‘Oh Tom, do use your head! It was just because I knew it was going to burst into flames that I went there to save Rory.’
‘But you didn’t save her,’ Tom pointed out.
‘Because I was too late, despite all my efforts. The whole of the ground floor was locked up when I got there, a little before midnight, having travelled half across the world in a desperate dash to get there in time, in a perfect agony of fear the whole way. It was something of a miracle that I managed to get there before it actually caught fire, even though I couldn’t get in!’
‘But why did you let her go there in the first place?’
‘I didn’t. I knew nothing about it. She went off in one of her rages, without a word to me. We’d had one of our ratbag fights of the kind you’ve so often witnessed, and when I got back the next day after one of those wild Bermudian parties, milady had gone, without leaving me so much as a note. I’ve never known her do such a thing before, she must have been pretty mad. I must have been pretty mad myself.’
‘What was the row about?’
‘What? … Oh, to do with some stupid girl I was having an affair with. Admittedly I told Rory I wanted to marry her, but she ought to have had more sense than to take that seriously. Her cousin Sylvia said she’d made up her mind to divorce me. She urged me to go after her at once, you know how women stick together. But I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing so if it wasn’t that I suddenly realised what the date was. And then discovered there wasn’t another plane east till the next day.’ Jeremy sighed and pushed away his plate, the food half eaten. ‘Just to think about it gives me indigestion, my stomach churning round the way it did when I was frantically trying to make a connection by flying westwards first.’
‘Evidently you succeeded,’ Tom interpolated, trying to get the story moving a bit faster. ‘What happened when you found you couldn’t get in?’
‘I climbed in through our bedroom window. And there she was lying on the bed, sunk fathoms deep in unconsciousness. Impossible to rouse her. I tried to get her out of the window, but she was a dead weight and the ladder was too short for me to reach with her on my back. I couldn’t manage it.’ He waved his hand before his face and shook his head.
Their waiter came across with a worried face. Was anything wrong? Did the gentlemen find the dish displeasing? No, they said, it was only that they were not hungry. He carried the plates away, casting his eyes upwards in an expressive grimace at a passing colleague, and pleasantly returned to pour out more wine. The first course having been removed more than half uneaten, there would be time to finish the bottle before the next course was served, for which a Mouton Rothschild had been ordered.
The Pouilly Fumée had been slightly overchilled, the third glass was better, Tom thought, sipping it as he listened to Jeremy recounting how he had run downstairs to telephone the Fire Brigade, only to find to his unforgettable terror that the staircase was ablaze and he could not get back. He recognised now that he had been hideously careless in his haste, leaving open her bedroom door as he ran down to the phone, when her window was already open, and then leaving the front door open behind him as he raced round to find, if possible, a longer ladder. The effect of this had been to cause a whoosh of draught upwards, it had been explained to him afterwards, and he could not deny that to some extent he may have been partly responsible for her death.
‘You mean, that if you had not left the doors open she might still be alive today?’
‘I suppose it is possible. Though not very probable, I would think.’
‘They say there are no accidents, you know. Which implies that, although you may not admit it, those doors were left open so that you would not be able to get back to her.’
Jeremy said:
‘I never wanted her to die, if that’s what you’re trying to say.’
‘Didn’t you? Never? Not for a moment? Not when you were thinking of the other woman, the one you wanted to marry? Not when you left her in the bedroom while there was still time to have dragged her downstairs when you went down yourself? Not when she seemed too heavy a burden for you to manage?’
Jeremy made no reply, leaning his elbows on the table, his mouth pressed against his folded fingers. He held up the bottle, looked at it, and emptied the remainder into their glasses.
‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘there was a moment, when I found I couldn’t get in, that I turned away to go, thinking: “Oh, to hell with her!” But that was only because I was tired and angry. I pulled myself together immediately. I hardly think that counts as wishing a person dead.’
‘Having come so far with so much trouble, you couldn’t very well go away again. You’d have to know what was going to happen: it might all have gone wrong.’
‘It did all go wrong.’
‘Not really, Jerry, not really. It only went wrong for Rory. For you it went just as you meant it to.’
The waiter approached and whipped the covers off the Toumedos Chasseurs with a flourish, deftly helping them to portions of french beans, salsify, and asparagus tips. The aroma was delicious, but Jeremy gazed at his plate with disgust. Everybody seemed extraordinarily eager to believe that he was responsible for his wife’s death. He couldn’t understand it. And now Tom of all people making these snide accusations.
‘I don’t know what you people gain by these insinuations. There’s simply not a word of truth in any of it, yet I’ve been dogged by them from the first. Beginning with Rory scribbling her idiotic drunken letters to the solicitor accusing me of intending to kill her — which was just the damned silly thoughtless mischief one could have expected from her. If the man had two brains in his head he might have realised it. But no, the bloody fool sends copies of it to the coroner and police and anyone else in the county he could think of. That started it. People are so vile they only want to believe the worst. It’s what is called human nature. Of course there wasn’t a single shred of evidence for them to go on, but it was. enough to bring her bitch of a daughter down like a wolf on the fold, threatening to contest the will. Well, if she can find some legal beagle willing to represent her, good luck to her. The vultures descend. Probate takes for ever; one knows what to expect there. And the Insurance Company stall with one excuse after another. While I hang around and wait. From time to time the police come and ask me questions and never answer the questions I put to them. Which reminds me,’ he held the wine to his nose, savouring the bouquet with closed eyes as if it was a rose or a spray of jasmine, ‘the police are looking for you. Did you know?’ He tasted the wine. ‘They think you can help them with their inquiries, as they put it in their own specialised jargon.’
‘Me? Why should they think I could help them?’ He glanced behind him to see if anyone was within earshot, and leaned forward to say in an undertone: ‘Surely they don’t suspect … ’
‘Arson, you mean? God knows what maggots wriggle in their tiny minds, they don’t confide in me. No, they say it’s in connection with the burglary that they want to see you. How do you like this burgundy?’
‘What burglary?’
‘The burglary. The removal from Upperdown of “a quantity of valuable old furniture, silver, porcelain and stuff. Forty-three items specifically described.” And you were the last person there, so even the fuzz could hardly escape the conclusion you might know something about it.’
‘Oh, you mean the things I put in store for you.’
‘The very same. And all in vain. As far as I can see they’ll lie there gathering dust for ever. Anyone fool enough to try to dispose of them would quickly find himself in trouble, since every dealer in the land has been supplied with a list of the missing items. And just imagine what the police would think if they were to discover that I had them in my possession and was attempting to sell them. It would lead to all kinds of discomforting inquiries. So that means another source of money vanished like water into sand.’
‘How did the police discover the things had gone?’
‘Because, my dear Tom, as soo
n as Rory walked in she saw that things were missing. Naturally she buzzed for the fuzz. Fuzz came. Found no sign of forced entry; everything in order. What were they to think? It must have dawned even on them that the most likely person to know something about the affair was the one who was on the premises last. Who curiously enough was a chap who had connections with the world of old pictures and antiques. Quite a coincidence, they must have said to themselves. And now the chap is missing too.’
‘They can’t possibly know where I am. And I’ve no intention of going back to England anyway.’
‘Very wise. Much better to stay out of the country if one can afford to.’
‘As long as the job lasts I can afford to.’
‘Ah, the job, yes. I’d forgotten about that,’ Jeremy remarked with a mocking smile.
‘Anyway, nobody knows where I am.’
‘Except me,’ the other reminded him.
‘Oh you. I don’t have to worry about you. You can’t afford to let me down, for it would bring you down too.’
‘That’s a comforting thought. For you, I mean.’
‘How did you find me, by the way? Was it just chance?’
‘My dear fellow,’ said Jeremy with an amused expression, ‘one can always track a person down if one wants to badly enough and puts one’s mind to it.’
Something in the way he said this gave Tom a cold sensation in the region of his heart, as when one looks into a mirror in the dark and fancies one can see something stirring in the shadows behind one …
‘When are we going to come to the point?’ Tom forced himself to say again, when they were in the Negresco Hotel, seated in a deserted writing-room with glass-topped tables at regular intervals round the walls and gilt-framed imitation-tapestry chairs in front of them, deep armchairs beside occasional tables, and a mute television flickering in one corner. Jeremy had elected to have coffee and liqueurs here, where they could be alone and undisturbed and yet in a place where they could be eyeball to eyeball in this crisis confrontation (unlike in a car or walking side by side, when particularly at night, one cannot see the other’s reactions, the look in the eyes that tells so much).
‘We are at the point now. I just wanted you to understand my position. I might say, my predicament. Everything has gone wrong. Nothing had turned out the way I expected. I’d lost Rory. Lost everything. I was utterly in the dumps, not knowing which way to turn. Not even free to go away without letting the police know.’ He glanced momentarily at the blue flickering picture in the corner … figures running down a street … gendarmes closing in on them … a struggle … He turned his eyes away and looked straight at Tom. ‘And then,’ he said in a quiet but intense voice, ‘I opened the paper and saw this photograph of a picture that had just been sold in New York. It was like a great light exploding in my head, Tom, because, you see, I recognised it. It was the picture of that dwarf which used to hang in the library at Upperdown. And the paper said it was painted by Velázquez. It was sold for over a million pounds: Rory’s picture. Just fancy if the old girl had only known that she had a painting worth a million and a quarter pounds!’
‘My dear chap, you’re letting your imagination run away with you. Like those old dears who were always writing in to Jennets to say they had a Rembrandt they’d bought at W. H. Smith’s before the war for twelve and sixpence, and what would it be worth now. What makes you think your “Velázquez” was genuine? You’ve no idea how many copies there are of the Mona Lisa and Flatford Mill and Van Gogh’s Sunflowers floating around — and I mean copies, not prints.’
‘But not of this one, Ransome, because it was described as a hitherto undiscovered painting. You can’t have copies of a painting no one’s ever seen. Besides, you knew it was the real thing. I know that now. You knew, and kept the knowledge to yourself.’
‘What makes you think so?’
‘Because I can see your face quite distinctly when you came into the library one day and found it gone. You turned as pale as a turnip and then looked as if you were going to pass out. I didn’t know why. But then Rory, who hated the picture like poison and had shoved it out of sight at the back of the big armoire on the landing, found you poking about in there one day when you thought she was out. She laughed when she told me and said you looked as guilty as hell, she couldn’t imagine why. Neither could I, then. Only afterwards when one already knows the answer, can one put two and two together.’
‘That’s proof?’ said Tom with a derisive smile. ‘Don’t be absurd.’
‘No. That’s not proof. The picture itself is the proof. The fact that it was the real thing. The fact that it appeared in the auction rooms so soon after everything in Upperdown was destroyed in the fire. A bit too much of a coincidence, I should say, to put down to chance. You vanish, broke to the wide, and are found living en prince in this very expensive place, putting up some highly improbable tale of running a yachting agency. You must think I’m stupid. And more significant than all the rest put together, you were the one who organised the fire. It did pass through my mind to wonder why you should go to all this trouble for Rory’s sake, not only putting yourself at risk but doing yourself and your family out of a free and comfortable residence. But, of course, it was the only way open to you of getting your hands on the painting and completely covering your tracks. Or so you thought, at least.’
Tom got to his feet and began pacing about the room, straightening the blotters on the writing tables. He turned and stared down at the other lounging back in the deep armchair. He said in a soft voice:
‘You say the significant thing is that I organised the fire. Well, yes, I did. I wouldn’t deny it. But who planted the idea into my head? You, Jerry. You, with your air of helpless guileless innocence — almost persuading me it was only a game of pretence, yet all the time urging me on, subtly insinuating fresh ideas. And I too wondered why. Why you were going to all this trouble to get the insurance for Rory. I couldn’t see it either, till afterwards. And then I saw how I’d been conned.’
‘You’d been conned! I like that, I must say.’
‘Yes, because it was always your intention that she should die in the fire. And I have no doubt that it would have worked but for Rory having left that letter saying you meant to kill her. She always had the idea you’d kill her some day, didn’t she? It does seem remarkably prescient of her, you must admit. I would guess that she mentioned her fears to other people beside myself and the solicitor; which may have been why they were so ready to believe you had, in fact, done it. Though, of course, only you and I know the truth. We knew it was rigged and how it was set up. We knew the actual day and hour and minute even when the building would catch alight. That being so, it wouldn’t have been very difficult for you to make sure she was back there in time.’
‘Oh, come on, what are you saying! I’ve told you what happened, weren’t you paying attention?’
‘I was paying attention, believe me. You had a row over some woman you were having an affair with, whom you told Rory you wanted to marry. Maybe that was true. But you certainly would not have wanted to be divorced, which would mean you would lose everything. Whereas if Rory died, you’d inherit it all. It’s so implacably obvious.’
‘What kind of bastard do you take me for!’
‘The kind of bastard you are.’
‘My God! You really are — Why should I, if what you say was true, have come haring half across the world? Tell me that.’
‘Because you had to be there to make certain that nothing went wrong. That she didn’t somehow escape death.’
‘You really think that?’
‘I certainly do.’
‘Then why don’t you do something about it? Why don’t you tell the police?’
‘You know I can’t do that, because the only proof I can offer makes me “an accessory before the fact”. The same reason, in fact, why you can’t go to the police and accuse me of having stolen a Velázquez belonging to your wife.’
‘I’m glad we’ve got back to
that at last, since that is what it’s all about. I don’t give a damn whether you like to think I murdered Rory, or let her die, or whatever. You’re welcome to your squalid little fantasies. All I want is the money you got for the Portrait of El Primo, the million and a quarter pounds it was sold for at Parke Bernet’s. Less, I concede,’ he added, seeing Tom shaking his head like a porcelain mandarin, ‘your expenses, and Parke Bernet’s commission, and whatever money you may have spent since. I’m not unreasonable.’
Tom was supporting himself against the table behind him. The room seemed to have become very dark except for the reflections of light on the brass tray and the liqueur glasses and the bottle of Armagnac and the ring on Jerry’s finger. He gripped the table tightly and shook his head to clear it of the dimness before his eyes.
‘You’re mistaken,’ he said, and was surprised at how hoarse his voice sounded in his ears. ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree. I haven’t got that money. I never sold the picture through Parke Bernet’s. I swear. You can ask them. I daresay they would tell you they handled it on behalf of a Swiss by the name of Nöckelheim.’
‘Oh, I know all about that, my dear chap. It doesn’t prove a thing. You can call yourself Knuckleheim or any name you please. Who’s to know or care?’
‘But I didn’t, Jerry, I didn’t! Nöckelheim is the dealer I sold it to in Zurich. And I didn’t get anything like that sum for it, believe me.’
‘You’d love me to, wouldn’t you?’
‘It’s the truth. I got three hundred and fifty thousand pounds and not a penny more. I swear it on all I hold most dear, on my children’s heads,’ Tom said wildly.
‘I wouldn’t advise you to swear that oath, Tom, the gods may be listening. You haven’t forgotten, have you, that the children are in my charge. They’re my hostages. Hostages to fortune.’
‘What do you mean?’ Tom said faintly.
‘If I don’t get the money, you don’t get Dinah and Biddy.’
A Game of Consequences Page 18
