A Splash of Red

by Antonia Fraser

  'You fool!' Jemima's momentary panic made her sound both crosser and more intimate than she intended. 'Don't you know that the police are here?'

  'Raffles the Gentleman Cracksman at your service.' Adam Adamson drew off an imaginary hat with a flourish. 'I did see a stalwart bobby standing at the front door of the concrete prison; nevertheless it proved the work of a moment for your humble servant to elude his stern but straight-forward gaze and shin up the ever-convenient scaffolding. Courtesy of the Lion of Bloomsbury. Then, lo and behold, what do I see, illuminated in the first-floor window, like the goddess you are, fit for worship, but Pallas Athena herself. Ho ho, thinks I, has our fair goddess set the sleuths upon me? And for that matter what might she be doing in the Lion's official den? So I decided to pay a call—'

  His grip on her shoulder remained firm.

  'Let me go.' But Adam Adamson didn't let her go. Instead he guided her further into the room and sat her down on the deep comfortable tawny sofa. Then he sat down beside her, quite close. She could have touched the golden down on his freckled cheeks and stroked the curly chestnut-coloured beard had she so wished.

  'First question, why did you shop me to the police? I had quite an unpleasant moment seeing yon arm of the law standing there.'

  'You fool,' Jemima repeated. 'I didn't shop you. Don't you know why the police are here?' Jemima felt herself breathing heavily, even panting; Adam Adamson's physical presence, which once she had found oddly attractive, now seemed to threaten her. Perhaps it was the late hour, the tantalizing and rather sinister circumstances of his arrival.

  'I rather imagined that they had rumbled the salubrious presence of the Friends of the House, as symbolized by your humble servant and were e'en now making sure that he did not effect any further revivifying entrances.' He put his hand on hers; she noted the golden hairs on the back of it. It was a strong hand with a spatulate thumb.

  'My dear Adam—' Jemima stopped. Both their intimacy and the situation itself were developing too rapidly for caution. Jemima Shore, Investigator, was in danger of losing a key opportunity of making a few pertinent enquiries of her own, before Pompey reached Adamson.

  'Where have you been, then?' She tried to stop her voice sounding too brisk. 'I saw you leave the house about half-past five just as I was coming back.'

  'I like to walk round London at night. Like Puss here I see the sights and smell the smells. Especially this part when it's empty. A little spying perhaps for the organization. Some beautiful empty houses doomed for demolition, no lights on, no security. We reconnoitre them at night.'

  'A long walk. But then I suppose you'd been cooped up in that terrible flat all day. You must have enjoyed the change of scene.'

  Adam did not answer the implied question. His expression was hard to read. Jemima feared that hers must be more open. She remembered Adam's apparent ability to read thoughts.

  'So what are the police doing here?' He spoke more abruptly.

  Jemima balanced the advantages of telling him - and thus proceeding further in her enquiries in a straightforward way - against the advantage she still possessed of surprise. While she still hesitated, Adam moved even closer to her:

  'No, don't tell me, you're going to lie to me, goddess, I can see it in your green eyes. And your archaic smile. Let me do this instead.' Adam Adamson, putting one hand on her breast, pinched the nipple quite hard. Before Jemima could cry out, she felt her lips impressed by his and he half kissed, half bit her.

  'No,' she panted when at last she had freed herself.

  'Why not? I rather thought you might like that kind of thing,' replied Adam coolly. 'More fun for us both than your telling me lying stories about the police. I hate being lied to, don't you? In fact I take very great exception to it. It's the one area where I generally take my revenge.'

  'I've no intention of lying to you." Jemima carefully checked the collar of her dress as though it was that not her breast which had suffered the assault of his hand. 'Someone was killed here today, killed, murdered. In the upstairs flat. The police are guarding the building.'

  'No chance of its being Sir Richard Lionnel, I suppose?' Adamson sounded extraordinarily composed; of the two of them, she was the agitated one.

  'It was Chloe Fontaine, as a matter of fact. The owner of the top-floor flat. My friend.'

  He stared at her in silence.

  'Ah. I'm sorry. I'm sorry your friend died.'

  After a long pause, Adamson sounded conventionally sad, no more than that. 'Chloe the Tragic Nymph. There's probably a curse on this building you know, since I tried to put one on it myself. I'm sorry it was a nymph that died and not a villain. She should never have come here.'

  'You didn't know her?'

  'I didn't say that. I didn't know her real name until you told me yourself this morning. Dollie, she called herself to me, Dollie Stover. Then I saw her photograph on the back of a book you were carrying and recognized it. Dollie - Chloe - you see, was a nymph by nature, a Nymph Errant, and I - sometimes - am a Knight Errant. We met, as such characters are prone to do, somewhere in the mazy land of the Errant where the most wayward one is king.'

  Memories of Chloe's breathless words came back to Jemima - 'A little, a very little, adventure ... a casual encounter you might say, a carnal encounter perhaps.' Was this little adventure then shared with Adam Adamson? If so, Jemima had filled in two names out of the three she had listed as the most recent admirers of Chloe Fontaine.

  'A casual encounter?' she asked. She tried to make her tones sound equally offhand.

  'I like them, don't you?' Adamson had in the meantime placed his arm along her shoulders; it was a more overtly friendly gesture than the fierce advance he had just made. Nevertheless Jemima still felt threatened; she could not deny that she also felt increasingly excited by his presence, his proximity.

  Jemima Shore returned to business.

  'So you had a carnal encounter with Chloe?' She stopped, slightly embarrassed by the Freudian mistake. It was all very well for Chloe. Jemima proceeded more firmly. 'Did you meet in the gardens, by any chance? She was locked out, she told me. Forgot her key. Climbed into the gardens and had what she called a casual encounter.'

  Adam smiled. 'Ah. An indiscreet girl, my Dollie, or at any rate it appears that your Chloe was indiscreet. I didn't know that she was in the habit of confiding her errantry. Yes, if you want me to say so, I'll say I met her in the gardens. I'll tell you something else about my Dollie which may or may not apply to your Chloe. It was she who told me about the empty flats here. Slipped me the key. Said she got it from a friend who was a decorator. Said she was living here as a kind of superior squatter. So it was you, Jemima Shore, goddess of wisdom, who informed me not only of the rather surprising news that my Dollie was your Chloe - literature's Chloe so far as I can make out - but also even less pleasingly that she was a lawful tenant in this concrete prison.'

  'Did you see her after that?' Jemima persisted. 'Your Dollie?'

  'A goddess of wisdom should know everything without needing to ask.' His hand was placed on her thigh, where it rested; with his other hand, he touched her cheek. 'No, I never saw her again. I don't think I would have been interested to do so. It wasn't, you know, a great romance. Only what you so aptly called it just now, a carnal encounter. A pleasant phrase that, by the way.'

  'It's hers, Chloe's. It was hers.'

  'Ah. Pleasant phrase all the same, pleasant phrase and pleasant activity. No, I didn't see her again. But I can see that your sleuth-like instincts are aroused and as I'd rather like to arouse a different set of instincts in you, I'll begin by setting your curiosity at rest. Here goes. I stayed in the upstairs flat all day, I slept, I read Dante - it seemed appropriate to the inferno in which I found myself - also some Petrarch, but that was for a different reason, and went out about five-thirty to get something to eat. When you, I gather, saw me. No, I heard nothing. Enough?'

  'You'll have to tell this to the police,' began Jemima. A terrible feeling - or was it so t
errible? Merely exciting or, in dead Chloe's own phrase, carnal? - was stealing over her that the conclusion of the evening was going to be exactly as Adam Adamson planned, and not as Jemima Shore intended.

  A little later she made no protest when Adam took her by the hand and led her into the dark green Empire bedroom. He stripped off the heavy rustling bedspread, and the soft white bedclothes tumbled out.

  His slight body - the hips round which she could have put both hands - looked quite different naked; not vulnerable as so many naked bodies did, especially those of the young, but powerful and triumphant.

  'Goddess,' he said facing her, 'it's your turn to worship me.'

  11

  Curiouser and curiouser

  When Jemima finally awoke the next morning, it was with an instant sense of happiness, content. That sensation quickly vanished when she first felt, then saw, the figure of Adam Adamson, lying across the Empire bed. He was fast asleep. He looked everything he had not seemed the night before; innocent, uncorrupted.

  'Oh Christ,' said Jemima Shore aloud. He did not move.

  She longed absolutely and passionately for him to be gone, magicked away from the flat; as much as she had longed for him to make love to her for ever the night before. Why could not such a mythologically minded man bear in mind the story of Cupid and Psyche? Cupid had insisted on leaving the mortal maiden Psyche before the light came. Very sensible of him. After all, dreadful consequences had ensued when Psyche had attempted to defy the ban by lifting her lamp of oil to view her unknown lover.

  In this case Cupid had overslept.

  'Oh Christ.' Unbidden the visage of Detective Chief Inspector John Portsmouth came into her mind; unlike the Cheshire Cat he was not smiling, but deprecatingly shaking his head. It had to be admitted that there was something to shake his head about ... shades of Chloe Fontaine (although that too was an unfortunate phrase).

  She became more resolute. After all in its own way it was an investigation. Jemima was fond of using the phrase in its own way on television when attempting to justify the unjustifiable. The Press sometimes mocked her for it. The memory of such - affectionate -attacks compelled her to admit, fair-minded person that she was, that given the opportunity she would undoubtedly behave in exactly the same way all over again.

  Given the opportunity: but not however on Sunday morning. This particular Sunday morning at any rate. No one was going to be given any opportunity this morning. Adam Adamson, great casual encounter as he might be, was going to the police. She, Jemima Shore, was going to - well, first of all - have a cup of coffee.

  She stepped gingerly from the white bed on which there were now no bedclothes at all and pulled her navy blue silk kimono from her suitcase. Adam did not stir as she left the room.

  Some minutes were occupied in searching out first the coffee and then the method of making it in the immaculate but curiously ill-appointed kitchenette. In the end Jemima discovered a tin of Nescafe stuck behind the rows of clean cocktail glasses and made do with that, there being no apparent method of filling or making work the elaborate gleaming Italian coffee machine.

  She sat meditatively on the single kitchen stool - uncomfortable and the wrong height. Was this kitchen intended for anything except getting ice cubes from the fridge? The coffee was too weak and tasted disgusting. As she sipped it, she heard the noise of the front door opening. Someone was coming in.

  'Oh Christ,' she said for the third time.

  The intruder had to be Sir Richard Lionnel. The police, so far as she knew, did not have a key to the flat and would in any case have rung first. Awkward and embarrassing as it might prove for him to use his own key without ringing the bell first, she supposed she could hardly object. The kitchen did possess a small digital clock. It was 11.30.

  Jemima tied the sash of her kimono still more tightly round her and stepped out into the little hall with its Georgian mirror and table - the prettiest and simplest room in the flat. There was no one there. The drawing room was empty and the door to the office remained locked. It took her a few moments to realize that what she had heard was the sound of someone leaving the flat rather than entering it.

  It was true. The green bedroom, now lit in a theatrical manner by one shaft of intense sunlight coming through the gaps in the heavy swagged curtains, was empty.

  The light fell upon a note, written on a piece of paper headed 'From the office of Sir Richard Lionnel'.

  'Dear Psyche,' it read, 'I'm afraid Cupid overslept but at least you didn't pour boiling oil over him. Thanks for everything. A. P.S. I've taken all the rest of this headed paper. Rather useful in the cause of revivification, don't you think? P.P.S. Don't worry, goddess, I'm going to the police.'

  The rest of Sunday was much less exciting. Jemima forced herself to read an Edwardian diary taken out from the London Library; the small print acted as a special kind of discipline.

  The call she awaited was from Pompey. It came about four o'clock that afternoon.

  'Well, my dear,' he began, 'we've talked to your squatter friend.' 'My friend?'

  'The one you met in the third-floor flat. Adam Adamson he calls himself. That's not his real name by the way. He's Adam all right but the rest of it is not quite so plain English. He tells me you advised him to go to the police. And very proper, too.' Pompey chuckled.

  'Naturally. You know me, Pompey, Honest Jemima Shore. The good citizen.' All the same Jemima was not totally happy about all this jocularity. She could picture Pompey shaking his head.

  'One thing did surprise me a little. He said you'd asked him no questions about his movements. Simply told him what had happened and said it was his duty to go to the police. And so, being a squatter -he calls it some funny name, doesn't he? - but not a slaughterer, those were his words, along he came to the station. Now, I wondered, where was the natural human curiosity of Jemima Shore, Investigator? No questions about his movements, alibi if any, connection with the deceased?'

  Pompey might be wondering about her incuriosity but Jemima herself was speculating how Adam Adamson had eluded the policeman at the door; not so much last night but this morning in broad daylight.

  Pompey answered that question for her.

  'Mind you, our chap on the door, PC Bland, is still rather baffled as to how your friend got into the building last night. Your boy—' Jemima wished Pompey would stop the emphasis - 'swears he just walked in, and has indeed made a statement to that effect. He noticed no policeman and, in so far as a squatter can be said to do so, minded his own business. Spent the night upstairs, emerged this morning, met you, you told him - but then you know the rest of it, don't you, my dear?'

  'And the murder period?'

  'His statement says that he spent the day in the third-floor flat. He even had an alibi for the first period, though we haven't checked that out yet. Says he heard nothing, neither the deceased woman entering the flat with her companion whom we assume to be her murderer, nor any sounds of a struggle or cries. You wouldn't expect the latter, not with that slash across her windpipe, she would have died more or less instantly. Says the door is exceptionally thick and the flats - he called them some very rude name and tried to incorporate it in his sworn statement - are soundproof, at least above and below. Left the flat at about five-thirty to get something to eat, confirmed by one Jemima Shore. Did know the deceased woman but as Dollie Stover, not Chloe Fontaine. No prints of his in the bedroom but the murderer wiped that clean in any case.'

  Pompey did not pause before adding in a completely different almost official voice: 'Ah, well, all this is of no great moment, because you see, we've picked up the artist.' Immediately Jemima's professional curiosity drove out all other considerations. 'Beyond that, we've checked out two alibis. Sir Richard Lionnel - he does prove after all to have an alibi, quite a good one as a matter of fact. The restaurant was called "The Little Athens", and he did have lunch there, no question of that, with a lady - now that's amusing - not your friend, naturally, seeing as her throat had been cut at the tim
e, but a lady, A Nonny Mouse.' Pompey chuckled. 'Second alibi, Mrs Mantovani, Mancini, whatever, the female editor. You mentioned her. Perfect alibi. Plane lands at Heathrow at one-fifty. Bus reached the airport proper - due to delays - at two-ten. She can't be in Central London before two-fifty and that's stretching it. She's out - as we see it.

  'And I've another piece of news for you,' he continued remorselessly, 'my boys have spoken to the maid, Rosina Whatnot or whatever her name is. Visited her this morning. Another funny piece of deception there. No sick child. Very healthy child bawling away out of sheer bloody-minded healthiness according to my boys. They don't know how to bring up kids without spoiling them to death, Italians, do they? Be that as it may, your friend Miss Fontaine gave her a few weeks' holiday. Out of the blue. Said you didn't want anyone disturbing you.'

  'I probably didn't,' Jemima felt bewildered. 'But I certainly didn't say so. I never had a chance. No, wait, Pompey, don't you see? She, Chloe, didn't want Rosina Whatnot hoofing about, talking to me perhaps about Lionnel, or about anything. Much safer not. She's a great talker, I gather. Is that true?'

  'One of the greats. Screamed, cried, screamed again, told my boys everything, absolutely everything they wanted to know. All about Lionnel. The Sir she called him. The Big Sir - isn't that a hippy place in California? And one or two other details which may be useful. However, she's no good for the actual murder, of course, because she'd been on holiday all the previous week. Still she is valuable background material.'