Authors: Christianna Brand
They came on. Suddenly, behind them, something swam, blue-white, at the single, uncurtained window-pane, a face was pressed suddenly close to the window, a face drowned in rain, pressed close and distorted. An enemy? But all her enemies were here. A friend then, passing the window, attracted by the strangeness of the silent scene within. Help was at hand, she was no longer alone. I must say it now, she thought, I must shout it out loud and then whoever it is will hear, they’ll know—if I’m killed, at least somebody will know the truth. … The white blur withdrew from the window and she cried out suddenly and sharply so that it abruptly returned and was pressed close again, greedily listening, greedily peering in. “I know who you all are, I know what you are, I know that Amista did exist, I know that she did murder poor Angela!” And, pressed against the wall, bracing herself with the palms of her hands away from the wall she cried out into Mrs. Love’s swimmily advancing face: “I know that
you
were Amista!”
Behind them, unseen by them, the white face stared in at the window, flesh distorted, pressed close. “Who knows that any of you are what you say you are? Who knows that you met only a year or so ago, or that Mrs. Love came to poor Angela only a few months ago? She says her mother was an actress—well, so she may have been, because I say that she’s an actress too, she’s been playing a part all this time. …”
They broke silence at last. Carlyon said in a voice of high disdain: “A part? What part?”
“The part of a hospital nurse,” cried Katinka, loud and clear for the benefit of the closely listening ear against the pane. “You asked me the other day where you were supposed to have found a substitute so conveniently at hand when your wife was killed. Well, I’ll tell you.” She threw out a hand towards Dai Trouble. “He has a young daughter, an illegitimate daughter; perhaps more than one. Two women left this village twenty years ago on his account. And all Welsh people can act, it’s in the blood, they’re dramatic by nature. …”
The listening ear pressed close. “What act is this young woman supposed to have played?”
“You had a rich wife,” said Katinka. “But she—she wouldn’t part with her money, I suppose, and you couldn’t get the control of it that you wanted. So… So…” She began again. “This man’s daughter, Dai Trouble’s illegitimate daughter, she’s injured in an accident. She’s unrecognizable. ‘Right you,’ says Dai. ‘Pass off my daughter as your wife. She’s a good enough little actress and for the rest, her right hand is injured, she won’t be expected to sign documents. We’ll promise her plastic surgery for her injuries—she could never afford it for herself and she’ll do anything we tell her to.’”
“And the accommodating wife, meantime?”
(Even to a mad wife in the attic, à la
Jane Eyre
…) “Shut away down here in this lonely place, kept under drugs. …”
“And writing nonsense to some woman’s magazine, signed ‘Amista’?”
“No,” said Katinka. And she looked again into the raddled face and said: “I thought—I thought Mrs. Love couldn’t be Amista because she hadn’t been with you long enough to know all the things Amista mentioned in her letters. But if that wasn’t true… I think she was with you, long before that poor girl got out of hospital and came down here. I think she was with you looking after the other one, looking after your drugged wife locked away in whatever room it is up there at Penderyn.”
“And the letters?”
Katinka had a sudden vision of the red hands folded over the unaccustomed crisp white parlour-maid’s apron. “She wrote first for a lotion to whiten her hands. Then she wrote and said that…”
Carlyon bowed sardonically in the direction of Mrs. Love. “She said, if I remember your story correctly, that she was in love with a man ten years older than herself. With all due deference to Mrs. Love…”
“Yes, but… The actual phrase was… Yes, now I remember it! The actual phrase was, ‘the man I love is over thirty.’ But her handwriting was terribly illegible and when these girls write to us about ‘disparity in age’ as we call it officially at the office, they’re always bobbysoxers in love with people older than themselves. So we assumed… But suppose that what she really wrote was that the man she loved was
only
thirty, was ten years
younger
than herself. …” She turned upon Mrs. Love. “I don’t believe there’s any Harry at all! I believe you’ve been hand-in-glove with Mr. Carlyon all this time—because you’re in love with him.”
Mrs. Love seemed incapable of speech. “And the murder note?” said Carlyon, coolly civil. “Amista’s note luring poor Angela—but no, she was Dai’s daughter, really, wasn’t she? Some unknown Bronwen or Mifanwy—to the precipice?”
Katinka’s voice began to falter with the first faltering of her confidence. “She—the girl might have begun to find out, she might have suspected that everything wasn’t being done to restore her face (because that wouldn’t have suited you at all,
would
it?). She wanted to look in a mirror and then—then she wanted to give me the ring as some sort of sign. That day she tried to give it to me in the hall, it was wrapped up in a paper; perhaps there was a message written on the paper. And as for the ring…” She broke off. “Mrs. Love said that she always wore the ring ‘when she played.’ Well, playing is the technical term for acting. I could easily have traced an actress who wore a sphinx ring on the stage; it would be used in publicity if I know anything about actresses, and it would have been easy enough to trace.” She stood at bay, gazing back at them, into their staring faces, the turkey-red face of outraged Mrs. Love, the intent and angry face of Dai Jones Trouble, the coolly sneering face of Carlyon. The white blur was melting away from the window, was fading away like the smile of the Cheshire cat, and she was left alone with them again, with these three infinitely more menacing than they had been before, because now they were not only angry, they were afraid. But the smile reappeared, thank God, fading in again at the doorway, the friendly, smiling, Cheshire-cat smiling face of Detective Inspector Chucky, all too hail-fellow-well-met for words.
“Well, there you are then, Miss Jones! Company all the time! I met Miss Evans down by the chapel and she told me that you were alone. Right you, I says, up and have a friendly word with Miss Jones. And what do I find—company with you all the time.” He flapped his wet hat out into the linoleumed hall. “There’s wet! Raining-pouring outside it is, proper old Pentre Trist weather. Pentre Trist, that means the Village of Grief, you know, in the Welsh; and crying all the time the old skies are, with the grief! Duw, duw!” He never had sounded so execrably Welsh, never had been more exquisitely welcome.
Mrs. Love disregarded him entirely. She had recovered the use of speech and now employed it to the full. Such a fandango of wicked lies Mrs. Love had never heard tell in all her born days. Her in love with Mr. Carlyon, indeed! Katinka’s accusations of murder and mayhem passed, apparently, clean over her peroxided head; but that she should be accused of harbouring a guilty passion for Mr. Carlyon, and unrequited passion at that…! And with her Harry patiently waiting for her up in good old London! Well, he wouldn’t have to wait much longer. Of that she gave them all her word.
“And Amista?” suggested Mr. Chucky, lovingly pouring a little oil on the flames.
“Amista! I jest see meself writing a whole lot of rubbidge to a rubbidgy girls’ magazine! Amista! She’s Amista herself, if you ask me, and always has been. Nosed out poor Mrs. Carlyon and made up the whole story so as to get into the house, like Mr. Carlyon’s always said. And wrote a few bits of letters herself to keep the thing going.”
“Including the last note?” said Chucky. “Luring Mrs. Carlyon to her death?”
Katinka had not scrupled to accuse Mrs. Love, but Mrs. Love looked a little shamefaced and said that she wouldn’t like to think
that
of Miss Jones.
Carlyon spoke. He said: “Was there ever really any note at all? This woman here—she says she found the note. She and Miss Evans, of course, but Miss Evans doesn’t count, she’d do what she was told. They were first at the body; who knows what they may have hatched up before the rest of us arrived. If Angela wasn’t quite dead… They could have scribbled this note and put it into her hand.”
“But she was dead,” said Katinka. “Of course she was dead.” And she thought of the twice-broken body and said: “God forbid that she shouldn’t have died the moment she hit the ground.”
Carlyon stood with bent head. “Well, amen to that.”
“Anyway, why should I want to keep up the story? Why should I want to steal the ring?”
He lifted his head at once. “Your story was dying on you, I suppose, literally dying on you. You’d scooped the world, you’d literally got in at the death, but after that there was nothing much to say, the inquest was a bit tame. You’d thought of that no doubt, well ahead. So now, when the thing begins to fizzle out, there’s still the ring to make a snappy paragraph of, bolstered with photographs. …”
The wallpaper was a scarlatina of red roses, with Carlyon’s face as white as the background to the roses, his white lips spitting venom. She confronted him. “Now look here—once and for all. Just tell me this—has there been one line in any newspaper, one single line that any local reporter couldn’t have contributed, one solitary word that must have been sent in by me? Have I contributed one word to any paper about Mrs. Carlyon’s life or Mrs. Carlyon’s death?”
“Not yet,” said Carlyon. “You work for a weekly periodical, don’t you? ‘The full story…’ What day does your rag come out?”
Katinka admitted defeat. “All right, I give in. There never was any Amista; I made it all up, I built it up for months beforehand in order to get into a house where a news story existed that I couldn’t possibly have known anything about. I kept it going so as to make more chatty paragraphs that I never sent in, and finally I lured a girl to her death and horribly murdered her, to make just one more news item that I haven’t used.” She said wearily to Inspector Chucky: “What’s the use? There was no earthly point in my making up any ‘Amista,’ but just because I’m the only person who knows anything about her, they all believe, you believe yourself, that she never existed.”
Mr. Chucky thrust out a thoughtful underlip, looked at her over the tops of imaginary spectacles. “Well, indeed now, Miss Jones, you underestimate the poor Swansea police! I know quite as much about Amista as you do—probably more.”
“You know who Amista
is
?”
“We local boys get around a bit,” he answered airily. “We’ve had the letters down from your office, of course, and had a go at the fingerprints—nothing posh, mind, just a few amateurs messing about with a bit of old powder. And then there’s the seal. There must have been a seal, mustn’t there? And that red-gold sealing-wax. So naturally we’ve had a bit of a look round for the sealing-wax and the seal.”
“Why the hell couldn’t you have told me that, when you wanted to search my house?” said Carlyon. “I’d have been a bit more co-operative.”
After the way he had looked at her and spoken to her, quite obviously Katinka Jones could never care for Carlyon again. And yet… If only it could be proved to him that Amista had been no part of any plot of hers! “Detective Inspector—for heaven’s sake tell me then—have you found the seal?”
“Not to say found it,” said Chucky, easily. “But I know where it is—or I can have a pretty good guess.” He did not even glance in Mrs. Love’s direction, but he said: “You weren’t very far out, Miss Jones, in your calculations.” He beamed. “A bit of psychology—there’s a splendid thing!”
“Well, don’t look at me,” said Mrs. Love. “You and your psychology!”
“Do you mean to say, Inspector,” said Carlyon, “that Mrs. Love…? That she really…?”
Mrs. Love had had a very bad evening. She was wet and weary and cold and angry and she had been mortally wounded in all her finer feelings. “You shut your face!” she said. “Lay off of me! You don’t employ me no more, and I’m fed up with you and your secrets!”
“Mrs. Love!” said Carlyon, sharply.
“Don’t you ‘Mrs. Love’ me! I’m fed up with this, suspected and accused and badgered, mixed up with the police and all. I’m not standing for it, I’m not going to get mixed up in your business no more, you and your Angel S. …”
There was a sharp sound as the ring clattered to the table, rolling over to lie against Katinka’s mirror which remained, with the contents of her upturned handbag, on the table. Mrs. Love, checked in mid-word, remained open-mouthed, belligerent but alarmed; and into the cool silence, Mr. Chucky hummed a little tune.
But Katinka was staring down at the two jade rings, the sphinx face tumbled down on the little mirror, the sphinx face reflected back from the mirror, the little roughness inside the upswept white jade wings reflected in a mirror as once she had seen it before.
“
Oh, what a minx
—
the sphinx was
…” crooned Inspector Chucky; and Katinka Jones was a journalist again, not Miss Friendly-wise of
Girls Together,
but go-getting girl reporter for Consolidated News, who had gone but not gotten any news at all from her interview with Miss Angel Soone. She sat again in the flower-gay dressing-room, she heard again the tinkling of the piano and the high, sweet, tinkling little voice singing a naughty little song; the tumultuous applause, the fading into the new signature tune. …
The white jade ring winked up at her, reflected in the brightly lit theatrical dressing-table mirror.
And she had come running into the dressing room. Angel, with her outstretched narrow white hands, saying: “
So
sorry to keep you waiting, Miss—Er. I’m awful about encores, I simply love them and I overstayed my time. The management will be furious!”
Miss Angela Erleigh. Miss Angel Soone.
That had been the very last concert she had given; not that Katinka had known that at the time, and the failure to discover it had cost her dear. She had sat like a drivelling idiot, playing with the ring on the dressing-table, asking the wrong questions, being delicately led up the garden path. “How do you think the new song went, Miss Soone? What about your old signature tune, Miss Soone? Is it true that your new husband wrote this one for you…?”