Fog of Doubt (12 page)

‘My dear girl, have you been having one over the eight?'

‘You just look in the papers, that's all. I expect the morning ones will be
frantic
. But, I say, Stanislas, the pec
u
liar thing is that when the police asked Melissa where she'd spent the evening, she told them she'd been out all the time with you.'

‘With me?' said the voice, alarmed.

‘Yes, with you. Of course I haven't told her about you and me running into each other like that and being so silly and naughty, because my dear you must admit we
were
most terribly silly and naughty, and then discovering that all the time you were Melissa's famous Stanislas. But then to my utter astonishment, she trotted forth that she'd spent the whole evening till half-past nine wandering about in the fog with you. What a liar, isn't she?'

‘How very queer,' said the voice, obviously not liking it one bit. There was a pause. ‘I say, Rosie—did she give my name?'

‘Only “Stanislas”. None of us knows the rest.'

‘No, so you don't, do you?' said Stanislas, much relieved. There was a further short pause. ‘Well, good-bye, Rosie; thanks for the buggy ride—it was wonderful as long as it lasted.' The line went dead and in the hall Sergeant Bedd softly put the receiver back. ‘Well, gosh!—what a so-and-so,' said Rosie—not referring to Sergeant Bedd.

And upstairs in the big bed-sitting-room with the dear old, stuffy, stodgy Victorian furniture from home, and the high brass double bedstead and the lovely bits of old china and glass, Tedward sat with old Mrs. Evans sipping a cup of after-dinner coffee and watching her steadily from under his bushy eyebrows. Mrs. Evans was in tremendous fettle. Seduced and deserted, Madonna Lily was now galloping back across the desert in pursuit of her errant knight (‘Black but comely, dear Tedward, black but comely!'), hotly pursued in her turn by yet another Sheik, obviously up to no good. ‘He's gaining on us, he's gaining on us!' cried Mrs. Evans, applying jewelled spurs to the sofa, flaying the air with an ebony and ivory whip. ‘We must abandon the caravan, leave a few trusted men with the camel train and press on, press on! Jettison the jewels, the spices, leave my carved rosewood palanquin by the bleak wayside to be silted over by the silver sand.…' She paused for a moment, struck by this impromptu gem of alliteration and Tedward could almost have sworn that she winked at him; but in a moment she was at the window, jettisoning jewels and spices till the whole room was denuded of cushions. Tedward helpfully passed over his coffee cup, but this nice little piece of Limoges china was evidently too insignificant to hamper flight very seriously and she ignored it. ‘He's catching up with us, he's gaining on us!' Madonna Lily was obviously marked up for a double dose of Worse than Death and Tedward, waiting a little apprehensively for his sedative to work, reflected that perhaps with luck it might be followed by another day of tranquil remorse which, in the shock and strain of their present regime, would be all to the good all round. But the pursuer caught up with Madonna Lily and—swept past. ‘It's Edwin!' cried Mrs. Evans, falling on her knees with clasped hands, without troubling first to dismount from her Arab steed. ‘It's Edwin who has loved me so steadily for so long. He has drawn his burnous across his face, but I know that brow, I know those eyes.' She found herself back in the saddle again and her thin old fingers, noded like bamboo stems, were clasped low on the flowing mane as she set off again at the heels of her avenger. ‘Edwin! Edwin!' But the dose was beginning to take effect at last. The sofa began to slow down, she dropped her hands heavily into her lap, her eyelids began to droop. ‘I must let him go on alone. I know the end. He will overtake my betrayer and there, alone in the desert, with the great storm of sand blowing up about them.…' She began to nod; straightened up with a jerk; drooped again. ‘I'm so sorry, Tedward, dear. I feel so stupid and sleepy, I wonder if you would excuse me now. I think I'll go to bed. It was very nice of you to come and spend half an hour with a dotty old woman like me.' She jerked back her head once more and looked at him beadily. ‘I hope I haven't been talking too much nonsense? I read so much, I sometimes get mixed up in my books, and all my ideas go skew-wiff.'

‘It's only your wig that's skew-wiff this time,' said Tedward; his big, kind hands gently put it straight for her and he went out on to the lawn to pick up the cushions.

And next morning one, Stanley Breeks, a young gentleman, with too few hairs in his little moustache and too many spots on the back of his little neck, slipped over the channel (his passport was all quite in order) there to hang about rather bored and miserable in spite of being Abroad, till his mingy allowance should be all gone. Best to keep out of the way, thought Stan Breeks, sicking up dreadfully into the heaving sea; a woman scorned was indeed a terrible thing—and then, damn it all, getting mixed up in a murder.…! But the truth was that though one's family might have educated one to be a gent, thus breeding in one a magnificent contempt for one's origins, there they were still in the background all the time, and one had to put up with them because of cheques and things. And really one could not stand the thought of their ignorant mockery, their robustious ‘teasing', their crude, vulgar laughter (for one's sisters had not benefited from a similar education) when it should be discovered that one had posed ‘in the West End' as ‘just Stanislas': Stanislas the exciting, the mysterious, the elusive, the highly born. ‘Count Stanislas Breeks' his old dad would call him, banging him lustily upon the shoulder with an odorous hand—for Breeks senior had made, and still made, his pile in fish, and was not so ashamed of it as to be very particular about removing its unattractive trademark; and ‘Stan, Stan, the flash in the pan' his common, bouncing, insensitive sisters would cry, dancing round the breakfast table ‘jollying him along'—before he had even had his cup of tea and slice of lemon and his ‘special' bit of toast. No thank you! That little ass, Melissa, had been quite fun, impressed and admiring, and Rosie had been a gorgeous armful and goodness knew, not backward in coming forward considering that they'd never set eyes on one another before they collided in the fog, night before last; but it wasn't worth it, there were lots more girls in France and Dad, who was so naïvely proud of his roving, imperious son, was quite ready to cough up the dibs so that he might (with one of his sudden strokes of swift decision) go off to complete his education ‘on the Continong'. So Stan departed by the afternoon boat and Mr. Charlesworth's easy assurance of soon laying hands on him, did not come off; and Rosie and Melissa were left to their indignation and their memories. Their memories, at least, were pleasant. Melissa had not been in a position to be choosey and Rosie, in the fog, had never observed the scantiness of whisker or the profusion of spots. The mysterious Stanislas threw his dark cloak about him and melted back into the nothingness from which he had come; and that was that.

There had been another murder and the forfeit for both murders had been paid, before Stan Breeks showed his horrid little face in England again.

CHAPTER EIGHT

M
R
. C
HARLESWORTH
thought that one might as well trundle down and have a chat with Littlejohn, the path. man, over the post-mortem and, like one small boy inviting another to a party, suggested that Inspector Cockrill might like to come too. Cockie agreed without enthusiasm and, nursing his enormous hat on his knees, sat back in the little black police car and was duly trundled down to the mortuary. Raoul Vernet had been degutted and was now lying, looking rather like an outsize tin soldier except that he was stark naked, in a sort of very shallow, grooved porcelain bath, his toes turned up, his hands tumbled loosely at his sides; he looked a little grey and there were ugly blue bulges beneath his shoulders and thighs where the blood had slowly collected after death, but otherwise he looked peaceful and at rest, lying serenely to attention there. A straight line of large black stitches ran up his stomach and chest but his rather fuzzy, sparse black hair had been carefully arranged, with the mortuary brush and comb, to cover his broken skull. Dr. Littlejohn had his liver and lights in enamel trays and was fastidiously turning them over with a forceps point. ‘Nothing here, of course. He died from the fracture of the skull, resultant cerebral lacerations, etcetera, etcetera.' He went off into a highly technical description of the wounds and what might be deduced from them. ‘O.K., O.K.,' said Charlesworth. ‘
We
get you. He died from a single whack over the coconut probably while he was leaning forward a bit, or at any rate with his head bent forward; and his assailant was standing behind him, a little to his right. Yep?'

‘That's about the size of it,' said Littlejohn. ‘I'll get it all nicely written down on a form for you and of course the high ding-a-dings will want to pronounce, but that's what it amounts to.'

‘Said assailant being either man, woman or child?'

‘Well, not a
tot
. Said assailant would have to be fairly tall to get a good swing on said instrument; unless of course the tot were standing on a chair.'

‘The only tot in the picture so far is aged about two, so we're not seriously exercised about that. How tall, actually, to do the job?'

‘Oh, any reasonable talth,' said Littlejohn. ‘It depends whether he leant forward or only bent his head a bit, and I don't think we shall be able to give a ruling on that. For the rest, the mallet's so heavy, and yet so easy to handle, that it wouldn't take an awful lot of strength. Just pick up the thing and put all you've got behind it and—whacko! Of course they were lucky to hit him just where they did.'

‘Or clever,' suggested Cockie, sombrely.

‘Well, yes, or clever. Only they must have been super-clever to persuade him to adjust his head so accommodatingly.'

‘Yes, indeed,' said Cockie, standing there in the dreadful antiseptic green and white room, all polished and shining and shadowless and stinking of formaldehyde; his hands thrust into the pockets of his droopy, untidy old mackintosh, hat perched on the back of his head. ‘Yes, indeed.' And he suddenly lifted his head and his bright brown bird-like eyes were a-shine with excitement. ‘Yes,
indeed!
'

‘“
Most
illuminating,”' quoted Charlesworth to himself. Charlesworth had suffered before from Inspector Cockrill's flashes of inspiration.

Two mortuary attendants lifted Raoul's lank figure and wrapped him up in a vast linen sheet. Looking like nothing so much as an oddly-shaped bundle of laundry, he was wheeled away to cold storage. Cockrill had an unsolicited glimpse of other large laundry bundles as the great refrigerator doors were lugged open and Raoul slid, feet first, on to his slatted, metal bunk; three large white bundles and one much smaller one. On a blackboard outside the doors was chalked: ‘One female leg for Prof. Prout.' He thought to himself that indeed beauty vanishes, beauty passes; one female leg: with a pretty ankle, perhaps, once much admired, with a nimble foot that had stepped lightly, danced charmingly, that had loved the feel of warm, golden sand trickling between the toes—one female leg, lying wrapped up in a frig., like a butcher's joint, ready for Prof. Prout to practise on.…

‘Well, what do you think of all that?' said Charlesworth, climbing back into the little car.

‘I think you should find out if one of the suspects possesses a gun,' said Inspector Cockrill.

Most
illuminating.

There was a gun knocking about most gaily somewhere in the big, untidy house in Maida Vale: Melissa was sure of that, but she couldn't think where. Somebody would probably know, but they were all out at the moment. ‘You yourself haven't seen it recently?' suggested Cockie, fixing her with his bright eye.

‘No, I haven't, not for ages,' said Melissa, readily. ‘But anyway, he was hit with a mastoid mallet, wasn't he? Not shot?'

‘That's right,' said Cockie. ‘He was standing turned a little away from his assailant with his head bent forward, presenting just the right part of his head as a target. Wasn't it nice of him?'

‘You don't by any chance suggest,' said Charlesworth, seeing the light, ‘that the attacker forced him into that position at pistol point? No man in his senses would obey; gun or no gun, he'd put up a fight, he wouldn't just tamely turn round and offer his head to be bashed. I mean, what had he got to lose?—he was going to die, anyway. There'd have to be some reason given, other than the bashing.'

‘Yes,' said Cockie, ‘there would, wouldn't there?' He said to Melissa: ‘
Where
do you say you were then?'

The bureau had been taken away from the hall, the telephone that had been there, had been replaced by another; desk and telephone would figure as Exhibits 1 and 2, no doubt, at the Central Criminal Court, one of these days. Meanwhile the hall was narrowed down by the barriers the police had put round the spot where Raoul Vernet had lain; Melissa had had to squiggle round to let them in, and now they stood bunched up round the door, uncomfortably close. The more uncomfortable they were, however, thought Melissa, the sooner they would stop asking her questions and let her go. ‘I told you I was out in the fog: we were wandering about, trying to find the way to a cinema, and then trying to find the way back home.'

‘You and “Stanislas”?'

‘Have you found him yet?' said Melissa, quickly.

‘No, we haven't,' said Charlesworth. ‘Nobody else here ever knew him, you see, and your own description wasn't too marvellously helpful,
was
it?'

‘I can't do more than tell you that he's sort of middling tall and middling dark-haired.…'

‘Unfortunately he's so exceedingly middling all round,' said Charlesworth. It suddenly struck him that perhaps excessively middling would be more the word. Considering that this Stanislas was her sole alibi, she didn't seem to be passionately anxious to lay hands on him. What if …? ‘At nine fifteen when Raoul Vernet made the 'phone call, you were wandering about in the fog? You got in some time after nine thirty and you didn't know anything was wrong until you heard a commotion in the hall and found them all standing round X-marks-the-spot?'