Find the Innocent (12 page)

Jill walked round, glanced at the lock and found her way through the open door to the sitting room.

“May I come in?”

“It would be very unwise. Stranack suspects that you are here. Your best plan would be to drive on, then curve back through Diddington. Otherwise you may meet him on the road.”

This man, thought Jill, was slightly off the beat, as were the other two, each with a different eccentricity. In flannel trousers and an open shirt, Eddis looked like a responsible official masquerading as an athlete at ease.

“I am not avoiding Stranack. But just now I would like to meet you, Mr. Eddis. I am Jill Aspland—WillyBee's niece.”

“And I am one of the men suspected of murdering your uncle. Won't you sit down?”

“I am duly impressed!” said Jill, taking the settee … “I will try hard to suspect you of killing WillyBee. It would be much easier to suspect you of making love to his wife.”

“That flatters me at the expense of your friend.”

“And now that we've broken the ice, don't let's talk like this any more, please. I want us to put our heads together. It's more than possible that I can help you.”

“That's what Inspector Curwen is offering to do. He feels he has a mission to help me prove my innocence of the murder.”

“But you've stalled him by refusing to admit there was anyone here with you—when he knows there was. Forgive me, Mr. Eddis, but isn't it rather—feeble—to take that line?”

“Oh, very feeble! But the circumstances have imposed feebleness.” As she shook her head: “If I say that I was at this lockhouse with Veronica Brengast, or some other woman, you will say ‘prove it'. And I can't. If you insist that I was at Renchester—er—attending to your uncle, it becomes my turn to say ‘prove it'. And you can't. So my little formula about neither asserting nor denying anything merely states the logic of the case in the fewest possible words.”

She perceived that he was playing with her for his own amusement, being wholly uninterested in herself. A man who enjoyed juggling with ideas, who would risk anything for the joy of making an apt retort.

“It's a wonderful formula—for keeping everything on ice!” she said. “Perhaps you wonder why I'm butting in? I am Veronica's friend. But there are limits. A dirty little conspiracy is one of them—if she
was
here!”

“And if she was not?”

“I know her very well. If you have been her lover, tell me something that only a lover or a close friend would know.”

“A lover knows less about his mistress than any of her friends. If you mean something physical, I have no eye for birthmarks.”

“Tell me enough about her to give me a strong feeling that she might have been here with you. Then I could almost certainly convince the police—”

“I am quite sure you could convince the police. That is why—if you don't think me boorish—I would not tell you anything if I could.”

“But surely you can have no feeling for her now! For her own selfish ends she has put you in peril of conviction.”

Eddis gave her a reproving glance.

“You're rather piling on the agony, aren't you?” he protested. “I am not in peril of conviction. Owing to the odd behaviour of my colleagues there is—now—no possibility of the innocent or the guilty being convicted. If I am in peril at all, I am in peril of having Veronica on my hands—which admittedly terrifies me.”

He saw that she did not understand.

“Suppose you prove that she was here with me at the relevant time. Very relevant to a marriage settlement—which I assume to be the explanation of her attitude! Afterwards, she comes to me and says: ‘I have lost a fortune through an act of yours. Please marry or otherwise provide for me.'”

“What nonsense!” Jill laughed with feeling. “A beauty like Veronica would be snapped up by another rich man.”

“If only I could believe that!” sighed Eddis. “It's not so easy to plant a woman on a rich man when she has nothing to offer but her beauty. Veronica might get short-listed for the selection board. But the scandal would debar her from offering anything in the nature of a testimonial from her previous employer. Excuse me!”

The siren of the morning “customer” had sounded near the lock.

“Marriage settlement or murder or what you like!” cried Jill. “If it's true that there's no proof, you can't lose by talking frankly to me.”

“You are very persuasive,” he said, from the doorway. “When I come back I will tell you everything.”

While he was away she studied the room. Not that she expected to find some trace which the police had missed. She was groping for the key to Veronica's behaviour.

There must have been plenty of daylight when she arrived, so the room would look much as it looked now. Clean in parts. The Victorian furniture would have repelled her. The rather characteristic disarray would have struck her only as untidiness. She had come into this room in order to telephone for a car to take her to WillyBee in Renchester. She had abandoned her purpose under the influence of a man she had not met before. Soon—very soon indeed—she had lost her head. In a few hours she had run the gamut of a love affair.

With Eddis? Could such a man possess for her the overwhelming appeal that had made her risk a position so very dear to her? At some point she had decided that she must never see him again nor let him approach her. On this settee she had torn out her photograph and thrust it into these folds—itself a sordid little trick! If Veronica had done all this, she must have slipped into some kind of second self unknown to her friends.

She barely noticed when Eddis returned. He went to the sideboard and presently produced sherry and biscuits, which she accepted.

“I'm wondering why you've suddenly decided to trust me?” she asked.

His eye rested on her, with awareness of her womanhood. Before she could signal indifference he said:

“To test my own honesty. I believe it impossible to give an account which a reasonable person would accept.”

“You could convince me by just gossiping about her.”

“Could I!” he echoed, scornfully. “Could I even convince you that the Veronica whom you know so well walked into this room and instantly fell into a love affair with a man she had never seen before? You need not believe I was that man if you don't want to. Any man will do. That she then sneaked off in the dark and denied the whole thing, thereby shielding the men who are believed to have killed her husband?”

“You're changing ground again,” she reminded him.

“That's the kind of thing Curwen would say. Have a little more sherry?”

“No, thanks. You seem to be saying Veronica did not come here?”

“You can tell me! You know that Veronica is not a cat on the tiles. You can see that I am not a dynamic seducer. As we came within a few feet of each other, each stepped out of our normal personality into a romantic haze in which there was no past we had not shared and no future that could menace our present. That's all conventional moonshine isn't it!”

Jill was silent. He had come so close to her own imaginative reconstruction.

“We talked. Our conversation was witty, unique, blending our separate histories and focussing our total experience in the moment of our embrace. Was it? That was what it seemed to be. In point of fact, we probably exchanged a string of platitudes about the sunset over the valley.”

“That's all very well, but you're describing what would happen with any pair of lovers who are temperamentally romantic.”

“Exactly! There are millions of them. And by definition they are all alike.”

“Did you know she was WillyBee's wife?”

“I inferred it, in so far as I thought about it at all. I had seen a published photograph of her before she arrived.”

“She must have told you some little things about herself!”

“No doubt! And I expect she told me little things about the sunset. I certainly told her little things about myself. But—I now suspect—they were not very true little things. On such occasions one makes liberal use of symbols, illustrative fables. Substantially true at the moment, but literally undocumented.”

“Tell me one!”

“One would be useless. So would half a dozen, unless they were linked in cumulative effect to exclude chance. ‘On my thirteenth birthday—an aunt who had lived twenty years in India—took me to tea with her cousin—a retired colonel living in Chiswick—who was a world authority on aniline dyes—and he gave me a parrot—which chattered in Spanish.'” He added: “I may be dogmatising on a single experience but I don't think women tell that kind of story on that kind of occasion.”

“Never mind about ‘women'. You were going to tell me what you and Veronica did.”

For a minute or more he sat with closed eyes.

“If you are groping for some incident that stands out—I put on a brash act—throwing her wedding ring into the river. But I now remember seeing a similar incident in a stage play.”

That wedding ring was taking on a positively mystic tang, as if the three men and Veronica and herself were imprisoned in its circle. Each man offered the ring and to each it brought ridicule by the fact that it was on Veronica's finger.

“Is it still in the river?”

“Presumably so!”

“Wouldn't it be fun to get it out?”

“A little fun, perhaps—but hardly enough to sustain the operation as a whole! If you would like to experiment I can lend you a swimming suit of Canvey's.”

“In the meantime,” said Jill, “can you tell me anything about the ring itself? Was it unusual in any way? I know the answer, of course!”

“A test of my veracity at which I am about to fail. I noticed nothing unusual about the ring. Veronica told me afterwards that it had been engraved, but that is hardly an unusual feature.”

“You pass!” smiled Jill. “I suppose she asked you to get it back for her and post it on?”

“I think not,” he answered thoughtfully. “That would have involved giving me her name and address.”

“So she didn't know you knew who she was!” cried Jill. “That makes you different from all the other romantic couples who meet by chance, make love and then go their separate ways. In your case, the man recognises the woman as the wife of his wealthy chief and keeps it to himself. That must have—”

“Inaccurate!” interrupted Eddis. “I had seen that photograph of her—as no doubt you have—in this week's
Prattler
, which is lying about here somewhere. The impression left was not sharp enough for me to recognise her when she arrived, tired and differently dressed. After she had gone, the memory of the photo recurred. I turned to
The Prattler
again and recognised the woman who had just left me.”

“So you were not certain until you looked at the photo in
The Prattler
a second time—after she had gone?”

Eddis laughed. It was hardly an offensive laugh, but it held patronage and made her furious with herself.

“By the way you repeat my words—accurately—I perceive that you do not believe me. At some point—you will say—I have lied. Therefore, if Veronica was here—as you so strongly suspect—I was not the man with her. Will you stay to lunch?”

“Thanks, but sorry!” Jill rose from the settee.

“Before you go allow me to thank you from the bottom of my heart. I was no more to you than a name in a newspaper. Yet—in order to help me you are eager to drag your friend into a scandal and perhaps a charge of obstructing the police.”

“Is that really how you see it?” gasped Jill. “That I am working off a spite against Veronica?”

“It's how I am trying to see it. Hatred of a person is a human weakness few of us can escape. It would be horrible to think of you as a self-appointed avenger, using your natural charm to augment the efforts of the police.”

“You hit very hard, Mr. Eddis!”

“And loathe doing it. Not because you're a woman. I could make Curwen cry before I could hurt you. Not, in God's name, that I want to hurt you! I want you to be nice and stay to lunch. I'm very lonely and miserable.”

For no reason that a policeman or a law court would accept she believed the last words to be wholly true.

“You're a very puzzling man!” she said softly, as if to herself.

“A dynamic seducer?”

“Possibly!” She added: “I can't speak for other women.”

“Shall we let it go at humbug?”

“A minute ago you didn't seem either lonely or miserable.”

“It was the act of cursing you that broke my nerve. Pushing myself further out into the cold. My colleagues put me in this revolting position. A beautiful woman flatters me—then reveals that it was only a physiological accident, and I become a shameful secret. Before we knew about WillyBee's death. All this police business, however troublesome, is just aftermath.”

“D'you mean you're still in love with her?”

“No! That's why I offered myself as a humbug. I couldn't have married a pampered pet like that. And of course I would soon have wanted her to vanish. It was the crude manner of her going that hurt. I don't blame her. She changes her moods very quickly.”

“It is a pity you didn't tell her you knew who she was.”

“That's hindsight! She cut romance with a knife and concentrated her thought on money. While we were having supper I was a little piqued, at first, that she did not tell me her name. Then she emphasised it by insisting on doing all the car business herself. One trifle was particularly wounding.”

To her annoyance, he paused. This was the sort of talk she had been waiting for.

“Tell me, if you feel like it,” she invited.

“She had a dressing case. She wouldn't let me carry it to the car. She couldn't get to the car by herself, because it was pitch dark. Before we reached the road, she asked me not to come any farther. I supposed it was because she didn't want The Hollow Tree driver to see me with her … I stood at the foot of the ramp, playing the beam of the torch in front of her feet to guide her, while I was thinking: ‘That girl is afraid I might blackmail her'.”