Tour de Force (25 page)

‘If at all.' He sat musing for a little while. ‘Unless, of course – I wonder what's the position if she marries him?'

‘Oh, good God – no!' protested Leo, as only a little while earlier, Helen had said before him.

‘He comes from Gibraltar,' said Cockrill. ‘That's a sterling area. Easy enough for him to bring it over from there. You convert it into Gibraltar pounds and then buy pesetas and then, I suppose, buy lire with the pesetas.'

Leo was not interested in the economics of Mr Fernando's jugglings with the existing currency regulations. ‘The thing is – how does this affect the murder? I mean, surely it must?'

‘It might well affect the blackmail business,' said Cockie.

‘Well, of course. She could threaten to expose him to the company. You've never been able to get hold of the book?'

‘No,' said Cockie. He, Inspector Cockrill of Scotalanda Yarrda, had asked in vain for a look at the bloodstained book; it was a sore point.

‘Or she could threaten to expose him to Miss Trapp. Only how could she have known? – La Lane, I mean.'

‘She was observant,' said Cockie. ‘It was her job to be – like mine: and after all,
I
knew. And she was a student of human nature.'

‘
And
she was a goddam bitch.'

‘She had a cruel streak. She didn't need the money and, in fact, she never asked for any. She just liked torturing people, that was all.'

‘Louvaine – though she was her cousin – had no idea of it.'

‘Miss Lane would hardly be proud of it, I suppose.'

‘Of course Louli knew that she kept books of notes: she thought they were just for people, to base characters on and so forth. She nearly passed out when the Gerente produced that one.'

‘She behaved very foolishly – and worse than foolishly – in not telling me at once the true state of affairs.'

‘Yes, of course,' said Leo. He deflected this uncomfortable offshoot of the conversation. ‘If Miss Trapp had promised Fernando money …'

‘We don't know that she had,' said Cockie. ‘Only that he expected to get it. In either case, she doubtless won't have known what it was for.' He pinched out the untidy end of his cigarette and pitched the butt over the balustrade into the oleander bushes below. ‘He was certainly ripe for blackmail. If marriage was really in the air, he had a lot more to lose than just his job.'

‘It does constitute quite a hefty motive for murder?' suggested Leo, deprecatingly, fighting down the optimism rising again within him. ‘The only thing is – how? We now know for certain that it really was Vanda Lane who came out alive and dived and went back to her room that afternoon, don't we? Or don't we?'

‘Yes,' said Cockie. ‘I think we do.'

‘I mean, I was a fool ever to doubt it for a second, even without having had time to reason. You see – I
know
it was La Lane diving. I saw her dive at Rapallo. She was magnificent, Louli would have had to be exhibition standard to have copied her; but what's more to the point, she had a certain style, sort of mannerisms – I'd recognize her just as I'd recognize a batsman or a bowler or a runner.'

‘All right, all right,' said Cockie, ‘I know, I'm convinced, I knew it long before you did. That was Vanda Lane diving; so, definitely, she was still alive at half past four that afternoon, when we all gathered on the beach to bathe. She was murdered between that time, and the time she was found in her room. But as for Fernando …' He sat leaning forward in his chair, his knees apart, his hands between them, looking down, rolling a new cigarette; and shook his grey head. ‘I just don't see how the chap could have done it. He makes a great play about swimming but he can't swim really: it was all he could do to go porpoising out to the raft and he could no more have swum back without attracting attention than he could have flown. And he'd have to do it there and back. As for under water …'

‘I asked Camillo that too,' said Leo. ‘Not letting on, of course, just casual chat about Fernando, following on the revelations – about which he's in a great state of pleasurable excitement – regarding the hotels. He says Fernando's a bit of a joke at the swimming club, can't swim for toffee, let alone under water; and you can't learn that sort of thing all in a day, it's true. I suppose he
was
on the raft?'

‘Oh, yes, he was on the raft,' said Cockie. ‘I watched him go out there, splashing and gasping and I saw him there, on and off when I glanced up from my book; and when we all started moving in, I watched him swim back. And in the interval – the woman was murdered.' He licked the edge of the cigarette paper and gummed it down with neat, accustomed fingers. ‘
I
don't know.'

Hope died a little in Leo Rodd's heart. ‘I can't pretend, Inspector, that I wouldn't – well, rather have it this way.' He thought it all over. ‘There's only one other curious thing – if it amounts to anything. Both times that Louvaine's appeared in the Vanda Lane transformation – the only person who's really been deceived, has been Fernando. I noticed both times. He went an awful colour and muttered and crossed himself, or whatever it is these heathens do.'

‘I noticed it too,' said Cockie. He shrugged. ‘Superstition, probably.'

‘Or a bad conscience,' said Leo; and once again could not keep the rising optimism out of his voice.

For the hours were passing by, passing by: and with every moment, the time crept nearer when the great hand would stretch out over the chessboard of their little lives and gather up the chosen pawn, the randomly-chosen pawn, and with one great sweep tumble the rest of them, helpless, out of the way. Leo craving audience with the Old Wykehamist pal, received in return an ominous invitation for the party to see over the Grand Ducal palace the following afternoon. They had missed it on an earlier occasion, suggested the El Exaltida's message, delicately, and no doubt would like to remedy the omission
before their early departure the following morning
. A car, by the way, had been laid on to take them from Piombino to the airfield, the
vaporetto
leaving at 8.15 a.m. would probably suit them best. If, during their visit to the
palatio
, he found himself at liberty, said the Grand Duke, he would send a messenger for Mr Rodd; if, as unfortunately was probable, he was too much occupied, he must content himself with making his adieux herewith, trusting that
such of the party as were leaving
would have a pleasant and uneventful journey. It was evident that the public school veneer, though restored, was spread very thinly across the volcano within.

They all sat uneasily at dinner under the bougainvillea and the swinging lanterns, wretchedly toying with the savoury mess of rice and pimento, artichoke and olive, heaped on the plates before them. ‘I don't think we should go near this terrible palace …'

‘But, ducky, if we don't and he sends for Mr Rodd, he'll be so
cross
.'

‘I could go alone,' said Leo.

‘No, Leo, don't!' said Helen, but she cut it off short and amended indifferently: ‘Well – perhaps.'

‘Suppose he sends for
Mrs
Rodd,' said Miss Trapp. She looked about her, into their faces, cold with fear and dread. ‘I think we should speak of it outright. We haven't got much more time. Suppose while we are at the palace to-morrow, he sends for Mrs Rodd.'

‘It won't make any difference where I am,' said Helen. ‘If they want me, they've only to make me come. Here at the hotel or anywhere. If I was at the palace, anyway I might get a chance to see him and talk to him – he must be more rational than the Gerente. If they make me go straight to the prison, I'm nothing to him, just an impersonal speck of dust to be got rid of.' She spoke very calmly but her voice shook. ‘I don't see anything to be gained by not going to the palace.'

Mr Cecil was of opinion that they should all make a mad dash for it away from San Juan altogether. ‘That has been considered,' said Cockie. ‘It won't work. Mrs Rodd is guarded day and night by two men; even if we could get rid of them, we'd have to get away from Barrequitas by boat, and even then we'd only get to Italy and Italy would quite certainly pack us straight back again.' He had given it far more serious thought than appeared from the way he spoke; but he knew that to fail in an escape plan would make their last case far, far worse than their first. He voiced for the first time an intention which he thought it might not be easy to put across. ‘Not only must we not try to get away to-day – but we must not get away at all.' He said to Helen: ‘You needn't think that we shall all go off and leave you here.'

‘But we've got orders to go,' said Mr Cecil, paling.

‘We aren't going.'

‘But I mean, they'll
send
us, ducky …'

Inspector Cockrill did not care for being called ducky by Mr Cecil. In revenge he, for the first time, included him in the proposal. ‘You and I and Mr Fernando, and Mr Rodd of course, are staying here on the island. The ladies, perhaps, had better go; but the men will stay, All the men.'

‘Of course,' said Mr Fernando, bowing gallantly to Helen; but his soft brown eyes filled with tears of apprehension as he looked at Miss Trapp.

‘I should not dream of going,' said Miss Trapp.

‘Of course not,' said Louli. ‘After all, we've paid! Odyssey would never refund the money, we must simply work it off in San Juan.'

‘But, Louli …' Mr Cecil wrung his white hands at this wholesale defection. ‘But, Inspector … But one's
got
to get back, my dears.…' He brushed back the golden forelock and threw out a shapely hand to Helen. ‘You
will
understand, my dear, how one longs, but longs, to stay on and sympathize, buns through the bars, and the lute played quite ceaselessly outside the little cell window; but there
is
the business to consider, so much hanging on one, and after all, dear, buns aside, what actually could one
do?
' And what was more, he added, calming down, if that wicked old Exaltida didn't want them on his island, he'd surely have ways of simply making them go? ‘They just wouldn't keep us in the hotel. So then?'

‘It's nice and warm,' said Cockrill ‘We can sleep in the pine-woods. But it won't come to that. They're within their rights in keeping – one of us – as a hostage if they can really pretend to think they're the guilty party; but they'd make themselves unpopular among the British tourists if they used force to make us go, and that wouldn't be good for business – as Mr Cecil would say.'

‘I don't see what good you can do by staying,' said Helen steadily. ‘The Grand Duke has said that you must all go by day after to-morrow, yes; but he's also said that by day after to-morrow I must be in custody with a good case cooked up against me. Whatever is happening to all of you, it won't stop that happening to me. And once I'm there …' And she burst out suddenly that the minutes were passing and there they all sat eating and drinking and not being able to
do
anything: and that once she was there in that ghastly place, they would all be helpless wherever they were, in England, in San Juan, it wouldn't matter, they could kill her, they probably would kill her, and nobody would even know.…

Miss Trapp sat silent, watching her: the caged and the free. For she, Miss Trapp, was free. In thirty-six hours she could leave this place, could go away to where these hideous things did not happen, could there in quietness and peace, await the new happiness that was to come into her life. To be needed – she had said to Helen Rodd that only to be needed was happiness to her, was happiness enough. And now she was needed. Fernando might turn anxious eyes to Miss Trapp at the perils of separation, but Miss Trapp knew that it held no perils for her: as soon as he might, he would follow her – because he had need of her. The knowledge was very sweet to her; and to keep it safe, she had only to go away from this island, as she was free to do, and embroil herself no more in all this uncertainty and dread. It is my first, my only chance of happiness, she thought: the only happiness I have ever known. To keep it safe, I have only to keep silent now.

And she looked into Helen Rodd's face, sick with a sort of dry-eyed desperation, and said deliberately: ‘I think there
is
something, after all, that we could do.'

The waiters had cleared the half-empty places, had put little bowls of wild strawberries, with bottles of the thick, sweet raisin wine to be poured over them, and pots of sour white cream. Their table was in a corner of the terrace, away from the curious eyes and ears of the other guests. She pushed aside her bowl and leaned forward, her elbows on the table, her thin hands cupped about her plain face. ‘I think,' said Miss Trapp, ‘that we must all stop trying to seem innocent: and all try to seem guilty.'

Mr Cecil had never heard, but never heard, of a more repellent idea. ‘Just try to be quiet for a moment,' she said to him as though speaking to a child. She went on: ‘The Inspector used a phrase just now: he said these people wanted “someone they could pretend to think was guilty”. I think we should all make it impossible for them even to pretend to think that any one person is guilty.'

‘You mean we should all con
fess?
'

‘Not all confess,' said Miss Trapp. ‘That would make the whole thing ridiculous.'

‘Unless,' said Louli, ‘we could confess to a sort of mass slaying, I mean not a mass of people being slain by one person, but one person being slain by a mass.
You
know – there was some hold she had over all of us so we banded together …' She slapped her hands down suddenly upon the table. ‘And there was some hold she had over all of us. The blackmail book!'

There was some magic in Miss Trapp this evening, that they should all turn respectful eyes to her, to await her reaction to this proposition. ‘If we all confessed, we should all be thrown into prison,' said Miss Trapp. ‘and seven people would suffer instead of one. We must not confess about ourselves – we must accuse one another. But the blackmail book …' She broke off. She took her hands away from her face, they began their automatic groping for the handles of the brown bag. ‘We must help build up cases against ourselves,' she said. ‘We must each tell what there was against us, in the blackmail book.'