Death of Jezebel

by Christianna Brand

  ‘And of course the horse did not tread on her,’ said Brian.

  ‘No,’ said Cockie. He thought about it. ‘They say they never will.’

  Sergeant Bedd’s face fell a little.

  ‘And there was no blood,’ he acknowledged. And added reluctantly: ‘And no dogs.’

  ‘And no eunuchs,’ said Charlesworth.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Brian Bryan, in a very deep voice.

  The exhibition crowds were thinning. It had been a wonderful day: but now the weary women, burdened with purchases they would bitterly regret when they got home, fought for buses in the light summer rain, with cross husbands, slung about with Ohsofine nutmeg graters and Ohsosharp lemon peelers and Ohsotroublesaving gadgets of every description, lumbering irritably after them. The young ladies in the galleries argued with the exhibitors about their commission, the demonstrators on the exhibition stands surreptitiously started to tidy away so as to get off sharp when the clock of flowers said ten o’clock: its margin of error was ten minutes either way and morning and evening they took the benefit of the doubt. On the stage the concealing screens had been removed. ‘You’d better all go home,’ said Charlesworth to his hungry and weary little group. ‘Thank you for being so patient. You’ve really all been model suspects!’ He gave them a brief, harrassed, apologetic smile. ‘I’ll want to see you all again, no doubt: dozens of times. But I’ve got your addresses; we can’t force you to remain there, but—please let us know if you make any change.’ He added apparently guilelessly that obviously it would look exceedingly peculiar, to say the least of it, if anyone failed in this duty. To Perpetua, he said: ‘I expect Inspector Cockrill will see you safely home.’ They drifted off and he was left in the big, dim hall, on the lonely stage. A ‘sealed room’. A single entrance, bolted on the one side, bolted and guarded on the other. Two short lengths of rope: a silly little verse: a diamond brooch. A man missing who could not be the murderer since he had been sitting on his horse when the murder was done: and a frightened girl locked up, but unharmed, in a room. And finally, eleven men in impenetrable disguise in full view of thousands of people: and a woman ten feet above their heads, strangled by two hands and thrown down out of the cardboard tower.

  He wandered through the arch and into the Assembly room. Twelve suits of zipped-up armour, hanging on twelve hooks; twelve coloured cloaks drooping from the pegs above them, aglow with their velvet sheen; twelve tin helmets with closed visors hooked up carelessly on the pegs above the cloaks. White, red, sky blue… Yellow, purple, orange, a deeper blue, a bottle green… A bottle green. He went and stood before the spare suit of armour, dangling on its hook with the bottle green cloak and the grinning tin helmet above: and poked it in the tin tummy with an irreverent finger. ‘You blessed old sardine tin!—if only you could talk!’ he said. Eyeless, toothless—the helmet grinned back at him.

  Chapter VII

  IF THE KENT POLICE benefited in any way by the conference held in London that year, it was not by the devoted attention of their representative, Detective Inspector Cockrill. Cockie sat absently doodling: doodling pin-men on pin-horses, filling them out with tiny suits of armour, flying standards, flowing cloaks… Doodling a lay-out of the stage and Assembly room at Elysian Hall… Doodling a somewhat lop-sided face, adding a bush of thick, springy fair hair, clipped to a page-boy bob… I wonder she doesn’t trim it into a peacock, he thought. Or a tree in a tub. He rounded out the page boy bob into a tub, and added a little tree sticking out of the top. It wouldn’t be any odder than what most of the girls did with their hair these days…

  And there he was, back to Perpetua again. He mumbled an excuse to his colleagues and got up and went out. Perpetua, after a bad night was at last asleep, but woken by his ring, answered the telephone at once. ‘How are you, Peppi?’

  ‘All right, Cockie, thank you,’ said Perpetua.

  ‘But scared?’

  ‘Well—a bit. I mean, Isabel’s dead, isn’t she? And perhaps Earl is too. So there’s only me left. You can’t help sitting and wondering a bit where the tiger will spring from.’ She gave a nervous little laugh.

  ‘Haven’t you got any boy-friends that would look after you?’

  ‘Well—no,’ said Peppi. She explained apologetically: ‘I always used to go round with Earl, you see. And when he was away I—-just wasn’t interested. I wasn’t interested anyway: but when he was here he used to take me about. Otherwise I just used to stay at home.’

  ‘Well, stay at home now,’ said Cockie. ‘I’ll have to deal with it.’ He rang off abruptly and marched out of the telephone booth, clapping his hat at its usual wild angle on his fine head. Might as well set up as a wet-nurse and be done with it, he said irritably to himself. What on earth was there in this gentle, pretty, maddeningly vague young creature that impelled his pity and care? Thinking deeply he stumped off, his shabby old mac hooked over his arm in the London sunshine; and changed his direction, and then changed it again; and changed yet again, and made for Kensington.

  Brian Two-Times lived in a ‘service-room’: a small bright attic with ‘use of bath’, and breakfast brought up on a nice clean tray by a weary young woman who, however, thought him ever so lovely and would have climbed more than the four flights any day, to see him in his beautiful flowered silk dressing-gown, with his hair standing up in ducks’ tails all over his head. Cockie was not susceptible to the ducks’ tails and thought a dressing-gown at 11 a.m. little short of a sin. He sat down in the Utility armchair, took out papers and tobacco and wondered where on earth he ought to begin.

  ‘I’ve just been talking to Miss Kirk,’ he said at last.

  Brian Two-Times shrugged off Miss Kirk. ‘This yong lady—a fine nonsense she is making! How can I have pushed her in thiss room? It’s idiotic.’

  ‘I should very much like to be sure of that,’ said Cockie.

  Brian got up impatiently from his chair. Hands thrust into the pockets of his dressing gown, he shifted like a caged animal about the tiny room. ‘I was sitting on my horse in the Assembly room during the whole time that this nonsense was supposed to be taking place. How can I sit on a horse and at the same time tie some young woman up in a bundle, half a dozen rooms away?’

  ‘Somebody sat on a horse and at the same time strangled another young woman a considerable distance away!’ Cockie reminded him, wryly.

  ‘Well, neither of these miracle-workers woss me,’ said Brian impatiently. ‘Why should I want to kill Issabel Drew? Why should I want to injure Perpetua Kirk? I never met either of them till a few weeks ago.’

  ‘But you knew Johnny Wise: and both of these women were—concerned in his death.’

  Brian clutched wildly at his bright hair. ‘For heaven’s sake! Johnny Wise! I knew this boy, yes: but that is all. Just to meet sometimes when I went over to the F.M.S. from Sumatra—to run around to parties with, and so on: nothing more. He wass a nice boy: everybody loved him—there was about him something fresh and—one can only say—good. He was one of those “golden boys”. I, with all the rest, loved him: but only as an acquaintance, only as a casual friend. When he came to England, he wrote back much of his Perpetua, and also of Issabel Drew who introduced them together. When I came here to England, I looked up this Issabel. I wanted to know more of how Johnny died.’ His blue eyes grew hard and angry. ‘It is true, it seems, that between them these women killed the boy: Issabel Drew and Perpetua Kirk.’

  Poor, vague, sweet Peppi, who on that night had died also—only that her body continued to live on. ‘She was very young,’ said Cockie. ‘Almost a child. They got her half-drunk between them, Isabel Drew and Anderson… I don’t suppose she knew what she was doing: she said afterwards that the whole evening was a sort of blur, until the came-to suddenly to find herself in Earl Anderson’s arms, and the boy standing there at the door. But Anderson had taken a fancy to her, I suppose, and Isabel was on his side. So she let the boy go in. I remember Peppi Kirk in those days of her engagement. She was quite a gay little grig—not th
e great Mind of the age, you know, not Greta Garbo, but a good little, pretty little, happy-hearted creature, and very much in love with Johnny Wise. You wouldn’t think it now, would you? She’s been like a—like a dead leaf, ever since that night. She’s walked through her life in a sort of stupor of remorse and grief. And now she’s awake again—and what has she woken up to? She has no friends, no inner resources, no defences—and a very real threat of murder hangs over her day and night.’ He looked up suddenly, his brown hand curled over his cigarette. ‘That’s why I want you to be a friend to her—to look after her.’

  Brian was moving about no longer. He stood more quietly than Cockrill had ever seen him, his golden head outlined cameo-clear against the dingy wall. He said: ‘Then you do not think that I am a murderer?’

  ‘I don’t see how you can be,’ said Cockie, dourly. ‘Which is much more important to us both than what I think.’

  Brian Two-Times gave him his flashing smile. ‘Well—it is true that I am not. And this girl, she will be safe with me. I look after her!’ Apparently unable to waste one second longer before passing on to execution of this duty, he fished a suit out of the little wardrobe, rummaged through a drawer for a clean shirt, and with automatic neatness and despatch began to dress. As his head emerged through the neck of the shirt, he added: ‘But you now have to convince her that I do not push her into any room!’

  ‘As you say, you were sitting on your horse,’ said Cockie.

  ‘This she knows. But still she does not believe sense. How does she think I attacked her, when I am sitting on my horse?’

  ‘Perhaps she thinks you were not sitting on your horse?’ suggested Cockie comfortably.

  The shirt sleeves waved wildly as Brian thrust through his arms. ‘Everybody can tell you that I am sitting on the horse.’

  ‘Everybody has,’ said Cockie.

  ‘But you do not believe?’

  ‘The question is—will Perpetua believe?’

  ‘But what can she possibly think?’ cried Brian, doing up his shirt with such exasperated haste that there seemed imminent danger of a stage of buttonlessness.

  Cockie considered. ‘Well, as to what she may think. She may think, for instance, that you were not on the horse all the time. The knights were on and off the horses, they were sitting in their saddles, they were standing at their heads, they were mounting and dismounting. Perpetua may think that you rode in and took up your position: and then quietly dismounted, came back and did your work with her, and went in and remounted again. The horses are well trained: yours would have stood still.’

  Brian could not help laughing. ‘That is very simple, certainly. But the point is that I never got down from my horse. Part of my job woss to take up this position and to remain there. The knights all took their lead from me. Each knight followed the coloured cloak in front of him: but all followed the white cloak.’

  ‘Perpetua might think,’ said Cockie twiddling his cigarette, ‘that that’s what they did: followed the cloak!’

  Brian was enchanted. His blue eyes danced. ‘You suggest that it woss not me upon the horse!’

  ‘I suggest that it was not anybody upon the horse.’

  Brian’s face changed. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘I’m only just saying what Perpetua might think,’ Cockie reminded him. He was intent upon the cigarette. ‘I was saying that she might think about that spare suit of armour: that you could have hoisted it up on to the horse, out in the stable: and given the horse a whack—it was a circus-trained creature, and it would go forward quite meekly, wouldn’t it?—and take its place before the arch. You’d done it many times. You’d been training it for weeks.’

  ‘You mean that I sent an empty suit of armour in with this horse! But…’ He spluttered, words for once failed him. He groped wildly in the air for anything with which to refute such an idea. ‘But—ah! Miss Betchley! I talked with her: she knows I woss on the horse.’

  ‘So she does,’ said Cockie, beaming. He quoted: ‘A word spoken in season: how good it is!’

  Brian fanned himself in a parody of panic relieved. ‘You frightened me. I have seen something of the working of your police: if they get hold of thiss idyotic idea…’

  ‘But of course,’ said Cockrill thoughtfully, ‘Miss Betchley spoke to you before the episode with Perpetua. Nothing really to prevent your getting down off the horse afterwards, in all that muddle: hoisting up the spare armour, slipping out and back again…’

  But you couldn’t catch Brian a second time. ‘Now you are being fonny! Even this ridiculous armour—it will not sit comfortably on a horse which jiggles about… It will not hold up the standard…’

  ‘The standards are rigid in the saddle: it would be more a question of the standard holding up the armour!’

  ‘But how then do I beg my armour nicely to hold on to the standard! “And please to take the reins in your left hand. I am back in one minute”.’ He laughed again. ‘This you do not believe.’

  ‘One just longs to fit in that spare armour somehow,’ admitted Cockie, laughing too.

  ‘And afterwards—if I have assaulted this Peppi, then I am the murderer, is’t not? Do I then assist my empty armour to dismount and give it my parting instructions to go up to the tower and murder Miss Drew?’ He stood before the dressing table, bending his knees to bring his eyes level with the inadequate mirror: the gold hair crisped up beneath the bristles of the brush, forcing its way back into its little waves. Cockrill thought that if he went at his head any harder with those brushes he would do himself an injury. ‘Have a heart, boy! You’ll knock your brains down your neck!’

  ‘In England it is not good to have silly curls,’ said Brian, slogging away without respite. ‘Your Perpetua will not like it, she will refuse to have me for her protector, and now I have a good fancy to be protector to Perpetua.’ He put down the brushes abruptly and came over and stood in front of the Inspector, pulling down his waistcoat, settling his shoulders into his jacket, straightening his tie. ‘Now I am ready. But before we go, I like to tell you something. We have a good joke about the spare armour, yes: but, Inspector—I am not a murderer. I give you my word of honour that your little Perpetua is safe with me.’

  These foreigners with their speeches! All the same, Cockie took the outstretched hand in his own. ‘I know that my boy,’ he said. At least now he would be free to attend to that blasted conference!

  Mr. Port in the early weeks of rehearsals had recommended his ‘residential hotel’ to Miss Betchley: it was not what one was used to, but nowadays you took what you could get. One of the things you could not get in the hotel was breakfast in bed: they met in the dining room at nine o’clock on the morning after the murder and, warm in the intimacy of experience shared, joined up together at one of the horrid little tables. Both had had bad nights, and both looked tired and grey, but anxiety gave an almost youthful look to Susan Betchley’s handsome face, while it brought out the sagging wrinkles in Mr. Port’s. He seemed eager to talk of what had happened. ‘Little do all these peaceful people, browsing away at their breakfast like a lot of cows, realize that the papers they’re reading are all about us…’

  ‘It’s terrible for you, Mr. Port. Bad enough for the rest of us, but after all—well, I mean, Isabel Drew was a friend of yours, I know…’

  He poured out more coffee for himself, from his little metal pot. ‘Yes, it’s been a shock. A terrible shock. I’ve been lying awake all night, thinking about it—thinking about it… But… I suppose there’s such a thing as being deliberately infatuated, Miss Betchley: do you think there is? I was—I sort of played at being infatuated with Isabel Drew. Those days—under the Japanese: I don’t need to tell you anything about them, my dear, you know it all as well and as bitterly as I do; and you must know how, amidst much worse things—the fear and the anxiety and the physical hardships—one hungered for—well, for a little ordinary luxury, for fun, for cosiness, for—for tenderness and relaxation…’ To Edgar Port, Isabel ha
d meant fun and cosiness: had meant—God help him, poor old boy!—tenderness and relaxation. Isabel, reflected Susan Betchley, had had about as much tenderness as a wolf: but after the terrible years, after the further anxieties of a wife broken down by the strain and mentally sick, the ruin of home and property, the loss of friends, all gradually emerging in the ensuing months, it was not wonderful if he had lost himself temporarily in those honey-coloured charms. ‘But now that she’s gone I can’t feel it as a personal loss, somehow; I’m shocked, I’m horrified, but—I suppose I just didn’t really love her, that’s all. I—I wanted to have my head full of a pretty woman, I wanted to think of nothing but chocolates and flowers and whether Isabel would keep her promise to have dinner with me on such and such an evening—I wanted to think that I was in love…’ He looked at her from under his baggy eyelids and said, simply: ‘One has a good deal to forget.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Miss Betchley. (So one laid one’s naked heart at two dancing feet: one let oneself drown in the seas of a pair of blue eyes…)

  ‘But now that she’s gone, nothing seems very terrible to me but the way she died. And other things are—important.’ He moved back in his chair so that the waitress could place before him his wrinkled grey sausage and a writhe of lean bacon. ‘My wife is still in the nursing home, you know. But—she’s better, she’s due to come out very soon and…’ His fork rattled against the china with the shaking of his hand. He burst out: ‘What will she think if she finds that I’ve been playing about all this time with this stupid, shoddy exhibition, that I’ve been playing around with that vulgar, shoddy woman…? I only took up the work at the exhibition to please Isabel: she wanted to be the Queen of the pageant, she badgered me into applying for the job, and I did it to please her, to be near her…’ He said again: ‘It was ridiculous for a man in my position, but I wanted to be ridiculous, I wanted to fool around and do impulsive things. I had a great deal of pull—more than Isabel had any idea of—with the sponsors of the exhibition: I had money in it myself. But how will my wife understand that it was only to—well, that it was just the reaction…’ He broke off pathetically and wiped his sweating brow. ‘It’s enough to send her back to that place for ever. As I told Isabel…’ He broke off again, more abruptly this time. Susan Betchley said slowly: ‘Yes—I remember now. You were quarrelling with Miss Drew, weren’t you?’