Death in Berlin (28 page)

Turpentine! thought Miranda suddenly. Robert had spilt some turpentine … when was it? - on Tuesday evening, of course! Was that what Stella had thought of? Had it puzzled her, and had the mention of green paint made her think that he had perhaps used it to clean stains from his clothes? What did Stella know, or think that she knew?

Whatever it was, she was wrong! Robert could not possibly have been involved in the murder of Mademoiselle. And for a very simple reason. He had no means of knowing that Mademoiselle would be at the swimming-pool late that evening, since her presence there was purely fortuitous. He had been at a conference that had not ended until about seven-thirty, and had been given a lift home by Harry Marson: and from then, until they had gone up to bed, he had been with Stella or herself or both of them.

But even if Robert had not possessed an alibi and had actually been seen near the pool that evening, Miranda would still have been sure that he could not possibly have murdered Mademoiselle. It was not a question of proof, but of instinct. There was no hard core to Robert. He was charming and attractive, and despite an occasional display of temper or irritability, essentially easy-going

- she would not use the word ‘weak’ even to herself.

Robert wouldn’t care enough to commit murder, thought Miranda, trying to explain her conviction to herself. Things don’t matter enough to him. He will always avoid something unpleasant rather than face it - if facing it means taking any drastic action. He loves Stella, but not as Stella loves him. He lets himself be loved. He will always let things happen, never do them - or even do anything towards making them happen. Why is it that I can see that, thought Miranda, and Stella can’t? The answer presented itself to her almost before the question had formed in her mind. Because Stella was in love with him and wore the bandage of her love across her eyes. She could not reason; she could only feel.

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Stella’s voice cut sharply across the silence. ,<;• ;Ť:Ť Ťa—?, -;”

‘What are you thinking about, Miranda?’

Miranda turned quickly and said in some confusion: ‘Nothing.

I mean I was just thinking about all this ghastly business, and ‘

The sound of voices and laughter from the hall interrupted her, and she realized gratefully that Robert was back. It must be later than she had thought.

‘I only hope there’s some beer,’ said Stella anxiously. ‘He seems

to have brought someone back with him. I wonder ‘ She

stopped suddenly and Miranda saw her stiffen. The door opened to admit Colonel and Mrs Leslie, Robert, and Sally and Andy Page.

‘Stella darling, have we a spare can of petrol?’ demanded Robert, crossing to her side and kissing her lightly. ‘Andy very kindly offered me a lift home, and then ran out of petrol about a quarter of a mile back. We were forced to abandon ship, and Colonel Leslie picked us up. There’s a two-gallon can in the garage, isn’t there?’

‘Yes, I think so,’ said Stella.

‘Good. Well let’s have a drink first. What about a glass of beer, sir? Or there’s gin if you prefer it. Sherry for you, Norah?’

‘Thank you.’ Mrs Leslie looked across at Stella and said: ‘I must apologize for this invasion, but your husband insisted.’

Stella smiled a stiff, social smile that did not reach her eyes, and murmured some polite formula as Norah Leslie accepted a cigarette and sat down on the sofa and Sally Page perched gracefully on the arm of a chair, one long slim leg swinging from the knee, and said, smiling appealingly at Stella: ‘It’s our fault really, Mrs Melville. I can’t get Andy to have the petrol-gauge mended, and so this sort of thing keeps on happening.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Andy irritably. ‘It’s only happened once before

- on the day we first discovered that the thing was bust. I can’t understand it happening again. I filled the tank up only a day or two ago. It’s all this coffee-partying of yours that eats up the

petrol.’ >5: r. ,-,,-v^ ••• ; ;,.,/,-,^-ťft,;ŤŤ;

II

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‘Far more likely to be a leak in the tank,’ retorted Sally. ‘I don’t see what else we can expect with a museum piece like that.’ She turned again to Stella: ‘I keep telling Andy that a fifth-hand prewar car is a false economy. A decent car might cost a good bit more to start with, but it would save pounds in the end! Don’t you agree, Mrs Melville?’

Stella was saved the necessity of replying by the unexpected appearance of Harry Marson.

‘Hullo,’ said Harry, checking in the doorway and looking about the room, ‘I seem to have gatecrashed a party.’

‘Not at all,’ said Robert hospitably. ‘This is purely impromptu. The more the merrier. Have some beer?’

‘Thanks, I will.’ He turned to Stella. ‘Eisa sent me over to ask if you could lend her something to read; magazines for choice. I’ve bunged her off to bed. She was feeling a bit mouldy.’

‘Of course I will. I haven’t got much in that line, I’m afraid, but she can have what there is.’

‘Good of you,’ said Harry Marson, and raised his tankard. ‘Well - here’s to crime!’ He drank deeply and did not appear to notice the sudden strained silence that followed upon his words.

Miranda looked around the room. At Sally, sitting suddenly still, her slim foot in its neat shoe no longer swinging. At Mrs Leslie, with the cigarette ash falling unnoticed onto her skirt. At Andy Page, holding his tankard so tightly that the knuckles stood out white against the tanned skin. At the little muscle that twitched nervously at one corner of Colonel Leslie’s mouth and belied the habitual boredom of his expression. At Stella, whose frightened gaze had darted momentarily to Robert and then away again, and at Robert, whose handsome mouth had tightened to a hard line…

The silence was becoming oppressive when it was broken by Mrs Leslie.

‘You’re spilling sherry all over the chair, Sally,’ she said briskly.

Sally righted the glass that she had been holding at an acute angle, and stood up hurriedly: ‘Oh dear! I am sorry, Mrs Melville.

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How messy of me!’ She produced a face-tissue from her handbag and scrubbed anxiously at the stain.

That,’ said Robert, ‘will be ninepence. And if you go on scrubbing at it Sally, it will cost you an additional two bob for having the hole invisibly mended.’

Sally laughed and tossed the crumpled tissue in the general direction of the fire. The tension was eased and a babble of conversation broke out again. But Miranda was not deceived. In the short space of silence that had followed upon Harry Marson’s ill-chosen toast she had realized that the Pages too knew of Mademoiselle’s death: the Leslies must have told them. They were all attempting to behave as though nothing had happened, but sometime during that morning each one of them had heard that there had been a third murder, and they were acting - discussing trivialities in gay, artificial voices.

‘Fiddling while Rome burns!’ thought Miranda, exasperated, and she said in a hard, bright voice: ‘Well, what do you think about our latest murder?’

Seven faces turned swiftly towards her as though they had been pulled on one string. Seven faces that were all at once blank and unsmiling.

Stella said: ‘Miranda - please!’

‘Why? What’s the matter?’ demanded Miranda crisply. ‘Why shouldn’t we talk about it? It’s what we’re all thinking about, isn’t it?’

Robert got up quickly, and coming over to her put an arm about her. Take it easy, darling. We all know how you feel. And we all feel much the same.’

Miranda jerked herself away angrily. Tm not having hysterics, if that’s what you mean. I just think that it’s silly to put on an act and pretend, when - when we all know what’s happened.’

Robert returned to his chair and poured himself out some more beer, and sat down again.

‘Of course we all know,’ he said deliberately. ‘We’ve all been on the carpet again; separately and severally. But what you do not

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realize, Miranda my pet, is that there is a limit to what one can take in this line. We have all been surfeited with horrors of late, and this is in the nature of a last straw. It’s not that we are being ostriches and burying our heads in the sand, but that we just do not feel like discussing it any more. So for the time being, darling, we’ll just lay off it if you don’t mind.’

‘Hear! Hear!’ approved Harry Marson. ‘Speaking for myself, I have gone over and over it until my brain is bubbling, and I now propose to lay off it for good - God willing and the gumshoe boys permitting.’

He finished his beer and set down his empty tankard with a thump.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Miranda contritely. ‘You’re right, of course. It’s only that I ‘ She checked herself with an effort.

‘Forget it, darling,’ said Robert lightly. ‘Have some more beer, Harry.’

‘No thanks. Time I was getting back.’

Stdla routed out some magazines and a novel for Eisa Marson, and the party broke up: Harry and Mrs Leslie leaving through the garden and Robert accompanying the Pages to the garage in search of petrol.

Colonel Leslie, who had offered to drive the Pages to where they had abandoned their car, lingered for a few moments in the hall, waiting for them to return, and said kindly to Miranda: ‘Cheer up, my dear. Don’t let this get you down. It’s a terrible business, but perhaps not as bad as Lang and his lot, and the Polizei, seem to think. She could have taken the bicycle in with her, instead of leaving it unattended outside the entrance gate, and been wheeling it along the edge of that pool when she tripped, or the bicycle skidded and took her in with it, and she hit her head as she fell. Those sagging great ropes of straw would have let her throughout held her down if she tried to struggle up. Pity that instructor fellow, Kroll, didn’t spot her earlier - or later, after we’d left! He called us over to show us, you know. If it hadn’t been for him, we wouldn’t have been involved in it. And if we hadn’t asked you to

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go swimming with us, you wouldn’t have been either. I’m sorry about that…’

‘You needn’t be,’ said Miranda sadly. ‘We’d still have been involved even if she’d been found by the Burgermeister of Berlin and his entire family! Because she was Lottie’s governess, and employed by Robert and Stella, and we all lived in this house.’

‘I suppose so,’ admitted the Colonel. ‘Still, it was unfortunate that Ah! here, I think, is the petrol.’

Stella and Robert accompanied the salvage party to the gate, and Miranda, left alone in the empty hall, went back into the drawing-room. It was quiet and warm and still, and in the silence she could hear through the open windows the voices of Harry Marson and Mrs Leslie talking in the next garden.

The green and white room was heavy with the scent of flowers, and Miranda looked guiltily at the wilting sheaf of cherry blossom and lilac, and realized that she had forgotten all about Eisa Marson’s offering. A wisp of damp face-tissue had been wrapped about the stalks, but the petals of the cherry blossom were limp and fading for lack of water, and as she picked them up a small shower of white petals fell from the flowers in her arms onto the carpet, and she thought with a touch of irritation that if Eisa Marson needed an excuse to call on the Melvilles in order to find

out what was going on, she might at least have refrained from bringing over cherry blossom, when she must have been able to see quite clearly from her own house that the Melvilles’ garden was full of it!

Miranda bent down to gather up the fallen petals and stopped with her hand an inch away from the fender.

Presently she straightened up slowly, leaving the petals untouched, and having laid the flowers carefully on the table, sat down on the sofa, her brain whirling. She had remembered something that had happened in this room during the last half-hour. Something that her mind must have subconsciously noted at the time, but put aside. And a fantastic, impossible theory began to form in her head …

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She sat quite still, staring blindly ahead of her while another small, unregarded incident, and another and another, detached themselves from the memories of the past few days and fitted themselves together, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, to form a picture.

I have been looking at it the wrong way round, thought Miranda. It’s like looking in a mirror. You see something quite clearly, but you see it the wrong way round.

Even Simon had seen it the wrong way round. No, that was not true. He had seen it both ways. If Friedel’s death was a mistake, then the first guess was the right one after all, and it should have been Stella who died in the garden. The diamonds had only muddled it: they, and the package that Eisa Marson brought out of East Berlin. They sounded more important and more interesting, and so the more ordinary thing was overlooked. And if that were true, then Mademoiselle was only the excuse and the opportunity. She was dead now, and her story was finished. But the other story had not finished yet

I must tell Simon, thought Miranda. I must let Simon know.

There was still no sound from the hall and the house was so quiet that Miranda could hear a faint clatter of pots and pans from the kitchen where Frau Herbach was preparing lunch.

Seized with a sudden panic she jumped up and ran quickly across the drawing-room and into the hall, and dialled Simon’s number.

A strange voice answered her. No, Captain Lang was not in, and the strange voice had no idea when he would return; who was speaking? Oh, Miss Brand. Would Miss Brand care to leave a message?

Miranda hesitated. She could hear Robert’s voice from the path outside the drawing-room windows.

She said hurriedly: ‘Yes. Tell him I want to speak to him.’ And rang off.

17

The long afternoon wore away, and still Simon did not phone.

Stella flipped over the pages of a magazine and Miranda forced herself to read a book, and struggled to keep her thoughts from the impossible theory that had occurred to her that morning. I won’t think of it! she told herself desperately. I won’t. I won’t think of it until Simon comes. He will know what to do about it.

It was halfpast three when a bell cut shrilly through the silence, and Miranda threw aside her book and was at the drawing-room door before Stella could rise. Til answer it,’ she said quickly.