Tour de Force (33 page)

‘She was supposed to be terrified of heights. We knew – we
knew
– that the real Louvaine was terrified of heights. And yet she leaned out over that low parapet a hundred feet above the gardens below, which in turn fell away and away in terraces down the steep hill – and grabbed at the case and caught it and hauled it back. I had been thinking of many other things; but at that moment – I knew. Louvaine couldn't stand heights. This girl didn't mind heights. This girl was not Louvaine.'

‘But Mr Cecil – the papers – Mr Cecil fainting like that …'

Too true, that one did faint most terribly easy, said Mr Cecil, but honestly, honestly, about a silly taradiddle over one's drawings, well,
no!
No, no, indeed, the thing had been that one had known poor Louli just a shade better than the rest of them and one had, after all, an eye for clothes, that was only natural; and really, there had been something latterly about Louvaine's clothes, all worn quite wrong, wrong tops with wrong skirts, put on all anyhow, and Louli, the real Louli had had a Thing about clothes, she just automatically looked right. So one had been half-prepared, just that step ahead of the rest of them, for that give-away business up on the tower. She had leaned out over the edge – Louvaine, who was supposed to be terrified of heights – and suddenly, as Mr Cockrill said, it had all slipped into place: it wasn't a case of Louvaine losing her sense of dress: it was just that it wasn't Louvaine. And as one had said, one did faint quite terribly easily; and the thing had been so fantastic, so incredible – and yet so utterly obvious when one saw it again from this new angle – that flop! one had gone out like a light; and bruised oneself like anything on that horrid marble floor, a huge pink mark to this
min
ute on one's tum.…

‘There was a pink mark on Vanda Lane's shoulder,' said Inspector Cockrill, ‘where she hit the water, deliberately coming down flat in her second dive. To account for it afterwards, when she appeared as Louvaine, she said she had been badly sunburned while she was ‘catched' in the bathing-hut. She showed me the supposed sunburn. But later on, when we were all up on the balcony outside Miss Lane's room, her shoulders were perfectly white again. The mark where she had hit the water, had faded. But sunburn wouldn't have faded. And next morning when you were all lying under the sun-shed, I saw her shoulders again. They were perfectly white – no traces of sunburn at all.' He said, making it sound like
their
fault, that he ought to have realized then.

‘Well, so then I was with the Grand Duke,' explained Leo, drawing a red herring across this painful reflection, ‘and trying to get him to let my wife leave San Juan with us the next day; and Mr Cockrill and Mr Cecil appeared and told us what had happened up on the tower. Mr Cockrill's one idea was to get her – Vanda Lane – back to England; whatever she'd done, there was something, well, almost indecent, in abandoning her to San Juanese justice. And as for me – after the first knowledge of the thing had struck me down, I wanted her got back to England too.' His face was terribly grim, his one hand was clenched into a fist upon his knee. ‘“Let justice not only be done but be seen to be done.” I want to see justice done; I want to see her stand in the dock in a British court of law, I want to see her condemned to die for what she did to Louvaine; and when the Judge says, “may God have mercy on your soul,” I want to be there, and not say Amen.'

Mr Cecil broke in with his babble again. ‘So then we hatched up a plot, at least the Grand Duke hatched it mostly. My dears, that Exaltida! – too gorgeous,' said Mr Cecil wistfully. ‘And so masterful! Even Inspector Cockrill had to do just what he said, now didn't you, Inspector?'

‘We all had to do what he said,' said Inspector Cockrill coldly. ‘We were all in his power. What the Grand Duke wanted was a hostage – alive or dead, he didn't much care which. What we wanted was to get Vanda Lane back to England. She wouldn't come if Leo Rodd didn't come and he couldn't come if his wife was kept in custody or supposed to be; in fact none of us could go while anyone was supposed to be in San Juan gaol. We argued it out; and at last the Grand Duke concocted this business about Mr Rodd and – not liking it very much – we had to agree. We worked out a case against him that on the surface would sound convincing – Vanda Lane's no fool: and then Mr Rodd was to swim out to sea and, with the help of his underwater mask, keep out of sight as much as possible, till a boat, with the boatmen under the Grand Duke's instructions, went out to fetch him. It wouldn't be very pleasant for Miss Lane, but that, I think, didn't greatly worry any of us. The men brought him back and he lay as still as he could under the sailcloth, which he says smelt disagreeably of fish, and Mr Cecil and I in turn testified to his being dead.' He made a ducking movement of his splendid head in the general direction of Mr Fernando and Miss Trapp. ‘We must apologize for having had to deceive you; but we had to have someone there who was not just acting. As I say, Vanda Lane's no fool.'

An airport official knocked and came in. The bus was waiting which would take them all to Waterloo; if they would please come this way.… They got up and went out quietly – Mr Cecil with Little Red Attashy case hugged up under his arm, mincing along with a slightly heightened colour, for really the airport officer was madly good-looking in all that dark blue and silver, and did seem rather a
pet;
Miss Trapp in her brown silk dress and the Brussels-Sprouts Hat with Fernando, glistening with affectionate enthusiasm at her meagre side; Helen Rodd, cool and dignified, showing no trace of the doubt and sorrow of the past terrible days, Leo Rodd with ravaged face and haunted eyes, walking close at her shoulder – carrying his own brief-case. Inspector Cockrill let them go out before him, standing aside bowing civilly to the ladies, the white panama hat in his hand. ‘I won't be a minute,' he said to the airport official, when they had all gone through. There was a poster on the wall that had caught his eye and he went and stood before it for a long, long time. It was addressed to visiting foreigners.
SPEND YOUR HOLIDAYS IN BRITAIN
it said.

‘You have left your straw hat, sir,' said the airport official as Detective Inspector Cockrill boarded the bus.

‘I know,' said Cockie. ‘I won't be wanting it again.'

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 1955 by Christianna Brand

cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa

This edition published in 2011 by
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