It had started when Susan Connolly gave a shrill little scream of horror at the sight of the camera. Susan, who had a huge dress allowance, a very gay life, and a rakish father who was reputed to have told her he would pay all her debts if she would trade her boy friend. (My Depraved Old Dad, as Susan not unnaturally called her father, was very rich.) Susan who was so well known that her little blunt nose and round eyes were always peering at you out of the pages of the Tatler like a pretty pink pig. Susan who although not frightened of Depraved Old Dad was sincerely frightened of her college tutor. “I haven’t got permission to go to this ball and stay out all night. I daren’t be photographed. I’ve been threatened with being sent down, and I must stay put to get my degree so that I can go into the Foreign Office.” Susan who truly believed her pudgy little paws were destined to mould Anglo-Soviet relations.
This was an invitation to violence not to be resisted by Anthony in his post-Commemorative Champagne mood. With a sweep of the arm he had knocked the camera out of the little man’s hand and followed it up with a violent push that sent the photographer stumbling into the gutter. Ezra and the girls made horrified noises and Ezra, shoving Anthony aside, helped the man to his feet. His face was muddy and bleeding and the camera smashed in.
Ezra had apologised repeatedly and emptied his and Anthony’s pockets of all the money they contained, and promised to get in touch.
But, of course, he never had. In a way he supposed he had been grateful to pass over the incident. Anthony had gone down and he had never seen any of his companions of that morning again. Shortly afterwards he had met his Rachel, and been born anew.
So the man was a photographer, thought Ezra, moodily, studying his nails. Yes, he had just that right mixture of seediness and brashness.
What was he doing hanging around Marion then? Photographers and Marion just didn’t mix.
He remembered the momentary glimpse he had had of the man’s eyes as they looked up at him from the gutter, full of anger and dislike.
There had been danger in them.
He got up uneasily.
He was not a great believer in coincidences. In his own work, where they occurred, they were usually the result of an error, and however they started out they usually ended in a trap.
“Poor old Marion. Reason must be tottering on its throne,” Ezra said sadly to Rachel. All the same he could not help remembering the warning of danger for Marion that had flared in his brain.
“Where is she now?”
“She’s gone to see the Principal in College,” said Rachel, who was tired and white. “I rang up and got her an appointment. That woman!”
“Yes, you’d think in the circumstances she wouldn’t insist on protocol,” said Ezra sympathetically.
Rachel grunted. She and the Principal had had many a clash, starting from the day when the Principal, who was an old and valued friend of Rachel’s mother, firmly led the toddler Rachel to be christened in the College Chapel. Rachel’s mother, at times persevering and obstinate in her freedom of mind, had been determined not to shackle her daughter’s infant spirit. But she couldn’t resist her friend’s determination, and Rachel’s father was away at the time. However, he would undoubtedly have been immobilised by the necessity to work out how far it was right for him to limit a friend’s freedom of action in order to protect an infant’s freedom of action.
“Marion went off wearing her best navy blue suit and hat and in a most lamb-like mood. I think she’s frightened of that woman. What will she do if the police arrest her?”
“They will do. They must, if she doesn’t produce some story.”
Rachel shook her head in silence. “If only she’d say something,” she burst out, “tell some sort of story. Say he attacked her or something. But she won’t.”
“Certainly I won’t,” said a voice from the door. Marion walked wearily over to the sofa, sat down and took a cigarette from the Wedgwood box. “Poor little man. Bad enough to be killed, without having me slander him. He didn’t attack me.”
“What did you tell the police?”
“What I believe to be the truth,” said Marion with dignity. “That he came here to this house by mistake, that I let him in, and then telephoned you because I became frightened.”
“So you haven’t told them he said he was your husband?”
“Not yet,” said Marion, after a pause. “Although I shall probably have to.”
They both looked at her and she smiled wryly. “No, you needn’t say it. Was he my husband? He wasn’t, of course. I don’t know why I for one moment thought he could be. Mad, I suppose.”
The two women were tired and irritable. Rachel had had an exhausting time: she had telephoned the doctor and police for Marion and then waited with her for them both to arrive. She had not seen the police herself except for a minute or two at the beginning; Marion had been with them for what seemed like hours while she had waited, cold and frightened and bored in the little sitting-room. Afterwards she realised that Marion had not in fact been with the police all that time, but had crept off to sit by herself in the bedroom. She had found her there in the end, sitting dazed and upright. The excitement, exaltation almost, of the mood in which Rachel had first encountered her had faded and she was defeated. She seemed to have no help to give the police, herself, or anyone. For Marion the dream was gone. It had been idle, ephemeral, dotty, false. She was still reeling from the shock of knowing she could have experienced it at all. The death of the watcher on top of it all was a fact she had not yet really absorbed. Part of her knew it had happened, here, in her own kitchen, but underneath was an incredulous stranger. She did not alter from her incredible story that while she had waited for Rachel to come, someone unknown and unseen had crept into her house and stabbed the visitor.
“But you were abstracted,” pointed out Ezra. “Thinking of other things, far away. A lot could have happened without you knowing it.”
“I was thinking, yes, but there was never a moment when I didn’t know what was going on around me. I saw nothing.”
“And heard?”
For a moment Marion looked puzzled, as if she did hear far-away voices. Then she shook her head. “I heard nothing. Nothing at all,” she said in firm tones.
“I don’t think the man could have made any noise,” said Rachel. “He might not even have known he’d been stabbed. You sometimes don’t with stab wounds.”
Ezra was despairing. “But he was stabbed. Someone did come. Marion, there must have been a minute when your attention wavered, a minute you’ve forgotten. Only a minute, Marion,” he pleaded. “That would do.”
But although Marion went whiter still, she rejected with a feverish intensity that there had been even a minute when she had not been herself, and in full command of all her faculties.
She seemed determined to put the rope round her own neck.
“Well, but, Marion, it’s got to be explained.” Rachel was floundering.
“Not by me, though. I’ve told them what I know happened. His call, my telephone to you. How I waited for you.”
“Someone killed him,” said Rachel.
“Then they did it while I was waiting for you.” Marion lit her cigarette. “God knows why or how.”
“It’s a little difficult for the police to take that, Marion.” Rachel was trying to be careful. “You must see that. As far as they can see there was only you who had the chance. They don’t want to attack you, Marion, but can’t you see they may have to? Who was there but you?”
“If he attacked you or you panicked, that would only be manslaughter, Marion. You could say.”
“I will not say what is untrue. He did not attack me. If I lost my head it was for other reasons.”
“Perhaps you lost your memory?”
But Marion could not be moved.
“Do you know I’ve had nothing to eat,” she said suddenly. “I can’t use my kitchen. The police have locked it up. I don’t even know if they’ve left the house.”
&nbs
p; “They have,” said Rachel turning away from the window. “They’ve left a man in the road though. Naturally. When this news gets out there’s going to be quite a crowd round here.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” Marion’s face went even whiter.
“Hadn’t you? At the moment I believe the neighbours think maybe you’ve committed suicide. That’s keeping them busy at the moment. They haven’t caught on to the fact, the blissful fact, that there’s been a murder on their own doorsteps.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Do you live in a dream world, Marion? Well, as a matter of fact the Major next door told me. He stopped me in the garden. He knows the truth.”
“Oh, that little man. He’s a great gossip.” Marion sounded disapproving. She and the Major were not twin souls. The garden divided them for one thing, and then Marion, more orthodox than she would admit to, could not get used to the sight of the Major primly pinning out his own underwear.
“He’s a very well-informed gossip,” Rachel told her. “And as for the food, Marion, you owe him thanks for that. He’s sent across a picnic.” She pulled a basket in from the hall, and crouched down by it, unpacking. From this point she saw the sitting-room from a new angle, it had a new face, rather as if you suddenly saw an old friend upside down. And several things stood out which had gone unnoticed before. The Meissen shepherdess who was, let’s face it, coy and irritating, had been pushed forward, whereas properly she had her face to the wall; and the utterly enchanting but admittedly extremely ugly jade monkey had been obscured by a bunch of artificial flowers. Artificial flowers in Marion’s room, who never even looked at a real one! From her position Rachel could also see dust underneath the sofa. It was not surprising that Marion was oblivious to household duties although it was true she was assisted by an odd scarecrow of a woman one saw on the stairs occasionally. Didn’t she have the aristocratic name of Mrs. Beaufort? Yes, it certainly was Beaufort, although according to tradition her husband had been an Italian immigrant from Milan. Rachel remembered that Mrs. Beaufort had once been porter in a women’s college, an occupation very productive of eccentrics for some reason. She stayed where she was with her head bent over the basket; she had a strong feeling at the moment that she wanted to meet no-one’s eyes, especially Marion’s, so clear, and Ezra’s, so loving and angry. She shook her hair over her eyes like a cross little Skye terrier and peered at the basket. It was well loaded with food wrapped in thick but spotlessly white napkins. “Ham, cheese, hot pastry and coffee. Good for the Major.”
“I’ll get some cups from somewhere. And some brandy. I need restoring.” And Marion bustled out, looking much better.
As soon as she had gone Ezra dragged Rachel to her feet away from the basket. He was surprised to find how violence grew upon him and supposed uneasily that he had a taste for it. She smiled at him uncertainly but his eyes were only angry; if there had been love in them then it had gone.
“You believe she did it,” said Ezra savagely.
“I haven’t said so.”
“It’s obvious. The way you speak to her. Asking her to admit to an attack.” Ezra was curt. “In the way you did.”
Rachel did not answer.
“You do hate Marion,” said Ezra. “Don’t you?”
“I didn’t say that either.”
“Again no need.” He was losing his temper. “It shouts from your manner. And I never knew till now.”
Rachel was disconcerted and unhappy. She had had a difficult time and now Ezra was attacking her. Oh fine, she thought, we’re getting along splendidly. Nothing like a love affair for making you really beastly to each other.
The police did not arrest Marion. She was saved by her reputation, her good name, and the impossibility, which even the policemen in St. Aldates recognised, of believing that Dr. Marion Manning, scholar and writer, could have killed this little man.
She was cleared also by one other thing. The knife which had killed him had not come from the house.
Chapter Five
The doctor Marion had consulted on her headaches was concerned about her. He had sat in the back of the court at the inquest on the dead man and regarded the scene with increasing apprehension.
He watched the behaviour of the police and drew his conclusions. Inevitably, he had gathered in his wandering career a certain understanding of the ways of police and prosecutors, and when he saw how the group of men concerned with the case gave their evidence he was convinced they were keeping a great deal back. Not perhaps of evidence, but of understanding. If you could ask them for their reconstruction of what had happened it would probably turn out later to be an accurate one. It seemed overwhelmingly clear to him that these quiet, patient, and apparently kindly men knew.
He observed Marion sitting among her group of friends: Ezra, whom he knew by sight, Rachel whom he had never met, and the head of Marion’s college who had come to give her moral support and was plainly failing to provide it. She was dressed in black from head to foot and even Dr. Steiner (he was considering anglicising his name), used as he was to the affection for black of many continental women, could see that this was wrong. Marion was not in black but in a sort of tabby brown which looked as though she had made her bed in it, as she probably had. Rachel was huddled in a dark loose coat, and Ezra was wearing sub-fuse, the decent, dark suit in which he had taken all his exams and trotted up to receive his two degrees. He was leaning forward to listen and there was the same look in his eyes as in Marion’s, giving him, for the moment, a family resemblance … What a lot, thought the doctor, so English, so anxious to dress for the occasion and so perennially uncertain exactly what the occasion is. A wedding, a funeral, a Peace Conference, a war, they were never sure whether these were occasions for amusement, despair, or courage, and met them, as their clothes reflected, with a triumphant mixture of the lot. Cheered up and reassured by this apothegm, the doctor went back to watching Marion. She seemed the least concerned of all. She sat there relaxed and dreamy. Not drugged, as he had for a moment thought, but dreamy. She had no headache just now, then: no anxiety about accusations of murder either. Marion seemed protected by her assumption that her innocence could never be questioned. He looked at her with liking and affection, for she had been so good to him when he had landed on Oxford, a city over-endowed with refugees, as a battered, shy, and miserable traveller. He had thought of himself as a traveller then, a man with no settled home, but under her patronage (he did not disdain the word) he had built up a little circle of prosperity : he had his flat, his concerts, and his tiny group of friends. She had done all this out of disinterested liking and he thanked her.
He listened with glum concentration to the evidence as it related to the dead man. He had never seen the man and there had been no photographs in the press, but he thought he could have predicted the sort he was A man destined to be attracted to the person least suited to him, bound to marry a wife who would dislike him in the end. A man fitted out to be destroyed. Someone would surely have killed him, a careless lorry-driver, a bungling surgeon, a clumsy nurse. All the same, he was no doubt attractive to women and some woman somewhere still loved him and thought of him. A mother or a sister probably. A man with anxious, timid features, and watchful eyes, although eyes that were very unobservant of what really mattered. A man with no sort of luck whatever.
Meanwhile, he realised he had responsibilities towards Marion who was his patient. He was undecided whether to consult Marion about Joyo or Joyo about Marion; he was acute enough to realise that at bottom it was a problem about their relationship. Superficially Marion was the person to start with, but just lately he had the crazy idea that he might approach Joyo.
He was reluctant to summon Joyo, but it ought to be done.
The truth was that he was frightened. He told himself often that as a doctor he should not be frightened of a woman, and a sick woman at that (for he could diagnose Joyo’s sickness). But he had been a prisoner in a concentration camp for upwards of nine ye
ars and the button which operated fear was old and easily touched. And then there had been a look in Joyo’s eyes on the one fleeting occasion when they had met that had alarmed him. Not, oddly enough, because it had been the cruel look of a tormentor (he had learnt to bear that fear) but because it had been the look of someone about to be tormented.
He was frightened of Joyo, and by her, and with her.
It never struck him that she might be frightened of him.
However in this matter Joyo got in first. She consulted him.
She came to call, and planted herself squarely in a chair, with her hands on her knees. She looked agreeable and determined.
He was doubtful how to treat her and decided to leave the interview to her. She had turned up, let her get on with it. With curiosity that in a less searching crisis would have been amused, he wondered how she would play it. Would she be the affectionate friend? the worried old servant? the puzzled innocent?
Joyo was none of these things; she was the Downright Adviser. She knew Best. Or so she let her manner imply.
“Marion ought to go away. Right away. For a long time. I suggest a good long holiday. You know what I mean.”
“She can’t go just now,” he pointed out. “The police would have something to say.”
“That’s exactly what I mean. She’s in trouble. I wouldn’t like to see her in worse.”
“I suppose not.” He wondered about that though; he had an idea that except for the inconvenience to herself Joyo didn’t mind a bit.
“Now you are her doctor. She’ll take advice from you. Be obliged to. Send her away. You can do it.”
“You think so? You know what you are suggesting?”
“Right away.” Joyo was firm. She was in danger of losing the Downright Adviser in the Boss Figure.
“You want to get rid of her?” Automatically his professional eye observed her empurpled cheek and her rapid shallow breathing. A heart swollen to the size of a cow’s probably.
Death Lives Next Door Page 8
