Rehearsals for Murder (14 page)

Vanner shook his head, “It doesn't make any difference. What was that letter of hers but the beginning of a confession to Mrs Clare that she'd been misconducting herself with her husband? ‘I have betrayed your confidence.'”

“The confidence of a divorced wife?” said Toby sardonically.

“Maybe Miss Capell doesn't recognize divorce.”

Toby stood up. He slapped the dust from the seat of his trousers. “As you say. Well, we'll be getting back to the house before the rest of your pals turn up. You may be right.”

“I'm right,” said Vanner.

“And the motive, Vanner, the motive for killing this poor devil as well as Lou?”

A small smile twitched at Vanner's heavy mouth. His gaze came up at Toby from under half-sunk lids. It was a sly gaze, self-confident and faintly mocking.

“Stares you in the face, don't it?” he said softly.

As they went through the gate into the lane George said to Toby: “Talkin' of money, you didn't show him that piece of paper I pinched from the flat.”

“Because I've no right to be in possession of it,” said Toby.

“Oh.” The corners of George's mouth sank in a grimace.

Toby glanced at him sideways. “Not really so very deaf, are you, George?”

“I can hear what you say all right; you got such a nice, clear voice,” said George.

“H'm. A simple person might think you were hoping to overhear something you weren't meant to.”

“That'd be a very simple person.”

They skirted Roger Clare's car. They had gone a few yards beyond it and were just at the stile when George stopped suddenly, looked down at the ground, looked back at the car and then exclaimed: “That's not uninterestin'.”

Toby looked where George was pointing.

The stile had a gate beside it leading into the same field. The ground before it was dusty, and on its surface showed a clear pattern of tyre tracks. There were the tracks of two cars. One set had plainly been made by Clare's car, but superimposed on this were the tracks of a car three of whose tyres had apparently no tread at all and whose fourth tyre was brand new, a car whose tracks George and Toby were able to recognize without any trouble at all.

“Max Potter's car,” said Toby, and George nodded.

“Clare must have reversed his car here when he left yesterday afternoon,” Toby continued, “which means that Potter's been here since.”

George was strolling down the lane. He pointed again. “It was before Clare came here this afternoon,” he said. “Here's Potter's track and here's Clare's goin' over it.”

“It 'll have to be gone into.”

They returned, climbed the stile and set off across the field.

Arrived back at the house, they found the usual group of people on the terrace, but Eve herself was not there. Charlie Widdison heaved himself off the grass and came a little way across the lawn to meet Toby.

“Will you go up and talk to Eve?” he said. “She's lying down. She said she wanted to see you as soon as you got back.”

“All right,” said Toby.

“I suppose I ought to go up and see her, too,” said Max Potter. “By the way——” He tossed a matchbox to Toby. “Here's your whatnot.”

Toby opened the matchbox. The dart was inside it.

“Well,” he said, “did you find out what made the stain?”

Max Potter nodded. His eyes were grave. “I did,” he said somberly.

“What was it?”

“Tincture of iodine!” And Max Potter let out roar upon roar of laughter.

Swiftly Toby crossed to the open doorway. Max Potter's voice followed him: “Tell Eve I'll come up as soon as I've had a drink.”

“Have two!” said Toby, and vanished.

He went to Eve's bedroom. At his knock she called: “Come in.” She was lying on the bed. As he entered she raised herself sharply on one bare elbow while with her free hand she clawed back her rumpled hair. Her large, light-coloured eyes were expectant, a spot of scarlet burned on either cheek. Under her thin, restless body the silk counterpane had been tumbled into a mass of creases.

As he closed the door she flung herself back on the pillows. A fit of trembling had caught her; from head to foot it shook her. Her helplessness to control it filled her with violent anger. With her clenched fists she beat the bed on either side of her. She dug her head backwards into the pillows, the muscles of her neck taut and quivering. A moaning sound was squeezed through her stiff lips. Then as Toby crossed the room to her bed and sat down at the foot of it she jerked her head up again. There was sullen gloom on Toby's face as he stared at the carpet.

Her voice cracking shrilly, Eve said: “Go on, go on, tell me about it!”

“Didn't Widdison do that when he came back?”

“He's told me what happened—how it was done. But you've got to tell me the rest of it. I want to be told!”

In a low tone he replied: “It's you who've got things to tell.”

“I?”

He nodded impatiently.

She lifted herself on her elbow again. She tugged her skirt over her knees. She looked as if she wanted to hurl abuse at him.

“Listen, Eve,” Toby went on in the same low voice, “you've got to talk a lot and you've got to do it quickly. We may not have much time.”

“I don't understand. Roger's been murdered. Lou's been murdered. I don't understand. Why should anyone want to murder Lou
and
Roger?”

“We mustn't waste time,” he said wearily. “Vanner may be up here at any moment.”

“Well, what's that got to do with it? I won't see him. I feel ill. Charlie can tell him I'm not fit to see him. I do feel ill. My husband's been
murdered
—don't you understand that?” Her voice was mounting wildly.

Toby turned his head. His eyes held hers.

“I
am
ill,” she repeated, but in a quieter voice. “Look.” She took a folded piece of paper from the chair by her bed and thrust it at Toby, “Charlie's been prescribing for me. It's a sedative. He said I'd got to have one and ought to lie down and not see anybody. But I told him I'd got to see you.”

Toby glanced at the paper. “Widdison wrote this, did he?”

“Yes.”

“All right,” and Toby pocketed it. “I'll send someone into Larking with it.”

“You needn't,” she said. “I've got plenty of things like that in the house, but Charlie wanted to prescribe, so I let him. Now tell me, what's going to happen? What are the police going to do?”

“Does it matter to you much—now?” said Toby.

Up till that moment there had been ceaseless movement in Eve's slim body; not for a moment had hands, shoulders, small head and working lips been still at the same time. But suddenly she lay there in a complete stillness.

Toby leant nearer to her. “Eve, why did you ask me to stay last night?”

Her eyelids flickered. Nothing else moved.

“What are you afraid of?” he asked.

He waited.

“Well,” he said next, “whom are you afraid for?”

After another short pause he shouted at her: “Talk! We may have only a few minutes. In another few minutes I may not be able to help you.”

Then some words came from her, huskily: “Do I need help?”

“I think you may need it like hell.”

She closed her eyes. Her lips moved for an instant as if she were testing out some words. She opened her eyes again.

“You know,” she said, “I didn't love my husband. I loved him for about a month once, just after we were married. But I relied on him. I spent nine years relying on him. It was comic to discover when he wasn't there any more to be relied on that there wasn't solid earth under my feet any more. One shouldn't let that happen, you know; one should never get to rely on anyone so much that one stops feeling like a real person when they aren't there. One stops feeling like a real person… even though one doesn't like them very much. It's funny, isn't it, Toby Dyke?”

Toby retorted: “Did you ask me to stay because you thought Roger had murdered Lou and you wanted someone who might be pushed between him and the police?”

“Perhaps,” she answered indifferently.

“Did you think that Roger was the father of Lou's child?”

“Wasn't it the obvious thing to think?”

“Then,” said Toby, “yesterday evening you knew that Lou was pregnant?”

She nodded.

“How did you know?”

“My aunt told me—days before.”

“Mrs Fry? Had Lou confided in her?”

“I think she just guessed.”

“And
you
thought Roger was the father?”

She raised her fine eyebrows, taking a long look at him. “Wasn't he?”

“I don't think so.”

“Oh, my God!” Suddenly, squirming and shuddering, she was convulsed by sobs. Noisy, torturing sobs, they almost rose to a scream in her throat.

Toby gripped her by the shoulders and shook her. “We can't waste all this time. Where were you this afternoon?”

She drew a few long breaths, and her shoulders went limp under his hands. “In the wood,” she said.

“Alone?”

“No, with Charlie.”

Harshly he reminded her: “Charlie was with Druna. We met them coming downstairs.”

“But Charlie came down to the wood with me after lunch. We sat there and talked.”

“How long?”

“I came in just after the inspector arrived asking for Roger. You came in yourself almost immediately after.”

“And how much of that time was Charlie with you?”

With a swift wriggle of her body she sat bolt upright. “What does it matter? What's it got to do with you?”

“He wasn't with you long, was he?”

She hesitated. “Not very.”

Toby stood up. He strode about the room and kicked at the carpet. Eve watched him with a dead, uninterested stare. He wheeled and threw some more words at her: “What was Roger's will?”

She did not seem to take the question in. He raised his voice: “How did Roger leave his money? Do you get any of it?”

“Oh yes,” she said.

Toby cursed.

“I get a thousand a year,” she said.

“And the capital?”

“It all goes to Vanessa.”

“He left his will like that even after he divorced you?”

She nodded.

“Suppose he'd married again,” said Toby. “Would he still have left it like that?”

A curious smile compressed her lips. “He wasn't thinking of marrying anyone else,” she said.

“But if he had?”

She shrugged her shoulders. The smile still gave her face a secretive, mocking look. Toby started walking about the room again.

“These questions I've been asking you,” he said, “they're the ones Vanner's going to ask you. Here's another he'll ask you: Were you at the Halloween party at the Victor Hildebrand Institute?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Yes,” said Toby with a sigh, “of course.”

“If that man asks me questions,” she said, “I shan't answer them. I don't have to.”

“You'll have to answer them at the inquest—or some of them. D'you realize, Eve, that you're the person who arranged that Colin Gillett shouldn't be in his cottage this afternoon?”

She protested quickly with a flash of apprehension in her tear-reddened eyes. “But that was just a casual arrangement, all on the spur of the moment. I didn't want to go to the V.H. myself, so I asked Colin. He was the obvious person to ask. Besides, how could I know that Roger'd go to the cottage? And how could I know what chemicals to use? I don't know how to make poison gases. I don't know
anything
about science—not anything!”

“You spoke to Roger on the telephone this morning, didn't you?”

“Yes,” she said, “yes, I did. Oh, but”—again her eyes widened with momentary fear—“but that was only when he rang me up and asked me to send Vanessa along for lunch. Really that was all. That was absolutely
all
we talked about.”

“Was anyone in the room when you were telephoning? Did anyone hear your end of it?”

She shook her head.

Toby gave a laugh and muttered to himself. Eve sat watching him and then, as he said nothing, reached for a hand mirror and started studying her face in it. She pressed a finger tip over her swollen eyelids and frowned at herself.

Toby asked abruptly: “Why didn't you want to go to the V.H. this afternoon?”

She looked up from the mirror. “These tears are going to show for the rest of the day.”

“Never mind,” said Toby, “they're quite appropriate. Why didn't you want to see Max Potter?”

“You know,” she said, “the beginning of my affair with Max was wonderful. But you've no idea how tiring it is, having to go on and on trying to convince yourself you've got power over a man; you like to get that sort of thing settled. I'd no idea what it'd be like. And I'd no idea it'd make Roger go all intractable and revengeful. In fact”—she looked up at Toby over the rim of the mirror—“in fact, it's all been a pretty good miscalculation on my part. Now I'd no need to tell you that. I haven't told it to anyone else. If there's a thing I hate, it's looking a fool.”

“I see,” he said. “Gradually, I believe, we're getting somewhere.”

“I don't see where,” she said. “I don't see what any of it's got to do with all this—except that whatever happens I'm always to blame. Always, always. I don't know why. I don't know if I'm really worse than other people, but always, always, whatever happens I'm always to blame. I'm always put in the wrong. It doesn't matter what I do; it doesn't matter how hard I try to stick to other people's rules; something always goes wrong, and I'm made to feel guilty and wicked and——”