you could fill in one or two details for me?’
Cope said that he had not known Mrs. Ormerod; he added, ‘There could be only one source of that little story.’ He sounded amused. Not that it mattered how he took it, the important thing was that the risk should be spread.
Chapter Seventeen
‘Pauline Ormerod, by all accounts, had been somewhat unreliable for a long time. There is a rumour that it was she who despatched those papers to us – did you know that?’ Cope stopped the car by a wire fence round a slope of the Downs where bullocks grazed. There were other cars parked up here, scattered about, with people sitting beside them on the grass. To the right and left tracks wound along the ridge of the Downs. Cope and Moray stayed in the car while Cope finished with Pauline Ormerod. ‘I’ve no doubt she told Lomax some story and no doubt that he believed it, journalists are an incredible mixture of naïveté and cynicism. You only have to listen to them commenting on political wrangles to realise that – some chap calls another a fanatic or a hypocrite, or some other form of mild abuse, and the press talks about “a fierce attack”! A journalist is the easiest fellow in the world to shock. Shall we stretch our legs?’
To the left a track led up a steep incline and soon joined the South Downs Way; there were people strung out along this route, mostly making for the parking area, it was eight o’clock in the evening. Cope turned onto the path to the right which was deserted.
‘You knew there had been developments?’ he asked, as he and Moray started up the steep incline.
‘No.’ It was Thursday evening; Cope had met Moray at the railway station and suggested that they should have a walk and then dine out. He had implied that there were matters which needed to be discussed and Moray had imagined these to be business matters.
‘Hannah has suddenly recalled that she saw me with Pauline Ormerod at some place that I wot not of at the end of March – early one morning as the song goes.’
‘She had some tale about Mario Vicente when I last saw her.’ Neil stopped. His breathing was laboured, and he could taste salt in his mouth. It had been another hot day, and even up here at this hour it was still very warm. ‘I’m out of training!’ he said fretfully. ‘I used to walk for miles. That’s what a few weeks in London does for you.’
They started walking again, more slowly. Neil said, ‘She went to the police about Vicente.’
‘She’s been again. And so have I.’
‘You?’
‘There are times when it is wise to put the record straight without delay. I can’t have it getting round that Pauline Ormerod was my style.’
‘You knew her?’
‘I recall seeing her once or twice, an emaciated woman with her hair in rags.’
They had reached the top of the slope. Moray said, ‘Do you mind if we sit down for a moment?’ He hunched on the ground, his knees drawn up, his arms folded round them. Cope stretched out with his hands beneath his head, looking up at the darkening blue sky. ‘Listen to the larks,’ he said.
Moray said, as though he was being led through a difficult lesson step by step. ‘But why would Hannah behave like this, it’s so unlike her?’
‘A woman scorned is a vessel of wrath.’
‘I don’t know about being scorned. . . .’ Moray muttered.
‘My dear Neil, Hannah has never been the same since you said thanks for the memory with a bunch of carnations.’
&nb
sp; ‘Oh, what rubbish!’
‘Is it? You ask some of the others how she reacted to that little gesture on your part! Think of it from her point of view. She worked damned hard during the campaign, for very little financial reward; she ministered to you like an angel – and you were very glad to be ministered to, you can’t deny that. Tea and sympathy at her flat at all hours. What do you think she did it for? Has Hannah ever struck you as being deeply involved in politics?’ Moray rested his forehead on his knees. ‘And don’t say you didn’t think about it. You thought about it quite carefully and your message was received and understood.’
