The Stand-In (15 page)

“Isn't this place an inspiration, Desmond?”

Ronnie was pointing with the spade at the nearest gravestones,
Mark, a Faithful Spaniel, 1910—1921. Spotty, a Beloved Friend, 1938—1945
.

“The Aunts went in for Spaniels, Sussex Spaniels, of course. They adored the creatures, who got far better treatment than you ever did, Desmond, and when they departed this vale of sin, the Aunts gave them each a dear little funeral.” Now Ronnie held the spade upright next to the kid to measure her height. “Perfect, I'd say, wouldn't you, Desmond?”

“You bastard!”

“From every point of view perfect. Far enough away from our film friends, and labor-saving, as well. All we need do is dig the coffin out—proper little coffins they had, too, with brass handles. The Aunts had the local carpenter do a bang-up job! Of course, we'll be very careful with the sod so it can be replaced.”

This time Desmond said nothing, knowing Ronnie enjoyed his reactions.

“Can't you see someone standing there reading
Mark, a Faithful Spaniel?
That's what you were, weren't you, Desmond? Those big sad blue eyes of yours, and the dog's life you led!” He leaned against a willow tree and gave Desmond the spade. “Lift the sod carefully and then just keep going until you hit wood.”

Desmond did, lifting the sod carefully, hoping to put Ronnie off guard. He would start digging, then up with the spade, slash at the hand with the pistol, then higher, getting Ronnie in the face.

Ronnie said, “Now help Desmond, Kitten.”

She squatted obediently with her rear resting on air the way only kids could and began to dig. Desmond worked slowly to put her behind him, but Ronnie said, “Oh, no, you don't! She stays between us, old boy.”

He dropped the spade and Ronnie took it. “Then you dig, Kitten. Come along, you can do better than that!” He grinned at her. “Such fun, Kitten! Fun and games
a la
Nazis, what?”

The kid knew she wasn't supposed to be enjoying herself. Every once in a while she took a poke at the ground with the trowel, but only because she was scared of Ronnie. Desmond said, “Put that thing down, Kitten. I'm not letting you do it, Ronnie.”

“You can't stop me.”

“You're going to have to shoot me first.”

“Pity. First you,
then
the child.”

“If you shoot me—”

“It will be more dicey, but I'll manage. They'll find your body and hers, but I have no connection with the kidnapping, Desmond. I don't see why I should come into it. Either way, she gets it, so please do think, Desmond.”

Desmond picked her up and pressed her head against the graveyard smock with one sweaty hand. Ronnie grinned and stuck the spade into the earth on one side of the hole. Desmond wanted to take off the smock but wouldn't set her down, shifting her to one side and pulling off one brown sleeve, then the other, his eyes always on the spade. He wanted that spade in his two raised arms, he wanted it to come down on Ronnie's head.

And then there were his upraised hands, but it wasn't the spade, it was the empty milk bottle.

They had gone back to the Victorian bedroom and Ronnie kept the gun on him and went on needling him and time ticked, but nothing clicked, nothing. That is, until he saw the newspaper and remembered that besides the paper cups and what was left of the bread and cheese, there was the milk bottle.

At two-thirty Ronnie stretched. “Fun's over,” he said. “It's time. We have to get this over, you know. You told them to meet you at four. When she comes there and no you and no kiddie, they will pour on the rozzers, and we don't want to be anywhere near this place.”

He didn't answer. Ronnie didn't believe he would try anything. So okay, much better. He kept his eyes down.

Ronnie stood. “I'm to kill her myself, I imagine? Yes? Well, here goes. You can't stop me, Desmond. Try not to be a greater nit than you are.”

Ronnie called Kitten, taking her hand, and began backing out of the bedroom. Again she kept her eyes on Desmond, asking,
“Must I? Must I?”

Yes. She must.

Ronnie shut the door.

On tiptoe, Desmond got the bottle out of the newspapers. (English paper didn't crackle like American paper.) He had to hold himself back to give Ronnie time. The way he worked it out, he'd get a better angle if Ronnie went down a couple of steps. More leverage. He tried to hear their steps, but the carpet muffled the noise, and when she suddenly screamed he couldn't wait. Ronnie had got smart. He wasn't going to take the chance of turning his back and was killing her now out on the landing.

Out in the hall he saw that she was holding on to the stair rail with both hands and Ronnie, with his back to him, was using both hands to get her loose of the rail—both hands. The back of Ronnie's head was toward him and—was it the bottle or the spade that came down? There wasn't the loud cracking sound he had expected when he thought he would use the spade, just the crack of glass as the bottle broke.

With his mouth open, Desmond watched Ronnie falling down the stairs. He just stood there, not believing he'd actually done it, with the piece of bottle in his hand, but then, hearing her sobs again (he had forgotten her), threw the piece down and saw it land near Ronnie's leg.

After that, he picked her up and pressed her face against him the way he had in the cemetery. She kept on crying and he hid her face so she wouldn't see Ronnie's bloody head as he carried her into the bedroom.

If he did everything possible to wipe out all connection between Ronnie dead in his aunts' house and the kidnapping, wasn't there a chance? Didn't he deserve a chance, because Ronnie deserved what he got? Kitten's face was all red and wet and her nose was running. Thinking hard, he wiped her face. “Sit here, Kitten, just a few minutes, then we'll go, okay? Don't move, Kitten, okay?”

When she looked up at him he saw how blue the white parts of her eyes still were. Just a baby. She was, he told himself, just a baby, so there was a chance. He took Daph's cape to wipe off any fingerprints Kitten and Ronnie might have left in the bedroom.

She said, sniffling, “What are you doing?”

“Nothing.” On the landing he went over the spot where Ronnie and the kid had been. If he missed any there, they would be his own and he was supposed to have been at the house helping Cyril.

“I know what you're doing. You're dusting. Can I dust?”

“I'm finished now.” Giving her the newspaper with the cups and stuff to hold, he picked her up and carried her downstairs, using one hand to wipe the rail and the carved rods underneath in case she had touched them. “You want to help, see you don't drop anything out of the papers, okay?”

As they passed Ronnie he pressed her face against him again and moved as fast as he could. The front door, he saw, was open. Why was it open? Ronnie must have left it that way so he could walk out with Kitten and still keep Desmond covered. He pushed the door with his shoulder and set the little girl down outside, reminding her to see nothing dropped out of the newspaper. Hurrying, he went back into the hall, because he had to wipe off the broken pieces of milk bottle. Fortunately, it had not shattered.

Then he had to find the keys to the Jag, but they weren't in Ronnie's pockets. He noted some letters on purple paper, but was careful not to touch them. He took the pistol, deciding to return it to the glove compartment. He would try the Jag; if Ronnie had left the keys, they would use it; otherwise, they would have to walk until he could figure out the best way to meet Coral Reid at four.

He wrapped his hand in his handkerchief to close the door. Should he open the catch on one of the windows so they would believe Ronnie got into the house that way? No. Ronnie had known the way to get in; let them find it themselves. He left the door open to show how the supposed killer might have entered.

To save time he carried the kid as far as the dog cemetery. Her voice jiggled with his pace.

“Where we're going?”

He didn't want to say graveyard. “To where we were before.”

“To dig? I won't. I don't like to dig. It's
dirty
to dig.”

Because he was winded, he nodded. It was Kitten who reminded him to take off the white shoes and stockings and put the brown smock on again. He shuddered, but it was safer. Kitten helped him stamp the sod back in place. That wasn't dirty. “Now we can go,” he said. “We'll put these back and go.” The smock, the spade, the trowel. “Hurry now.” She trotted along.

“You and me?”

“That's it. Hurry up, Kitten.”

“Not Ronnie.”

“Ronnie hurt himself. Come on, Kitten.”

“He's dead. He can't come with us.”

“He fell downstairs and hurt himself, Kitten.”

“You hit him with the bottle and he fell down and got dead.”

Desmond stopped. “You mustn't say that, Kitten! Don't say that!”

She lifted her face to see him, and he saw her short neck and then her long lashes and her big eyes with the bluish white around their blue. “Why?” she asked.

He began to walk on with the spade and the trowel and the smock, so fast that she had to run to keep up with him. “Desmond, why? Why? Why?”

When they got into the car, the key was in the ignition and Desmond turned it. “Here we go, Kitten.”

She squirmed happily. “To see Mommy.”

“Yes,” he said.

“I wouldn't go before,” the kid said. “Ronnie said I could go to Mommy, but I wouldn't go when Ronnie told me. I wouldn't!”

Desmond stared at her. “Ronnie told you to
go
, Kitten?”

“Now I'm going to see Mommy, with you, now!”

He pulled up. “Kitten, Ronnie told you to go? When? Where were you? Kitten!”

“On the stairs, right on top of the stairs. He told me to go out the door.”

“To go out? The door was
open?
Kitten, pay attention! The front door was open?”

She nodded complacently, pleased with herself.

Ronnie had showed her the open front door:
Go. Run. Scram. Get the hell out
. But because Ronnie scared her, she wouldn't. She had leeched on to the railing with both hands, and the scream he had heard came when Ronnie tried to pry her loose so she would go down the stairs and out of the house.

It had been a put-on, the whole bit. Ronnie had never meant to kill her. The dog grave, the Nazi bit, the needling, only a put-on. The kid was supposed to scram out of the house, that was why the door had been open, because it would have been too heavy for her.

Ronnie would have told him then that it had been a put-on and that anyone else would have known it long before. When Ronnie kept telling him to “come to his senses” it had meant: Get it through your thick skull that I'm putting you on. Fun and games, fun and games.

Anyone else would have seen through it. Anyone else would have told Ronnie to put the gun away, he'd had his fun and games. Enough was enough, anyone else would have said, enough was enough. He'd take the kid back and take his medicine if he got caught.

15

Coral kept saying, lighting cigarettes and putting them out, “You'll be careful, Millie? If they tell you to go to a dark place, don't you go in. On the street they won't dare try anything.”

Coral was a mother. Coral loved Cornie. Coral would go in any place Cornie might be. Millie knew the reason Coral kept telling her to be careful was because she thought Kitten was dead already. The less she said it, the louder she said it.
“Kitten's dead. They killed Kitten already. Kitten's dead.”

Coral whispered, “Millie, maybe Nube is right, maybe the cops—”

Kitten is dead, this meant.

“Listen, Millie, why can't Carlos make up a policewoman to look like me? Why can't Carlos do that?”

This was after Carlos said he couldn't make Millie up because she couldn't stop her tears. At first Carlos wiped them. (He knew something was wrong.) While he carefully dabbed at her wet face, he made a noise in his throat like a dog, then he stopped, and then he got sore. He said he could work under any conditions, God knows he did, but not under water. The hairline was too close to the eyebrows. He would have to shave the eyebrows and wax the hairline; that would change the shape of the face so Coral's wig would fit, then he would raise the brows and curve them to open the eyes, and if he used two and a half sets of lashes the eyes would pass. He would shade the nose to make it smaller and the lines around the mouth had to be softened, too. Shading the cheeks could fix them, but for Christ's sake, he couldn't work under water!

Coral asked him to go inside and have a drink. By that time her sister would be in control.

Coral looked at Millie, not knowing what to say. If Bran were here he would tell Millie that she was an actress now, and actresses had to forget their own feelings.

“Call him in,” Millie said after a minute. She had stopped crying.

Millie heard the scrape of Carlos's little razor on her eyebrows; after that, nothing. It took forever and no time at all. When he finished, Carlos pulled her up, took the plastic cape off, and pulled her to a mirror. She wouldn't have believed that she could look so much like Coral. It was only when Coral stood next to her and both their faces were reflected in the mirror that she saw she didn't look like her.

Carlos grunted. “Keep your hands off my work, and no more crying.”

“She won't cry,” Coral said. “A swell job, Carlos.”

“Swell. Thanks,” Millie said. She would pass. They would take her for Coral, but would that help Kitten?

Coral said it was time. She called the garage to bring the Ferrari around.

Coral couldn't go down with her, of course. Two Coral Reids? It was too hot for Millie to wear Coral's sable, but Coral said she had to take it. There were people downstairs in the lobby, but they paid no attention to her. She walked out and the skinny doorman in the derby held the door open for her and then the car door, and she put the sable coat down on the seat and the flight bag on top of it. “Drive on the left,” she told herself. “This is England; don't forget to drive on the left.”