‘Only—why? If she knew about the body, it was all to her advantage to have it found in the stranger’s car—’
‘And if she didn’t, why go to the trouble of swapping back?’
‘Here we go round the mulberry bush,’ said Ginger; a path, he thought, which by no means leads me home to bed.
But Charlesworth was not risking a disquisition upon the life cycle of the silk worm. ‘The whole damn thing’s a great rigmarole of nonsense, look at it whichever way you will. I just wanted to hear someone else say so.’ He got up from his chair, with an enormous yawn. ‘Go on, hop it! You look absolutely all in!’ (Ap-solutely, his goddess would have said, giving it a faintly mocking, indulgent air. An extraordinary crowd; you simply couldn’t keep up with them.)
Ginger lowered himself, with relief, from his aching toes to the soles of his feet and stood, the earnest neophyte, still all brave and willing but dismissed by edict of compassionate God; inwardly, however, addressing Charlesworth with hideous imprecations for keeping a chap up, playing bloody silly games, when he was already half dead with weariness and ennui. ‘It’s been good of you to stay with it,’ said Charlesworth kindly, taken in by the look. ‘Great help talking it over. Cleared the air. Thank you.’
‘Thank you sir,’ said Ginger. Silly old bugger! he thought to himself. For, after all, it hadn’t cleared the air at all.
8
SARI WOKE UP WITH the customary moaning and groaning, ill, depressed and, in recollection, terribly frightened. Rufie was standing by her bed with coffee and cigarettes all ready. ‘I’ve had a ghastly morning, darling, fighting off the press, I’ve had to leave the ‘phone off the hook, but they’re simply swarming all over the place.’ In fact, two or three journalists had finally wangled their way through the police guard around the flats. He said rather hopefully: ‘You’ll have to stay in all day; you daren’t go out.’
‘But we’ve got to go and find the man,’ said Sari, heavy-eyed, gulping black coffee as though it were the elixir of life.
He sat down on the edge of the bed. Sari’s bed was enormous, with a coverlet depicting a curious jungle scene painted by herself, except that she had never got around to putting in the green bits—which, after all, were much the most plentiful, and therefore very dull to do; so that blue tigers and purple elephants inhabited an unlikely winter landscape of bare tree trunks. ‘Sari, we went a bit dotty last night, I was high as a kite, I admit it; but, let’s face it—it’s your car.’
‘He must have turned round as soon as the tree was cut away, and swapped back.’
‘The tree wasn’t out of the way till quite late this morning.’
‘Well, there’s lots of side roads, I expect. He’d know them, he knew the district, he told me a place where I could reverse, which he’d never have noticed that night in all that storm.’
‘Then why didn’t he take one of the side roads to get home?’
Sari held her aching head. ‘Oh, Rufie—spare me! It would just be a longer way round, I suppose, and he was in a hurry.’
‘So he hurried to wherever it was in your car, and then turned round and brought it straight back?’ He said, but he knew the answer before he spoke: ‘What about the car keys?’
‘I left them hanging in the ignition, I suppose,’ said Sari. ‘I was so terrified of those people following me, I just leapt out of the car the minute I got here and rushed into the hall. And anyway, you know I always forget.’
‘You really are nutty, darling,’ said Rufie, who usually forgot himself: in fact it was part of the game—the affectation?—of easy-going, careless living, among the whole gang of them, not to think of these things. The purest good fortune that he’d happened to have his own in his pocket, when the policeman came upon them last night hunting for the rose.
‘In all that storm and stuff, who would have seen him?’ said Sari, pursuing her theme. ‘No one would be out in such weather if they could help it; and from the flats, you can’t see in under the shed.’
Even beneath the narrow peaked roof of the so-called sheds, the heavy rain had been blown in by the high winds, muddy puddles had formed and been swept across the concrete floors. Little sign remained of the comings and goings of cars or of their owners and by the time the police had arrived upon the scene, there had been a good deal of the normal Sunday morning activity of other tenants. Such signs as had been identified served only to confirm the acknowledged actions of the night before. ‘Still, he’d be taking a chance.’
‘Rufie, there was this huge storm blowing, you know what the shed was like last night, you were there yourself coming back from Etho’s: dark as pitch and a howling gale blowing through. A man drives in, in a plain black car and gets out of it and then after a minute he gets into what looks exactly the same car and drives off again. He’s forgotten something or come back to get something or—who cares? Only, he hadn’t so much come back to get something as to leave something. And what he left was -what he’d brought. He’d brought a dead body in the back of my car.’
‘Why leave it there, Sari? In all that storm, he could just have pitched it out by the roadside.’
Nicotine and black coffee were bringing Sari back to the surface. She stopped clutching her head and ran her fingers through her thatch of hair so that it stood up softly on the end and all a-glow. ‘Wherever he left it, there might be some connection found with him - he might have to account for it. This way—I do.’ And she kicked aside the leafless jungle and, staggering slightly with the awfulness of it being only half-past ten in the morning, heaved herself out of bed. ‘You promised! Come on, we’ve got to find him.’
But Rufie, though last night he had been full of plans and promises, by this morning had changed his mind. Mr Cecil of Christophe’s had rung up and was ap-solutely blackmailing him, dovey, for these wretched sketches and he simply must work, honestly he must. Mad keen to come on the hunt, but, dovey-darling, truly, truly....
‘Oh, well, never mind, I’ll try and get Charley, then.’
Charley’s car was a livid green sports model—it was like driving about, Sari used to say, in a glass gravy-boat filled with pea soup; but it did as well as any other, and the journalists thronged about the fiat up on the heights of Hampstead had taken little notice of a coloured gentleman and his bespectacled girlfriend driving off in a pea-green sports car. Sari had been clever with a mud-coloured make-up and Rufie had contrived to dig up for her a long-haired blonde wig. (‘Oh, darling, not one of the Visitors?’ But no, no, Rufie had resentfully replied, how often did one have to tell her, one ap-solutely did not go in for Camp; if she wanted to know, he’d been matching up material with the wig to be worn by the model of one of his creations.) ‘Marvellous, Charley, we’ve dodged the lot!’ They made a great pretence of gooping about like sensation-seekers, driving very slowly past the scene of yesterday’s ghastly discovery, Sari even leaning out to call to one or two of the reporters, ‘Anything new?’ From now on, the slightly dreary blonde, with or without Paki boyfriend, would go unnoticed in and out of the flats. ‘So now, darling, to the garage first and I’ll scream out to them to look around for a new car for me. The minute the police release the Halcyon, I’ll get rid of it. I couldn’t bear to set eyes on it, ever again.’
So they stopped briefly at the garage and, minus the wig, she called out her message, promising to explain later. The garage who had read in the morning papers all about how the dead body of a woman had been found in the boot of Miss Sari Morne’s car—a fact apparently confided to this one reporter alone by the head of the Metropolitan Police himself—cried respectfully back that they quite understood. To Charley’s timid protestations that she would lose a great deal of money on a brand new car, she replied that she’d have to get something cheaper, that was all, unless her beastly trustees would see reason and divvy up; just as long as it had a decent bit of acceleration—more than ever, now, must Sari have a car with speed...
And they stopped at a chemist’s and she rushed in and emerged w
ith a large packet of cotton-wool. What Sari could do with all the cotton-wool she bought, the Eight Best never could imagine, she was for ever dropping off at chemists’ and buying packages of it. ‘Well, I clean my face with it, don’t I?’ And she liked the kind that was made up in little separate blobs—for babies’s bottoms, actually, Sari supposed, but it did get used up much more quickly. ‘So now a quick wee, darling, at the public loo, there’s a lovely one just round the corner there, I know it well—and then off to go!’ The quick wee was on the whole quicker than usual considering that she’d had to take off all the reporter-off-putting make-up. ‘So now we really can get weaving. Wren’s Hill!’
Charley obediently headed the green gravy-boat towards the road she had travelled two nights ago. ‘What we want is to find a man—a rather tall man, I did notice that much—who has a Cadmus Halcyon and—well, access, at any rate, to red roses; or who, anyway, had a red rose that night.’ She and Rufie had looked over the roses in the beds outside the flats and there were none so red as the one that had lain on Vi Feather’s humped dead shoulder. ‘Oh, but you don’t know about that, Charley, do you? And perhaps I’d better not tell you; it’s kind of Rufie’s secret. Forget about the rose.’
But how could the rose have got there? How could it have got there? Like—well, sort of like putting flowers on a grave, she thought to herself. Had someone laid a red rose upon Vi Feather’s dead body, by way of farewell? She said, suddenly: ‘Charley! That car’s following us.’
‘Some car iss following us?’ said Charley in his sing-song way. One went to school and talked like the other kids there, but then one went home. His mixture of Scouse and Pakistani was part of Charley’s charm for his friends, and he retained the family habit of launching himself upon a long word or series of words run together.
‘That small black car behind us. Slow down! Come on, slow down! Now, look in the driving mirror—it’s slowing down too. Now accelerate—there you are, you see, they’re speeding up. I tell you, I know all the tricks. It’s following us.’ She reached out automatically for cigarettes and he saw that her hands were actually shaking. ‘When you come to the next turning, go left—never mind where it leads to, go left—then slow down; don’t stop, it’s too frightening in case they’re... But slow down. If they seem to do anything—then just step on the gas.’ She fumbled desperately, tearing at the packet of cigarettes. ‘Now! Turn here!’
And sure enough the black car turned also and, finding them slowed down almost to walking pace, had nothing for it but to drive on past them. ‘You wait! When we come round this bend, we’ll find them dawdling, waiting for us.’
For a moment, it had been genuinely frightening. Now Charley said: ‘But, Sari darling, thiss iss only a polisscar.’
‘The police? What doing?’
‘Well, you are suspect, Sari, it must be, mustn’t it?’
‘You’re joking!’ said Sari.
‘But, darling, after all—’
‘Who would seriously think I could kill poor wretched Vi Feather?’
‘She iss being found dead in your car, Sari, after all.’
‘The police have lights on top of their cars,’ said Sari, suspicious again.
‘Not always. Not advertising themselfs.’
‘Oh, well, if it’s really the police, let them follow,’ said Sari. ‘It’ll keep us safe from—the others. Just turn round and carry on. I don’t care if they know what we’re doing.’
‘What exactly are we doing?’ said poor Charley.
‘Looking for a man and a car—and a rose,’ said Sari, impatiently. She remembered. ‘That chap at the pub—he told me that several people in Wren’s Hill had Halcyons.’
So they made for the pub. It was once again a clear and sunny day and with their nice safe police escort, rather pleasant to be driving down the country roads. They passed the fallen elm, now sawn into three with the great centre trunk rolled to one side. ‘My God, what a crash it must have been making—coming down right there in your front.’ Charley, more guileless than the rest, never doubted the story of the man at the tree.
‘If I’d been just a few minutes earlier—!’
They were glad to reach the pub: what with the garage and the cotton-wool and the quick wee, they’d been getting a bit anxious about closing time—and were mildly amused to find themselves followed in by two of the most obvious plain clothes policemen, said Sari, that ever wore size twelve boots—who drank beer unobtrusively in a far corner. She left an order for tomato juice and went off for the inevitable wee, returning to the tomato juice with new eyebrows, lids an exquisite muted sunset and a great lashing-on of a very pale pink lipstick. ‘There’s a most peculiar lady in your loo,’ she confided to the man behind the bar. ‘I never saw anyone with so much hair all over them. Absolutely sprouting through her stockings like mustard and cress on a bit of flannel.’
The landlord looked anxiously into the faces of his patrons to see whether anyone had caught—and might mildly resent—this reference to a nearest and dearest; but their eyes were riveted on Sari’s own hair. He had had a splendid day retailing the events of last Sat’day night and the subsequent police enquiries, and no one present could fail to recognise his vivid descriptions of the lady’s coiffure. He drew the new arrivals down to one end of the counter, and all ears were strained to listen—including, to Sari’s delight, those of the owners of the Size Twelve Boots. But the man could tell them nothing, really. He had perhaps exaggerated a bit, he admitted—one said these things carelessly and his boast of several new Cadmus 3000’s running around in Wren’s Hill amounted really to his having seen one, a day or two before, filling up at the garridge...
‘The garage will know who owned it,’ said Sari, exultant on tomato juice, and dragged Charley away from his Vodka-and-Coca-Cola and the Number Twelves from their beer, and dashed off out to the little green sports car.
Charley’s keys which, as usual, he had left dangling from the dashboard, were gone.
Of the lady with the superfluous hair, there was nothing to be seen. Nor had the landlord observed anyone of the sort in his bar. There was an outside entrance from the car park to the lavatories.
The Number Twelves looked upon one another with a wild surmise; though there was not much to surmise about, as regarded what Mr Charlesworth would say to him when he learned that they had not thought of splitting up, one to watch the suspects, the other to stay outside. ‘Well, meantime, you stay with this lot, Bill, and I’ll go out to the car.’ Bill issued instructions made somewhat sharper than need be by his own inner quakings, and Dawkins, the landlord, with apparently mounting exasperation, shouted ‘Time, gentlemen, please!’ though it was still several minutes too early; and ushered Sari and Charley, both somewhat shaken, into the Snug. ‘As it happens, there’s a doctor here; the wife’s threatening any minute though it never seems to happen. As soon as he comes down, I’ll get him to see to the lady.’ Real shocked she looked, poor girl; like she’d looked when, two nights ago, she’d told him that a car had been following her. He’d doubted it a bit then, but with all that was happening now, well there must have been some truth in it. A small glow burned within him at the thought of all the excitement and profit this would bring to the Fox. His pub was called The Fox in His Den.
A Size Twelve stood by with his notebook. ‘You’re absolutely sure, sir, that you left your keys?’ It was unimaginable to a policeman that any man could be so stupid, but still—these Paks! ‘You’ve searched your pockets, sir?’
‘Try not to be silly,’ said Sari.
‘Didn’t put them down on the bar?’
‘No, no, neversuchathing,’ said Charley. They were all so gay and feckless in the group, they all lived so carelessly and easily—Charley did his very best to keep up with them, and one of the most lovely, casual things of all was just to drop your car wherever you happened to be, irrespective of parking rules, and leave it there, keys and all. No one else ever seemed to have any trouble but poor Charley was alway
s getting into muddles and having to be helped out by the rest. And now... ‘I have virryvirry bad habit, Officer, of leaving keys in car. Isn’t it, Sari?’ But Sari seemed actually to have passed into a state of shock, dead white and shivering, clinging to his arm. ‘Oh, Charley, I’m frightened! Behind the police—even behind the police they must have been after us...’
‘—a spare, sir?’
But his spare key had been lost in the last adventure and he had never got around to arranging for a new one. What with medical school and the studies into which Charley put all his earnest heart, and dancing attendance upon his beloved Eight Best, he had little time to spare for other details of life. ‘I am virry virry sorry, Officer, I am making a greatgreat deal of trouble.’
‘Well, we’ll have to do what we can. Now, Miss, as to this woman—’
‘Oh, leave me alone!’ said Sari, clinging and shivering. ‘I’ve told you. A great butch woman, all covered with hair.’ A man? Well, she supposed it could have been a man, only it hadn’t been that sort of man-y hair. But—! ‘Oh, Charley, if it was a man! If they’re disguising themselves now—’
‘Not worrying, darling, now the pollis are being with us, you are safe.’
‘The person didn’t speak to you, Miss?’
‘Speak to me? Oh, Christ!’ said Sari, bursting out with it suddenly, ‘Don’t go on and on about it!—don’t you see that she was watching me, sizing me up, planning against me, right there in the room with me...’ And she screamed out again to leave her alone, leave her alone, leave her alone...
‘Yes, Officer, just leave her for the moment,’ said a quiet voice; and a man stood in the doorway, a tall man, holding a medical bag in his right hand, the shoulder sloping a little with the weight of it. She looked up sharply—shot to her feet—took one tottering step forward and, for the second time, fell into his arms.
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