Cat and Mouse (23 page)

Mr. Chucky shrugged away Amista. “Whoever, whatever, wherever she is, anybody could have written that note, anybody could have scribbled those few words, left-handed, and signed them ‘Amista.’ And since it was in answer to the note that Angela Carlyon had gone to a prearranged death, by tripping over the rabbit snare, it was reasonable to suppose that the person who had written that note had been her murderer.”

“But for Pete’s sake, now you’re saying all over again that Mr. Carlyon murdered his wife.”

“All I’m saying is that he still had a motive for doing so; and that he may easily have written the note.”

There was a clatter of school boots as the small girl from next door ran down the garden path to take over the milk float. “I don’t say,” went on Inspector Chucky mildly, “that he did. I only say that
if
the girl was murdered, she was murdered with the help of the note drawing her to the rocks at Tarren Goch. And what is the evidence? She was left alone in the hall with Mr. Carlyon, after you had gone. There was a scene, the servants were sent back to the kitchen, told that he could ‘manage.’ Well, he didn’t manage very well; for next thing, she’s haring across the mountains, and Mr. Carlyon who could otherwise easily have caught up with her, whatever start she had of him, develops an unfortunate limp at the critical moment. She dives into the corridor of rocks as instructed, or more or less instructed, by the note. And she comes out, inevitably, at the top opening where a rabbit snare is stretched, or let’s say has quite possibly been stretched, so that anyone running quickly out of the cave will trip over it. Mr. Carlyon subsequently uproots the snare, or at any rate is seen to get rid of it by picking it up and throwing it over the cliff. She’s found at the bottom with the note clutched in her hand. If the note was innocent why doesn’t the writer come forward and say so?”

“If you know who the real Amista is,” said Katinka, “as you say you do, why don’t you ask her?”

“The ‘real Amista’ may not have written the note.”

“Even so, why should you think that Mr. Carlyon did?”

“I think it because of the rest of the facts,” he said.

She sat with her head in her hands, her elbows propped on the green table-cloth on the little round central table. Mr. Chucky left her to her battered thoughts and moved over to sit beside the deaf woman. When Katinka roused herself to listen, she saw that he was gently paving the way to revelation. He was saying, “You know about the accident?” His pen scratched as he transferred the question to paper.

“Yes, yes, I know that of course,” said the woman.

“She means the first accident,” said Tinka, butting in. “Obviously she knows about that.”

Mr. Chucky wrote again. He spoke the words slowly as he wrote them down. “You do realize, madam, that your niece is dead?”

“Yes,” said the woman resentfully. “I know that. I know she’s dead.” She produced the envelope from her handbag. “And now that she’s dead, I want my property back. He’s got a painting there that’s worth a lot of money: thousands of pounds; and other things, not only here but in London—he says they’re in store, but how am I to know that? There’s a list of them. You can see for yourself it says here positively, ‘on loan.’ It’s the list I sent her from America. ‘Of course you can have them, darling,’ you can see it written here, ‘on loan till we come back and settle in England again.’ And then there’s the list: the Sisley painting, the Chippendale mirror, but that’s not down here, or the little Renoir or all this furniture. The Dresden figures are here, though, and some of the Persian rugs.” She insisted: “On loan. It says so here, he can’t get round that. But if he’s sold them…”

“Angel Soone couldn’t earn more money,” said Chucky to Katinka over the woman’s unsuspecting head. “But she seems to have left quite a little bit of property that could be disposed of—legitimately or otherwise. Murder’s been done for very much less than all this stuff would come to.”

“But he’s rich in his own right. You heard him say so, you heard him remind her that he proved to the solicitors when he married the niece that he was at least as well off as she was. Why should you think that he murdered her? Why should you think that she was murdered at all?”

“Because of the assignation note,” said Chucky patiently.

The deaf woman had struggled to her feet. “When can we go? I want to get up to that house.” She limped forward, the two sticks gathered in one hand and, clinging to the table, thumped with them on the floor. “I can’t wait all day. I shall have to arrange with someone else.” A faint breath of perfume stirred with her stirrings. What were these barbarians that she should be kept waiting while they settled their trivial affairs? She supposed it was a matter of money as usual. She opened her handbag.

Katinka half amused, Miss Evans outraged, they protested. But the woman could not hear the sincerity of their refusals, she thought that these tiresome yokels were merely genteel. She followed them insistently as they backed away from her, thrusting upon each a ten-shilling note, and at last, seeing Katinka’s handbag on the table, snatched it up and opened it and thrust the two notes inside.

The photograph of the wedding group, Carlyon’s picture that all this time had stayed so secretly there, tucked into its side-pocket, slid out a little and was exposed to full view. And something that had niggled all night at Katinka’s consciousness, suddenly broke into splinters of blinding light. The woman said, bending over the photograph: “But that’s not my niece!” and Katinka burst out simultaneously: “That’s not Angel Soone!”

T
HERE WAS A DISCREET
hoot outside the front door followed by a violent honking. In a neat black police car, an embarrassed constable cringed over the driving wheel while Mrs. Love leaned across from the back seat and pressed heavily upon the horn with a cotton-gloved hand. “I must go,” said Inspector Chucky. He whipped up the photograph, bowed to the three ladies with infuriatingly olde-worlde grace, and hurried out to the waiting car. Mrs. Love’s voice floated back to them urgently through the muffling curtains. What her Harry would do to Mr. Chucky if she missed that train! They drove off in style, the Inspector and the constable erect and prim in front, Mrs. Love bumping blowsily among her heterogeneous packages in the rear. A plump hand in its openwork cotton glove waved vaguely back in the direction of the house.

The deaf woman would answer no questions. Faced with bewildered and bewildering enquiries, she reiterated only that she wanted to go to “that house,” and this time without recourse to her purse. Miss Evans, blue eyes blazing at the memory of the recent insult to her friendly disinterestedness, marched out into the hall for her mackintosh and hood. Tinka had never seen her so decisive before. The hood was too awful. She looked like a middle-aged pixie, like a dwarf in coloured plaster from a suburban garden; and yet rather pretty, thought Katinka, pitifully smiling, with her pointed brown face and her blue eyes on fire, disdainfully escorting the ill-mannered stranger down the hill. The day was clearing, the fine drizzle of rain had ceased, and there was even a glimpse of blue in the tear-drenched sky. They walked down in silence to the river’s edge.

The lame woman manoeuvred herself painfully aboard. Her hands were firm and strong on the ivory crooks; beneath the thin sleeves moved muscles developed and hardened by the long necessity of extra strain. She perched herself gingerly on the folded newspaper laid reverently by Miss Evans across the wet wooden seat. The river had risen again after the night of rain. They bumped against the muddy bank and she painfully scrambled ashore and started the slithery climb up the mountain-path.

Dai Trouble had gone to Swansea; Mrs. Love driven off with Mr. Chucky to the station in Neath, twelve miles the other way. Up at Penderyn, Carlyon was nowhere to be seen. Tinka, stunned and bemused, sat down on the sodden wooden bench outside the window of the sitting-room and tried to decide why she was here and whether she should try to see Carlyon or not, and what on earth she should say to him if he deigned to speak to her. She heard Miss Evans clank tinnily round to the back door; the front door bell pealed as the deaf woman stood with her finger pressed to it. No answer. The shrill ringing drove Tinka frantic. She jumped to her feet again and started round the house to the front. The movement brought her eyes on a level with the window of the sitting-room; she moved, as three days ago Mr. Chucky had moved close, and peered inside. Immobile, uncaring, impervious to the sound of the shrilling bell, Carlyon sat in the leather armchair, the silver cat stretched out at his feet before the grate where the dead fire lay untended, his silvery head in his hands. At that moment the door of the sitting-room was pushed violently open and the woman in black stood looking in on him.

Carlyon raised his head at last. He said without surprise or interest: “What do you want?”

After the long jolting ride up the valley, the long wait at Miss Evans’s house, the long toil across the river and up the mountain-path, the woman was drained of all strength, her nerves were raw. She thrust forward the envelope and in her black-gloved hand it looked more blankly white than her white face with the faded eyes. Hysteria seized her. She cried out, high and jerkily: “There’s the letter! There’s proof! On loan, it says, on
loan
! The things are mine. I’ll see about the others, my lawyers will see about them. But the picture’s mine and I’m going to take it
now
!” She dragged her eyes from his face and lifted them to the place on the wall where the Sisley snow scene had hung. Except for the hideous pattern of the wallpaper, there was nothing there but a blank. She gave way completely. “You’ve hidden it! You’ve sold it! You’re not going to give it back…!” Miss Evans’s pointed face appeared in the doorway, wide-eyed with shocked alarm.

Carlyon fended off the woman’s strong, flailing arms. Tinka waited to witness no more, but flew round through the open back door, through the kitchen, across the hall to the sitting-room. As she went, something caught her eye that sent no message to the mind absorbed in other things; but there remained on her retina a memory of something gleaming gold where only silver should have been. In the sitting-room, Carlyon had succeeded in taming the bitter white hands, but the woman, head held back, was still screaming at him that he had deceived and defrauded her. He cast at Katinka one single glance of astonishment at her presence, and thankfulness that she should be there at his aid. “Find a piece of paper! Write it down for her—I’ve sent the picture to Swansea, to her hotel.” Tinka remembered Dai Trouble and the big, flat parcel. She wrote in huge printed letters: He’s sent it back to
you
! and moved it before the woman’s face until at last the wandering eyes came to rest on it. “Can’t she wait till my wife’s in her
grave
?” said Carlyon, bitterly.

The woman had quietened down and he released her wrists, and as he did so, imperceptibly pushed her away from him, cast her distastefully from him. She turned to Katinka. “What does he say?”

“Never mind, never mind,” said Carlyon. “What does it matter? But tell her I sent in the picture this morning by Dai; tell her she can apply to my solicitors for the rest.” He turned away and stood looking out of the window. “Now that she’s dead—let ’em all take their junk—what do I care? Tell this creature that I’ve instructed the lawyers to let her have the whole lot back, whether she’s got any right to it or not.” Katinka, interpreting freely, obediently wrote. He swung round from the window. “And now tell her to get out and never let me see that death-mask of hers again.”

Now that her mission was accomplished, the woman no longer cared about it. In themselves the beautiful things had had no charm for her: their value was a drop in the ocean of her wealth, she had desired only to save them from avaricious Carlyon, and finding him not covetous after all, her triumph was dust and ashes in her mouth. She looked dully round the room and her glance fell upon the Dresden figure. “Tell her I’ll arrange to have it sent,” said Carlyon, impatiently. “Let her give me half a chance! It’s too precious to be jolted around in the valley buses.” But his rage and resentment got the better of him, he strode forward suddenly and picking up the figure from the mantelpiece, thrust it into her arms. She pushed it aside and, drained of all purpose, crept out slowly from the room. They heard the scratch and tap of her sticks as she limped across the linoleumed hall and out onto the gravelled space to the downward path. Miss Evans cast one scared glance round the sitting-room and went out after her, leaving Katinka alone with Carlyon.

He stood with his back to her, hands in pockets, looking out of the window across the valley to the opposite mountain. He said at last: “Well, thank you, Miss Jones, for your timely intervention. And now—if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to be left alone.”

She hesitated in the doorway, irresolute, desperately searching her mind for words to speak. Exertion had brought the wild-rose flush to her cheeks, she looked up at him appealingly with bright eyes. Carlyon, however, thrust his hands deep down into his pockets and merely said: “Goodbye, Miss Jones.”

Nothing more to be said. Mr. Chucky would tell him of Mrs. Love’s declaration as to the letter on the hall table: he would at last come to believe that she had not made up the whole story of Amista for mercenary ends of her own. But what good would that do her, if she were never to see him again? She decided to make one more venture. “Mr. Carlyon, could I speak just one word to you?”

“I asked you not to come back,” said Carlyon.

“Yes, I know, but…”

“Forgive me, I don’t want to be rude. But if you wouldn’t mind…”

Sick with despair, she turned away from him and blundered out into the hall.

But he swung round suddenly from the window. “By the way, Miss Jones, before you go—haven’t you got some property of mine?”

The ring! She could kill herself at the thought that she had forgotten to give him back the ring. Now he would believe… She went back into the room and scrabbled in her handbag. “Actually, this was what I came back about. With that woman being here, I’d forgotten.” She held it out to him. “I swear I didn’t know I had it. She must have slipped it into my bag that day, in the hall. …”