‘There’s the person he arranged to meet,’ I suggested at last.
‘They do not seem to believe that.’
George moved. I flashed him a warning, and he relaxed.
‘What do they believe?’
Delia shook her head. ‘I don’t really understand. Something about one of you...’
‘It was me,’ said George shortly.
‘Whoever it was, they seem to believe there’s...what did he call it...a cover-up. They believe that Adrian simply drove there. That there wasn’t anybody he was meeting.’
‘I will not have you upset,’ Amanda burst out. ‘Really, Delia, this is absurd. You should be resting.’
‘And you, my dear, should be at work.’
I put down my empty cup. ‘Then before Miss Greaves has to go — while you’re both together — there’s just one thing I’d like to ask.’ I smiled from one to the other, Delia listless but making an effort, Amanda brittle. ‘You’re the two who were closest to him. I’m not talking about evidence now, but of atmosphere and instinct — intuition, if you like. Did Adrian kill those three girls?’
There was a gasp from Amanda. George grunted in protest, as though I had punched him. Amanda said:
‘How dare you! At a time like this.’
‘At a time like this you’re more likely to admit the truth to yourselves.’
Delia lifted her head. ‘I suppose he did. Does it matter?’
Amanda was shocked. ‘How you can calmly say such a thing...’
‘And you?’ I asked. ‘What was your opinion, Miss Greaves?’
‘Adrian could never, in all this world, do such a thing!’ She caught her lower lip in her teeth, then clasped her hands to her face before it could crumple away. She shook her head desperately, driving it from her. One hand sought Delia’s.
‘You mean yes?’ I asked gently.
‘Yes, yes,’ she whispered bitterly. ‘Oh Delia! My dear, my dear! I knew, and I suffered, seeing you here with him, and not getting away.’
Delia looked at us. Her face was drawn, but she had a quiet, deep courage, much more solidly planted and experienced than her sister’s.
‘You’ve upset her now. Poor Amanda, you should go home. And rest.’
‘Of course she should,’ I agreed, and between us, George and I, we managed to get Amanda into her sheepskin coat, into her car, and on the road before she’d recovered her equanimity.
‘I can’t thank you both enough,’ said Delia ambiguously, ‘for what you’ve done.’
She was standing in the open front door at the time, gazing after her sister. Her eyes were cold.
We were using the Renault again, and George got us well clear before he burst out with what I’d been expecting.
‘What the hell did Thwaites mean by that — there’s been a cover-up!’
‘Oh come on, George. You can’t imagine he’d tell a witness what he thought could have happened. No. That was Delia’s idea. Somehow she’s got to believe that. I wonder why.’
‘You’re crafty. You never let on. What were you up to, in there?’
‘Me?’
‘Springing that on them.’
‘It helped to know, I thought, who’s really the dominant one.’
‘That poor Delia, treating her like that!’
‘I know, George. Where’re you heading?’
‘For his offices. Where else?’
‘Then you see why I said it. I had to get you going, somehow.’
I laughed. After a minute, George laughed, too. But there was no heart in it.
‘It’s all we’ve got, Dave,’ he explained, as though I hadn’t realised it. ‘Collis had it all fixed with some accomplice or other, and that accomplice brought along the MGB, and parked it in Plummer’s slot.’
‘I’m with you.’
We left the car in the street outside Collis’s office, and got out to walk the last bit.
‘They swapped cars, in effect, while I was round the other side of the car park. There, Dave, over there in the far corner, that’s where I was when the BMW drove away. Then Collis phoned the police, to give himself an alibi, and he’d got the MGB and a clear run.’
‘We don’t know it was anything but a distraction for us,’ I pointed out. ‘We don’t know that there was any intention for those two to meet again. It’s likely he only wanted to give himself a free run at the female population.’
‘So now you’re accepting it.’ George was derisory.
‘I’m accepting the possibility. Trying to see all round it. Maybe the log house was his usual base for his activities, and there was no intention of meeting that accomplice there.’
‘But they did meet, because the BMW was there, and Collis was shot. So the accomplice is the one we’ve got to find.’
‘The only clue is the MGB.’
I was watching him, slightly amused. Last night, definite opposition. Now, all of a sudden, enthusiasm.
‘You tell me, George.’
‘It’s unlikely it’d actually belong to the accomplice. That would be too risky, and seeing the sort of car it was, ideal for his purpose, it was...’
‘Ideal for who’s purpose, George?’
‘Collis’s of course.’
‘So you’re saying there was a definite intention of a fast run somewhere? To the log house, then? By major roads, seeing that the accomplice took the motorway.’
‘Who’s telling this, anyway?’
‘You are, George. I was just exercising your ego a bit.’
‘I was going to say that the MGB was obviously hired because of what it was, to leave for Collis’s use. We don’t know what coercion he might have used. But you see how it is — all we’ve got to do is find the hire firm and ask who hired it.’
‘And who returned it?’
‘Is that likely, Dave? Use your loaf. Who hired it’ll be enough.’
‘All of which should be dead easy. Not many hire firms have sports cars on their books.’
We had to go Birmingham to find it, and that was on the advice of the nearest Avis. This was a specialist hire firm — the odd Daimler or Jensen for that special effect you wished to create; the few snappy sports jobs to impress the girls. Yes, they had a red MGB out on hire. Of course they would look it up — anything for the city C.I.D. George looked innocent and very official.
The man fetched his books. You have to produce a driving licence to hire a car, so we expected a decent lead.
The car had been hired, with a huge deposit, by Adrian Palmer Collis.
George said not a word, but turned on his heel and went out to the Renault. He came back with a sketch of Wolverhampton’s deplorable horse — one of Collis’s subtler clues which was signed A. P. Collis. The signatures matched. The one on the hire contract was written above the date. It was thirteen days before.
We returned to the Renault. George did not immediately drive away. He grasped the steering wheel firmly, and stared ahead.
‘Before he engaged us,’ I said.
‘He’d got it all planned.’
‘Car first, then the less important details, such as the two idiots to give him an alibi.’
‘When he was good and ready, Dave. When it suited him to go out and do whatever he wanted to do.’
‘People don’t plan sex assaults thirteen days ahead.’
‘But they plan murders.’
‘The accomplice, George? Is that who you mean? Lured to the log house on some pretence, and then to be killed.’
‘It leaves us no lead at all. Just a red MGB, abandoned somewhere.’
‘So think, George. Go on, do your memory trick. That MGB. Visualise it, man. There must have been somebody sitting in it, in the car park, as you drove past.’
‘It doesn’t follow.’
‘But visualise it.’
‘I’m doing that. Don’t push me, Dave.’
‘A low, red car...’
‘I know what it looks like. For God’s sake, shut up a bit.’
&nb
sp; ‘Just trying to help.’
I sat and sulked for three minutes. Then at last:
‘Somebody could have been in it, and I wouldn’t see.’
‘Why not, George?’
‘Because the visor was down.’
‘Perhaps so that you wouldn’t see.’
‘But the sun was low. The snow hadn’t started. You weren’t even awake, but first thing yesterday morning the east was clear sky. The visor could’ve been down because the card been driven in from the west. Collis hired it thirteen days ago. He’d have to leave it somewhere the police wouldn’t pick it up, a long-stay car park, say. Dave...a long-stay car park to the west, not too far away...The Airport, Dave!’
‘Good thinking.’
He looked at me suspiciously. I said: ‘Let’s go and have a look, then.’
The motorway is almost due west to east, which made the car park at the Airport a pretty wild guess. There were a thousand alternatives, but it was where I’d choose to dump a car.
You drive in and take a ticket. As you drive out, a man at the barrier checks the time and date and asks you for a lot of money. The previous morning he must have collected twelve days’ parking fee on the red MGB. It was odds against his remembering.
‘Twelve days is a funny period,’ the old fellow said. ‘Mid-winter, too, it’s the ski-ing crowd. Ten days or a fortnight, but never twelve. That’s why I remember.’
‘You do?’
‘Drives out with this little sports car and pays £24.20. By dinner time, drives out again and pays five hours on a scruffy old saloon. Sure I remember.’
‘Scruffy old saloon?’
‘A Morris Minor. There’s still some about.’
‘Can you describe her?’
‘You knew,’ he accused me. ‘I didn’t say it was a woman.’ He went on to describe Amanda Greaves.
We drove on into the parking area. It was divided into huge compounds: long stay, short stay, and don’t know till I get back. The little red MGB was in the short stay. Amanda had had to return for her own car.
‘It’s too easy,’ said George suspiciously.
We stood and looked at the car. We were both wearing driving gloves. I tried the door. It had been left open, keys on the passenger’s seat. I peered in, disturbing nothing.
‘This is the car,’ I said.
‘I’d guessed that.’
‘Proof though, now. There’re shotgun pellet holes in the driver’s seat squab. And what looks like blood.’
We walked back to the Renault. Our short stay cost 20p. George was morose.
‘I wonder,’ he said at last, ‘what it’d take to sit in that seat, with his blood in the small of your back.’
‘It was something she’d have to do. We’d better phone the police.’
‘There’s a box right in front of Riverside Court.’
‘That’s twenty-seven miles from here, George,’ I said gently.
He eased the Renault onto the road and headed for the motorway junction.
‘We wouldn’t want the police to get her first, Dave, now would we.’
George wouldn’t, anyway.
CHAPTER SEVEN
We had not parted amicably, so it was not surprising when Amanda tried to slam the door in our faces. George reached past me and rested a hand against the door, and that was that. She turned away in exasperation and allowed us to follow her.
The previous time, we had seen only the hall. When we walked into the flat she was standing, half turned away, lighting a cigarette nervously. She had venetian blinds at the window, and these were nearly closed. The room was dim. She had a gas fire going, and there was an eerie glow to the whitewood furniture. None of the chairs looked as though it would support George.
She spoke bitterly. ‘You sent me off home to rest, but you won’t allow me to.’ Her voice was harsh. ‘But the light on, if you must.’
That was simply to indicate that she had nothing to fear from the light. But when George put it on, there was. Her eyes looked bruised, and the shock was still flooding them.
She raised her chin. ‘I don’t usually give way,’ she claimed.
‘I’m surprised,’ I admitted. ‘I’d have thought, being such an emotional woman...But perhaps not, seeing how things were.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Practice. It must have been going on a long time. You’d need every bit of restraint you could lay your hands on in order to carry on. And resolution.’
She was looking at me, the cigarette smouldering in her fingers, her eyes narrowed, perhaps against the smoke.
‘We’ve just come from the Airport, Miss Greaves. We were looking at a small, red MGB, which had been hired thirteen days ago by Adrian Collis. There’s evidence that he was killed while he was sitting behind the wheel, and the description we have seems to indicate that you drove it for him to his office, and left in his BMW. Tell me if this is all fantasy, because we’d like to hear it’s not true.’
‘But I’m proud of it. Proud!’
‘You’re making things very easy.’
‘I’m glad to hear something’s easy for somebody. Believe me, there’s been nothing easy in my life. Not ever.’
I glanced at George, but he was unresponsive. Leave it to Dave, that seemed to be what he implied.
‘I think you’ve perhaps taken your responsibilities too seriously,’ I suggested.
Her voice was scathing. ‘Are you talking about the same thing?’
‘I’m talking about your relationship with your sister, protecting her, as you thought, from the harsh facts of life. I can well imagine that when you began to feel some attraction for Adrian Collis, and when it grew, and when he responded, then you’d want to protect her from that, too.’
‘Men are very simple. I don’t know how half of you get through life — you’ve got no imagination. Do you think I cared for Delia? It was Adrian...Adrian! It was he who would suffer. The poor damned idiot, he still felt something for her. He said he couldn’t leave her...how much he’d hate to hurt her feelings. How much it’d hurt him! That tells you what an idiot I was. Any other woman would have thrown him out on his ear. But I loved him. There was nothing I would not have done...Oh, what’s the use of talking to you. You can’t understand. You wouldn’t know.’
‘Perhaps I do. You’re speaking with contempt, so I can understand, at least, that you’d have the same contempt for Delia.’
She stared at me. ‘You’re a fool.’
‘You say that because you think I admire her. Perhaps I do. She’s very courageous.’
Her laugh was brittle. ‘The little fool, she didn’t know what she had in Adrian...his loyalty. She rejected him.’
‘Rejected?’
‘She was his wife!’ Amanda cried. ‘That was the be-all and end-all of it. A contract which they’d signed. An oath they’d sworn. To have and to hold. She let it go that far. He had her and she held him, but dear God her hands must have been cold. The letter of the contract, but not the warmth. Isn’t that rejecting? Haven’t you ever realised, it’s men who framed the marriage vows. For men. They didn’t realise they were storing up distress for themselves. People like Delia are too literal. I bet she’s cherished every word. For better or worse! She enjoyed the worse bit, when it came. She could bask in it. I’m his wife! She screamed it at you without saying a word. Let no man put asunder! But oh dear Lord, that man was Adrian, and he couldn’t throw it back in her face. He just couldn’t.’
‘However much you pleaded with him.’
‘I did not, damn you. I loved him. I cherished him.’
‘Why don’t you sit down?’
‘Because I prefer to stand. If you’re going to fling accusations at me, I can stand on my own two feet.’
‘Of what did you expect to be accused?’
‘Whatever the legal phrase is. I’m sure there must be one. I went along with what he wanted me to do — because I loved him. I picked up the MGB for him, and did just what he told me to.’
‘Including dropping my partner when he followed you?’
She glanced at George. ‘It was so simple, and it worked just as Adrian said it would. We had to meet secretly, because we could not meet any other way, and because...’ She shook her head, dismissing it, but the pain was in the line of her jaw.
‘And because of what?’
She stared directly into my eyes. ‘Because he intended to kill me.’
I allowed the idea to penetrate and develop. Then at last:
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Didn’t I say you wouldn’t!’ she snapped. ‘I don’t know why we’re wasting time, talking like this...’
‘It’s not a waste. Very soon you’re going to be saying much the same thing to the police, and it’s likely that they’ll understand even less. So treat this as a dress rehearsal.’
‘It’s not bloody play-acting.’
‘A dummy run, then, if you prefer that. Tell us why he wished to murder you — or at least why you’d think so.’
I was trying to choose my words carefully. She was in an unstable emotional condition and I didn’t want it to overflow into hysteria, when nothing she said would be valid. I wasn’t too sure of what she’d already said. George was looking unimpressed.
She sighed, the heart going out of her. For one moment she had thought she’d met someone who might understand.
‘The facts?’ she asked flatly. ‘Just the bare facts, is that what you want?’
‘If you’ll try not to confuse us.’
‘Then you’ll need to realise that I knew Adrian before he married my sister. My work...I could put him in the way of business. I didn’t expect gratitude. At the wedding, he put his arm around me and said how much he owed me for bringing them together! Wasn’t that splendid of him. But I watched it go stale, all that bright face of happiness sliding away. We met casually, then more often, and then he began to come here. His job took him away, with his times of return flexible. He would stay with me. Sometimes the whole night what he called a stopover. I gave him what Delia denied him, perhaps even then not enough.’
She paused, waiting for a comment. I merely inclined my head.
The Bright Face of Danger Page 7
