Rose wanted her to concentrate. They couldn’t afford a mistake in the form-filling, but Antonia continued to talk. ‘There’s a dear little undertaker called Hopkinson at the top end of Tottenham Court Road. Much nicer than Greely. We can go straight there and hand him this. Then I’ll get you to come home with me and see if Hector’s any easier to move before they come for him. It would look more natural if he was lying in bed. By now he ought to be more pliable, didn’t he?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘I will need your pen after all. There’s a short bit here that I’m supposed to fill in as myself. Different ink, you see, and bolder handwriting. No flies on me. What was I about to say? Yes, after you’ve helped me upstairs with Hector I suggest we shake hands and go our different ways.’
‘I’m all for that.’
‘Fine, but don’t sound so bloody pleased about it, my flower. I’m not looking for gratitude for what I did, but you don’t have to treat me like a case of measles. Considering the mess your marriage was in when we met, you haven’t come out of it at all badly.’ She returned the pen to Rose. ‘Do you want to check it? The other part has to be filled in by the undertaker.’
‘What?’ Rose felt a tightening in her stomach. ‘What did you say? Let me see.’
‘Part C. Part A is the registrar’s bit authorizing the disposal, which I’ve filled in. Part B is for the informant to complete. That’s me, and I’ve done it. And C is for the undertaker. “Notification of Disposal”. Oh my God!’ She clapped her hand to her mouth.
Rose quietly studied Part C. ‘A person disposing of a body must within ninety-six hours deliver to the registrar this notification as to the date, place and means of the disposal of the body.’ She was churning inside, but she spoke mechanically, chanting out the obvious as if she were playing consequences, except that it felt and sounded like the death sentence. ‘Who does the undertaker notify? The registrar. And the registrar checks it against his records. And if it’s a name that doesn’t appear in his records, he wants to know why. When he doesn’t get a satisfactory answer he asks the police to investigate.’ She paused. ‘You know, Antonia, we’ve had it. This perfect murder is a perfect dud.’
‘Bloody hell!’ Antonia screwed up the paper and drummed her fists against the dashboard. ‘Five hundred sodding forms and we can’t use one of them.’
Rose didn’t have that much energy left. She turned on the engine and drove out of the Park, into the traffic moving up Park Lane. She was incapable of saying any more. She was blitzed. It was all she could do, all she wanted to do, to perform the mindless functions of controlling the car. It was some kind of link with normality, like hanging out washing the morning after an air raid that had shattered every window in the house.
Mercifully Antonia also went silent.
The street lights were on already. Outside the Dorchester a man was selling evening papers. Rose switched on the headlamps as she swung the Bentley into Oxford Street and the predictable jam. While they were inching towards Oxford Circus the subversive aroma of roast chestnuts wafted from a street corner.
‘It’s past teatime.’
‘Shall we?’
‘A bag of chestnuts won’t go far.’
They stopped at Yarner’s in Langham Place and sat by an upstairs window at one of the glass-topped tables with a pot of tea in front of them. They had a corpse at home to dispose of and they blandly ordered Bismarck Herring sandwiches, buttered crumpets and chocolate cake from the silver-haired waitress in her black dress, pink apron and cap. The imminent prospect of returning to the house without the slightest idea what to do with Hector appalled them both. Tea was a convenient hiatus. They didn’t speak, except to place the order and pay the bill. They were long past the point of small talk.
Back in the car, Rose handed across a cigarette and lit one herself. ‘It’s got to be faced. You can’t use an undertaker now.’
‘What do you mean – you?’
‘All right. Slip of the tongue. We’re in this together.’
Another half-minute passed.
Antonia said, ‘Nobody knows he’s dead except you and me.’
‘And Mr Greely.’
‘That undertaker? He didn’t use my name once. He’ll forget all about us.’
‘Some hopes! I should think you’re indelibly fixed in his memory. I can’t imagine anyone else has ever changed their mind in a funeral parlour.’
‘Greely might remember me, but he didn’t meet Hector, did he?’
‘You’d better tell me what you’re driving at.’
Antonia blew out a thin plume of smoke. Suddenly the bleak look had slipped from her features and was supplanted by an expression Rose had seen before, that afternoon they were standing outside the Ritz – lips pressed together into a secret smile, pleased with itself and scornful of the world, eyes slightly glazed and looking at nothing in particular. ‘Hector will just have to disappear.’
Rose frowned.
‘Go missing, darling. Plenty do.’
‘That’s going to take some believing. He wasn’t the type.’
‘What?’
‘Successful businessmen don’t go missing. How are you going to account for it?’
‘I won’t. It’s not my job.’ ‘But you’ll have to notify the police.’ ‘Eventually.’ ‘And?’
‘I’ll tell them he didn’t come home one night.’
Rose shook her head and sighed. ‘It’s not much good, Antonia. What are they supposed to think?’
‘Anything you bloody well like.’ Antonia rattled off a list. ‘He fell down a manhole. He lost his memory. He was robbed and pushed into the river. He refused to pay protection money to a gang. He seduced the entire Luton Girls’ Choir and fled the country. He got religion and went into—’
Rose cut in. ‘For God’s sake, Antonia! How will you get rid of the body?’
‘We, my little helpmate.’
‘We, then.’
Antonia waved a dismissive hand. ‘Bury him somewhere. Out in the country. A Surrey wood.’
‘Have you any idea how hard it is to dig a grave in uncultivated ground?’
‘Why? Have you?’
Rose gave her a glare that would have sunk a battleship. ‘The newspaper reports always say the victim was found in a shallow grave.’
‘What’s your suggestion?’
‘I don’t have one.’ Any minute they would be at each other’s throats. ‘All right. We’ll go back to the house.’ She succeeded in sounding calm, but her hands shook when she tried fitting the key into the ignition. She didn’t know which was worse, the hostility from Antonia or the terror boiling inside herself.
She drove slowly up Portland Place and brought the car round the Devonshire Street turn to the Mews. Antonia got out and ran into the house. Rose pulled out the key of the car and followed.
Antonia’s voice hailed her excitedly from the sitting room where they had left the body. ‘He’s starting to loosen up. I think we can move him tonight.’
Rose thought, what’s the point? She remained in the kitchen, sparing herself another sight of the corpse.
Antonia appeared again, radiant with her discovery. Her dead husband might have been a bread-mix from the way she talked about him. ‘I’ll put some heat in there and he’ll be ready in no time.’
Rose looked round for something else to occupy her. The cat had walked in and wanted feeding, so she opened the fridge. Some uncooked meat was in there on a plate. ‘Is it safe to feed this to Raffles?’
‘What do you mean – safe?’
‘Free from poison.’
‘For crying out loud, you halfwit. There was never any poison.’
‘No poison?’
‘Only the chloroform.’
‘For Hector?’
‘No – for you, stupid.’ The barb sprang from Antonia’s tongue and she immediately tried to cover it with words. ‘The point is, you can feed the bloody cat with perfect safety. I’ve got to find an electric fire.’ She
quit the room.
Rose stood rigid. Now she knew. Hector’s murder had been an afterthought, one of Antonia’s devil-may-care decisions after the murder attempt failed. The whole charade of Antonia going away and Hector requiring cooked meals had been dreamed up to bring Rose herself to the house to be chloroformed and killed.
Why?
How could she have so antagonized Antonia? The worst she was guilty of was an innocent meal out with Hector.
What did Antonia hope to gain by it?
She thought back to Barry’s death. That had been casual and coldblooded. Barry had been insufferable, but not to Antonia. She had no grudge against him, yet she had calmly offered to kill him. And kept her promise.
Antonia didn’t need a bloodlust or a brainstorm. She murdered with detachment. Yet not without reason. Surely not without reason.
She must have killed Barry because it put Rose under an obligation to her. Something was wanted in return.
The opportunity to steal the death certificate from the registrar? Not just that.
Rose clenched her fists.
My identity.
I assumed all along that she wanted me to square the account by killing Hector, possibly without knowing what I was doing. I was wrong. If she’d wanted Hector dead she’d have done it herself. She didn’t need me for that. But if she killed me she could write her own name on the death certificate and ‘die’. She’d have my handbag with all my papers and my house keys. She’d become Rose Bell and she’d be free to go to America with Vic and marry him.
And Hector, could he have known about this? Was it possible that he’d gone along with it? Did he know of the plan that evening in Reggiori’s?
Rose thought back to what she had heard about the drowning of Hector’s first wife. He’d connived at that. Why shouldn’t he have also connived at another murder?
The cat mewed.
She took the meat from the fridge and looked for a knife with a good, sharp edge.
29
Just what are you doing with that knife?’
Antonia stood in the doorway, her right hand gripping the door frame.
Rose looked up. She’d taken it from a drawer containing wooden spoons, tin openers, meat skewers and a selection of knives and cleavers. This had been the obvious one to choose, a long bone-handled carver with a blade that may once have been uniformly wide. Years of sharpening had honed it to a point.
‘What I said I would do – cutting up meat for the cat.’
‘It shouldn’t be used for that.’
‘Why not? It’s wonderfully sharp.’
‘It’s the carver.’
‘I’ve finished now.’ Calmly Rose picked up the chopping board and used the knife to push the pieces off into the cat’s dish. ‘That should keep him quiet.’ She took the knife to the sink and ran some water over it. She reached for a teacloth and wiped the blade, taking care not to touch the edge, turning it over appreciatively. ‘An old knife like this is certainly worth looking after.’
‘Why do you say that?’
Rose gave a shrug. ‘I wouldn’t mind betting it’s sharper than anything else you’ve got.’
For a moment Antonia had looked alarmed. Now she seemed to accept that she’d misinterpreted what she’d seen. She put her hand to her hair and twined one blonde strand around her forefinger and twitched her mouth into an odd, speculative smile. ‘There’s a hacksaw in the garage.’
Rose frowned. ‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘I should have thought it was obvious.’
‘Well, it isn’t to me. What are you suggesting?’
‘He’d be easier to bury in pieces.’
Rose dropped the knife in the drawer and slammed it shut.
Antonia carried on in a persuasive voice as if she were suggesting how to pass a diverting evening. ‘We could wrap the bits in newspaper and bury them in different places.’
‘That’s vile. How could you possible do it?’
‘The two of us, ducky.’
Rose’s stomach heaved. ‘You must be mad even to think of such a horrible thing.’
She got a cold stare. ‘Think of something better, then.’ Getting no answer, Antonia added, ‘Sweetie, we’ve got a dead man to dispose of. You’d better face up to reality.’
The words hit Rose hard. The thought of butchering any human corpse, let alone Hector’s, was too nauseous to contemplate. Yet she was barren of suggestions.
As if to underline the inactivity, Antonia fetched some playing cards from one of the other rooms and started a game of patience on the kitchen table.
‘Understand what I said, Rose? You kept your lily white hands clean when I got rid of Barry, but you’re as tainted as I am because you asked me to do it. I don’t know what goes on inside that mind of yours, but you can’t go on looking the other way. Face it, you’re a killer, just as I am. If you want to go on living, stop playing Snow White and get some blood on your hands.’
The phone rang.
Their eyes met. Antonia stood up. ‘It’ll be Vic.’
‘Don’t answer it.’
‘I can talk to Vic.’
‘You don’t know who it is.’
The bell pealed out its insistent notes.
‘For pity’s sake, it’s only a telephone.’ Antonia ran across the hall.
‘You’re asking for trouble.’
Furious, Rose followed her into the room and stood not a yard away.
‘Yes? . . . Speaking, yes.’ Antonia switched the receiver to her other ear and turned her back on Rose. Her voice was guarded. This certainly wasn’t Vic. ‘Really? He left here as usual . . . No, not yet, but that’s nothing unusual. He works all hours, as you know . . . I see . . . No, he didn’t – but then I didn’t enquire. I’m his wife, darling, not his nursemaid. Perhaps he spent the day at that exhibition . . . Closed? I didn’t know that . . . Well, did he go to Paris, do you think? He had lunch with some Frenchman the other day . . . God, no, I’d be the last to know . . . Listen, my dear, it’s not the end of the world. Surely the place can survive for a couple of days without him? I’ll get him to ring you if he gets in touch. There’s nothing more I can do.’ She slammed down the phone. ‘Bloody woman.’
‘His secretary?’
‘Fussing over sweet F.A., as usual. What time is it?’
‘Just gone nine.’
‘A fine time to call me. I’ve got my suspicions about Hector and that girl.’
‘She’s got suspicions of her own by the sound of it.’
‘Piffle. She doesn’t know there’s anything wrong.’
‘That’s beside the point, Antonia. He’s been missed at work already. If you’re going to play the anxious wife you’ll have to call the police damn quick.’
Antonia slid her eyes in the direction of the drawing room where the corpse was lying. ‘How can I?’
Rose had no answer. She’d rejected everything Antonia had suggested.
In her mind’s eye she stood over Hector’s body with a hacksaw, bracing herself to use it. Revolting. Yet it was rapidly coming to that.
No. She’d reached her sticking-point. ‘There must be another way of dealing with this. A better way.’
‘Well?’ Antonia waited with the air of a schoolmistress expecting some glib answer.
Out of sheer desperation Rose talked, casting for ideas as she spoke. ‘We take everything out of his pockets that could be used to identify him.’
‘We’d have to do that whatever happened.’
‘Let me finish. And then we put him in the boot of the car and drive out and . . . find a bomb site that hasn’t been cleared.’
‘A bomb site – that’s a thought.’
Confidence surged through Rose like a drug. ‘We drop him into a hole and cover it with rubble. The chances are that he’ll never be found. If he is, they’ll think he was looting and had an accident. Or that he was just some tramp using it as a place to sleep.’
Antonia made a fist and feigned a punch. �
��Brilliant, Rosie! Let’s drink to it.’ She fetched two glasses and a bottle of the Burgundy, which she uncorked with one pull of the corkscrew. ‘Just one. Got to stay on our feet.’
They touched glasses. Antonia’s eyes may have caught some reflected light from the cut glass but it seemed to Rose that they shone with something more than relief. There was a gleam of triumph there. Almost of rapture. It was as if she was looking ahead to some sort of happy-ever-after.
Rose brusquely recalled her to the present. ‘Croydon is the place. I come through there when I visit my parents. It’s peppered with bomb sites.’
‘Croydon?’ Antonia spoke the name as if it were Timbuktu. ‘We don’t need to go that far when you’ve got a perfectly good site in Pimlico, darling.’
‘Where?’
‘Christ Almighty, if you don’t know …’
Rose gazed at her in disbelief. ‘You can’t mean Oldfield Gardens.’
‘You bet I do. It hasn’t been cleared, has it?’
‘I am not going to bury Hector in Oldfield Gardens.’
Antonia rebuked Rose in a good-natured way. ‘Don’t be such a sap. It’s the ideal place. It’s not overlooked.’
‘No. I refuse. It’s much too near. It would be asking for trouble.’
‘That great poster screens it from the road.’
‘We’re taking him to Croydon.’
Antonia conceded tamely. ‘Have it your way if you insist, darling.’
Rose went out to the car. She had remembered the packet of disposal forms on the back seat. She brought them back to the house, gave them to Antonia and told her to make a fire of them. Antonia took them off to the drawing room, joking that if they helped to raise the temperature a few degrees the afternoon hadn’t been a complete waste of time. She was in a better mood now that they’d settled what to do with Hector, and she seemed appreciative of Rose’s more positive role.
Some time towards midnight Antonia came back to the kitchen. She’d changed into a sweater and slacks and she’d brought some down for Rose and dumped them on the table, together with a pair of flat shoes.
‘You can’t climb over bomb sites in heels.’
Dead Gorgeous Page 18
