The Stand-In (17 page)

She was still crying, but she nodded and let go his sleeve.

17

Nobody was around to see him go barefoot into Daph's house and up the stairs and in her door. That was because everybody was having tea—no, it was because he didn't give a damn if he were caught. If he did care, all London would have given up tea as of today.

The flat was just the same. Daph hadn't come back a day early. Did he care about that? Yes. At least she was out of it. Daph wouldn't think he was so wizard if he told her what he'd done wearing her uniform with her wig shoved into the bra and her shoes and stockings stuck into the pockets of the trench coat. Pulling the shoes out, Desmond walked into the bedroom. The first thing he saw, because the late afternoon sun hit them, was the row of Daph's make-up on the dressing table.

He picked up one of the bottles, then put it down. Nuts to the Queen, nuts to the queens in the My-Oh-My Club, to the honorable Boy Flyte-Martin. “Balls,” said the Queen. “If I had them I'd be King. The King laughed; he had two.” He was naked again. He had two—no, none. “It is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.” Ronnie had quoted that and Ronnie had been right. He had taken the kid, not Ronnie. Ronnie wasn't his fate, he was his own fate. Only he would have taken a helpless kid without really meaning to kidnap her, only he would have let Ronnie believe it was the real thing just to impress him, only he would have been fool enough not to know that Ronnie was putting him on.

Tomorrow they would find Ronnie, and how long after that would it take the police to find him? And then the whole story would come out, because anyone who knew Ronnie—Boy Flyte-Martin, for example—would know Ronnie had never planned to kill anyone. Pimping, yes, stealing, blackmail, even kidnapping, but not murder. Leave it to him, Desmond Carr, the first cluck who was a murderer and a big laugh at the same time!

Desmond hurried into his clothes because if he stood there thinking of the way everyone was going to laugh, he might start banging his head against the wall. Not in Daph's place. He hung her uniform back in the wardrobe. Being that uncrushable stuff, it wasn't even wrinkled and was, because Ronnie and the kid had made him wear that brown smock, remarkably clean. He put the shoes back. They were dirty.

“Now
what?”
old Daph would wonder.

Good old Daph. He wanted to rest against her softness once more. The sleeping pills in the small round pillbox were on the shelf in her bathroom. Desmond carefully put them in his pocket, because he would rather die than go to jail. He deserved a life sentence, but he would rather die, and that would be his own fault, too.

When he took the pills he would lie down and tell himself that the pillow was old Daph, not Coral Reid this time, just good old Daph. Then Daph turned into the kid's mother. He felt her arms around him; he pushed against her small high breasts. You know why? Because even old Daph wouldn't have him if she knew that he'd killed a guy because of a joke; no one would, only that kid's dopey mother!

He picked up the trench coat and, walking backwards to take one last look, went out into the hall.

When the bell rang downstairs, Desmond had only been home long enough to get all of Daph's make-up off and to boil some water on the gas ring. Suddenly he had wanted the taste of strong coffee in his mouth and the warm of it in his gut. He took his doorkey to the window to throw out. This place was so old-fashioned you had to go downstairs to let anyone in the front door. He was damned if he was going all the way down to let the cops in, so taking the key, Desmond opened the window, yelled “Key” and tossed it down.

By the time Desmond got back to the kitchen he realized there had been no police car outside. It was Cyril's car. The thing was to get Cyril out as soon as possible, and the only way to do that was to act as if everything was fine, so when he opened the door he stretched, yawned, then tousled his hair as if he was still half asleep. (Not any more he wasn't.) “Hi, Cyril. I was just making coffee to wake up. Make a cup for you?”

“Late night?”

“Late night.” He made it sound like a party because, nosey as Cyril was, nights with birds was one thing he kept his nose out of.

Cyril pulled out a kitchen chair, gave it that “Are you clean enough” look of his, then sat tidily. “Thank you, Desmond, but I haven't time for coffee. I must dart off to meet Mr. Ossian at the Stoke Newington place.”

Desmond turned his back, reaching for the instant coffee jar so that Cyril couldn't see his face, but Cyril caught something.

“Not feeling quite the thing, Desmond, are you? I knew you wouldn't be too too perky, that's why I popped in. I told Mr. Ossian I'd meet him but had to see you first. I had to make certain you see the incident in the right light.”

They'd find Ronnie today. Not tomorrow
.

“Are you wondering how I know about the little incident in the commissary, Desmond? I knew something was up when I got your note with the keys in it, so I rang up Mr. Ossian's secretary to say the keys were delayed, and he told me what had happened.”

Coral Reid breaking up over his voice seemed a hundred years ago.

“One must not permit these vulgar stupid people to upset one, Desmond. To laugh at a high voice—vulgar, stupid bitch!”

“I'm okay, Cyril. No kidding.”

“When one is my age, one doesn't give her sort a second thought.” Cyril smiled timidly. “I expect the night you had should wipe that snickering right off the slate.”

Desmond put two spoonfuls of instant coffee into a cup and poured in the water. Cyril wouldn't look beyond the living room into the bedroom. As it was, his thin nostrils were pulled in to block out the smell of woman. “I'm okay, Cyril.” Desmond smiled and nodded. “You better get going. Mr. Ossian won't like waiting.”

“I suppose not. Desmond, you needn't have anything further to do with the Stoke Newington house, even if Mr. Ossian finds something else which wants doing.”

Cyril had a heart as big as a house, a heart as big as the hole in his, Desmond's, head. He tried to help him, like Daph did. Old Daph and old Cyril, what a crummy pair of guardian angels! Cyril giggled and called himself the Good Fairy whenever Desmond tried to thank him.

But this time Cyril wouldn't be the Good Fairy. Cyril would drive to Stoke Newington in his beat-up Morris Minor and once he got inside that door he would find Ronnie. And when the cops questioned him, he would certainly tell them that Desmond had been working in the house and that he knew Ronnie. Suddenly he wanted to get it over with. “Cyril, I'm taking the rest of the day off. I have a bird coming here.”

“After last night's session? Dear, dear!”

“You know the mod girls! See you tomorrow.” If Cyril believed he was going to have a party, wild horses couldn't keep him. “Thanks, Cyril.”

“For nothing.”

“For a lot.”

Cyril stopped to pick the trench coat off the floor and fold it over the back of a chair, but then he left. Desmond took a gulp of the coffee, but it was stone cold. It wouldn't warm his gut, but he could use it to help swallow Daph's pills; he took four, then three, then six, then one.

In England the old hospitals like St. Andrews and some drugstores still used these round pillboxes; even the writing was old-fashioned. Desmond decided to burn the box so that it couldn't be traced and put it in a saucer. Maybe they would think he'd written a farewell note and then burned it. He scratched a kitchen match and touched the flame to the box. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Old Daph had this terrible joke about asses to asses. She thought she was pretty groovy with that asses to asses. The kitchen match didn't do a thing, because the box had a wax coating. It would take time to burn it, too long; he was too tired, so, using a fork, Desmond scratched off the words St. Andrews and Daph's name. Now the pills could be from any hospital. Hell with it.

Maybe he was getting weak and dopey already, maybe he just wanted to be. Let it be soon. Let it be before the kid's mother got herself into trouble withholding evidence because she wanted to help him, too. She was in deep enough now. Desmond put the box on the table and (from habit) the saucer in the sink. Let them see the label that he had taken fifteen Barbitone pills; maybe then they wouldn't have to slit him up after he was dead. For some reason he saw himself at the end of the striptease in the My-Oh-My Club and above his jock was a long cut up his middle. He thought how the expression on the faces at all the unsteady little tables would change if they had to look at him then.

18

Alone in the Rolls, Nubar Ossian was studying the revised Call Sheet for the next day. He had his copy of the shooting script on the seat beside him and was skimming the thirty scenes which were (optimistically) down for tomorrow.

He noted that the little girl was not on the
List of Artistes
. He had told Alec the simple truth about being able to replace Kitten, but he was scared Coral might go to pieces seeing a new kid, tomorrow. Change the shooting schedule, or work on Coral? Work on Coral, he decided. He knew how to get to her. (It must be partly because of this that Bran was so hipped on directing Coral himself, but, hell, he was no Svengali—he just knew how to get to actors. Excuse me,
Artistes!
Nube grinned.)

Turning the first page, seeing
MAKE-UP
and
WARDROBE
under
ART DEPARTMENT
reminded him of Carlos making Millie up as Coral, but he put that out of his mind. Always with a problem he did what he could, then let it lay and got on to the next problem. (His first wife said she hated him because he ate problems like grapes. He visualized eating grapes, the teeth snapping the tight skin, taste buds working away, the biting, the slide, the sweet, the swallow. No, he didn't eat up problems like grapes; as usual, Enid didn't know one damn thing about him.)

Nube rarely drove alone. (There were only two things he did alone!) The queer from the antique shop was supposed to have come with him but he said he'd had to go soothe his assistant's feelings. Very fine, very kind, but a guy who put hurt feelings before Nube Ossian, who could throw a lot of business his way, wouldn't get very far. This reminded him of Alec. Last night it was true that Alec had, for once, tried to help somebody out but he had been right to tell him off. Let Alec think it over a while. It would be soon enough when they got back home to forgive Alec and stick him back on the payroll. Alec was a luxury he could afford. It was a shot in the arm every time he looked at Alec and remembered how in the old country his folks had been Alec's poor relations.

“I believe we're here, sir,” the chauffeur said, pulling up in front of the big gates, getting out to open them.

They drove up to the house and Nube got out of the car. He was surprised to find that the heavy front door was open and filed a mental note to complain to the queer.

The first thing he saw was the dead man at the bottom of the stairs, the arm of a bronze statue lamp pointing at him.

Nube's first reaction was anger, because he hadn't ordered a corpse in the entrance hall, and then annoyance that the carpet would certainly have to be cleaned. Coming to, he forced himself to move closer and saw the broken milk bottle and how the man's open eyes reflected the light. Dead eyes were different. Nobody ever got them right in a close-up. Contact lenses? He noticed the look of surprise:
“That you should hit me with a milk bottle! That you should shove me downstairs!”
Because now he noticed the blood spatter on the bannister on the landing.

This was no bum who had sneaked into the house. He took in the clothes. Even with the jacket hiked up from the fall, it was Savile Row, and the shoes were right, and more than the clothes, the man was right. He and his family were used to kid glove treatment; no wonder he looked surprised.

Where was his office?

He had been assured that the phones were in and the lines open, so he could call the cops. The back of the house, that was it, where it would be out of camera range. He stepped around the dead man and walked along the hall toward the heavily studded green baize door that separated the quality like the dead guy from the servants' quarters.

He couldn't remember that emergency number in London. Should he go back and ask his driver? Much quicker to ask the operator, and something, he didn't know what, was telling him to take another look at the corpse before the cops arrived, but he wished, for some reason, that Alec was with him.

19

Cybil rang and rang, but there was no response. Craning his neck, he stood well out in the road to try to see whether Desmond had come to the window, but as far as he could see, no Desmond. Cyril pulled a face remembering the girl Desmond had told him about, but he might at least call out the window that he didn't want any interruptions. “Oh, well,” he said pettishly, “he can wait, then!”

But he had to tell somebody. Cyril took one more good look at Desmond's window, then hurried off toward the telephone at the corner. Luckily—he'd have burst with the news—Boy was at home. “Cyril Moore here, Boy.” He cleared his throat. “Delighted I caught you.”

“I'm spending most of my time at home these days, but I am expecting someone directly, so—”

“Boy, Ronnie Ashton's been killed!”

Boy said that it wasn't true, it couldn't be true, he'd been meaning to ring Ronnie. Should have done. (How oddly people reacted to news of death!) It took several minutes before Boy even asked how Ronnie had been killed. “Murdered, Boy! Bashed on the head with a milk bottle and thrown or fell down a flight of stairs in Stoke Newington. You remember his aunts' place, the decorating job he wangled for me from the film people? That's why I was there, Boy, in fact it was I who
identified
poor Ronnie. I shall
never
forget the sight, never! So ghastly, Boy, positively the most dreadful experience of my life! And after that, of course, the police were all
over
me!”