Tour de Force (19 page)

‘Don't worry about me, Inspector. I'm used to my husband's – flirtations,' said Helen. She added with an air of superior pity, that she always liked to avoid scenes, if she could, with the current girlfriend.

‘If you know who she is?'

‘There hasn't been much doubt about this one,' said Helen, looking Louvaine up and down, from the mop of red hair, by way of the ill-matching blouse and skirt, to the vividly manicured sandalled feet.

‘Oh, no, of course you've known all along,' said Louli, sarcastically.

‘All along,' agreed Helen, pleasantly. ‘I had a seat in the gallery – up above you – when you opened the attack that night in Rapallo. I thought you did it very well – and I've witnessed a variety of approaches, I assure you.'

‘You knew
then
, did you?' said Cockie; for if that were really so, what price his theory of this afternoon?

‘I'm not deaf and blind,' said Helen, still pleasantly smiling. ‘I know all the symptoms by now. I watched Miss Lane too – as far back as Milan, Miss Lane got it. Then for a moment in Siena I thought my husband was settling for her, but I soon knew that wasn't the way of it. If you'd seen your faces, you and Leo,' she said to Louvaine, ‘that morning in the hall, when you realized you weren't the only two people staying back from the expedition! And Miss Lane came down all ready for departure, it wasn't till she knew Leo wasn't going that she suddenly developed her headache – those two hadn't planned anything; that was clear.' She leaned with affected nonchalance on the rail, propped on the uninjured arm, and looked out over the bright sea, fighting to keep the pleasant smile. ‘Not that I cared. You could all go or stay, whichever you liked, and be hanged to the lot of you!'

‘So Miss Lane stayed; and be hanged to somebody,' said Inspector Cockrill. ‘We've yet to know who.' But bang went another neat theory: Helen Rodd had not killed Vanda Lane because she believed in an affair between Vanda and Leo.

Mr Cecil appeared, making his graceful way up the wooden steps to the balcony, outwardly languid, inwardly agog with curiosity at the raised voices above him. He looked with arched eyebrows at the two tense faces. ‘My dears, how white you look and how cross! Like two Piccasso doves gone belligerent.'

‘Mrs Rodd is making a last dovecote stand,' said Louli. She appealed to him, shaking hands clutching at the veranda rail, literally for support. ‘Cecil – Mrs Rodd won't believe that Leo and I were planning to go away together. But
you
know it's true, don't you? Didn't I tell you about it? – that night on the beach?'

He looked again at the two faces: the rouge-patched face of a girl on the edge of hysteria, the composed, set face of a woman in physical pain, fighting the impact of emotional pain as well. For once in his lifetime, he did the decent thing. ‘Did you, Louli? I can't say that I remember.'

A breeze had, blown up, a little warm breeze coming in from the west, bringing the scent of the pine trees, dark and dusty under the afternoon sun. It swept back the heavy, forward-falling red hair and once again there was a glimpse of that face that Leo Rodd had seen the day before: the once gay face drained of all gaiety, the face that till now had never known sorrow, grown heavy and ugly with pain. She left the rail and went slowly away from them to the door of her room. Just inside the room, she turned. She said to Helen: ‘If you think this has only been a flirtation – you're wrong.'

‘“Has been”?' said Helen. ‘So you realize it's over?'

She was terrified; terrified at the implications of what, unconsciously, she had confessed. ‘It's not over. You'll soon find out – it's not over at all.'

‘Very well,' said Helen. ‘I don't want to discuss it.'

Mr Fernando was accustomed to scenes among his Odysseans, accustomed to pouring oil upon stormy seas. He said pacifically that they had all better wait until Mr Rodd came back. He looked like an owl, the yellow horn-rimmed sun-glasses ringing the bright eyes in the large round face.

‘Yes,' said Louli. ‘You'll wait, you'll all wait and do nothing; but supposing he doesn't come back?'

‘Now, now, Miss Barker, of course Mr Rodd comes back.'

‘Well
I
won't wait,' said Louli. ‘I'm going up to the palace. I'll give him a few minutes longer, and then I'm going up to the palace. You may all be willing to let him sacrifice himself, but I'm not. I'm going up there.'

‘You'd much better stay away,' said Helen. She looked rather anxiously at Cockrill; God knew what mess this silly, hysterical female would make of things, her look unequivocally said.

‘You can do no good at the palace,' agreed Cockrill.

‘It's better than staying doing nothing down here.'

‘Better for you perhaps,' said Helen. ‘But not better for Leo. What can
you
do?'

‘I shall see the Grand Duke, that's what I'll do …'

‘You'll never get anywhere near him,' said Helen, impatiently. ‘And if you do, what on earth can you say to him?'

Louvaine stared back into her face. ‘I can tell him the truth, Mrs Rodd.'

‘The truth,' said Helen. ‘What truth?'

‘The truth. The truth that he's gone up there to hide.' She clutched at the lintel of the doorway with trembling hands, panic rose in her, a red mist rose before her eyes; she knew that what she was about to do was appalling, but she was driven forward by her own inward torment of terror and doubt, she was unable to stop herself. ‘Do you think I don't know why he's gone, do you think I don't see now why he's sacrificing himself? He knows, you see – he knows what I've known all along, he knows who the murderer was.' She knew that she must not say it, she knew that the words should never be uttered, she knew that what she did was ignoble and yet she could not stifle the hatred in her soul against this woman who stood here, cold and sneering, a woman without heart, without warmth, without emotions, who yet could stand between herself and her love. She stared back into the cold, pale face: and screamed out suddenly: ‘He knew that it was – you!'

They all stood very still. It was as though a motion picture had broken down and left them all standing there, each in his characteristic attitude – alert, sceptical, fascinated, aghast. Helen Rodd broke the spell. She said with chill contempt: ‘You must doubt very much that Leo really loves you: if you're reduced to anything so – despicable – as this.'

The desperate blue eyes fell before her own. ‘You think I'm using it to try to get you out of the way?'

‘Yes,' said Helen.

‘If Leo comes safely back, I swear by all I hold sacred I shall not mention it again.'

‘You can never unsay what you've said in front of all these people.'

‘I've said nothing. If I happen to believe you're the murderer, what's that to do with them?'

‘It's a great deal to do with me. I am not a murderer. I had no reason whatsoever to want to murder Miss Lane.'

‘I never thought for a moment,' said Louli, ‘that you wanted to murder
Miss Lane
.'

Silence again, up on the sunlit terrace; and that stillness – only the little warm breeze blowing in softly from over the scented pines. ‘It would be nice to know,' said Helen Rodd, scornfully, ‘exactly what it is that you do think.'

I must not say it, thought Louli. I must not say it. I'm saying it because I hate her, because I'm afraid of her, because I want to get her out of the way. I'm saying it for vile reasons, and if I say it now, God knows I'm damned for ever. But she said it. She said: ‘I think you wanted to kill – me. I think you went to the wrong room. I think you saw somebody that you thought was me.' And she lifted up her arms, suddenly, and twisted her bright hair into a knot at the back of her head, sweeping it away from her face; and stood so for a moment and then released it. The red curls fell softly back round her face again.

Mr Fernando screeched out, one curious, high-pitched, chopping-off train-whistle of a scream; and crossed himself and burst into a mutter of prayer. And Leo Rodd, coming cheerfully up the wooden steps with the Gerente at his heels, stopped short and said: ‘Good lord, Louvaine – except for the colour of your hair as you stood there just then – I'd have thought you were Vanda Lane.'

Chapter Eleven

Two cousins. Long, long ago, in the old hard-up, struggling days – two cousins, sharing a tiny flat: Louise Barr and Vanda Lane whose names had been woven at last into that lovely
nom de guerre
– Louvaine. Louvaine Barker: whose first brain child had been born in the long, sick, agonizing months of labour; to the cousin called – Vanda Lane.

‘She was always the clever one, the writing one,' said Louli, explaining it all over again to Inspector Cockrill behind the closed shutters of her little room. ‘I was the gay one, I loved people and parties and going around, but she hated it, she only wanted to stay at home and scribble away at her precious book. And then the book was accepted and she had to go and see the publisher and she was petrified, she loathed it, she sat there as mum as a mouse feeling more and more certain that she was mucking up all her chances; and then there was a film of the book and they said that she must appear at the première …'

And the arguments and the cajolements, the sick headaches, the sleepless nights, the despair, the dread … ‘Louise, I can't, I won't, everyone will talk to me and I shan't be able to think of a word to say, I shall make a fool of myself, I shall probably be sick in front of everybody, from sheer nerves.' And the reluctant climbing, at last, into the specially bought dress, the tentative dabs with unaccustomed make-up, a sudden piercing stench of singeing hair.… ‘There, that's done it, now I really
can't
go, thank God for that!' And, close upon it, the breaking of the first glimmering dawn of the great inspiration. ‘Louise, you go, you can wear my dress, tell them I'm ill, tell them I'm dead, tell them you're representing me, tell them – my God, Louise! – tell them you're
me!
'

‘We were both really quite alike in those days, Inspector. We were the same height and about the same figure, we both had sort of mud-brown hair and, which was the real thing, our features were alike – a sort of family likeness, you know, not identical, but enough to make us now and again mistaken for one another by people who didn't know us well. And of course the people in the film world didn't know us at all, they'd seen her about once and me never, and the same applied to her publishers and any other people that were likely to be there. They'd all insisted that it was important for her to go, because of press photographs and publicity and so forth; and so we took a chance, and I went. I did my hair like hers and I wore no make-up and I talked in a low voice and said hardly anything, and it worked like a charm. Only at the end, I couldn't quite keep it up and I went a bit gay and made a few jokes and everybody muttered to each other that the Barker wasn't too bad at all when she got a bit of drink in her and livened up, poor little thing …'

Inspector Cockrill sat on her white-draped, four-poster catafalque of a bed and swung his short legs, absently knocking the ash from his cigarette with the nail of a nicotined finger. ‘And that was the beginning of it all?'

‘Well, yes. Because the next time, she naturally said, “You go again.” And it did make sense, because by that time I'd said things at the prèmiere which they might refer to and she wouldn't know what it all meant; and anyway, however mildly, I'd gone and set a standard which she swore she couldn't now live up to. Besides, she loathed it all and I adored it, and of course the joke of it made it all the more fun. So I let “Louvaine Barker” blossom out, sort of gradually, over the weeks and months and they all thought that with the increasing success of the book, it was natural enough that I should get more and more gay and begin to use make-up and break out into real clothes instead of mouse coats and skirts. Vanda was only too pleased; she said it increased the difference between us, in case we should ever be seen together and she more and more toned herself down and I more and more dyed my hair and had red nails and generally gayed myself up. Of course by then her writing was earning money, real money, and she paid for things.'

‘I see,' said Cockie. His hands dangled between his knees, the smoke of his cigarette drifted up between brown fingers. ‘And you were content to accept that?'

Louvaine sat with the legs of the wooden chair tilted till her bright head rested back against the wall. ‘Well, yes – why not? I made a little of the money myself: I used to do the odd bits and bobs, the reviews and articles – we can all write a bit in our family, it's just one of those things; and of course I made money by just being around, picking up commissions for work and so on, let alone leaving her free to get on with her writing; and I gave up my job and stayed at home and worked as a general secretary – dogs – body, coping with the letters and the telephone. But that was only while we were still sharing flats.'

‘You separated?'

‘Yes.' She tipped back the chair to its normal position and sat with her hands clasped on the little table before her. ‘We began to get worried about being discovered. Vanda worried more than I did. By that time she'd got a terrific following, the books meant a great deal to people, women especially: they used to write to her – they were attracted to some extent by her publicity, they thought it was wonderful that anyone who was outwardly worldly and gay, could write with so much depth and sincerity, could understand the problems of inarticulate people like themselves. If they'd ever found out that they were being deceived –'

‘That would have been the end of Miss Barker?' said Cockie.

She raised her head sharply. He had never seen her so grave, for a moment she seemed far away in another world. ‘It was much more than that. They'd really have minded. They looked on me as – actually as a friend.'