Fog of Doubt (20 page)

Or Damien Jones: they would never hang Damien Jones. For the police knew nothing of Damien Jones, knew nothing of Damien's sudden tendency to limp, knew nothing of how wearily Mrs. Jones' pet lodger, Mr. Hervey, dragged himself up the stairs after his long day's work, collecting subscriptions for his insurance firm; knew nothing of any meeting in the house in Maida Vale, that night of the fog. The police would never associate Damien with this crime at all, for only one person could tell them that he had been there, and that person would never breathe a word of it. They would never hang Damien.

And they would never hang Matilda, for Matilda had no sort or kind of motive to murder Raoul; and if she had killed him, would never for one moment have permitted her husband to suffer in her place. It was as simple as that. They would never hang Matilda for this crime; and they would never hang Damien and they would never hang Thomas and they would never hang Tedward; and they would never hang old Mrs. Evans and they would never hang Melissa. And they would never hang Rosie.…

Inspector Cockrill went upstairs to Rosie's little room. Rosie lay back against the pillow, with only the street lamp shining in from outside to illuminate the room, and said in a dying-away voice that she felt very ill and would he please go away.

‘I will when you've answered me one single question,' said Cockie, standing over her bed in the darkened room. ‘Only
you
can help us, Rosie; only you can say whether Tedward could have killed Raoul Vernet or whether he could not. I don't say “whether he did kill him”, I say “whether he could have”. Now, tell me the truth.'

‘I feel very, very ill,' said Rosie. ‘I can't answer any questions. Please go away and leave me to sleep.'

‘This is me, Rosie, not the police; not officially the police. You called me in, yourself, to help you all. I can't do a thing for you unless I know the truth. I don't for one moment believe that Tedward could have killed Vernet, all in a half-minute like that; but unless you tell me in one word whether or not he went into the house alone—I'm stuck, I can't go on. Now, tell me the truth.'

Rosie flopped back against the pillows and closed her eyes. He put out his hand and caught at her shoulder and jerked her to a sitting position. ‘Don't play games with me, Rosie; don't play for time. I'm not going to leave this room till you give me an answer.'

‘I don't know what you're talking about,' said Rosie, querulously. ‘Please go away.'

‘Did Tedward, or did he not, go into the house alone?'

She turned her head from side to side on the pillows and gave a sort of hollow moan. ‘I feel terrible. Please go away and let me sleep.'

‘I'll let you sleep the moment you've said this one word—yes or no.'

‘I've taken something,' said Rosie. ‘I'm too dopey. I can't talk.'

He hammered with his clenched brown fist on the table by her bed. ‘Stop play-acting! Yes or no?'

‘Yes or no—what?' mumbled Rosie, passing a lax hand with a gesture of exaggerated weariness across her face.

He pulled down her hand. ‘Yes or no—did Tedward come into this house alone?'

The hand dragged limply out of his; she said at last, ‘Of course he did,' and moved the hand again and laid it with a childish gesture which, in the dim light he could only just discern, upon her heart. ‘Go away, please, Cockie, and let me sleep. Now I've told you. Yes—he came in alone.' Her eyes closed, her hand slid softly down and rested against the turned-back edge of the bedclothes. ‘Good girl,' he said, and went away, satisfied.

They would never hang Rosie; for Rosie had cried wolf once too often and one who might, even then, have saved her life, had come away all unsuspectingly and left her to die.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I
NSPECTOR
C
OCKRILL,
shocked temporarily into old age, tottered to the telephone and asked for Charlesworth. To him he said, briefly: ‘You'd better come over. Rosie Evans is dead.'

‘Dead? Rosie Evans? How
can
she be dead?'

‘She's stopped breathing,' said Cockie in a blind rage and slammed down the receiver.

Matilda, sick and sobbing after a night of horror, walked through a round of necessary duties in a stupor of sorrow and remorse: of sorrow for the young life suddenly ended, for the beautiful body lying so still, out of mischief at last, and in peace, of sorrow for Thomas who must break his heart all over again; of remorse for hasty anger, for too little understanding, too little patience, too little love. In the office, Tedward sat with his head in his hands, as colourless and motionless as stone. Downstairs, Melissa wept noisily and cooked up a drama about it's all being her fault, upstairs old Mrs. Evans sat by the dead girl's bed and gave herself over to the quiet grief of those who have seen the passing of so many friends. The doctor whom Tedward had called in during the night, paced up and down the long drawing-room with its unlit fire and said again and again that he was most frightfully distressed, Mrs. Evans, that he had done all he could, that by the time he saw her, it was already too late … Matilda brought him coffee. ‘I'm sorry it's only this; there's no one to cope except me.'

‘My dear Mrs. Evans, for goodness sake don't think of me.'

‘I'll try and scramble some breakfast together later.'

‘Please don't worry about
me,
' he said again.

‘You'll tell Inspector Charlesworth.…?'

‘I shall have to tell him I think it was some kind of overdose; some kind of abortifacient. I can't not tell him.'

‘No, of course not,' said Tilda, hopelessly. ‘You'd have thought we had enough to bear, wouldn't you?—without …' She stopped. ‘Without Rosie going and landing us in for this,' she had been going to say.

Charlesworth arrived, anxious and nervy, concealing it in a flurry of jerky activity, of questions, notes, orders, cancellations, reprimands. The doctor introduced himself. ‘Under the circumstances, Dr. Edwards didn't feel that he ought to handle the case himself, certainly not on his own. He seems to be a close friend of the family; and then all this murder business.…' It was self-explanatory. ‘I think he was right.'

‘What time did you get here?'

‘Two o'clock this morning. Mrs. Evans heard her moving about some time after midnight and went up to her; but I gather she was pretty far gone even then. Frightful retching and vomiting and all that. They'd done a lot already when I got here, but it was hopeless.'

‘Did she say anything, do you know?'

‘Not to me; she was past it by the time I saw her, and I think by the time Mrs. Evans found her. They don't seem to know what happened, anyway.'

‘She was supposed to be having this illegit. How could she have got hold of an abortifacient?'

For answer the doctor produced a large white handkerchief, tied into a bundle, and slowly untied the knot. I noticed these in the waste-paper basket in her room. I had a closer look at them, and then I thought I ought to keep them for someone in authority. I fished them out and wrapped them up; it was easy enough, they were all occupied with the patient.' He was rather miserable about it. ‘It seems a bit mean—but what else could I do?'

What else indeed? A dozen little white envelopes, tiny white envelopes such as pharmacists use; each with the legend, ‘To be taken as prescribed', each labelled POISON, each with the name and address of a different chemist. ‘Quite small doses, probably,' said the doctor. ‘Harmless by themselves. But twelve!'

‘She must have gone round collecting them,' said Charles-worth. He spelt out the addresses, Paddington, Bayswater, Westbourne Grove, Marble Arch … ‘Juggle them about a bit and you can practically trace her route; she must have just walked along, popping into each of the shops she passed.'

‘But where did she get all these prescriptions from?'

Rosie had got the prescriptions from Thomas. They were written on his headed writing paper, signed with his name; twelve prescriptions each for a small dose of a proprietary drug. A young lady had come in, the day before, said the various pharmacists, and presented a prescription which seemed to be quite in order; and here, if the police doubted them, were the originals.… Twelve prescriptions which, all added together, amounted to certain death.

Pushed into Rosie's handbag was a thirteenth prescription, dated two days ago. Written across the bottom were the words, ‘Repeat once'. It had been stamped by a Maida Vale chemist, but the second dose had not been applied for. Charlesworth himself visited the chemist, and later confronted Tedward with the prescription. ‘
you
gave Rosie Evans this?'

Tedward was still sitting, dumb and unmoving, in the office, where Matilda was coaxing a reluctant fire. He lifted an unshaven face and looked back at Charlesworth with bleary eyes. ‘What about it?'

‘It's an abortifacient.'

‘I know,' said Tedward. ‘She was having an unwanted baby.'

‘You mean you were helping her to get rid of it?'

‘Oh, go to hell,' said Tedward and relapsed back into his coma.

Charlesworth took him by the shoulder and shook him roughly. ‘Give your mind to this. She died of the stuff.'

‘It wouldn't hurt a fly,' said Tedward.

‘Enough of it would.'

‘Well, she didn't have enough of it. This was for a small dose, two small doses that wouldn't have done her any harm—or any good either, for that matter—if she'd taken them together. But I told her to take them three days apart.' He looked more closely at the paper and added, indifferently: ‘She's never even cashed the second one.'

‘Why give them to her at all, if they'd do no good?'

Tedward put his head back in his hands. ‘Oh, dear
God!
I gave them to her because she begged and badgered and I thought it would keep her quiet and prevent her from running off to some phoney who
would
“help” her. There was nothing wrong with them, they might just as well have been aspirin.'

‘Then why not have palmed her off with aspirin?'

‘Because Rosie was not a damn fool,' said Tedward shortly.

Matilda sat back on her heels, brushing away a strand of hair with the back of a sooty hand. ‘Anyway, how could this small dose of Tedward's have made any difference?'

Charlesworth spread out the twelve prescriptions. Matilda, craning forward to look at them from her position on the hearth, said, sharply: ‘But those are Thomas's!'

Charlesworth turned the papers so that she could more easily read them. ‘Yes—they are, aren't they?'

‘But Thomas—well, Thomas wouldn't give her all those, he wouldn't sign a dozen prescriptions at a time, he wouldn't dream of it. And anyway, he didn't know about the baby.' She stared at them, terror-stricken. ‘Yes, they're his … It's …' But suddenly she said: ‘But they're dated yesterday.'

‘Yes,' said Charlesworth. ‘All of them.'

‘But yesterday.… But yesterday, Thomas was in prison. And the day before.
And
the day before.' And she raised her head and said urgently: ‘Rosie took a lot of his headed notepaper upstairs. She said she was going to write to Tedward. She was up there for hours.' She swung round on Tedward. ‘
Did
she write to you?'

‘No,' said Tedward. ‘What would she write to me about?'

‘And then she came down with something in her hand. I thought it was an envelope for posting; and she went out and she was out all day. And then she came in and went straight up to her room, and later on when Cockie went up she was already in bed and she said she felt ill.' She said, triumphantly: ‘She had Tedward's prescription. She copied it out on Thomas's paper, all these times, and signed his name.' She looked more closely at the forged signatures. ‘They're frightfully bad, really; but of course, on this official paper, how would the chemists know? They had nothing to compare with. It wasn't as if it were a large dose or anything frightening like that.…' And she buried her face in her hands, dizzy with relief, and said: ‘It's nothing to do with Thomas—nothing at all.'

‘So that's all right, isn't it?' said Tedward, savagely sarcastic. ‘What does anything matter if Thomas is in the clear?' He got up and blundered out of the room, out into the cold November garden and up to the stone bench beyond the leafless mulberry tree, and there sat down and buried his head in his hands once more. They saw the baby trot up to him, full of excited confidences, gazing up into his face with her head on one side. He lifted his hand and pushed her so roughly away that she fell down and, picking herself up, ran bawling into the house. He did not even lift his eyes to look after her.

If only, thought Cockrill, they would not all be so sorry for him because he had been the one to get up and go away leaving Rosie to die! He supposed that somewhere, fathoms deep down in him, he was sorry himself, but he had for so long gradually overlaid with the matrix of self-protection, the small pearl of pity in his arid old heart, that he no longer felt capable of this kind of distress. Far more than their sympathy he would have valued a simple recognition that he had done what each of them, knowing Rosie, would have done, that it had been the natural thing. But no! Sitting round the drawing-room on the day of her funeral, sick with the scent of inappropriate lilies, uneasily conscious of the casket of ashes which was already so pathetically becoming no more than a faint, faintly ludicrous, embarrassment, they forced on him still their generous, kindly pity. ‘For God's sake,' he said to Charlesworth, ‘let's go out to a pub and drink in some nice fresh air.' But at the pub, with beer glasses in their hands, it resolved itself into the same old round, whether she had been as ill already as she had claimed to be, when she must have taken the stuff to have arrived at that stage, the how, the why, the who.…