‘This’ll do. It can’t be far away.’
I checked the time, put the box into drive and drove. I did a fast run. Ninety-five down the fast lane of the motorway, part of the time with a police BMW on my tail and twenty minutes on the hard shoulder listening to a lecture and collecting a ticket.
But I didn’t tell Dave. He’d have fallen over laughing.
FIVE
DAVID MALLIN
Two minutes after George left I saw the solution. It came in a flash. I dived into the Porsche and set out to catch him, but he’d been in a peculiar mood and something was pushing him. I gave up in the end and headed for the Abbotts’ place instead.
It must have been about nine o’clock. That particular time was beginning to haunt me and I hoped it was not an omen that I rang their bell at one minute to the hour.
Bella answered the door, rather more quickly than I had expected. She looked startled.
‘I can’t stand any more shocks,’ she said pathetically. She seemed drawn into herself, flinching from some imagined assault.
I followed her into the hall. ‘What’s happened now?’
‘They’ve brought the Dolomite back.’
It didn’t sound very distressing to me. ‘I didn’t see it.’
‘They left it round the side.’ Then she put her hand on my arm in agitation. ‘It’s blocking my Morris, so Victor will have to use it in the morning.’
‘Oh?’
‘And they haven’t … cleaned it out.’
I could understand that Messingham had held the Dolomite only as a bait for George and me, so that after it had been swallowed he’d been only too anxious to get the car off his hands.
‘Your husband …’
‘He won’t go near it. And I … I just couldn’t touch it.’ She looked beseechingly into my face, walking crabbed beside me as we moved along the hall. Soft music came from the living-room. I knew I would have to offer.
Abbott was listening to the radio, turned well down on Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben. Lord, he could choose ’em! His head was back against the top of his easy-chair, his eyes open. He seemed unresponsive. I knew then what was disturbing her, that she’d been unable to depend on him. I decided not to offer, after all. She relied on him completely and I could not take that from her.
‘In the daylight,’ I said encouragingly, ‘it’ll seem different.’
It was to Abbott I was speaking. He realized it and turned his head. His eyes were red-rimmed and lacked life.
‘Do you think so, Mallin? I shall have to sell it, you know.’
‘Of course. It’s getting a bit battered, anyway.’
He made a great effort and got to his feet, grimacing. Bella reached out a hand as though to help him, but he ignored it. She flinched away and quietly went to her piano-stool, where she sat sideways on it, one foot hooked behind the other ankle.
‘You’ll have brought news,’ he decided, his voice defeated. ‘Can I get you a drink?’
‘No, thank you.’ I glanced at Bella. ‘We must talk.’
I wished to imply that what I had to say might upset his wife. I was beginning to understand her. As she had claimed, she was not jealous or possessive, but she was completely dependent on him. She should have had more sympathy with Len and Natasha, I realized. They were, all three, so much alike. One vital cord secured their existence.
He looked across at her worriedly. Her eyes were wide and liquid. Across the room she still clung to him and he was too gentle and fine a man to break away, especially at that time. And she was afraid to.
‘Then talk,’ he said, making an agonized attempt at indifference. ‘There’s a chair …’
‘I think better standing.’
‘If there’s something to sort out … perhaps some other time … ’
‘There’ll never be a better time,’ I said, because it had to be displayed for Bella’s consideration. She had to understand and accept.
‘There’s no doubt now that the dead man in your car was Colmore,’ I said.
It had no effect. They had accepted that. I tried again.
‘And, because of certain circumstances involving the clock on your car’s fascia, it’s absolutely beyond question that he died at one minute to nine on Tuesday evening.’ That was rather more emphatic than I usually like to be on such evidence, but I was going to have to push him.
Bella had not moved, not made a sound.
‘Then it’s fortunate … ’ Abbott moistened his lips ‘ … that I’ve got some sort of an alibi for that time.’
I shrugged, waved my arms around and reached for my pipe. ‘Surely your wife’s told you about the youth.’
‘I told him,’ she whispered.
Abbott barked a short, dismissive laugh. ‘You’re surely not accepting such a ridiculous and disgusting reason for that lad’s injury. Bella … was almost in tears when she repeated it.’
‘In tears?’ I asked, turning to her.
She nodded, then abruptly turned away. Her fingers were spread over the keyboard, but she did not play the chord. Her voice was low.
‘I thought about those two people after you’d left, Mr Mallin. I couldn’t get them out of my mind. So rough and … and violent. And yet I thought I understood … in some way sympathized … ’ She played a gentle chord, then another, transposed to the minor, as though a tear had fallen.
‘You mustn’t listen to Bella,’ said Abbott from behind me, making it light and playful. ‘She’s very fanciful.’
‘I think I should. Sympathized, Bella?’
‘Well … ’ She glanced up for a second, then down again. ‘At least, understood what they meant, sort of … what life meant to them. So very simple, really. And then … then … ’ She shook her head, ashamed to go on.
‘You don’t want to hear this,’ claimed Abbott, pain in his voice. I very nearly turned and hit him.
‘Go on,’ I said quietly.
‘Then … I thought I had just a hint — you know — nothing more than a suggestion in my mind … that what he said about … what they did.’ Her voice was dying. She recaptured it bravely. ‘Taking the vulgarity from it, I could believe — and this is the point — feel that what he said could be true. So how could I face Victor with it, when it’s a complete contradiction of what he said happened? That I could accept what a rough and uncouth young man said in such a filthy manner … ’ She played a violent discord ‘ … as true and possible!’
I took a deep breath. Now, what I had intended to say was daunting. A wrong word and I could break her. Her sensibilities were too delicate. The dependence she felt for Abbott was more emotional than I’d thought, might well have been passionate, though constrained by her fear that it could, if too openly revealed, be snatched from her.
Abbott was speaking in an embarrassed, jocular voice. ‘This is all talk. The lad will be persuaded to tell the truth. Then this brash claim to some sort of virile athleticism …’
‘Victor!’
He broke away from her. ‘Anyway, he’ll tell the truth.’
I said: ‘It looks as though he’s too scared to tell anything. He’s disappeared.’
‘But he’ll be found, surely.’
‘And if he is?’ I demanded. ‘We can sneer at his story as much as we like — making ourselves appear pitiful, by the way — and he can stick to it.’
‘A doctor!’ he said quickly. ‘An examination of his ear … ’
‘It’d prove nothing. The wound looked ragged to me. As though he’d been wearing an ear-ring and your shot took that out.’
I waited. His eyes glazed. Then he smiled. ‘No. He did wear an ear-ring, I recall. But it was the other ear.’
‘Good,’ I said. ‘Very good.’ So he’d noted that. There was something in his story, at least. ‘So all we’ve got to do is find him. But in the meantime let’s have a look at what we’ve got so far.’
I glanced from one to the other and got nothing. Bella was watching her husband avidly.
‘I�
�ll go through it,’ I said, there having been no encouragement. ‘Two deaths, one hour’s drive apart. Both were with twenty-two pistols and similar cartridges. Both were within a few minutes of nine o’clock that night. At this end, Colmore’s death is almost unmovable from one minute to nine. At the other end, his mistress died at eight minutes to nine. Now, you see what we’ve got. The same type of weapon and cartridge, so it seems that the same person shot both. Oh, it’s not inevitable, but it feels like it’s the same person. Otherwise you’ve got to accept a tremendous coincidence. It’s one I’m not willing to accept, anyway. And so … what else is there left but an impossibility? Which is that the two deaths were by the same hand?’
I paused. Abbott cleared his throat politely and Bella ran her fingers silently along the white keys.
‘But, you know,’ I went on, ‘it isn’t all that absurd and quite suddenly I realized it. I saw how two people could be shot by the same person, at roughly the same time, sixty miles apart.’
‘I think,’ said Abbott tonelessly, ‘that we’d better discuss this … ’
‘No,’ she said desperately. Insecurity peered at her.
‘It has to be discussed.’
I can be as prim as the rest, as hypocritical. And as cruel, when the end is justified. All I couldn’t decide was whether it was. You can talk a lot of sanctimonious claptrap about justice and truth — and heaven knows I’ve done my share — but what’s the point in standing proudly with truth in your hand, when it’s clenched in a fist that’s destroyed every admirable emotion within reach?
I turned to Bella. ‘What do you say? Shall we discuss it?’
She stared numbly at me, her face drawn. She saw me as a saviour, blast her. I wanted to slap that trust from her eyes. Then she nodded slowly.
‘Very well.’ I turned back to Abbott, who’d offered no consent. ‘Let’s just imagine a possibility. Mr Abbott divorces his wife. The life he’d been leading, as principal of a residential college — as lecturer — this was his ideal, but his wife struck him a terrible blow by having an affair with a boorish, self-satisfied bully.’
‘That’s enough, I think, Mallin.’
‘Let him go on,’ Bella whispered.
‘As I say, a terrible blow. It struck at his pride and soured the existence he was devoted to. So he divorced her. I don’t know how reluctant that was, that final break.’ I lifted my chin at him. ‘Perhaps you thought the gesture was noble and dignified.’
‘Go to hell!’
‘Or just damned stupid. Anyway, it was done. And you’re too big a man not to bounce back. No regrets, huh? You’d build a new life, cutting your losses, not allowing regret to eat into you. Maybe the job of personnel officer isn’t exactly a perfect substitute for what you had before and maybe Bella … ’
‘Damn it all, Mallin, I’m not going to listen to this. D’you think I’m going to stand here and listen to you denigrate my wife!’
‘I was about to say that maybe Bella turned out to be a jewel, who didn’t particularly care for a bit of fun with the men and didn’t flaunt her independence in your face.’
I watched his expression. He didn’t know what to do. His chin shook, his eyes darted. Loyalty tortured him, because he was loyal to two women. And loved only one?
‘This is disgusting,’ he burst out eventually.
‘I’m maybe being a little unfair to Dulcie,’ I admitted.
He could have killed me. Bella broke in, quietly and evenly.
‘I was his first secretary. Such a cliché. The boss’s secretary! But in practice the relationship’s always very close. I got to know him. He was hurt. He went round like a dog who’s been kicked, and too proud to complain, and too loyal … ’
‘I forbid you to talk like this, Bella.’
She gave him a tiny smile, pouted and went on calmly, with pale determination. ‘And shy. Any sort of expressed emotion shrivels him up. Look at him now!’
He thrust past me quickly, so that he looked down at her, his back to me. ‘Can’t you see what he’s doing to you, Bella?’
‘My dear, he’s only expressing what you do to me.’
He gave a strangled rejection in one short sound, then said no more. I had to speak to his back.
‘You’re too easy, Mr Abbott, too forgiving. You understand other people’s points of view and that’s a weakness. The strong people see only their own viewpoint and plough the rest out of the way. And Dulcie, maybe she destroyed the important centre of your life with her, but she’d retain some of your understanding and respect. And when things became very difficult for her with Charles Colmore you’d perhaps find enough sympathy to want to help her with it.’
‘Nothing but conjecture,’ he said with disgust. But he hadn’t turned. Was he comforting Bella with his eyes, bracing her?
‘I’m trying to build up some basis in reason for your driving to Bentley on Tuesday evening with the express purpose of killing Colmore.’
That brought him round violently, his fist raised and his face distorted. Too soon, I realized. I’d been impatient. I had been attempting to establish a setting in which it was reasonable to accept that a man could assist an ex-wife who had hurt him deeply, without any emotion or feeling entering into it. I had been trying to do this for Bella’s sake and I hadn’t pursued it deeply enough. Beyond his shoulder I saw her white, stricken face, her hands coming up to hold her distress from breaking free. He raised his fist and in self-disgust I turned away.
‘What d’you think you’re doing?’ he shouted after me.
‘I’m trying to establish the possibility that you’d have gone there at Dulcie’s request — or even her insistence — to confront her husband. It sounds ridiculous, but with a man like you anything’s possible. I wanted to show that you could have followed him to the flat — you, not Dulcie — and there became involved with a violent row with both of them, Colmore and his mistress, and that you shot Marilyn Trask in a bout of anger and chased Colmore from the flat, in distress or fury, or whatever can bolster a man like you to murder, and that he reached your car, because his own wasn’t there, and in your car you shot him … ’
His voice was pitiful. ‘What are you trying to do to us? This is our home … I love my wife … ’
I advanced on him. ‘I’m trying to tell you that the only way both of them could be killed at the same time by the same hand sixty miles apart would be if he died there at one minute to nine … ’ I lowered my voice. I felt exhausted. ‘And you drove his body back here.’
Bella screamed shrilly.
I thought at first that she was going to push between us and run for the door. But her nails were tight in her clenched fists and the pain held her.
‘Do you realize what you’re saying?’ asked Abbott hollowly.
‘He was shot in your car. The blood shows that, if nothing else. He couldn’t have been shot elsewhere and put in it. And you’re uncovered by any outside witness for a two hour period, at least, from eight until ten. It could have been. Surely you see that.’
His eyes were darting, reaching for some relief. Beside and behind him, Bella was making small moaning sounds. But Abbott didn’t speak.
‘And why,’ I demanded, ‘did you ask us to prove you didn’t leave the clubhouse for those two hours, if the whole of that period wasn’t important to you?’
He stammered, lost. Bella’s small voice was almost beyond hearing. ‘Or important to me.’
He looked startled. ‘Bella … please … let me discuss this alone.’
But she wasn’t going to leave now. Particularly now.
‘What have you got to say?’ I persisted and my voice was rising again. He had no answer to it. He looked quickly at her and flinched. Then, abruptly, absorbing the awkward pause, he went across the room to pour himself a drink. His shoulders were shaking. I heard the glass clinking. Without turning:
‘Two other people … ’ His voice was harsh. ‘Nothing to do with me.’
‘Two other people in collusion?�
�� I asked. ‘Timing things together? That’s what it’d need. And Colmore, just because he happened to be in your car at nine, had to die there! Because that was the arranged time! What nonsense! And why would he be there, would you say? Because you, Abbott, were interfering in his marriage? He’d come down to have it out with you … Is all this going to be more acceptable?’
I’d been pushing him too far. He turned as though cornered and gulped down half his drink. He spoke with resolution, some dignity, and with his eyes on a spot above my head.
‘What you say is impossible. I couldn’t have been anywhere near Bentley at nine. I was at the Parkway Service Area on the motorway, halfway between here and there, at that time.’
I heard Bella gasp behind me. I didn’t glance at her.
‘What’re you telling me now? Anybody can say things.’
‘I can prove it.’
‘Don’t try.’
‘Prove it if I have to.’
But Bella had made no sound since the gasp. I wasn’t even sure she was breathing. ‘I think you have to,’ I told him.
‘I met Dulcie there, by arrangement, at nine. It had all gone beyond her control. She had to speak to someone and I … I was all she had.’ It was a quiet but quavering pride. He didn’t look at Bella.
‘This is bloody stupid!’ I shouted. ‘You’d come out with anything. He died at nine, in your car. Are you telling me you shot him there?’
‘I can’t help your fixation with nine.’
‘It was yours, damn it, not mine.’
‘He could not have died at nine in my car.’ He gave a grimace. ‘He was certainly not there at twenty past, when I left Parkway to drive back.’
I took a deep breath. ‘I saw that clock. It couldn’t have been rigged.’
‘I can’t help that.’
‘But you spoke of a shooting incident at the clubhouse at nine. The youth. You shot off his ear-lobe. Remember?’
‘Oh God, this is bloody awful,’ he said, choking down the rest of his drink. ‘Can’t you understand — I saw the car clock too.’
‘You said not, when I asked you.’
‘Of course I did. But I’d gone back to the clubhouse — it seemed I had to do some shooting — and when I finally went out to the car he was dead in the passenger’s seat, his face half blown away … Bella, dear, I’ve got to say it … and I saw that, because his head was down against the fascia, but sideways, looking towards me. Oh, there was blood! God, I hated to touch … but the clock face was visible then. It was only when I lifted his head — I had to know, you see, that he couldn’t possibly be alive — it was such a dead weight that I let it drop, face forward on the clock. And so, I’d seen the time as nine. I don’t know how that happened, but it showed nine, so naturally I said the incident with that stupid youth happened at that time.’
One Deathless Hour (David Mallin Detective series Book 16) Page 11
