The Sleeping Partner (26 page)

‘Four-two-six,' I said to the attendant.

We went imperceptibly up. The attendant flashed his lighter for me but I shook my head. As the door slid open I said: ‘ Which way is it from here? I usually go up on the opposite side.'

‘Turn to your right, sir, and then left at the end of the passage.'

I followed the directions. In the third passage a door was open. As I got near it the page boy was just coming out.

I said: ‘ Oh, have you brought something for me?'
He smiled. ‘Yes sir. Or I think perhaps it's for madam.'
‘Good. Thank you.' I gave him half a crown.
I went in and the door closed behind me. Then I had time and

breath to light the cigarette.

A drawing-room with french windows and a balcony, a lavender-blue bedroom, a bathroom leading off. The orchids said: ‘ To my darling Margaret from her adoring Ray.' It was like an obituary notice. Not much personal in the bedroom except one suitcase marked already with the trophies of travel:
‘Hôtel Splendide, Deauville; Hôtel du Pare, Bruxelles.'
On the bureau were a half-dozen labels neatly printed:
‘ French, SS Otrantes, Stateroom Baggage.'

The hotel was very quiet. People went out of London on a summer weekend. The french windows were ajar and I closed them. A freckle of rain had been falling on the edge of the expensive cinnamon-coloured carpet. With the windows shut it was still quieter. There was a telephone in the drawing-room cunningly disguised in the writing bureau, and another phone by the bed. I went into the bedroom and hesitated and then lifted the receiver and asked the hotel operator to get me Letherton 407.

It took a little time to get through. I could hear the receptionist talking about Danny Kaye. Then a voice said: ‘Letherton 407.'

‘Darling,' I said. ‘Stella, darling …'

‘Mike, where are you?'

‘Never mind. Have the police been again?'

‘Yes, a few minutes after you left. Are you in London?'

‘Yes. But they got my car.'

‘So they told me. What about the wedding?'

‘It went on. How's John?'

‘Sleeping now. But Mike—'

‘Don't worry about the wedding. Are the police still there?'

‘Oh, no, they left soon after. They left as soon as they knew you'd gone. It was a man called Baker.'

‘I know him.'

‘John insisted on seeing him for a moment. Are Ray French and this girl—?'

‘What did he say to the police? D'you know?'

‘One thing, Mike, I must tell you. It was John who first told the police.'

‘What? About what?'

‘About Lynn being dead and where she was. I didn't know that until they came this afternoon.'

I said: ‘I can't believe it. If he—'

‘Well, listen. Apparently what he did was—'

I said: ‘I'll have to ring off now. I'm sorry. I'll ring you again as soon as I can.'

‘But Mike—'

I put the phone down. Ray French was standing in the doorway of the bedroom watching me.

S
OMETIMES YOU
wait for a moment, and when it comes you don't know what to do with it; the event has suddenly run back on itself, gone unmanageable. Imagination is swallowed by temperament.

He said: ‘Don't bother about me, old boy. There's no need to cut it short on my account.'

I got up and picked my cigarette out of the ashtray. ‘I'm sorry I couldn't make the wedding.'

He shrugged. ‘These affairs are never passionately interesting, are they, except to the people concerned.' He threw his gloves on the bed, passed a hand over his sleek hair, straightened his jacket with a brief downward tug of the hands behind the pockets.

‘It wasn't lack of interest.'

‘Well, I expect you had your plate pretty full, did you?'

‘Full of what?'

His eyes came back from the mirror and went over me. There wasn't much expression on his face. It was like an empty house. ‘I haven't seen the papers but somebody told me. Dear boy, what's been going on? Is Lynn really dead? I can't tell you how distressed I am.'

‘She's dead,' I said. ‘I really came along to ask you why you killed her.'

It might have been a stone, the question thrown at him like that. There was a flicker of dislike round the corners of his eyes and lips as he turned back into the drawing-room. I followed quickly, thinking he might be going to call some member of the hotel staff, but instead he went across to a table where there was a siphon and a glass.

‘How thirsty marriage makes one. I'll ring down for some whisky—'

‘Where's Margot?'

‘Downstairs.'

I said: ‘That night at Glyndebourne was the first time Lynn saw you with her, wasn't it? I thought she was raging at me that night, but really she was raging at you.'

He went to the french windows, opened them, stood frowning out at the day.

‘I hope this strong wind drops before tomorrow. Margot's not at all a good sailor.'

‘I said: ‘Doesn't it worry you that I may have to pay for a murder you committed?'

‘It worries me that you may suffer,' he said over his shoulder. ‘As your friend, that worries me madly. But
if
I had done what you say, the alternative would worry me more.' He sighed. ‘Oh, well, that's what life's like. I'll get the whisky.'

He moved to go round me into the bedroom, but I got in his way. He smiled at me. It was a pretty queer smile.

‘What is this, Mike – a hold-up?'

I said: ‘ I suppose what Lynn was hoping to do was manœuvre me into a position where I might agree to a divorce and a permanent settlement on her, a larger share of the partnership – not alimony which would stop if she married you. She loved you but she knew you had to be bought.'

There was no doubt that his good-fellowship was losing its brightness. Like a badge suddenly tarnished. ‘And always supposing that was her aim, would you have done it?'

‘Done what?'

‘Agreed to settle a larger income on her without conditions?'

I screwed out my cigarette, felt the hot tobacco under my fingers. ‘I suppose you thought you couldn't risk it. Was that it?'

‘Always supposing that was the set-up, it would, I admit, have been a dubious point.'

I watched him. ‘And then Margot came along, eh?'

‘You tell me.' He had moved back into the drawing-room.

I said: ‘I don't know why you went to see Lynn that last afternoon, and I don't know what part Margot took in it. But I think you'd probably been playing them both along until the last minute, and Lynn, having seen you with Margot and being full of anxiety, decided to bring things to a head by bullying her lawyer into filing a petition at once. Probably on the Thursday morning she phoned you to say, “Darling, I'm leaving Mike tonight and coming to the flat, can you meet me there?” That sort of thing? And you had the job of going round and telling her you were going to marry Margot after all.'

He had taken the carnation out of his button-hole and was sniffing it. The flower looked faded, and after a minute he crumpled the stem between his short, manicured pianist's fingers.

I said: ‘Surely you didn't take Margot with you, to reason with this – nymphomaniac.'

He smiled and said: ‘ Lynn was an exciting woman, and usually you don't find women like her with a high standard of morals. But I really believe she'd been faithful to you until I came along. After that there was never anyone else in it at all.'

For the first time there was something in his voice. Some flickering memory …

I said: ‘ If you felt that way about her, why did you turn her down?'

‘You've already arrived at the answer, my dear Mike. Money. Just money.'

In spite of his care he was talking. There was life after all in the empty house.

‘When you're wealthy, old boy, it's easy to live on a lofty moral plane. You are in a well-paid racket. You get thousands of pounds for making repulsive little airborne computers which will enable as yet unweaned babies to be more skilfully and scientifically blinded and scalded to death. My racket is a badly-paid one. Except for a dozen at the top we artistic fools who make music may starve to death for all the public or the state cares. When I was in my teens, Mike, I used to practise at the piano seven or eight hours a day. I thought I was going to make a baker's dozen of the top twelve. But not so. I can play Beethoven and Schumann and Busoni with such technical expertise that in your profession I should more than get by. In my profession I don't quite get by. So I'm expected to rot in the gutter like an old banana skin.'

He bent his head, pulling bits of the flower off and sniffing them before dropping them on the floor. ‘Not so again. I am quite unwilling to rot or to starve. I like the good things of life. I enjoy driving a fine motorcar just as much as you do. Caviare tastes as well on my lips; possibly I know more than you about a Latour 1934. So I've had to scrape the barrel and turn to use a gift for pleasing women. I'll give you a few tips sometime.'

‘I understand a lot but I don't understand why you had to kill her.'

He was at last left with only the stalk of the white carnation in his fingers. It was already well broken and he began to nip off bits with his thumb-nail.

‘My dear man, if you have any suspicions go and confide them to the police. It's perfectly obvious to me that you put her under the coals yourself.'

I said: ‘Were you smiling when you dragged her into the cellar and shovelled coal over her?'

His eyes twitched. ‘Was that how you did it?'

I said: ‘Lynn was my wife, Ray. I know now I didn't love her or look after her as I should have done. I shall always blame myself for that. But she didn't deserve to be – broken like that, buried – you should have seen her, after three weeks.'

‘You saw her?'

‘I saw her.'

He stared at me and licked his lips.

The telephone in the bedroom began to whir.

I don't think he had noticed the phone in here because he made a move towards the bedroom door. I got in his way again. ‘I'll answer it,' I said.

‘I'm sorry. You won't.'

I had turned to go into the bedroom myself but he gripped my arm. We looked at each other. I should have seen the danger. (But he'd won all along the line; he'd nothing to gain by pressing now.)

I shoved him away. He leaned back, dropping his hands, but before I could get into the bedroom he had grabbed my other arm, pulled me and himself three or four paces into the drawing-room. We stopped, breathing hard, hesitating on the edge of worse. The telephone went on.

He made a move to go round me, but I caught at him and we lurched against the wall, slid along it. There's a perverted intimacy about violence; I could smell the stuff of his suit, the cigarette smoke on his breath; this is what Lynn loved; and in loving perhaps learned to hate; another obligation on me? Perhaps I could pay off in the only currency left.

Anger suddenly caught at me, and I swung at his smooth clean face. Knuckles on it, pleasure in marking, in damaging. Suddenly his face changed, twisted, and he came for me with both hands; as I raised mine he kicked violently up at my knee. I lurched away and he followed and caught my flying arm, wrenched at it; I fell across his shoulder and was flung over it five feet across the room.

It was like being knocked out by an iron door. I had just sense and control to lie still, I could just see the hazy light from the window and his shadow standing over me. I thought he was going to kick me again, but the telephone which had been silent began again. He went out to it.

I rolled over and got to my knees and tried to lose the meal I hadn't eaten. Then I began to crawl towards the telephone in the writing-desk. I got to it but couldn't get up so had to pull the receiver off. Then I lay on the floor with my ear to it.

A cautious voice saying: ‘… fortunate to get you a seat on the twenty twenty-eight for Brussels. There happened to be just one seat left, sir.'

‘That's Sabena?'

‘Yes, sir. Leaving Waterloo at seven. Er – do I understand you'll not be occupying your suite tonight?'

‘I shall not, but – er – my wife … She'll be along later, of course. She'll be here. But if you'll make out my account now …'

‘Certainly, sir. Shall we send the air ticket up to you?'

‘No, I'll collect it. Oh, and – er – will you see that the suite is
on no account
disturbed – until my wife comes, that is. I shall be leaving some private papers about …'

‘Of course, sir. I'll send up instructions at once.'

‘Thank you.' There was a click.

I didn't bother to try to put the phone back. It took all I had to get to my feet. I got to my feet. I looked round for something handy and saw the soda siphon, I made across to it and picked it up. Ray came out of the bedroom and stood back against the door. His face was like a smart woman's when the make-up is taken off.

He said: ‘Feeling ill? You pale lily-fingered scientists bending over a bench all day, you've got no guts. You should try being an artist for a few weeks, it would get you in condition.'

I didn't say anything. His glance strayed to the dangling telephone. After a pause he said: ‘Murder's one of the rarer carnal experiences, isn't it? You can't qualify or divide it. And at the time perhaps you don't want to.'

The teeth were showing at last. I said: ‘ Why aren't you taking Margot with you?'

He walked over and slammed the telephone back on its rest. ‘Have you ever seen Lynn in a temper – suddenly white hot, an electric wire short-circuiting. Have you? Has she ever come at you with her nails just like a cat, wanting your eyes out? What did you do in self-defence against the sweet girl? Did you fight Marquess of Queensberry? I was in the Commandos, my dear Mike, while you were hatching nasty eggs in your safe little back room. In the Commandos they teach you fascinating technical tricks of another kind. The only thing they don't teach you is that some people's necks break easier than others. Lynn's must have been very flimsy. I let her go as soon as she dropped her claws.'