An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (23 page)

But he had an advantage. As she threw herself through the gate she saw that he had parked the van some fifty yards up the road and left the engine running. She chased after him but could see that it was hopeless. Her only hope of catching up with him was to get the Mini. She tore down the lane, feeling in her shoulder bag as she ran. The prayer book and her notebook were both gone but her fingers found the car keys. She unlocked the Mini, threw herself in, and reversed it violently on to the road. The rear lights of the van were about a hundred yards ahead of her. She didn’t know what speed it could do, but doubted whether it could outpace the Mini. She trod on the accelerator and gave pursuit. She turned left out of the lane on to the subsidiary road and now she could see the van still ahead. He was driving fast and was holding the distance. Now the road turned and for a few seconds he was out of sight. He must be getting very close now to the junction with the Cambridge Road.

She heard the crash just before she herself reached the junction, an instantaneous explosion of sound which shook the hedges and made the little car tremble. Cordelia’s hands tightened momentarily on the wheel and the Mini jerked to a stop. She ran forward round the corner and saw before her the gleaming, headlamp-lit surface of the main Cambridge Road. It was peopled with running shapes. The transporter, still upright, was an immense oblong mass blocking the skyline, a barricade slewed across the road. The van had crumpled under its front wheels like a child’s toy. There was a smell of petrol, a woman’s harsh scream, the squeal of braking tyres.

Cordelia walked slowly up to the transporter. The driver was still in his seat, gazing rigidly ahead, his face a mask of dedicated concentration. People were shouting at him, stretching out their arms. He didn’t move. Someone—a man in a
heavy leather coat and goggles—said: “It’s shock. We’d better drag him clear.”

Three figures moved between Cordelia and the driver. Shoulders heaved in unison. There was a grunt of effort. The driver was lifted out, rigid as a manikin, his knees bent, his clenched hands held out as if still grasping the immense wheel. The shoulders bent over him in secret conclave.

There were other figures standing round the crushed van. Cordelia joined the ring of anonymous faces. Cigarette ends glowed and faded like signals, casting a momentary glow on the shaking hands, the wide, horrified eyes. She asked: “Is he dead?”

The man in goggles replied laconically: “What do you think?”

There was a girl’s voice, tentative, breathless. “Has anyone called the ambulance?”

“Yeah. Yeah. That chap in the Cortina’s gone off to phone.”

The group stood irresolute. The girl and the young man to whom she was clinging began to back away. Another car stopped. A tall figure was pushing his way through the crowd. Cordelia heard a high, authoritative voice.

“I’m a doctor. Has anyone called the ambulance?”

“Yes, sir.”

The reply was deferential. They stood aside to let the expert through. He turned to Cordelia, perhaps because she was nearest.

“If you didn’t witness the accident, young woman, you’d better get on your way. And stand back, the rest of you. There’s nothing that you can do. And put out those cigarettes!”

Cordelia walked slowly back to the Mini, placing each foot carefully before the other like a convalescent trying her first painful steps. She drove carefully round the accident, bumping the Mini on the grass verge. There was the wail of approaching
sirens. As she turned off the main road, her driving mirror glowed suddenly red and she heard a whoosh of sound followed by a low, concerted groan which was broken by a woman’s high, single scream. There was a wall of flame across the road. The doctor’s warning had been too late. The van was on fire. There was no hope now for Lunn; but then, there never had been.

Cordelia knew that she was driving erratically. Passing cars hooted at her and flashed their lights and one motorist slowed down and shouted angrily. She saw a gate and drew in off the road and switched off the engine. The silence was absolute. Her hands were moist and shaking. She wiped them on her handkerchief and laid them in her lap feeling that they were separate from the rest of her body. She was hardly aware of a car passing and then slowing to a halt. A face appeared at the window. The voice was slurred and nervous but horribly ingratiating. She could smell the drink on his breath.

“Anything wrong, Miss?”

“Nothing. I’ve just stopped for a rest.”

“No point in resting alone—a pretty girl like you.”

His hand was on the door handle. Cordelia felt in her shoulder bag and drew out the gun. She pushed it into his face.

“It’s loaded. Go away at once or I’ll shoot.”

The menace in her voice struck cold even to her own ears. The pale, moist face disintegrated with surprise, the jaw fell. He backed away.

“Sorry, Miss, I’m sure. My mistake. No offence.”

Cordelia waited until his car was out of sight. Then she turned on the engine. But she knew that she couldn’t go on. She turned off the engine again. Waves of tiredness flowed over her, an irresistible tide, gentle as a blessing, which neither her exhausted mind nor body had the will to resist. Her head fell forward and Cordelia slept.

Cordelia slept soundly but briefly. She didn’t know what woke her, whether the blinding light of a passing car sweeping across her closed eyes or her own subconscious knowledge that rest must be rationed to a brief half-hour, the minimum necessary to enable her to do what had to be done before she could give herself over to sleep. She eased her body upright, feeling the stab of pain in her strained muscles and the half-pleasurable itch of dried blood on her back. The night air was heavy and odorous with the heat and scents of the day; even the road winding ahead looked tacky in the glare of her headlights. But Cordelia’s chilled and aching body was still grateful for the warmth of Mark’s jersey. For the first time since she had pulled it over her head she saw that it was dark green. How odd that she hadn’t noticed its colour before!

She drove the rest of the journey like a novice, sitting bolt upright, eyes rigidly ahead, hands and feet tense on the controls. And here at last were the gates of Garforth House. They loomed in her headlights far taller and more ornamental than she remembered them, and they were closed. She ran from
the Mini praying that they wouldn’t be locked. But the iron latch, although heavy, rose to her desperate hands. The gates swung soundlessly back.

There were no other cars in the drive and she parked the Mini some little way from the house. The windows were dark and the only light, gentle and inviting, shone through the open front door. Cordelia took the pistol in her hand and, without ringing, stepped into the hall. She was more exhausted in body than when she had first come to Garforth House, but tonight she saw it with a new intensity, her nerves sensitive to every detail. The hall was empty, the air expectant. It seemed as if the house had waited for her. The same smell met her of roses and lavender, but tonight she saw that the lavender came from a huge Chinese bowl set on a side table. She recalled the insistent ticking of a clock, but now she noticed for the first time the delicate carving on the clock case, the intricate scrolls and whirls on the face. She stood in the middle of the hall, swaying slightly, the pistol held lightly in her drooping right hand, and looked down. The carpet was a formal geometrical design in rich olive greens, pale blues and crimson, each pattern shaped like the shadow of a kneeling man. It seemed to draw her to her knees. Was it perhaps an Eastern prayer mat?

She was aware of Miss Leaming coming quietly down the stairs towards her, her long red dressing gown sweeping round her ankles. The pistol was taken suddenly but firmly from Cordelia’s unresisting hand. She knew that it had gone because her hand felt suddenly lighter. It made no difference. She could never defend herself with it, never kill a man. She had learnt that about herself when Lunn had run from her in terror.

Miss Leaming said: “There is no one here you need defend yourself against, Miss Gray.”

Cordelia said: “I’ve come to report to Sir Ronald. Where is he?”

“Where he was the last time you came here, in his study.”

As before, he was sitting at his desk. He had been dictating and the machine was at his right hand. When he saw Cordelia, he switched it off, then walked to the wall and pulled the plug from the socket. He walked back to the desk and they sat down opposite each other. He folded his hands in the pool of light from the desk lamp and looked at Cordelia. She almost cried out with shock. His face reminded her of faces seen grotesquely reflected in grubby train windows at night—cavernous, the bones stripped of flesh, eyes set in fathomless sockets—faces resurrected from the dead.

When he spoke, his voice was low, reminiscent.

“Half an hour ago I learned that Chris Lunn was dead. He was the best lab assistant I ever had. I took him out of an orphanage fifteen years ago. He never knew his parents. He was an ugly, difficult boy, already on probation. School had done nothing for him. But Lunn was one of the best natural scientists I’ve ever known. If he’d had the education, he’d have been as good as I am.”

“Then why didn’t you give him his chance, why didn’t you educate him?”

“Because he was more useful to me as a lab assistant. I said that he could have been as good as I am. That isn’t quite good enough. I can find plenty of scientists as good. I couldn’t have found another lab assistant to equal Lunn. He had a marvellous hand with instruments.”

He looked up at Cordelia, but without curiosity, apparently without interest.

“You’ve come to report, of course. It’s very late, Miss Gray, and, as you see, I’m tired. Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”

Cordelia thought that this was as close to an appeal as he could ever bring himself. She said: “No, I’m tired too. But I want to finish the case tonight, now.”

He picked up an ebony paperknife from the desk and, without looking at Cordelia, balanced it on his forefinger. “Then tell me, why did my son kill himself? I take it that you do have news for me? You would hardly have burst in here at this hour without something to report.”

“Your son didn’t kill himself. He was murdered. He was murdered by someone he knew very well, someone he didn’t hesitate to let into the cottage, someone who came prepared. He was strangled or suffocated, then slung up on that hook by his own belt. Last of all, his murderer painted his lips, dressed him in a woman’s underclothes and spread out pictures of nudes on the table in front of him. It was meant to look like accidental death during sexual experiment; such cases aren’t so very uncommon.”

There was half a minute of silence. Then he said with perfect calmness: “And who was responsible, Miss Gray?”

“You were. You killed your son.”

“For what reason?” He might have been an examiner, putting his inexorable questions.

“Because he discovered that your wife wasn’t his mother, that the money left to her and to him by his grandfather had come by fraud. Because he had no intention of benefiting by it a moment longer, nor of accepting his legacy in four years’ time. You were afraid that he might make this knowledge public. And what about the Wolvington Trust? If the truth came out, that would be the end of their promised grant. The future of your laboratory was at stake. You couldn’t take the risk.”

“And who undressed him again, typed out that suicide note, washed the lipstick from his face?”

“I think I know, but I shan’t tell you. That’s really what you employed me to discover, isn’t it? That’s what you couldn’t bear not to know. But you killed Mark. You even prepared an alibi just in case it was needed. You got Lunn to ring you at college and announce himself as your son. He was the one person you could rely on absolutely. I don’t suppose you told him the truth. He was only your lab assistant. He didn’t require explanations, he did what you told him. And even if he did guess the truth, he was safe, wasn’t he? You prepared an alibi which you dared not use, because you didn’t know when Mark’s body was first discovered. If someone had found him and faked that suicide before you had claimed to have spoken to him on the telephone, your alibi would have been broken, and a broken alibi is damning. So you made a chance to talk to Benskin and put matters right. You told him the truth; that it was Lunn who had rung you. You could rely on Lunn to back up your story. But it wouldn’t really matter, would it, even if he did talk? No one would believe him.”

“No, any more than they will believe you. You’ve been determined to earn your fee, Miss Gray. Your explanation is ingenious; there is even a certain plausibility about some of the details. But you know, and I know, that no police officer in the world would take it seriously. It’s unfortunate for you that you couldn’t question Lunn. But Lunn, as I said, is dead. He burnt to death in a road accident.”

“I know, I saw. He tried to kill me tonight. Did you know that? And earlier, he tried to scare me into dropping the case. Was that because he had begun to suspect the truth?”

“If he did try to kill you, he exceeded his instructions. I merely asked him to keep an eye on you. I had contracted for your sole and whole-time services, if you remember; I wanted to be sure I was getting value. I am getting value of a kind.
But you mustn’t indulge your imagination outside this room. Neither the police nor the courts are sympathetic to slander nor to hysterical nonsense. And what proof have you? None. My wife was cremated. There is nothing alive or dead on this earth to prove that Mark was not her son.”

Cordelia said: “You visited Dr. Gladwin to satisfy yourself that he was too senile to give evidence against you. You needn’t have worried. He never did suspect, did he? You chose him as your wife’s doctor because he was old and incompetent. But I have one small piece of evidence. Lunn was bringing it to you.”

“Then you should have looked after it better. Nothing of Lunn except his bones has survived that crash.”

“There are still the female clothes, the black pants and the bra. Someone might remember who bought them, particularly if that person was a man.”