Death Has Deep Roots (23 page)

“It came on March thirteenth. I remember it well. I was very excited. I was convinced he would have news for me.”

“Did Monsieur Sainte show you the letter?”

“No. He told me of it at once, though.”

“Very well. What happened next?”

“After lunchtime on the next day, March fourteenth, Monsieur Sainte called me to his office. He had been speaking to Major Thoseby on the telephone. He said he would be coming to the hotel that night. Imagine my excitement.”

“One minute, if you please. I wish to be quite clear about this. Did Monsieur Sainte tell you that Major Thoseby might be at the hotel early that evening?”

“No. He said, as I recollect, ‘Major Thoseby will be sleeping here tonight. He will probably arrive late.’

“What time did you imagine that meant?”

“No time exactly – about half-past ten or eleven.”

“That was what Monsieur Sainte usually meant when he told you a guest would arrive late?”

“Yes. For example, there was a train which arrived at Euston from the north at half-past nine. A guest who was coming on that was always referred to by us on the staff as a ‘late’ guest.”

“Did Monsieur Sainte indicate that Major Thoseby might be at the hotel in time for dinner?”

“Not to me.”

“Thank you. Please go on.”

“I got back to the hotel that evening at about half-past ten. Camino was leaving the desk as I came in. I took his place.”

“Did you say anything to each other?”

“We may have said good evening or hullo. I can’t remember. There was no need for any explanation, you understand. It was our usual arrangement that I took the desk after my evening out.”

“Was the lounge empty?”

“So far as I could see, quite empty.”

“Was anyone else about?”

“No. I could hear Camino moving in the kitchen. Otherwise, it was quite quiet.”

It was quiet in the court, too. Macrea let the moment hang.

“What next, mademoiselle?”

“The bell sounded. I was a little surprised. I had not known that room was occupied. Then I noticed the key was gone so I supposed it must be occupied. I went up.”

“And then, mademoiselle.”

“I found Major Thoseby.”

“And then—?”

“Then I believe I screamed.”

On the previous afternoon, at about the time that Dr. Younger left the witness box to make way for Detective-Sergeant Cleeve and Nap sat by himself in the Public Gardens at Angers, looking at the monkeys, McCann was getting out of a bus at the crossroads by the Stonehenge Inn.

The rain had stopped and the washed grey uplands of Salisbury Plain stretched round him, bare, unchanging and unfriendly under a monochrome sky.

The six pink-and-white bungalows looked like six little intruders.

He walked up the short gravel path, between two rows of flat, whitened stones. There were a few marigolds, a few sweet Williams, the rest was a dreary jungle of Michaelmas daisies.

For a few moments after he had rung the bell nothing happened. A spotter plane from Old Sarum buzzed slowly across the sky. It was very peaceful. McCann had spent the half-hour in the bus coming over to Amesbury persuading himself that he was on a fool’s errand. He would do no good. He might easily do harm. He had no idea what he wanted to say. He felt glad, in a cowardly way, that there should be no one at home.

Then a child’s voice shouted something from inside the house and there was a shuffle of slippered feet down the hall. The woman who opened the door answered one question before she spoke. The brown hair, the plain but friendly face, the kind, slightly anxious eyes, the immature tilt to the nose – even the freckles. They were all there. He had seen them all before. She was a little older than Ivy Pratt, less carefully dressed than Victoria Lamartine. But in effect she was the same. McCann knew exactly what he was looking at. He was looking at the sort of girl that had appealed to Lieutenant Julian Wells. The real likeness between the three was almost as uncanny as the real differences.

He was aware that he had been staring.

“I beg your pardon,” he said: “Mrs. Bellerby?”

“Yes.”

“I’m McCann. I’m quite certain the name won’t mean anything to you. I’m from London. I—look here—I can’t possibly explain all this on the doorstep. May I come inside?”

He observed a flicker of distrust.

“I promise I won’t try to sell you a vacuum cleaner.”

“I’m sure you won’t.” Mrs. Bellerby smiled. “Please come in. I’m afraid you caught me – I was having my afternoon nap. I won’t be a minute.”

She led the way down the passage, showed him into the living room and disappeared. It was a neat and cheerful room. Perhaps the nicest thing about it was the view from the big window. The garden ran away, and over the low hedge you could see an uninterrupted piece of downland. The furniture was like the furniture of all the Army families everywhere. It looked as if every stick of it had changed hands at least a dozen times but had, at last, got resigned to it.

There were some photographs on the wall. One of a young gunner wearing a side hat and a cowlick. The other a picture of the same man, rather older, kneeling beside a monstrous-looking gun with six trumpet-shaped barrels, which had apparently just exploded in his face.

Mrs. Bellerby came back. She had done the mysterious things which women do to themselves on such occasions and look ready to entertain a duchess.

“That’s my husband,” she said. “He’s clever about everything to do with guns. They terrify me. That one with six barrels is the only one in England, and he’s the only man who really understands it, so they say.”

McCann thought on the whole that it wasn’t an act. He thought she sounded really fond of him. It made what he had to say somehow easier.

“I’m going to tell you a story,” he said, “from the beginning. It’s a true story. I’m leaving out one or two names, but otherwise I’m giving you the full strength of it.”

She was a good listener. She only interrupted once, when he came to the trial. Then she pointed to the evening paper and asked, “Is this the Euston murder?”

“That’s it,” said McCann.

“All right,” she said. “I just wanted to know. Please go on.”

At the end she said, “How do I come into it?”

“The young officer,” said McCann, “the one who disappeared in France. It was Lieutenant Wells.”

“You didn’t have to tell me, really,” said Mrs. Bellerby. “I guessed. He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” said McCann. “Yes. I really think he must be.”

“Poor Julian.”

She was silent for a long time. It was getting dark in the room, but there was still a little light in the sky. She seemed to be watching the clouds.

“Poor Julian. What a—what a
person
he was.” It was difficult to say whether she was laughing or crying. “He used to talk to me. You know he lived here?”

McCann nodded.

“He had ideas, about himself, and the war. He wasn’t content just to be a gunner. He wanted to do something real, something—dramatic. I can’t explain it. He tried lots of times to get into the commandos and things like that.”

“We turned away fifty a week,” said McCann quietly. “There just wasn’t room for them all. You had to know someone—”

“I think it made him bitter – a little. He thought they were laughing at him. Then he found out that the one thing he had never thought about was the thing that mattered – his beautiful French. He really was good. He lived in France until he was fourteen and spent all his holidays there. When they found that out they were keen enough to have him. He did a lot of special training. He wouldn’t tell me much about that—because it was secret. But sometimes, he simply couldn’t keep it in. I remember him sitting there, playing with a little silver pencil, and saying that he could blow us all up with it.”

“Just a boy scout,” said McCann. He didn’t mean it unkindly. It didn’t matter, because she didn’t seem to be listening, anyway. After a bit she said, “Have you got a photograph – of the French girl? The ones in the papers weren’t very good.”

McCann took out a photograph and pushed it across the table.

“She looks kind.”

“I think she is that,” said McCann.

“Did she kill Major Thoseby?”

“I don’t know,” said McCann. “I don’t think so.”

“What were you hoping to find – down here, I mean?”

“We were just casting around. It seemed a hopeless chance, the time was too short. But we wanted to find people who really knew Wells. I think you did, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Bellerby. “I knew him all right. You know that we—?”

“Yes,” said McCann, “I knew about that.”

“I’ll do what I can. I wouldn’t want to give evidence – not about us – not unless I had to.”

“Of course not,” said McCann. He was out of his depth. “I don’t know what the law is about all this. One of the things we wanted to prove was that it was more likely that Wells would be the father of the child than Thoseby. That he was the sort of man who—”

Mrs. Bellerby said nothing.

“Another thing,” went on McCann, “we thought we might get hold of someone who had heard from him when he was in France. Messages did get out.”

“Not a word,” said Mrs. Bellerby. “I think you were right, though. He’d have written to me if he could have written to anyone.”

“Yes, I expect he would,” said McCann. “I’m afraid that’s all there is to it. I’ll have to have a word with our counsel.”

“How old would the boy have been?”

McCann took a moment to think what she was talking about.

“Vicky’s boy? If he had lived – he’d have been almost exactly five. Why?”

It was dark in the room by now and very quiet. Mrs. Bellerby turned and looked full at McCann. There was just enough light to see that she was smiling.

“Say that again,” said Macrea.

The telephone clacked and buzzed.

“Can you get ’em up here by midday tomorrow? Good work. No. I don’t know how we’ll use it. I’ll have to have a word with her before I go into court tomorrow.”

The telephone said something else.

“No,” said Macrea. “Highly illegal, I should think. But I’ll do it gladly for the sake of seeing Claudian’s face.”

“Mademoiselle Lamartine,” said Mr. Claudian Summers. “Have you ever killed a man?”

“Killed—you mean in wartime?”

“Certainly. I was referring to your experiences during the war.”

“Yes. I have.”

“How many men?”

“Only one.”

“Who was that?”

“A German soldier, of course.”

“Of course. How did you kill him?”

“He would have killed me if I had not killed him.”

“I asked
how
you killed him.”

“With a knife.”

“And in what way did you use the knife?”

“If it will save you time, I will say at once, in just the way that the knife was used on Major Thoseby.”

“Thank you. Whilst we are dealing with past history perhaps I could question you on one other point. You have admitted in evidence – or if you have not actually stated it, it has been made part of your case – that you had an illicit affair with Lieutenant Wells.”

“I do not understand, I am afraid. What is that, an illicit affair?”

Mr. Summers looked a little baffled.

“You mean that he was my lover?”

“Yes.”

“That is correct.”

“He and who else.”

“I am afraid, monsieur, that you have formed your ideas of French girls from reading romances. We do not fornicate with every man we meet.”

“Very well. Now perhaps you will answer my question.”

“With Lieutenant Wells alone. No one else.”

“You were aware that what you were doing with Lieutenant Wells was wrong?”

“Yes – I was wrong.”

“Morally wrong?”

“Certainly.”

‘Thank you. I am only stressing this because the defence as I understand it have endeavoured to cast a certain glamour over this matter. It is even suggested that times of stress and danger excuse indiscriminate behavior.”

“I am sure the jury will know better than to believe any such nonsense,” said the judge.

“I am obliged,” said Mr. Summers. “Now, mademoiselle. In the interval between your release from prison and the events of last March you made, I believe, a number of attempts to communicate with Major Thoseby. Why was that?”

“I have already told you.”

“Possibly it was not very clear to me. Would you mind telling me again?”

“Because through Major Thoseby I hoped to hear of Julian.”

“All right. I will accept that for a moment and amend my question. Why did you wish to get hold of Lieutenant Wells?”

For the first time the prisoner hesitated.

“Of course, I wished to see him.”

“Why?”

“He had been—he was the father of my child.”

“A child who was – you will excuse me for reminding you – some years dead?”

“That does not abolish its significance.”

“Let us be precise, mademoiselle. Did you still wish to marry Lieutenant Wells?”

The hesitation was now plain. The prisoner did not attempt to conceal it.

“I do not know,” she said.

“If you did
not
still wish to marry him, why were you going to such lengths to see him. Did you hope to get money out of him?”

“Certainly not. The suggestion is infamous.”

“Then if you did not mean to ask him for anything, and cannot be sure that you wanted to marry him – we are back where we started. Why did you try to see him?”

“I do not know if I would have married him.”

“Not one attempt, mademoiselle, but several. You were prepared, according to your story, to urge and press a very busy officer to make inquiries on your behalf. Yet you cannot be certain that you really wished to see the object of those inquiries?”

“Must I answer this question?”

“You have already said that you do not know,” said Mr. Justice Arbuthnot. “If that is your answer then I cannot see that there is any need to add to it.”

“Well, then, that is my answer. I do not know whether I wished to marry him or not.”

“I see. You found him attractive enough in France.”