‘He was weak, this young man—I saw it from the first; one cannot be a nun’, she said calmly, ‘without understanding something about character—one spends so much time finding out about one’s own. And I saw how weak he was—a great, tall young man, magnificently handsome, very strong—but only physically strong. I didn’t know then who he was, she used her stage name and we don’t know much here, about what’s going on in film studios in Rome. Now that I know, I understand. The father by all accounts is a frightening figure, taller and more handsome still, and strong also, but not only physically strong. A despot—benevolent, who knows?—but absolute ruler over his people, an enormously powerful, an intemperate man—and his son was afraid of him. He knew already that he would be in deep trouble when they found out about his marriage—and already I fear, he was growing a little out of love with this ailing girl, sick and wearisome. And now!—if the accident’s reported, the police will arrive, the news of his marriage will be out; and what is more, if the Sister is badly injured, if the child is dead... The Italians and the Juanese don’t very dearly love one another; and this may well be a criminal offence—and under Italian law. The girl jumps out and runs to their assistance. He calls out to her, ‘Say nothing, they don’t know my name!’ and he drives away and leaves her there. And he leaves her entirely; flees home to his island and there, I suppose, confesses all to his parents and sits by while his father—only too thankful if he’ll allow the marriage to be ended, gets him out of the whole dreadful mess.’
‘And she?’
‘The shock was appalling. But our Sister was not in fact seriously injured, we could never know that the baby suffered more as a result of the accident. She begged us, she implored us to say nothing; if we did, her husband could never again venture into Italy. At that time, poor girl, I suppose she thought that he would come back to her. But he didn’t. Instead came a letter, via the studio, telling her that the marriage was be annulled—the Grand Duke of San Juan el Pirata makes his own rules. A second shock, and it brought a relapse, we couldn’t release her; what exactly was wrong, who could say? But at any rate, we agreed at last to keep it quiet. It was difficult; in law we were committing an offence ourselves, in not reporting what had happened, but our Sister expressed her forgiveness, what was the point of making trouble for everyone? So we kept her, and while she was here, she made a pet of the baby, I think she will never be sure in her own mind that his condition isn’t partly due to the accident. At any rate she petted him and spoilt him, whenever she’s in Rome, she visits him, she brings him gifts...’
‘And she’s paid for his keep,’ suggested Sergeant Ellis.
‘Ah—you’ve seen it too? At this moment, it’s being removed. I think she had no idea at the time of its value. I assure you that we knew nothing—who could believe that the thing was real? and nuns aren’t very familiar with magnificent jewellery. I think we imagined it to be some piece of costume jewellery for the stage. The Abbess of that day was perhaps a simpler person than I, and since some equally simple sister placed it on Our Lady’s finger, I’ve seen it only from afar and thought nothing about it. I may say that it now returns to San Juan. The Duchess offers us an enormous sum to compensate us; and I think Our Lady would wish us to take the money.’ She said with a small smile, ‘To be honest, I daresay she’s never greatly cared for it. It really is a bit much.’
‘You realise that all this time—?’
‘Only now do the Juanese understand that. Of course there has been no pursuit; just, in the last month or two, this young man sent over, to try to find out something, anything, about the ring.’
‘But she believed it. And with just one word—’
‘A wonderful girl,’ said the Abbess. She smiled again. ‘If she were older, it wouldn’t sound so foolish to say—a great lady...’
And not the only great lady, he thought; and bestowed upon her another of his bows, and went away.
‘... and the Grand Duke now understands that all this time the young lady has imagined herself to be in danger. By speaking out, she might have saved herself this—in fact non-existent—anxiety. I have written to her personally, telling her how deeply we appreciate that it was on account of our son that she kept silent, believing him to be still in danger from the Italian police—it is all now long ago, however, and they undertake not to prosecute. She thought also, perhaps, that the nuns having acted illegally in failing to report the accident, it might be supposed that they had accepted a bribe. I have paid my compliments, sir, to this young lady who in happier circumstances might have been our daughter.
‘This statement now closes. For your exact information, there have been no Juanese agents in your country—except in the past two months since El Bienquisto’s betrothal, the young man whom they knew as “Pony”, who however posed no threat to her, was instructed simply to discover what he could about the ring. She is now as she always has been, perfectly safe.
‘As to the death of a young woman and the mysteries surrounding it, reported to us by this agent, we can offer no assistance. We could have no interest in the matter and were in no way involved with it. It is for your information as to this as well as other matters, that we make this statement and most solemnly undertake that it is true. Signed—’
Signed in the sloping hand that had addressed the envelope: Simone, Duchessa di San Juan el Pirata.
And under the signature an addendum, in the same sloping longhand. ‘Please reassure the young lady as I have done in my letter to herself; there has never been any danger whatsoever to her and there is none now.’
Mr Charlesworth folded the papers carefully and put them back into his pocket. ‘Poor dear lady,’ he said. ‘She means well. But you’d so much rather we could all still believe in your Followers—wouldn’t you?’
But they had been there. They were real. The letters from San Juan, they were all lies. Yes, one had played tricks, put on acts to try to convince people, no one would believe, one had been so alone in the darkness because no one had believed.... But they had been there. It was not true to say that she had not been watched—they had been there always, in the shadows, watching her. Of course the Juanese would deny it all, that was easy enough, why admit it?—why admit to murder when from their safe distance they could simply write and say that they had no connection with murder?—had held no threat for her, that even when Pony had come to England, that had held no threat... And there you were!—Pony had been watching her, had been spying on her, had been deceiving them all, spying on them all, reporting back every word they said, ringing up the Grand Duchess in Rome—had she not been followed then? Nobody had believed that Pony was a Follower, but that hadn’t been nonsense, so why should the rest have been?
Pony had been no threat to her—according to them, according to the letter from the Grand Duchess. But why should not Pony have been a threat as well as anyone else?
Had it been Pony following her that night, in the little black car?
But it had not been Pony. Pony had had an unbreakable alibi for that night, actually performing before all the people at that club of theirs—even the police had positively crossed him off.
It had not been Pony. That really had been the Followers.
The Followers. Through the black night and the storm, the little car following her, tracking her down; slowing down when she slowed, accelerating, maintaining its distance from her, tearing through the rain down the small dark country lanes from Wren’s Hill towards home... A face, illuminated for a moment by a flash of lightening, dead white, peering out through the rain-spattered windscreen, two hands stretched forward, spread-eagled against the glass, two hands reaching out towards her, coloured to a ghastly crimson, as though they had been dabbled in blood...
Vi Feather, lying crooked and hideous in the back of the car, with her shiny pale blue plastic mac over the tawdry pink cardigan, and the cheap little woolly red cap all awry—and the cheap little woolly red gloves.
No Followers: only Vi Feather being
driven home through the storm from the cinema, in a little black car. The same make and size, she had said to him that night, as Rufie’s car...
As Rufie’s car.
No Followers.
No Followers. No Juanese, frantic to recover the ring, to discover the significance of those inset gems surrounding the great betrothal diamond, rubies for the marriage, emeralds for a son, sapphires for mere daughters... No Juanese with her murder in their minds. In her own mind, mists seemed to clear away, they had all been right, there had been no Followers ever, no Juanese; long ago in Rome, the sharp-faced men in sharp high-shouldered suits, eyeing her, had been just sharp-faced men in sharp suits, eyeing her; the watchers from the shadows, the cars nose-to-tail with hers—how long ago it seemed that Nan had suggested, just fellers trying to get another glimpse of so much gorgeousness! There had been no Followers; only, that night—two followers.
Just Vi Feather, in her red woolly gloves in Rufie’s little hotted-up black car; and Rufie.
Rufie. ‘Queer as a coot, I always thought meself,’ Vi Feather had said, ‘carrying on with Angelico, him that played your lead,’ and, just to go a bit careful she had said to Vi, Angelico was a world star now, had made a prestigious marriage; it. could ruin him if a story like that got around. His whole appeal was to female audiences, his good looks and masculine virility....
Angelico, whom Rufie had loved and still deeply loved. ‘You see, among our other unexpected qualities,’ he had said to her, bitterly, ‘we queers may even have fidelity...’
‘You did but see him passing by - ?’
‘And yet must love him, till I die,’ Rufie had acknowledged sadly. What might Rufie not have done, to protect Angelico from Vi Feather’s vicious, scandalmongering tongue?
17
IT WAS STRANGE AND almost horrible—the clearing of the old mist of terrors, leaving her mind so sharp and watchful, watchful not of imagined dangers but of threats immediate—threats to herself and Phin, to their future, to all her future, her last hope of happiness and peace. No Followers; no excuses any longer—real people, real motives, not necessarily concerning herself; real actions which might indeed concern herself.
For how had Vi’s dead body come to be in the Halcyon, which anybody at a casual glance must suppose to be hers?
Back through the storm with the body of Vi, strangled, lolling in the front seat of the little black car; dragged out—and placed in her own.
And if Rufie could do that to her—to her... She said in a new voice, sharp and new: ‘Rufie—what were you doing that night of the storm?’
‘Me? I was at Etho’s’ said Rufie, surprised.
‘Only for half an hour or so—quite late.’
He stared at her in amazement. ‘Darling, what do you mean?’
‘I mean that you had time enough to come back from Wren’s Hill, leaving a bit early, getting past before the fall of the tree; and be at Etho’s with a twenty-minute alibi.’
‘He was with me much earlier than that,’ said Etho, glancing uneasily between the two pale faces. Mr Charlesworth sat still as death in his deep armchair and prayed for them to go on forgetting that he was there.
‘You said you only got back yourself about the same time. You admitted you’d driven Sofy down, and driven back with her. And you did, because I remembered, on Sunday after the party, I remembered catching a glimpse of her there.’
‘I was here in the flat, I kept ringing them up,’ said Rufie, only vaguely protesting, hardly conscious yet of what was happening between them.
‘But they weren’t there to answer, they were down at Wren’s Hill. So who knows that you really rang up? You only say you were here.’ Now Charlesworth’s presence did impinge itself upon them, they stopped dead, glanced at him horrified, looked away. Sari said at last, trying to turn it all aside, ‘Oh, well, of course I don’t mean anything.’ To Charlesworth she pleaded: ‘I keep doing this, I think of silly things and then everyone gets cross with me.’
‘Not silly at all. You’re suggesting, I take it, that Mr Soames killed the woman and transferred her body to what he supposed was your car?’
‘Of course not, why should he want to kill her?’
‘That needn’t worry us at the moment. If he killed her, it must have been he who put the body in the other car?’
In a movement totally automatic, Rufie got up and crossed to the mantelpiece. Mr Charlesworth removed the white-painted pot from his hand. ‘I think for your own sake, we’ll take this one straight,’ he said.
He seemed almost to come out of a trance. Etho said, ‘It’s ridiculous.’ His mind moved swiftly, working it all out like a computer. ‘All right, Inspector. We were all three down at the cinema. Sofy and Rufie and I. We didn’t want to be seen, Miss Morne had asked us not to go, so we left early; we got by before the tree fell, we dropped Miss Burnsey off on the way and he and I came back here for half an hour or so.’
‘Wouldn’t it have been tidier just to let Miss Morne find him waiting for her here at home?’
‘Not for me,’ said Etho, trying to speak lightly. ‘If he could say he’d been with me, that let me out too.’
‘Very neat. So he drove with you down to the cinema and back, in your car. How did he get from your place home to these flats?’
Rufie sat mute, paralysed. ‘He’d driven over to my place and left his car there, and then picked it up again to go home. Of course.’
‘Of course,’ said Charlesworth. He heaved himself out of his chair. ‘Might I use the telephone?’
They looked on helplessly. ‘Miss Burnsey? Chief Superintendent Charlesworth here. Just one question—that night of the murder: Mr Wendover is here with me. He now says that in fact he wasn’t at home till later—that he drove you down to the cinema—’
A pause. One could almost hear Sofy’s thoughts coming over, What is this, what am I to say, what will be best for him? But evidently Etho was admitting to it. She said rather cautiously: ‘Well—yes.’
‘And—did you drive back with him?’
This would obviously be the nitty gritty. If she had been with him, he could not have killed Vi Feather. ‘Yes, I did,’ said Sofy, much more confidently.
‘You and he together—just the two of you?’
Did he mean...? Was he suggesting, after all, that Vi Feather...? If Vi had been with them, if they had started off by giving Vi a lift—there was such a thing as collusion, they were known to be close friends and Vi a common—enemy. ‘Oh, yes,’ said Sofy, absolutely firmly this time. ‘Only Etho and me. Who else?’
Charlesworth put down the receiver, went slowly back to the chair. Rufie remained speechless. Etho said: ‘OK, Inspector, it just seemed simpler to tell a fib—’
‘Quite a fib, sir, if one may say so,’ suggested Charlesworth, ‘in a murder investigation. And one asks oneself—why? Because you can’t help seeing that Miss Morne is quite right—the case against your friend is beginning to look rather positive.’
‘Oh, Rufie, I didn’t mean to suggest any case against you!’ But if Rufie had put that body in her car—what he thought was her car—had placed his own guilt on to her shoulders... So close, so near, so loving and trusting, they two to one another—if he had done this to her...
‘Mr Wendover, let’s just get this straight. And no more lies, please, or I tell you,’ said Charlesworth with quiet savagery, ‘I’ll get you for obstruction of the police in the performance of their duty—that isn’t just bonking them on the conk, you know!—and After the Fact, and Before the Fact for all I know; the whole damn lot. So let’s have it! You got back to your house, having dropped Miss Burnsey off at her flat—at what time?’
‘I’d better explain to you, Inspector—’
‘Please do,’ said Charlesworth, with a touch of ice.
‘—that we hadn’t been in touch, we didn’t know Rufie—Mr Soames—was going to Wren’s Hill. He didn’t make up his mind till the last minute, there was some do at this club he went to, and he couldn’t deci
de. But we met him there, at least we saw him as we left, Sofy and me; and we exchanged guilty glances, jokey glances, and then we two came home. He was getting up when we saw him as though he were leaving too, and we looked out for him, but in the car park in all that storm you couldn’t see a thing and it didn’t matter anyway, we’d get in touch later. We drove home and I got back to my place about ten to eleven or a minute or two after that.’ He paused. ‘You wouldn’t care to check with Miss Burnsey?’
‘No,’ said Charlesworth. ‘Now that you know that I can do so, I don’t think I need to. But thanks, all the same.’
V-eeeery sarky! thought Ginger, with nothing to do but keep as still as one reasonably could, curled up like a small pork sausage in a large can of baked beans. It amused him very much when in crime stories, accompanying sergeants chipped in with intelligent questions of their own. It was an underling’s place to keep his eyes and ears open and his mouth shut.
‘So, having established your alibis—’
‘They weren’t alibis then,’ said Etho. ‘Why should they be?—we knew nothing about any murder. On his way past my place, and he actually passes the door, he stopped off to compare notes; it was the sort of thing we do all the time. He’d see my car and know I was back. Any element of alibi would be to deceive Sari. On my account, largely. Just say we’d spent the evening together. She’d asked us not to go.’
‘And why did you go?’
‘Me, personally? Well, my company still has an interest in her, I wanted to see how the film went, audience reaction to her. Sofy wanted to see her old self, Rufie wanted to see his dress designs... And he longed to know what we’d thought of it, so on his way home—’
‘Just a casual dropping in, then?’
‘I’ve told you. And you’ll hardly suggest’, said Etho, ‘that he’d casually drop in, leaving his car standing out in the road with a dead body lolling in the passenger seat? It’s a small car, no hiding place in it.’
Charlesworth shrugged. ‘Pushed to lie across the two seats, covered with a rug or something. Who’s peering into parked cars at eleven o’clock on a night like that?’
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