Rose in Darkness (29 page)

‘We were playing nice games,’ said poor Ginger, protestingly.

‘I don’t want any more games, Ronald and I want to go home!’

Phin cast a look about him that implored, Be natural, don’t let her realise that anything’s up! and to Charlesworth flung out appealing hands. ‘I’ve told you now, there’s nothing more for me to say. And you know where to find me.’

‘You’re not going, Phin?’

‘I must take her home, darling. She’s tired, she... I must work it all out. God knows what now; but I’d just better take her home.’

‘Yes, take me home,’ wailed Ena Mee. ‘I want to go home!’

‘Yes. Yes,’ he said blankly. With the child still clinging to his arm, he turned towards Sari. ‘Understand, my darling! I couldn’t know it was your car.’

‘No, no,’ she said quickly. ‘It was all the Followers. Mr Charlesworth knows now that it’s true about them, it’ll all come all right.’

Ena Mee tugged and whined. ‘Daddy, come
on
!’

‘All right,’ said Charlesworth. ‘Better get her home. I can see you again, later.’

‘What on earth for now? I’ve told you everything, surely it’s been bad enough?’

‘There’s still this niggle in my mind, that picnic basket and tarpaulin, packed in with poor squashed-up Nanny, when they might so easily have gone in the boot.’

‘Oh, my God—not all that over again! There was masses of room, she was perfectly all right, the damn woman makes an injury out of everything. I simply folded up a small square of tarpaulin, put it in the corner, put the basket on top—a small basket, we weren’t feeding the bloody zoo... Well, as it turned out,’ said Phin, with a faint touch of humour, ‘in fact we were but I didn’t know that at the time.’

‘So you didn’t open the boot?’

‘What did it matter? I just put them in beside her, it wasn’t worth a thought.’

‘No, I daresay not,’ said Charlesworth. He was not in fact giving it any very serious thought himself; the experts swore that nothing, certainly no body in wet clothes, had ever been in the boot of the car. ‘OK,’ he said to the mizzling Ena Mee, ‘off you go with Daddy!’ Phin put out his hand and with never a backward glance at wonderful Sari who had given her Ronald Pig and all this marvellous day, she took it and they were gone. ‘It’ll be all right,’ said Sari again. ‘It was the Followers. You all know that now.’ But her heart said: They haven’t finished yet with Phin—and was filled with dread.

You couldn’t accept a drink on duty but Ginger had had a trying time and he knew a trick worth two of that and so did Mr Charlesworth. He appealed to no one in particular: ‘Would it be possible to go to the toilet, please?’

‘Um—yes,’ said Charlesworth. ‘I think I could do with the same.’

‘There’s one off my room,’ said Rufie, indicating a door.

‘I think a quick wee for me too,’ said Sari, as soon as they were gone; but Etho caught her by the hand.
‘And
a quick slug?’

‘You know I never touch the stuff.’

‘OK, darling, let down your Image just for now! You need an occasional crutch like the rest of us—only, to keep it pretty, you keep it private. But it’s only me and Rufie. Sit down again, and I’ll give you a brandy.’ Glass in hand, he moved to the couch where Phin had sat, and pulled her down beside him. He couldn’t make it all out but he knew in his soul that things were going to get rough. ‘Hang on tight,’ he said to them. ‘I’m afraid this isn’t the end.’

Smelling unobtrusively of peppermint, the arm of the law returned. ‘If we might sit down, Miss Morne?’ Charlesworth collapsed into a deep armchair; Ginger looking round for something more suitable for a mere sergeant, could find only the bag of beans. Oh, well, he thought, the whole thing’s such a bloody old send-up anyhow... Sari said: ‘But it’s all explained, I don’t see what more there is to question. If you believe in the Followers, well you know they must have killed Vi Feather—like I keep saying, thinking it was me; and put her into Phin’s car, thinking it was my car, and now we know how it got into mine so surely that’s the end of it?’

‘It leaves that one rather big “if”, said Charlesworth. ‘
If I
believe in the Followers.’

‘You can’t ignore the letter that came today,’ said Etho. ‘From San Juan, stamped and sealed and the lot. And with the second sketch in it.’

‘They believe that she knows—’ said Rufie, roused from his lethargy of terror by the drink, ‘—and perhaps nobody else knows—that she did have a son by Aldo, and that this son would be Aldo’s heir.’

‘What would they care? The marriage was annulled, they’d regard the child as illegitimate.’

‘We’ve been into all that before,’ said Etho. ‘The marriage was in a Catholic church, the Duchess is a Catholic and anyway in these days, even the Grand Duke of San Juan el Pirata has to play it clever with Rome. No man is an island, and even an island isn’t an island any more.’

‘But the letters. And the sketches!’

Charlesworth reached out a hand for them. ‘OK, let’s take the letters and the sketches.’ He opened the plastic. ‘The first one. A blank envelope, pushed through the door.’

‘Sealed with the seal of San Juan,’ said Rufie. ‘Sealed with Aldo’s ring.’

‘From all accounts, anyone might have had in their possession Prince Aldo’s ring. Who saw the letter arrive?’

‘Sari and I did. It was pushed through, while we were sitting here.’

‘One of you deceiving the other. Both of you in collusion. It isn’t awfully convincing is it?’ said Charlesworth.

‘It never was,’ said Etho, easily. ‘They’re both gifted people, either of them could have done the sketch. And they’d both seen the body—only someone who’d seen the body could have done the sketch; most people would draw a dead body just lying out flat.’

They bent upon him looks of horrified incomprehension. ‘Etho, you never imagined—?’

‘I just wondered,’ said Etho. Charlesworth knew a lot by now and what he already knew, there was no sense in trying to hide. Give an air of frankness, don’t seem to be guiltily trying to cover over. ‘It was possible that Sari was just trying to build up her Followers. She never could get us to believe entirely in them.’

‘Yeah,’ said Charlesworth, comfortably; for nowadays he held almost all the trump-cards. ‘Like that business about the car keys, that time at the pub. What about that, Miss Morne?’

‘You mean, someone pinching Charley’s car keys? In the loo there was this woman, all hairy—’

‘Who saw the famous hairy lady?—only you. And there was a door from the car park to the ladies’ room too, there often is in pubs. You just went through, and nicked the keys out of the dashboard. The way you people leave your car keys just hanging!’ said Charlesworth, shocked to his professional soul; unaware of the spirit of admiration for all this easy carelessness, in which Charley had left them there.

‘Why on earth should I take Charley’s keys?’

‘Oh, come on, Miss Morne! The mysterious Followers, up to their tricks again, everyone simply must believe in them now—because, as you say, why should
you
take the keys?’

Against his shoulder, Etho felt how she trembled. But they on their side, held a trump-card also. ‘You can get round everything, Inspector, but you can’t get round that letter that came this morning. Genuinely from San Juan. With the sketch in it. And sealed.’

‘That’s right,’ said Charlesworth, equably. ‘Only—when was it sealed?’

An envelope, genuinely posted; stuck down but with no seal. Ripped open along the top, the contents removed, replaced by the threatening sketch, hurriedly improvised; and upon the torn envelope, anyone in possession of the ring might affix the seal.

Into the bleak little silence, Etho said: ‘Even so, it means nothing. She could be still trying to prove what she really believes—that the Juanese are after her.’

‘Except that—what was in the letter, Miss Morne? Not what did you put into the envelope—what was in the envelope when it arrived?’ And when, sitting shivering there, she made no answer he answered himself. ‘There was a letter in it. I had one too.’

T
HE FINE, LARGE WHITE
envelope, the copy-book, sloping continental script. Within, three pages of typescript, each page initialled at a corner, and the last page signed.

From: La Bellissima, Felicissima, Gran Duchessa di San Juan el Pirata. To Chief Inspector Charlesworth, Scotland Yard, London, England, ‘Sir...

‘Sir, I understand from our agent in England matters which I think it right to put straight. I therefore with the concurrence of my husband, the Grand Duke, dictate the following explanations.

‘The marriage of Miss Sari Morne to our son, El Bienquisto, Aldo, heir to the Hereditary Grand Duke of San Juan, was annulled without consultation with her; and the information sent to her through the film company she worked for. No more was thought about it until, four years later, my son becoming betrothed, the vaults were searched for the family betrothal ring. El Bienquisto then confessed to having taken it for his engagement with Miss Morne and left it in her keeping. Our lawyers applied for its return, offering even to pay a price for it, but with all our efforts, we received no satisfaction. We were informed only that the ring was not in her possession. The ring is of very great value, to us of very great importance.

A young Italian agent was sent over to your country to try to make acquaintance with Miss Morne and her friends and discover if there might be any way of getting back the ring.

‘The young man learned that she had worn it in the film in which she played a role. She wore it with the central stone and the several additions which have each its own significance; but as she wore them all and patently not all of them could have relevant meaning, we accepted that, as worn by her, none of them need; it was all purely ornament.

‘Our agent telephoned us informing us that Miss Morne was going to Rome; in some vague hope of confronting her and asking her directly about the ring, I went myself to Rome. By his direction—it was thought less suspicious if he himself remained in England—the proprietors of the hotel where she was staying reported her movements to me and I learned that she was going with a friend to the convent of the Madonna dei Miracoli, out at Tarquinia, and I drove there hoping that in that atmosphere I might have my best opportunity to speak with her calmly.

‘You will have heard that—to my utter consternation—I saw her taking affectionate leave of a boy who might well be her child through her “marriage” with El Bienquisto, this island’s heir.

‘I could think only that the Mother Abbess of the convent must know something and I asked to see her...’

... asking to see her—asking to see Mother Abbess, a thousand compliments; if Mother Abbess would be so good, and without delay... The great blue eyes wide with a new terror, hands clasped rigid, lips grown white. ‘La Bellissima, Gran Duchessa di San Juan... Capisco? Duchessa di San Juan el Pirata...’ Bobs and curtseys, at once, Signora Duchessa, at once, at once; please to wait just one moment, doubtless Mother Abbess would receive the Signora Duchessa, without a moment’s delay.... The door of the chapel stood open, she went in and flung herself down on her knees before the painted statue, life-size, of Our Lady of Miracles. ‘Ave Maria, gratia plena—Mother of the Saviour, Friend of the Unfortunate, intercede with thy Son that this terrible misfortune may not come upon us! Kindest and tenderest, not for a bauble, how should I trouble you with anything so material as that?—it is for our happiness I pray, for the happiness of those I love; for all the people, perhaps, of our island... Hope of the Helpless, hold out your hand to me; hold out your hand to your child in extremity, my heart faints within me, be merciful, give me a sign...!’ All about her, hung around the walls, the abandoned splints and crutches, the surgical corsets, silvered over, touching and ludicrous, the strait-jacket over-all embroidered in gold. The veil flung over the marble head, of priceless, handmade lace; about the neck and wrists, pinned about the dress of rich brocade, crowning the blonde, painted head, the innumerable tributes of devoted and grateful hearts, giving of their best—jewelled tiara, chains, bracelets, brooches, rings—rubbish and reality, beauty, and crude, cheap ugliness, none the less moving for that.

The painted praying hands were crossed upon the marble breast; and among the glitter of small, chippy diamonds and rubies, the larger semi-precious stones—with a glow almost sombre in its depth and magnificence, worn proudly upon the tapering forefinger—the huge, many jewelled betrothal ring of the Hereditary Grand Dukes of the island of San Juan el Pirata, for all the world to see.

A curtsey at the door, a whisper. Mother Abbess would receive La Signora Duchessa; if la Signora Duchessa would please to come this way...

Sergeant Ellis, sitting waiting meekly in the hall, awaited his turn, followed her in. Quite how to behave towards an Italian religious, head of a great institution and quite evidently a very great lady in her own right, he hardly knew, but with his accustomed
savoir faire,
he stopped in the doorway and bowed. The Reverend Mother Abbess inclined her stately head. He explained his identity, offered his credentials; outlined his errand. If, he said in his excellent, ill-accented Italian, Mother Abbess felt herself unable to help him, he must accept her discretion; but he felt that if she could, many problems for many people might be resolved. He bowed again and assumed an attitude of dog-like anticipation that would have sent Mr Charlesworth beresk with irritation.

Mother Abbess bowed back and indicated a chair. Certainly: the gentleman was perfectly right. The Grand Duchess of San

Juan had agreed with her that there should be no further secrets: the time had come to speak.

Four years ago. A young girl, fraught with many difficulties, work she was quite unused to, the heady courtship, the secret marriage, the realisation that one day she must face the rage of a father of whom even her husband was apparently terrified out of his life. The visits to the doctors, the recommendation of treatment in the clinic, here. For some weeks, a regular attendance, kept secret from the studios who would not be best pleased to find their starlet falling ill while they urgently needed her. And then, one day...