And So To Murder (18 page)

The silence went on unendurably.

‘So you’ve found out,’ said Tilly, keeping her head down. ‘I was afraid you would.’

‘You … wrote … those … letters.’

‘As God is my judge,’ said Tilly, suddenly lifting her head and looking Monica in the eyes. ‘As God is my judge, I never did.’

‘Don’t you come near me.’ said Monica, pretty steadily. ‘I’m not afraid of you. Only –
why
did you do it? I’ve never done anything to you. I liked you. Why did you do it?’

Even now she was stunned by the fierce sincerity of Tilly’s manner. Tilly’s manner, in fact, had reached that pitch of high-flown and impossible melodrama which is often the surest sign of good faith. Uprearing her ample bosom, Tilly lifted her right hand as though she were taking an oath; the flabby flesh sagged in folds at her wrist.

‘As I hope to live and die, as I hope to answer to the Good Man in heaven, I never wrote those letters! I know it looks like my writing.
Do
I know it? What do you think I’ve been thinking ever since you started to get them? I’ve been going nuts. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I can’t –’

She put her hand to her throat.

‘Wondering if you recognized the writing. Wondering if you thought it was me. Not daring to ask you. I
had
to give one of ’em to Bill Cartwright; I just
had
to. I had to know what was going on, don’t you see that? If he’d asked me, I’d have told him; but I didn’t dare tell him straight out in case you’d think it
was
me. I didn’t do it, honey. I swear to God I didn’t do it. Look, honey –’

Tilly, breathing like a horse, took a few steps forward. Monica moved away until she was touching the wall of the cloakroom and Tilly stopped. All emotion, either passion, or wheedling, seemed to collapse in her, leaving her spent and wrinkled like a toy balloon. Her voice became a dreary croak. Picking up the overturned chair, she set it right and flopped down on it. She wiped her eyes, blinked, and grew calm.

‘Well, that’s that,’ she said. ‘If you won’t believe me, you won’t. Where do we go from here?’

And she peered about the room, absently, during another silence.

Against all reason, Monica felt a twinge of doubt.

‘But they’re your writing! Look at it. Do you deny that they’re your writing?’

‘I do, honey,’ returned Tilly. ‘Because they’re not.’

‘They even sound like you. I – I’ve been trying to think all along who the phrasing of them reminded me of; and it’s you.’

‘I expect they do, honey,’ said Tilly indifferently, continuing to blink and peer round the room as though the matter were of no interest to her. ‘I expect they were meant to.’

‘Meant to?’

‘That’s what I said, honey.’

‘But do you know anybody who could imitate your handwriting? Or would you want to?’

‘Yes,’ replied Tilly, with a certain grimness. ‘I know one person. But that person … Sh-h!’

Footsteps, light and precise as of a woman who walks well, could be heard coming down a distant staircase. The footsteps passed the mouth of the corridor, hesitated, and turned in. Someone, as though to exercise a fine and deep contralto voice, was humming an experimental bar or two of a song.

‘Ditch those papers!’ hissed Tilly, making a striking movement like a snake. Tilly was again all action. She swept up the manuscript-sheet and the letter, stuffed them into the drawer of Monica’s desk, and slammed the drawer shut as there was a light rap at the corridor door.

‘Hello,’ smiled Frances Fleur, putting her head in. In the gloom she seemed surprised and a trifle annoyed when she saw Tilly. ‘Do you mind if I come in, Monica? I have a very important message for you.’

1

‘I
T
’s very dark in here,’ continued Miss Fleur. ‘Do you mind?’

A light-switch clicked beside the door.

Frances Fleur was one of those people who always bring excitement with them, because it was a sort of excitement merely to sit and look at her. She incited what young ladies in the ninepennies had been overheard to describe as a ‘goosey feeling’. And this was not personality: it was sheer good looks, animated by the expression of the eyes.

The face haunted you. On the screen you could not look away from it. In private life, with colour to make it more alive, it was at times startling. Such was the effect when she turned on the light in Monica’s office, and blinked and smiled against it. Tilly Parsons suddenly resembled a rag doll after rain. Even Monica would have had nobody’s eye except Bill Cartwright’s.

Monica was partly used to her by now. She catalogued the woman’s clothes: powder-blue; two-piece; silver fox at the sleeves. Summer-felt hat, of the same blue colour, shading the side of the face. Black suède shoes, black handbag, and gloves. Yet even Monica felt the disturbing wave of her presence.

‘This is the first time I’ve been in here,’ Frances Fleur smiled. ‘It’s a comfortable place to work in, isn’t it? May I sit down?’

‘Please do. Try the couch.’

Miss Fleur moved across. She made the room look dingy; she stirred the air, and made it impossible to look anywhere else but at her.

‘I’ve got two messages for you,’ she told Monica. ‘The first is from Tom and Howard. They’re terribly sorry, but they simply couldn’t come to see you this afternoon. They say you must be cursing them, but they couldn’t help it.’ She looked at the ceiling. ‘They’ve been up in Tom’s office all afternoon, arguing, and I’ve just got away from them. What’s the matter, dear? Why are you laughing? What’s so funny?’

‘You mean
they
didn’t –?’

‘No, dear. They couldn’t. I say, don’t laugh like that; you make me nervous. They’ve finally come to a decision about
Spies at Sea
.’ The expressive eyes, never quite telling everything, moved round towards Tilly for the first time. ‘And that’s rather a bit of good news for you.’

‘Is it?’ said Tilly. ‘Why?’

Tilly had been regarding her with a stiffness which indicated ill-concealed dislike.

‘Because you can go back to America now,’ said Miss Fleur. ‘I think they’ve decided they will stick to the original script after all. You don’t mind terribly, do you?’

Tilly stared at her. There passed across her face an expression of real malignancy: a new expression: one which it was just as well that Monica did not notice.

‘Mind?’ Tilly said, from deep in her throat. ‘Me! Hell, no! Suit yourself. I’ve had my money:
I
should worry.’ Her colour went up. ‘If you want the goods, I can deliver ’em. If you don’t want the goods, then good-bye and good luck and good day to ye.’

‘I knew you’d understand.’ The long-lashed eyes, at which Monica could not stop looking, returned; but not before they had given Tilly a long, speculative glance. ‘And that’s good news,’ Miss Fleur went on, ‘because now we shall be finished with it in a few days. And then – if Tom Hackett keeps to his production schedule – I can play Eve D’Aubray in
Desire
. Won’t that be nice?’

‘Mind!’ growled Tilly under her breath.

‘I’m terribly keen about the part. Did you know, Miss Parsons, that Monica wrote it expressly for me?’

‘The name is Tilly,’ said Tilly. ‘For Pete’s sake don’t call me Miss Parsons. I hate it.’

‘Well, if you insist: Tilly. But did you know Monica wrote the part for me? A real
femme fatale
, and apparently I’m It.’

‘You mean you have It,’ snarled Tilly. ‘But why parade it all over the place all the time? Why –’ She checked herself, swallowing, and drew the back of her hand shakily across her forehead. ‘Sorry. Forget it. I’ve got the jitters. What’s a
femme fatale
?’

Miss Fleur’s tone was wry.

‘Something I’m afraid I shall never be,’ she smiled, with a look which made Monica writhe. It is all very well to write an imaginary biography of a person; but, when the original of that biography sits down to read it in cold print, the result is apt to prove embarrassing for the author.

‘Tell me, my dear,’ Miss Fleur went on, in a slightly different voice. ‘I’ve read it clear through, you know, since I met you. I know you’ll forgive my asking, but I really am curious.
Was
it all just imagination? You look terribly young, you know, and – other things. Tell me. Just between ourselves. Did you ever really …?’

‘Oh Lord, yes,’ said Monica. ‘Thousands of times,’ she added wildly.

‘You did?’

‘Oh Lord, yes.’

‘But where?’

‘At home, of course,’ said Monica.

That the shattered photograph of Canon Stanton did not, at this moment, leap up out of the drawer of Monica’s desk may be ascribed rather to the inexorability of the law of gravity than to the damage done to abstract truth.

But Monica was not herself. Much as she liked Miss Fleur, she wished her guest would go. Her mind was on anonymous letters to the exclusion of everything else. Yet, curiously enough, Frances Fleur seemed to be feeling much the same restlessness as herself. Miss Fleur’s well-shod foot had begun to tap on the floor. She kept glancing at her wrist-watch.

‘Have you, indeed?’ she said. ‘What a place it must be. It’s near Watford?’

‘Yes, that’s right. East Roystead, Hertfordshire. It’s near Watford.’

‘Is that so? Do you know, I have some cousins …’ Miss Fleur laughed, and her tone hardly changed. ‘Aren’t you going out for dinner to-night, Miss Par – Tilly, I mean?’

‘Dinner?’ said Tilly. ‘Certainly. But not yet. It’s not six o’clock yet.’

‘A quarter past six, I make it,’ corrected Monica.

‘Dear, dear. Is it as late as that? I must be running along myself.’ Frances Fleur stirred, but did not get up. ‘I only dropped in to pass the time of day. After all, I mustn’t interrupt your work. Er – you have some work to do, haven’t you, Miss – Tilly?’

‘Not any longer,’ said Tilly. ‘You tell me they’ve just given me the air.
I
should work? Haw, haw, haw.’

This time their guest did get up. She smiled, but with her mouth alone. Her voice had that deliberate, honeyed sweetness she used at the beginning of her love-scenes.

‘I told you I had two messages to give Monica,’ she remarked. ‘Would you mind terribly if we were left alone while I gave her the second one?’

It was touch and go.

Tilly stared at her.

‘I can take a hint,’ Tilly said slowly. ‘It’s got to be broad, you understand. It can’t be subtle, or it’ll go straight over my head. But I can take a hint.’

‘Thank you so much.’

‘Would I mind …’ began Tilly.

The full power of her state of mind was not apparent until she had left them. Tilly went to her room with quiet, bouncing, dignified little steps. Once inside, after giving them a long and slow look, she slammed the door with a crash which must have been audible at the main building up the hill; and which, if this house had not been so solidly built, would have brought plaster down from the ceiling.

‘Listen, quick,’ urged Frances Fleur, whose manner had instantly changed again. It was difficult to believe that there could be so much animation in her. ‘That second message was from Bill Cartwright. He’s on his way out here in a taxi.’

‘In a taxi?’

‘Yes. He was in town. He rang me up on the phone in Tom’s outer office. He said I was the only person here he could trust. He made me promise not to tell Tom or Howard; but of course they got it out of me.’

Miss Fleur made a face.

‘Here’s what Bill says you’re to do. He says you’re to – That woman’s listening at the door,’ she added abruptly.

The knob of the door quivered; Monica could have sworn Tilly was just on the point of flinging it open to stalk in and deny that she was listening.

Miss Fleur got up from the couch. Soundless on the linoleum-covered brick floor, she moved over to the desk. She stood with her back to Monica, one hand on the desk and the other hand on the needlework-box: red-painted finger-nails against red leather. She watched the door, and Monica watched it too. But there appeared to be no further sign of activity inside.

Then she turned round, the light shining down on blue cloth and silver-fox fur. She came back softly, took Monica’s hand, and made her sit down on the couch.

‘Listen, Monica,’ she said. (Monica had not yet got over the faint thrill of being called by her first name.) ‘Bill said that if you got back here when it was getting dark, you were on no account to try to get home. Sh-h!’

‘Yes?’

‘He said you were
on no account
to leave this building or this room until he got here. He said he was phoning to that ground-keeper, O’Brien or whatever his name is, to come in here and sit with you until he (I mean Bill) got here.’

‘But –’

‘SH-h! Above everything else,’ Miss Fleur leaned closer to whisper, ‘whatever else you did, you were not to be a minute alone with’ – her head inclined significantly towards the door – ‘that woman. Do you understand?’

‘I don’t know.’

Miss Fleur released her hand and got up. The tone of her whisper was faintly querulous.

‘I’m sure I don’t know what’s going on. And I don’t think I want to. If half what I hear is true, you must have led a very queer life indeed. All I know is that I’m frightened, too. Now promise me: will you do what Bill Cartwright tells you to do?’

Not a very long time ago, Monica would instantly have said No. The negative came into her mind; she opened her mouth to speak it, and stopped. It occurred to her, with painful clarity, that the finest sight she could think of in this world would be the sight of Bill Cartwright storming into that room.

She moistened her lips.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll do it.’

‘You promise?’

‘I promise.’

2

Miss Fleur relaxed. A sort of radiance grew again about her, kindling the dark amber eyes which (it occurred to Monica as an unromantic comparison) were exactly the colour of one of Bill’s pipe-stems. She laughed. She smoothed her gloves. Her voice grew natural again.

‘Well, I only dropped in to pay my respects,’ she explained, in a tone intended for the other room. ‘I’d love to stay, only I’m driving in to town to meet Kurt. Tom! Don’t jump about so! I say, must you sneak up on everybody?’