The flowers! The roses, the orchids, the great baskets of scented magnolias! And one day, nestling at the heart of the biggest of all the bouquets—the ring! ‘D’j’ever hear of that Prince of yours nowadays, dear?’
‘No,’ said Sari. ‘That ended.’ And the old, cold fear was chilling her spine, the feeling of being watched. From the corner of her eye she glimpsed for the first time a flicker of something—familiar: of colour, of light, so ephemeral that she could hardly tell what. But something vaguely reminiscent of something—of someone—she knew. She said uneasily: ‘I’ll have to go in now.’
‘When I’ve got rid of all this, I thought I’d go in and see it meself, for old times’ sake. Ah, those were the days, Miss Morne, weren’t they? And best of all for me was the time I worked with you. All the excitement in your dressing-room, especially after the Prince began coming: the flowers, the presents and then—that ring! You would wear it in the picture. “She’s not to wear it,” Mr Solon says to me—Mr Solon speaking to me! It’s the only time he ever did. “It’s too valuable,” he says, “to be knocking around the dressing-rooms.” But you never could be told.’
‘Yes, well, Vi, that’s all forgotten now.’
‘Not by me, it isn’t. What’ve I got these days but me memories?’ She cast a surreptitious eye over the beautiful coat of softest tawny brown leather to match the gleam of hair almost extinguished by the huge black stetson-shaped hat; the fine leather gloves, the expensive handbag, enormous, of fine canvas, hand-painted in a pattern of black and brown. ‘Times are hard for me now, Miss Morne, honest they are.’ She opened her own shabby handbag, scrabbled in its grubby depths for an already well-used paper handkerchief and began, unattractively, to snivel. Ugh! thought Sari; and yet—poor thing! Was she working up to a touch? she wondered. Small hope if she were! One had enough money, lot and lots of money compared with poor Vi, but somehow it all seemed to dribble away. Rufie was such a seducer where spending was concerned: what was the use of temptation, was his favourite quotation, if one didn’t give way to it? And they’d been on a shopping spree and here she was penniless, long before the end of the quarter. ...
Nevertheless, the watcher in the shadows observed, pennies were scraped together in the end: a note handed over with a look of half-contemptuous compassion before the black hat and the high black boots and the beautiful tawny coat disappeared behind the shabby curtain into the auditorium.
The little cinema was quite crowded after all; many who, like herself, had come to see only the feature film, were ploughing about in the dark, trying to find seats. Peering through the gloom she ran full tilt into a man coming the other way, and landed up with her arms around his neck. ‘Oh, I am so sorry!’
He restored her to her feet, smiling down at her. ‘Not at all—be my guest!’ The usherette’s torch lit up his face for a moment, and passed on down the aisle.
A fair face, a handsome face, clean shaven, with that look in the light blue eyes that never failed to turn her heart to water. That look of vague melancholy, of being, somehow, a bit—lost. Aldo had had that look and—one or two others; and highly misleading in every case it had turned out to be. But here it was again and here she went again, head over heels in love with that look—that look of easy independence and strength, and vulnerability.
He held her for a moment, as though to reassure himself that she was all right. She repeated: ‘I’m terribly sorry, really I am.’
‘I enjoyed every minute of it,’ he said and let her go—but reluctantly?—and passed on up the aisle. She knew a moment of absurdly bleak despair at the thought that she would never see him again.
A mile from the cinema—she knew that she was being followed. A mini—the same make and horse-power as Rufie’s or she might never have noticed it. She slowed down and the little black car slowed down, accelerated and it maintained its distance behind her. I’m frightened, she thought, I’m terrified—driving here alone through the black night and the storm, along the small, dark country lanes: and they’re following me again. And a face was illuminated for a moment, dead white in the lightning flash, peering out through the spattered windscreen with the flick-flick-flick of the wipers moving across and across it; and two hands seemed to stretch forward, spread-eagled against the glass, as though only that prevented their reaching out for her. What red glow from some street lamp unobserved, from some passing window, perhaps, curtained red—what red glow had seemed for a moment to turn those grasping hands to crimson, as though they were bathed in blood?
She thrust down her foot on the accelerator and the big car flung itself forward, screeched round a bend in the road, round another, was wrenched into the car park of a wayside pub, lights immediately extinguished. She caught again a glimpse of the white face thrust forward, peering ahead into the darkness; and the little car passed by her, unseeing, rocketing on through the rain. She decided: I’ll let it get well ahead. I’ll go in and have a drink.
The first thought of the man behind the bar as she came in through the door, pulling off her big black hat, thrashing it against her thigh to shake the wet from it, was: My God, what on earth have we got here? His second thought was: But, by God—isn’t she beautiful?
If she was strange, she was deliberately strange; and she could be strange because she knew that she was beautiful. She was—twenty-six, perhaps? Tall, marvellously shaped, with narrow hips and long legs, slender from thigh to ankle, like a boy’s legs. Her hands and feet were narrow and delicately boned, her eyes a deep blue-grey: the face perfectly ovalled, a smooth, golden-y skin, the whole with its shadowed planes beneath the high cheek bones a miracle of moulding. She’s like a cat, he thought, a lovely, smooth golden-y cat, a lioness perhaps—but no, that was far too fierce and strong: a cheetah, more like. But her hair—! ‘My God,’ said the man, before he could stop himself, ‘whatever have you done to your hair?’
She was totally unoffended; only, as ever, a little thrown by a word of criticism, doubtful, insecure. ‘Don’t you like it?’
It had been cut ‘en brosse’, but longer than a man’s crew-cut might be, perhaps two inches high on the crown of her head, brushed upwards all over from above her ears - very thick and close like a tight-fitting wig of soft animal fur, and dyed to a deeply glowing russety red, the colour of dark orange marmalade lit from beneath with gold, with no pretence to any shade that any hair in the world could ever have been. ‘Well, I’m sorry, love,’ he said, abashed by his own outburst. ‘It just comes a bit of a shock at first. But, mind, it suits you.’ And indeed once you got accustomed to it, she was beautiful with it; beautiful.
She peeled off her leather driving gloves, heaved one slender haunch on to a bar stool, balancing with the toe of a high black boot on the brass rail. On this night of drenching rain, no one else in the pub. ‘Give me a brandy, would you?’ she said. ‘A big one. And please have one yourself.’ And she burst out with it. ‘I don’t usually drink anything. But I’m a bit scared. I think I’m being followed.’
‘Followed?’ he said, pausing for a moment, standing at the gantry, one hand on the brandy bottle, looking back at her over his shoulder. ‘Followed—by who?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, but doubtfully.
‘You mean some feller—?’
‘No, no, nothing like that.’ He placed the glass in front of her and she splashed a little soda into it, not waiting for him; she sketched a salute and gulped down half the contents, put down the glass on the counter and sat staring into its sparkling depths. It was always easier to tell things to strangers. She said simply: ‘I think they want to kill me.’
Oh, crikey! he thought. Another of these nuts! Her, with her hair like a strangely dyed pussy-cat’s. But the wonderful face! He said more gently than he had intended: ‘I’m sure no one wants to kill you.’
‘That’s what everyone always says,’ she said. ‘But I know that someone does.’
‘Why should anyone?’
‘Well, I... Well, I know something, you s
ee. And they’re afraid I’ll tell someone about it. I haven’t the faintest intention of telling anyone, I wouldn’t dream of it. But they can’t know that, can they?’
‘So you do know who you’re being followed by.’
‘I know why. I don’t know exactly who.’
‘Better tell the police then.’
‘I have told them. They just say what you said, which is what everyone always says: “I’m sure no one really wants to kill you.”’
He took a long swig of his drink, eyeing her dubiously. ‘If they want to kill you, why don’t they just kill you? What’s the use, following you about?’ But he answered his own question: ‘Perhaps they just want to scare you.’
‘That wouldn’t stop me telling. If I wanted to, which I don’t. But they’d never accept that.’
‘If they thought you might—well, blackmail them—?’
‘They wouldn’t think that. I’ve got enough money. But while I’m alive I know—what I know. What they think I know. I think they’re just waiting for a chance.’
The brandy warmed the cockles of his heart. ‘Look, love, people don’t go about murdering people. I mean, not just ordinary people—’
‘These aren’t just ordinary people. They’re very un-ordinary people. They’re in something called the Red Mafia, Mafia Rossa, which is about fifty times worse than any ordinary old Italian Mafia—’
‘Oh, come on!’ he said. ‘The Mafia. What secrets could you have that the Mafia wouldn’t want you to have?’
‘It’s not the Mafia themselves. They’re just carrying out orders. The real people giving the orders are very rich and grand.’
‘People don’t give orders to the Mafia.’
‘Those people do,’ she said.
Just nuts, poor girl. On the other hand—she was frightened, he could see that, properly frightened. She really believed in all this tommy rot. All the same, soon he must turn her out. He glanced up at the clock; five minutes to Time, and anyway he was waiting for the doctor to come. He confided in her; he was proud of himself and his care for his wife. Baby coming more or less any time now and the specialist had promised to call in. Not the ordinary doctor, mind: the special gynaecologist, rooms in Harley Street and the lot. But he was on the staff of the hospital here in Wren’s Hill and had rooms in Wren’s Hill too and this was the first baby. ‘Nothing but the best,’ he said to Sari, telling her all about it. ‘My wife and my baby—nothing but the best.’
‘Well, I think that’s lovely,’ said Sari.
And she was lovely too. He looked at her closely again. ‘Don’t mind me asking, but haven’t I seen you somewhere?’
‘If you’ve been in the town in the last few days, you may have seen my photograph. There’s an old film of mine, showing at the Cinema Club. That’s why I’m here.’
‘Don’t tell me,’ he said. ‘Some Indian name. The wife was talking about you only this afternoon.’
‘Sari,’ she said. ‘Sari Morne.’
‘Well, I’m damned! She was cursing herself, the baby coming a bit before its time or so they think, so she wouldn’t be able to go into town tonight to see you. Mad about you she is. You was in some Italian film; but three years ago or more, she says, and she never saw you again.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘That was my last. But you see—Italy: so it’s not so impossible about the Mafia, is it?’ And she put down her empty glass with a little clonk on the polished wood surface of the counter, glanced out uneasily at the blackness of the night and gave a little shudder. ‘I must go.’
He followed her glance, saw where the heavy raindrops bounced and shimmered on a gleaming black rooftop. ‘Decent bus you seem to have, out there.’
‘It’s the new Cadmus, the Halcyon 3000.’
‘Ah, yes, very popular that is. We’ve got several right here in Wren’s Hill. All that advertising, I suppose. I must say, outwardly it looks much the same as anything else.’
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Inconspicuous.’
For the first time he thought that this might, after all, be something serious. ‘You especially choose an inconspicuous car?’
‘That’s right,’ she said again, dully; and got down from the stool slowly, as though reluctantly, perched the big black hat on top of her head with a careless bang on the crown to push it down further over the glow of her hair, pulled on the soft leather gloves, slung the handbag over her shoulder. Beautiful. Beneath the brim of the black hat she looked more beautiful than ever, he thought, everything about her was beautiful, everything she owned, luxurious and beautiful. Only the fear in the shadowed blue-grey eyes was disturbing. He came round to the front of the bar and put a hand on her arm. ‘Don’t worry, love. They’ll have gone past now. They’ll be miles ahead of you.’ He didn’t believe in her followers but it was evident that she did; she was deeply afraid.
‘Unless they’ve realised and stopped somewhere and are—waiting.’ But she would have to go. He went with her to the door. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll be all right.’ He stood in the lighted entrance, one hand already lifted to shoot the bolt behind her. ‘Be seeing you!’
‘I dare say you will,’ she said. ‘In the News of the World.’ And stepped out into the rain and opened the nearside door and shifted across into the driving seat. The overhead light, automatically switched on, illuminated the beautifully finished interior; it was a very expensive car. He looked it over with interest till she reached across and slammed shut the door and the light went out.
‘Well, goodnight then, love!’ he called again; and the headlights sprang on and the engine purred and she drove off slowly and then faster—faster—faster—away from the warmth and the light, away from security, along the lonely road.
And straight across the path of the speeding car—the great tree fell.
3
PHINEAS DEVIGNE LIVED UP at the top of the steep incline which gives Wren’s Hill its name: a rather beautiful one-storey house which he resolutely refused to call a bungalow. Nanny came through from her sitting-room as he stood in the hall peeling off his soaking wet raincoat; smelling of cold cream and tightly belted into her pink woollen dressing-gown with its tasselled cord: a big woman not improved by a heavy greying moustache. ‘Well, so you’re home?’
Usually it irritated him intensely: what was one supposed to reply? But tonight—tonight there was a sort of glow within him that he could not quite place, not like any of the minor glows that had, of necessity, for the past year or so punctuated his life; and he only said, holding out the wet mac, ‘I’d better hang this somewhere to drip.’
If he had been Ena, Nanny would have been all cluckings of distress, urging on him hot drinks and cossetings. But Ena had gone where her faithless little heart had led her and he had custody of Ena Meena; and the one person Nanny loved more than Ena was Ena Mee. She bore within her an unceasing resentment against a law that would take away a child from its mother, however ill behaved, and hand it over to a mere man. And what fun those bygone days had been! - with Mummy so naughty and indiscreet, all those secrets and coverings-over and the little rewards of teas and even lunches in places Mr Devigne never even heard about, and exciting little gifts that were not to be shown to him! She was living with a very rich gentleman now, Mummy was, and many a chat she had with Nanny over the ‘phone when His Nibs was working at the hospital or up in London, in Harley Street. She took the wet mackintosh, however, ungraciously. ‘I’ll hang it to drip in our bathroom, over the bath. It’s warm in there, it’ll dry out for the morning. And gimme that flah from your buttonhole, I’ll throw it down the lav.’ Our bathroom was hers and Ena Mee’s. ‘I s’pose you don’t want a hot drink?’
‘No thank you, Nanny, I think I need something a bit stronger.’ He tossed his soaking wet gloves on to the umbrella stand. ‘Some storm!’
‘Well, fancy going out on such a night, anyway, just to the cinema!’
‘I’d have had to go and see Mrs Dawkins at the Fox. And anyway,’ he pointed out mildly, ‘
it wasn’t nearly so bad when I started.’ He glanced over in the general direction of Ena Mee’s room. ‘She wasn’t upset by it?’
‘What, by you going off for the evening?’
‘By the storm,’ he said with an edge to his voice.
‘No,’ said Nanny. ‘Nanny was with her. Even if she didn’t have her Mummy,’ she added with a significant sniff. But as he turned away without reply towards the dining-room and a decanter, she enquired, apparently placating: ‘Well, how was the picture?’
‘Quite good,’ he said, briefly, unrelenting.
‘Sari Morne came up to expectations, did she?’
‘Yes, she was fine.’
‘Funny she died out. Lovely film that was, her in that Italian place. That bit’, said Nanny craftily, ‘where she runs up them steps with her lover coming after her—’
‘You’re thinking of some other film,’ said Phin. ‘She never does run up the steps. As a matter of fact,’ he added, a touch craftily on his own part, ‘on this occasion a young woman ran down some steps: and full tilt into me.’
‘Whatever do you mean—ran into you?’
‘Some girl, looking for a seat I suppose, ran down the steps and I bumped into her.’
‘Oh, so you did go to the cinema?’ said Nanny; and could have bit her silly tongue out, honest she could.
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