The Affair of the Bloodstained Egg Cosy (18 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Richard's Story

After leaving Deveraux, Jane felt restless and full of suppressed energy. She found it almost impossible to stay in one place, and began prowling aimlessly round the house and grounds, getting in the way of servants and gardeners. At last, feeling she would burst if she didn't do something, she went to look for Gerry. She couldn't find her at first, but eventually Merryweather informed her that Gerry was in the music room - 'with the constabulary person, miss'.

Jane hung impatiently about outside until Gerry emerged, then pounced and demanded a game of tennis.

'Oh, darling, no.'

'Why not?'

'I don't think we should, with two of our guests just murdered.'

'Tommyrot. What possible harm can it do them?'

'Nothing. It's just the look of the thing.'

'Who cares about the look of the thing! Come on, don't be mean. I just must have some action or I'll go mad.'

'Why don't you go for a ride?'

'I don't feel like riding. I want to hit something.'

Gerry sighed. 'Oh, all right. But I don't like playing you when you're in this sort of mood. You'll make mincemeat of me. I might as well play Helen Wills.'

* * *

Jane and Gerry had played four games when Richard strolled up to the court. He sat down on a bench and watched them. At the end of the set, won by Jane 6-0, an exhausted Gerry begged for a breather. They went across and sat by him.

'You seem red-hot today, Jane,' he said.

Gerry said: 'She's all keyed-up and she's taking it out on me.'

'Why's that?' he asked.

Jane shrugged. 'I don't know. All this happening at Alderley, I suppose. Spoiling the party. It's all wrong. Alderley ought to be a haven of peace. It annoys me to see it desecrated like this. I'm angry with the Wraith, and I'm angry with Batchev and with Anilese for bringing their dirt—' She broke off. 'I'm sorry, Richard. I shouldn't have said that. It was inexcusable.'

'That's all right, my dear. It's true. They were both involved in pretty nasty business. I had my eyes opened about Anilese. Which may be the one good thing to come out of this whole schemozzle.' He looked at his niece. 'You were quite right about her, Gerry.'

'She knew you were here all the time?'

'She did.'

'I was sure of it from the very start.'

'Why did she come here?' Jane asked him.

Richard had picked up Jane's racquet and was looking down at it, plucking at the strings. 'She came here to blackmail me,' he said.

Jane stiffened and Gerry's eyes widened. Gerry said: 'Blackmail! But she couldn't. I mean, what grounds—?' She stopped short. 'Sorry'.

'What grounds would she have - what was she threatening to reveal? Well, it goes back a long way.'

Gerry was red-faced. 'Please, Richard, I didn't mean to pry.'

'I'd like you to know, Gerry. It seems as though it's bound all to come out shortly, and it'll be better if you hear it from me now. Your mother and father know the whole story, so it's only fair you should, too.'

Jane started to stand up. 'I'll leave you then—'

Richard put a hand on her arm. 'No, stay, Jane, please. You're one of the family.'

Jane sat down again, concealing the warm glow of pleasure his words gave her.

Richard said: 'It's not a long story. I first met Anilese in France in 1917. I was a very green lieutenant, only out from England six months. I was stationed at Amiens. We met at party given by the wife of some local dignitary. I thought Anilese was the most beautiful creature I'd ever seen. For the first time in my life I fell madly in love. For weeks I haunted her and eventually she led me to believe she loved me too. Almost immediately I proposed. To my joy, she accepted me. Our romance lasted three months, during which time I was promoted Captain.

'Then one day Anilese came to me frantic with worry. She had just heard that a cousin of hers, a young man called Pierre, with whom she'd been brought up and who had been like a brother to her, had been arrested on a charge of spying for the Germans. He had been tried and condemned to death. He was being held temporarily in a British army guardhouse, the local jail being full. Anilese swore to me that she knew Pierre was innocent. She told me a long story about suppressed evidence which seemed to prove it. She convinced me that a fearful miscarriage of justice was going to take place and she begged me to try to save Pierre's life.'

Richard paused. Then in a curiously flat voice, he said: 'Eventually, after much heart-searching, I agreed to try to help him escape. I need not go into the details. Suffice it to say that I worked out a plan to free him, which succeeded, and very early one morning I myself led him to a pension where Anilese was waiting. She had a change of clothes, money, and papers for him. She had obtained a motor car, and the plan was that she was to drive Pierre to Dijon, where he had friends who would get him across the border to Switzerland. I left immediately to return to my quarters, arranging to meet Anilese the next day, after she got back.'

Richard stood Jane's racquet carefully up against the side of the bench. He looked up. 'Five minutes after I left, the house was destroyed by a stray German bomb. They pulled Pierre's body out of the ruins the next day. Anilese was not identified among the victims, but there were a number of unrecognisable women's bodies brought out; and when I discovered the motor car she had borrowed parked a few blocks away from the pension, and when she did not turn up for our meeting the next day, I had to assume that she had been killed. She was officially listed as missing. I was the only person left alive who knew she'd been in the building, and as the body of the escaped prisoner had been found there, I could not admit I knew she had been there too - nor take too great an interest in the house or its occupants. There was naturally a lot of talk about the irony of Pierre's escaping the firing squad only to be killed by a German bomb, and about justice having caught up with him after all. I discovered then that he had unquestionably been guilty of spying.

'You can imagine my state of mind: not only had I helped an enemy agent to escape - and it was purely chance that he hadn't got away - but I had been responsible for Anilese's death as well - for had I not agreed to help, she would not have been in that house when the bomb fell. For a time I was absolutely consumed by grief and guilt. However, my part in the escape was never discovered, and I ended the war with an unblemished reputation.

'A year after the armistice I went back to France, to the town where Anilese told me she had been born and brought up. But nobody there remembered anything of her family. There were no records in the town hall, the church, or the school, of her ever having been there. I told myself that I had misunderstood her, and got the name of the town wrong. I went home, resolving, when I had a chance, to make enquiries about any other places with similar-sounding names. But somehow I never did and, for me, until last Friday, Anilese was dead.'

Richard looked from one girl to the other. 'Well, that's my story. Not very edifying, is it?'

'Oh, I think it is,' Gerry said with a sigh. 'I think it's a terrific story. Frightfully exciting and mysterious and sad.'

'Did she tell you over the weekend what had actually happened to her?' Jane asked.

'She said she'd left the house about four minutes after me to fetch the car while Pierre was changing. The bomb fell when she was about twenty metres away. She was knocked unconscious by the blast. When she came to, she was in a complete daze. All she remembered was that she had to get to Dijon. She started off on foot, then got a lift. She was put down at a crossroads about half way there, started walking again, then collapsed. She woke up in hospital - and found she'd lost her memory. That's as far as she got. How she lived for the rest of the war, when it was she recovered her memory, why she never got in touch with me - all this she had been going to tell me later.'

Rather tentatively, Jane said: 'Do you believe her story?'

'I don't know, Jane. Quite possibly some of it's true.'

Gerry said: 'Perhaps I shouldn't ask, but can we know what happened after she arrived here - when you learnt she was intending to blackmail you, and so on?'

'Yes, you can know. There's not much point in my trying to hide anything any more. I first learnt what she was really after on Saturday morning. We adjourned the talks and I took Anilese for a walk round the lake. Then she sprang it on me. She'd known I was here: she'd known about the talks. Her so called accident had been faked. And I had to make certain important concessions in the talks - or else. Obviously Batchev was behind it - though at first, of course, that didn't occur to me, because I believed him to be the real Martin Adler. I imagined some outside agency was trying to influence the negotiations. But even before I learnt his real identity I came to the conclusion, incredible as it seemed, that "Adler" was behind it. How he found out about Anilese and me in the first place, whether he contacted her, or she him, I'll never know. Anyway, he must have previously arranged with her to hold herself ready to fake the accident if he gave the word. I think he'd anticipated after our very first session that his initial plan of bluffing and browbeating us into giving way was not going to work, and he 'phoned her on Friday afternoon. It must have been Saturday morning on the terrace, just after we broke off the talks, that he gave her the signal to start applying pressure.'

Gerry was looking puzzled. 'How did Anilese intend to prove you helped Pierre to escape? Wouldn't it have been just her word against yours?'

'Unfortunately, no. She had a letter.'

'What sort of letter?'

'A short note I'd written to her at the time, making the final arrangements for the escape - telling her to be at the pension with the fresh clothes for Pierre at a certain hour. It was something I'd naturally assumed she'd burnt within seconds of reading it. But no. Perhaps even then she saw its potential.'

Gerry gave an exclamation. 'While you were actually planning to save her cousin's life!'

'He wasn't her cousin.'

They stared. Gerry said: 'But—'

'I know. But that was one of the other things she casually revealed on Saturday. She'd never even seen the chap; she'd been paid by his associates to feed me the whole story. And there'd be only my word that Anilese ever told me he was her cousin at all. If the affair came to light, it could be argued that I was paid to do it - or was a German sympathiser myself.'

'But that could never be proved,' Gerry said.

'It wouldn't need to be, would it, Richard?' said Jane.

He shook his head. 'There'd be no danger of my being charged. Not now. But simply a public accusation of that sort would be enough to finish my career, if I wasn't able to clear myself absolutely.'

'Where's the letter now?' Gerry asked.

'I've got it.'

'You?' They spoke together.

'Yes. Anilese relented, you see. She told me on Saturday evening after dinner that she wasn't going through with the blackmail. She'd been going to leave here first thing yesterday morning.'

'And she gave you the letter back?' Gerry said.

'No, she told me it was in London. But she promised I'd get it back today. Sure enough, it came by first delivery this morning. It's postmarked 9 p.m. Saturday.'

Gerry looked blank. 'I don't understand.'

'Anilese's driver, this man Roberts, was obviously a close associate of hers. What their precise relationship, was I don't know. But it seems that Saturday afternoon she made a telephone call. It must have been to Roberts at the Rose
&C
Crown. I think she told him that the scheme was off, she was backing out, and she advised him to get away. Wilkins tells me that he took the five-forty-two to town. She must have given him instructions to get the letter and send it to me.'

'And you haven't destroyed it?' Jane said.

'No, and I don't intend to yet.'

'But it's the only proof you helped Pierre to escape,' Gerry said incredulously.

'It's also the only proof that I had no motive for killing Anilese. You see, I had to tell Wilkins of her blackmail threat - and that I went to her room in the early hours of Sunday.'

'So that was you—' Gerry stopped.

'What was me?'

She reddened. 'You - you that Mr. Deveraux heard going along the corridor.'

'Yes, it was. She told me to come along when everyone else was in bed, and she would explain everything. Only when I arrived, she wasn't there. The police could argue that I had opportunity and motive for her murder. However, if I can prove that Anilese didn't have the letter at the time she was killed, and that by then it had actually been posted to me -well then, it would be much harder for them to maintain I had reason to kill her.'

Jane was looking puzzled. 'But can you prove you received the letter this morning?'

'Yes. I was waiting for it and I made sure I had a witness. Peabody was with me when Merryweather brought it. He saw me open it. And I got him to initial and date the letter and the envelope there and then. So he can identify it and testify as to when I received it.'

'Would showing the police the letter clear you?' Gerry asked.

'I'm afraid not. It would weaken the case against me. But they might still suspect Anilese was holding other material damaging to me and that killing her was my only means of keeping it dark. So I'm not out of the wood by any means.'

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Concealed Weapons

'You want me to do what?' Deveraux said.

Take Mr. Peabody for a walk, and when he's at least fifteen minutes away from the house, ask him if he has any objection to our searching his suite and luggage.'

'But how do I get him to come for a walk?'

'I'm sure you'll think of something,' Wilkins said.

'And what reason do I give for wanting to search their things?'

'I would have thought that fabricating unlikely but convincing lies was much more your line than mine.'

'I hope that's a compliment. Very well: mine not to reason why. When?'