Ellis Peters - George Felse 06 - Black Is The Colour Of My True Love's Heart (18 page)

“If you want to talk,” said Rapier philosophically, “who’s to stop you? But I feel I ought to remind you that there are two witnesses present, whether there’s a record or not, and that anything you say may be used in evidence. Maybe you should take another long, quiet think – about as long as from here to Comerbourne. There’ll be time there to do all the talking you’ll need to do.”

“I have thought,” said Lucien bleakly. “I should have done better to think before I ran. What has it got me? I don’t suppose I ever had much chance of getting out, but what chance I had I seem to have muffed. Talking can’t make things worse now. It might even make them a shade better. Because I never meant to kill him, of course. If I hadn’t had the most hellish luck he’d be alive now.”

In the small, pregnant silence, shatteringly apparent even while Price continued to direct the car calmly at the same smooth speed, Lucien observed his two escorts exchanging in the mirror a speaking glance that was yet very careful not to say too much.

“I didn’t know,” said Rapier mildly, “that anybody’d mentioned a death.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Lucien in a spurt of nervous fury that left him trembling, “let’s pack in this pretence that you’re after me for running off with a car. People don’t try to skip out to South America for that, and you fellows don’t have the airports alerted to stop them. That’s not what all this is about. You know as well as I do that Mr. Arundale’s dead, and if you weren’t as good as certain I killed him, you wouldn’t be here taking me back with you to Comerbourne. So why put on this act with me!”

“Have we asked you any questions about Mr. Arundale’s death, sir? I don’t recollect that we have.”

“You don’t have to ask me, I’m telling you. I want to tell you. I’m sick of being the only one who knows.”

“It’s a free country,” allowed Rapier considerately. “But no charge has been made against you formally yet on any count. I shouldn’t be in any hurry to make statements, if I were you.”

“But if I do, you’ll keep a record of it? Not that I care, except that I’d rather get it over in one. I’m so damned tired.”

“Very well, sir, if that’s what you want. But you will bear in mind that I’ve cautioned you.” And with the minimum of movement and fuss, suddenly the sergeant had his notebook on his knee, and his ball-pen in his hand. Probably wise to the fact that I’m one of those contra-suggestible types, thought Lucien bitterly. If they seem to be heading in the direction you want them to go, push like the devil the other way, and they’ll persist. If you give them a hand, they’ll turn back.

“Oh, I give you full credit for that. But it’s all right, I want it finished now. It never should have begun. It was all unnecessary.”

He moistened his lips nervously. How much did they know? Better assume they knew most of it. How could Felicity keep her mouth shut for long, once she realised what she’d unleashed. And even if they hadn’t yet recovered everything the river was supposed to conceal, they soon would when the level went down. No, better leave out nothing that was there to be found.

“I was down by the river,” he said, and shivered as if he’d plunged into its coldness, “and the kid had followed me there, the warden’s niece, the Cope girl. She’d been round my neck ever since I’d got to Follymead, I couldn’t shake her. And I was in a miserable way because I’d quarrelled with my own girl, and she was around, too, and things were pretty bad with me. I wanted to get somewhere by myself, and think, and there was this silly little thing bleating about love, when she didn’t know she was born yet. I stood it a long time, and then I blew up. All I wanted was to get rid of her, and I wasn’t particular how I did it. I’m not proud of it now. I suppose it was about the cruellest thing I’ve ever done. I gave her a message to take to her aunt… to Mrs. Arundale… as if there was something between us. There wasn’t, of course, I only met the lady a couple of times before. It was just that Felicity was already mad jealous of her aunt, that’s why I made it her. It cut deeper. And it worked, too. She took offence and walked off and left me there, and that was all I wanted. I never thought she’d go and deliver the damned message, right out in front of both of them… or just to him, I don’t know… to him, anyhow, because he came. I’d said to tell Mrs. Arundale I was waiting for her there. But it was her husband who came.”

The sergeant’s hand seemed to do no more than idle over the paper, spraying shorthand symbols like rain. But he wasn’t missing anything. And he could still spare one eye, occasionally, for a quick glance at his prisoner’s face.

“Must have been a bit of a shock, when you expected Mrs. Arundale,” he said sympathetically.

“I didn’t expect anyone. I told you, all I meant to do was shoo the Cope girl away. I never thought she’d have the devilment – I don’t know, though, I asked for it! – or the guts, either.” Lucien shivered, a nervous compulsion that ran through his bones in a sharp contraction of cold. “He was there before I knew. I wasn’t paying any attention to anything. I was just glad to be alone, and then there he was coming out of the trees, with this thing in his hand…” A compulsive yawn followed the chill; he smothered it in his hands, and shook himself violently. He wasn’t through the wood yet, he had to keep his mind clear.

“This thing…?” said Rapier, patiently nudging.

“Maybe you don’t know it. It hangs in the gallery there, among a lot of other exotic junk, Victorian, maybe older. The Cope kid showed it to us when we went round the house, the first evening. It’s a black walking-stick with a silver handle, but really it’s a sword inside an ebony sheath. I knew it as soon as I saw it, but I never thought… He just drew it out and came at me. Never said a word, simply ran at me with the blade. I tried to talk to him, but there was no time at all, and anyhow I doubt if he could even hear. He looked quite mad… stone-cold mad. I couldn’t believe in it, I nearly let him get me because I couldn’t take it in. But then I knew he meant killing, and I just put the rocks between us in time, and ducked aside into the trees, hoping to beat him to the gate and get away. But he saw what I was about, and cut back there as fast as I did. I got my hand to the latch, and then he was on top of me, and I jumped round and put up my other arm to fend him off, and the tip of the blade ripped my fingers…” He flexed them painfully, and there indeed was the sliced cut, imperfectly healed, crossing all four fingers diagonally between second joints and knuckles. “And the latch had pulled half out of its place, so I knew it was free, and I pulled it out.”

He shut his face tightly between his palms, trying to suppress the sick yawns that were tearing at him now like bouts of pain. Queer the way you reacted when the time came, mentally calm but physically disrupted, a rash of nervous symptoms with a tensed and wary mind. This pause he prolonged in the hope of eliciting a question, anything that would make things easier for him, and give him a signpost, but Rapier waited politely with his ballpoint suggestively poised, and said not a word.

“But I had to spring away from the gate to get out of range. And then he was between me and it, and even if I had a weapon I couldn’t match his reach. He drove me down towards the water again, and all I could do was try to parry his strokes. But then it was no good backing any more, I should have been in the river, so I had to try and jump him. I’m no more good at that than he was, and I was in a state by men, and… I don’t even know exactly what happened. We were struggling together there, and I hit him… He went down. I didn’t know I’d hurt him badly, the only thing I thought about was to grab the sword, while he was stunned. But after a few minutes, when he still didn’t move, I got scared, and took a closer look at him. His head was like a ploughed field, and yet there was next to no blood. He wasn’t breathing, and with a head that shape he wasn’t going to breathe again. I knew I’d killed him. And all for nothing. I never wanted to, I hardly knew him… What was I supposed to do, with that on my hands?” he appealed passionately.

“The right thing,” said Rapier, accepting this literally, “in a case like that, would be to leave everything as it is, call the police, and tell them the whole story.”

“And how many ever do the right thing, when they get into a jam like that? Try it, some day, and see if you don’t do what I did – run. There wasn’t a thing I could do for
him
. He was dead. I pulled him to the edge of the river, and threw him as far out as I could, into the current, and I saw it take him downstream over the weir. I threw the sword-stick and the latch in the pool there. And I remembered that he was supposed to start for Birmingham, and his car was out in the yard ready. So I took it. Nobody’d look for him again until Sunday night. But you can’t get money out of banks or turn other assets into cash on a Sunday, I had to wait over until to-day. If it hadn’t been for that, you wouldn’t have caught up with me.”

“And how,” asked the sergeant mildly, “did you know that we were inquiring into this death, then? You say nobody’d be expecting him back until last night, and nobody’d panic at one extra night, would they? Or did somebody tip you off? Did you hear from somebody that his body’d been found?”

Lucien took his hands away from his drawn face, and stared him steadily in the eye. “No, how could I? I thought I was still ahead of you until they dropped on me at the airport. After that, I couldn’t help knowing you’d either found him, or found traces that were just as good. You wouldn’t have known about the car being stolen, otherwise. And what you didn’t know before,” he said wearily, “you know now. Have you got it all down?”

“Yes, Mr. Galt, I’ve got it all down.”

“Good! I should hate to go through all that again.”

“I’m sure you would, sir,” agreed Rapier serenely.

“I don’t want anybody else to be pestered,” said Lucien, leaning back in his corner with a drained sigh, “when nobody but me had anything to do with it. I didn’t have a thing against him, I hardly even knew him. But
I killed him
.”

“Yes, Mr. Galt,” agreed Rapier, accommodatingly, watching the stillness of the pure, dark profile against the streaming world outside, “yes, you’ve made that quite clear.”

AUDREY ARUNDALE emerged from her privacy to preside at the final gala tea. She wore black, but like many primrose-and-silver blondes, she very frequently did wear black, and there was nothing to remark on in that. She was pale, her eyes a little remote, and shadowed by bluish rings that made them look larger and more lustrous; but there was nothing in her appearance to give rise to comment or curiosity. Her manner was as it had always been, but at one remove more, and the wall of glass that separated her from the rest of the world, even while she touched and conversed and was patently present in the flesh, was so thin and clear that happy people never noticed it.

She was about again on Follymead’s business, and had a couple of calls to make. On her way to the small drawing-room she looked in at the deputy warden’s office. Henry Marshall looked up from his laden desk as she entered, and came to his feet in quick concern.

“Mrs. Arundale, I’d no idea… You’re not going in to tea?”

“Yes, I must. I’m quite all right, I assure you, there’s no need to worry about me. I just wondered if there was anything I could help
you
with. I’m so sorry to have left everything to you, like this.”

“You mustn’t trouble about the running of the place at all, that’s what I’m here for.”

“I know,” she said, “and I know how well you can do it. I hope… I hope they’ll give you the job, Harry.”

“Thank you!” he said uncomfortably. He hadn’t thought of her bereavement, until then, as his opportunity. “I think we’ve got everything in order. It’s lucky that we had no special fixtures for the next few days. We’re circulating all the people who’ve booked for the course next week-end, and cancelling the arrangements. I thought it would be impossible to go through with it. I have it from the police that no statement will be given to the press until to-morrow, and I very much hope it will only affect the local and regional press at the moment.”

“But there’ll have to be an inquest, won’t there?” she said, contemplating the complexities of death with eyes of stunned distaste.

“It’s to open on Wednesday morning, I’m told. But Inspector Felse says it will be only a formal opening, and the police will be asking for an adjournment. At least that will allow time for the public to forget about us a little.”

“And find some newer sensations,” she said with the blanched ghost of a smile. “Yes… And what about the subscription concert, on Monday evening of next week? So difficult to cancel a thing like that, when all the tickets have been sold, and then it’s hardly fair to the artists…”

“I think we ought to go through with that. A whole week will have passed, and the public who do use Follymead will know by then what’s happened here, and I think they’ll be reassured to find that the work is to go on. I’m sure the governors will approve.”

“Good,” said Audrey. “I’m glad you feel that way about it, too. I thought myself we ought to honour the arrangements. It’s certainly what Edward would have wanted us to do. I’m so glad you’re here to look after everything, Harry. I see you don’t need me at all. Now I must go along and have a word with Inspector Felse before tea.”

He sprang to open the door for her, his anxious eyes searching her face, but there was nothing to be seen but a white calm. “I don’t think you should attempt too much. The social load is taking care of itself, you know, you’ve only to listen to them. And it’ll soon be over now. You weren’t thinking of attending this last concert, were you?”

“Yes, I feel I must. Edward would have wished it.”

She went along the corridor from the gallery to the warden’s private office. George Felse was sitting behind the desk with his head propped in his hands, the telephone silent now, the photograph of Audrey in her party dress, Audrey at sixteen, leaning against a trough of Edward’s books. George could look from the girl to the woman, and feel time whirl past over his head, and she, since the picture was hidden from her, would not even be able to guess at the reason for the look of wonder and compunction in his eyes.

“Mr. Felse, I hope I haven’t done something I shouldn’t have done, but it seemed to be my job. I’ve told Felicity, in confidence, that her uncle is dead; and I’ve telephoned her mother, and told her that I’m sending the child home by the half past five train. Wilson will drive her to the station. If you have no objection? I know you’ll probably need her, later on, but you’ll find Mrs. Cope’s address there in the book, and Felicity will be available whenever necessary.”

“I’m glad,” said George. “It’s the best thing you could have done. You may be sure we shall spare her as much as we can. It may not even be necessary to bring her into it at all. If we can avoid it, we will.”

“I know. She told me… she said you’ve been very kind to her. She… we have never understood each other, I know that. I feel guilty towards her.”

“So does she,” said George quietly, “towards you.”

“Yes… we can hardly take a step, it seems, without infringing someone else’s liberties. I’ve suggested to Mrs. Cope that she should try sending Felicity abroad for a time, perhaps even to school abroad. A completely new environment, new companions…”

“It would be the very best thing for her. And I believe she could make good use of it, now.”

“I believe she could. Thank you, I’m glad you think I’ve done right.”

She closed the door gently after her, and went towards the hubbub in the drawing-room. And there she dispensed tea, and made conversation, and was everything the hostess of Follymead should be, always with the invisible and impenetrable veil between her and reality.

“Such a delightful week-end, my dear,” said Miss Southern, balancing a china tea-cup as old and fragile as her own thin, bluish fingers. “So wonderful to get away from this awful modern world and enjoy an island of such
peace
.”

“I’m so happy,” said Audrey, “that it’s been a success.”

“Oh, it has! Everyone’s enjoyed it
so
much. That charming little girl with the harp… I do think the harp’s such a
graceful
instrument for a woman, don’t you?”

“Mrs. Arundale,” shrilled the girl with the butterfly glasses, bounding between the chattering groups with a cucumber sandwich in one hand and a tea-cup in the other, “it’s been
fab
! I can’t
wait
for the next one.”

“I’m so glad you’ve enjoyed it. We must try to fit in another one as soon as we can.”

“I’m only sorry Arundale’s missed most of it,” said a thin gentleman in a dog-collar. “Do tell him, when he gets back, what an enormous success it’s been.”

“I’ll tell him,” said Audrey, and her glass smile never wavered.

Felicity came down the stairs from her room at a quarter to five, carrying a coat over her arm and a suitcase in her hand. She cocked an ear towards the small drawing-room, but on reflection did not go in. Instead, she looked round the recesses of the gallery for a secluded spot, and there in a cushioned corner of one of the built-in seats was Liri Palmer, sitting alone.

“Hullo!” said Felicity. “I was just thinking of going to look for you, only I was a bit scared, too. Do you mind if I sit with you? I’ve got ten minutes, and then I’ve got to go.”

“You’re leaving?”

“My aunt’s sending me home.” Felicity put down her case, and dropped into the cushions. “I think she thinks the children should be kept out of the way of crime and the law, and if there’s going to be unpleasantness, Felicity must be shipped off to more sheltered places. Very correct, very conventional, is my Aunt Audrey.” She looked along her shoulder at the clear, still profile and the glorious, envied hair. “You know my uncle’s dead, don’t you?” Her voice was low, level and determinedly unemotional, but her face was solemn and pale.

“I found him,” said Liri simply. “How did you find out?”

“Aunt Audrey told me. She knew I was in it already, up to the neck, so she told me how it turned out. I was grateful to her for that. It’s horrible to know bits… too much, but not enough… And to have to find out the rest maybe from a newspaper. Now at least I know where I am, even if I don’t like it much.”

“Who does?” said Liri.

“No… nobody, I suppose. But
you
haven’t
done
anything.”

“And you have?”

“Yes, that’s what I wanted to tell you. You see, the bits you know are different bits from mine. And I only found out to-day, from Dickie Meurice, that you and Lucien… You were engaged, weren’t you? Or as good as, what’s the difference? I wanted to tell you, I didn’t know that. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have tried to make him interested in me, and none of this would have happened. Not that that makes it much better for you, I suppose, because in any case he was playing you false.” The phrase came strangely but without affectation; whatever was on her mind now, Felicity was not pretending, even to herself. “He was Aunt Audrey’s lover. I suppose you knew that?”

Liri stared straight before her. “He broke three dates with me, always with a good excuse, always on the telephone. It’s easier to lie to somebody on the telephone. Twice I swallowed it, the third time I was a shade low, so I took myself out to dinner at a little place we sometimes used. He was supposed to be at rehearsal for a recording session, but he wasn’t. He was there with her. They were glowing like studio lights, and talking like bosom friends, as if they had a lifetime’s talking to make up. He was holding her hand, right there on the table. They didn’t see me. They weren’t seeing anyone but each other. I didn’t interrupt them. I waited until the next time he came for me, and then I threw it at him that he’d been standing me up for another woman. He said there was nothing in it, I was making a mistake. But I knew better. We both went mad, and that was the end of it.” She sat up abruptly and shook herself, between anger and amazement. “Why am I telling you this?”

“I don’t know,” said Felicity humbly, “unless it’s because I’ve grown up suddenly.”

“Afterwards I thought about it, and I thought, no, that was too big a thing to throw away like that, without even trying to straighten it out between us. So I came here to Follymead, because he had this engagement here. I came to make it up with him if I could. And the first person I saw when I got here – no, the second, actually,
you
were the first, through the lighted windows right here in this gallery – the second person I saw was this woman who’d been with him in the restaurant. So then I knew why Lucien had taken this engagement… maybe why the whole week-end course had been thought up. And that was the end of it as far as I was concerned. I
thought
! Actually it turns out things don’t just end when it’s appropriate, they go on whether you want them to or not. Is that what you wanted to know?”

“It isn’t that I wanted to
know
. But thank you, all the same. It makes it easier to understand. Me, I didn’t know any of all that, or even about you. All I could see was Lucien. I was in love with him, or I thought I was. I went out after him last Saturday afternoon…” She told that story over again, softening nothing; Liri had a right to know.

“That was what he said. And I did it. I went straight back to the house, and Uncle Edward and Aunt Audrey were sitting there together, and I said just exactly what Lucien had told me to say, right out loud to both of them. And that’s the part you didn’t know. That’s all. That’s why Uncle Edward went down there to kill him, only he got killed himself, instead. But whichever way it went, somebody died, and I was the cause of it.”

“You did
that
?” Liri had turned to study the girl at her side with wide-eyed attention. “Went and chucked his private invitation down on the table between them, ‘where they were sat at meat’?”

“Well, not exactly that,” said Felicity, puzzled. “They were just finishing coffee, actually.”

“Don’t mind me, it was just something that came into my head. It happens in one of the ballads, didn’t you know? Just like that.” She stared sombrely at the story that now unrolled before her remorseless and complete. “It’s something I might have done, too, if he’d done a thing like that to me.”

“Oh, might you? Do you really mean that? But you didn’t,” said Felicity, clouding over again. “I was the one who did it, and I was the one who caused Uncle Edward to get killed.”

“You and all the rest of us who’ve had any part in this affair. And Mr. Arundale himself, that’s certain. Don’t claim more than belongs to you,” said Liri hardly.

“That’s what Inspector Felse said,” admitted Felicity, encouraged.

“Inspector Felse is a pretty deep sort of man.”

“He is, isn’t he? There; that’s the station wagon for me.” The horn had blared cheerfully in the courtyard. Felicity picked up her coat and her case. “Good-bye! I wish things could turn out better than they look now. I’m sorry!”

She turned her slender, erect back, and marched away along the rear corridor towards the back stairs. At the warden’s office she hesitated for a moment, and then tapped on the door. It would be only polite, wouldn’t it, to say good-bye to Inspector Felse?

“Oh, hullo!” said George. “I heard you were off home.”

“It’s all right, isn’t it, for me to go? Aunt Audrey said she’d tell you.”

“Yes, it’s all right. If we need you, we shall know where to find you. Take care of yourself, and good luck. Better luck,” he said gently, “than you’ve had so far.”

“Thank you. You’ve been very kind.” He saw her glance stray involuntarily towards the glass over the hearth. “You did mean what you said, didn’t you? You do really think I’m going to be… pretty?”

“No,” said George firmly, “you’ve never going to be pretty, and that isn’t what I said.”

“I was afraid to say the other word,” Felicity admitted simply. “But you
did
mean it, didn’t you?”

“I meant it. You’ll see for yourself, before very long.”

“It’s not that it makes any difference to what’s happened,” she explained punctiliously. “But it’s something to start from – like having capital. You know!” She picked up her case sturdily. “Good-bye, then, and thanks!”

“Good-bye, Felicity! You’ll be all right?”

She understood that in its fullest meaning, and she said: “I’ll be all right.”