Hide My Eyes (25 page)

It took her hardly a moment to unlatch the glass doors, lift the ornate lid, and slide the heavy thing out of sight. Then, shutting the cabinet, she was turning away when she saw that the window curtains were swaying. The discovery that the casement was open, and that therefore any sound the young people might have made by the fire escape just round the corner of the house could easily have been audible in the room, sent a net of nervous pain over her face.

She was bolting the window when Gerry came back and set the tray down on the table again. Besides the beaker there was a glass of scotch and soda upon it, but although he had removed the skin from the top of the milk she suspected he had not taken the time to heat it again, despite all his protestations. Something had happened to upset him. She could see it in his face.

“What are you doing?” he demanded. “Opening the window?”

“No. Shutting it. It’s cold.”

“Shall I light the fire for you?”

“If you do we mustn’t close the door.” She stood over him while he put a match to the gas. “Last time the gas man called he warned me it was dangerous. Those things I had put in here stop the draught completely and the fire can go out.”

“I know. You told me.” He did not look up and his tone was casual. “There,” he said, “that’s all right. Sit down in your chair and I’ll bring you your drink. Polly, that boiler of yours in the kitchen, does it go out easily?”

“Not unless one tries to burn rubbish in it. It’s no good for that.” She had been in the act of resuming her seat in the shell-backed chair while he was still kneeling on the rug, so that she was looking down at him. Her face was close to his when the significance of her own words occurred to her. She drew slowly away, down, down, further back into the upholstery. “
You’ve been trying to burn your jacket. There was blood on it
.”

The voice was not like her own at all. A hideous quality of panic had dried it into a whisper.

The man sat back on his heels, looking at her, and a strange dark blush spread over his face, more revealing than any change of expression could have been.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

It was bluster and she put up a hand to stop him.

“Don’t, dear, don’t. I tried to ring up Matt tonight. I know.”

He remained where he was, kneeling before her chair, and there was a moment of indecision, fleeting to him but to her as deliberate as a film in slow motion, while he chose the line to take. Finally he took her hand.

“You’re making a silly mistake, old girl,” he said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about and nor do I. I don’t know Matt, do I?”

She sat forward and looked into his face to see if he was lying. It was a manœuvre of the nursery and he met her stare with eyes which just then were like an animal’s without the spark behind them.

“When you look like that there’s no one there,” she said,
“but
that’s not true always. Sometimes when I look into your face, Gerry, I can still see the lively boy that old Freddy and I were so fond of.”

“That’s right, Polly, while you love me I’m alive and kicking.” He sat back on his heels once more. He was deeply relieved and was laughing, but the strange dark colour had not entirely faded from his face. “When you look in my eyes, darling,” he said, “d’you know what you see? You see yourself. You’re the life in me.”

“No I don’t.” She spoke with sudden vigour. “I see you, my boy. There’s not much that’s for ever in you, Gerry, but there’s still a man there and not a snake, please God. I’m afraid, though, terribly afraid. Gerry, I know about the gloves. That glove we saw in the paper was your glove, one of the pair I gave you. You shot those people in Church Row.”

It was his own turn to shrink away. The dull, orange blush returned but this time he did not bother to make denials.

“If you knew, you connived, you approved,” he said, and added, since even to his own ears the accusation sounded absurd, “you hid your eyes. You’re like that. You deceive yourself very easily. You keep all that crashing junk of Freddy’s because you think it must be wonderful, since he collected it, yet you know perfectly well that it’s vulgar, tasteless and a bore. Anything goes if it’s done by someone you’re fond of, that’s your creed.”

“That isn’t true. You’re changing the subject. You’re trying to muddle me. Oh, Gerry,
they’re going to catch you
.”

He cocked an eye at her. “They won’t, you know.” Now that she was reacting as he had thought she might if ever she discovered him, he dropped his attack. He appeared completely confident. “I’m careful. I’m like a good racing driver. I never take a risk. I’ve got no ties and no rules. I’m so safe it’s boring.”

She sat listening to him, horrified and absorbed. It was as though, on looking at last at the Gorgon’s head, it had indeed turned her to stone. She was dead to the gay room, to the fleeing children, to the blessed ordinary programme of
sleeping
and waking, lost in a single dreadful effort to comprehend.

“But it was Matt threatening to prosecute that scared you. And in Church Row you shot because you were frightened. All you did you did in panic, Gerry.” She was appealing to him in the teeth of her own intelligence to make the mitigating claim.

He sat on the rug frowning, as if he found the recollection shadowy.

“Church Row was the beginning,” he said at last. “That was the start. That didn’t count. The others were different.”

“What others? Gerry … there hasn’t been another besides poor Matt?”

“What? No, of course not. There hasn’t been any, ever.” He was laughing at her, treating her as he had done a thousand times before over less important issues. “You are inventing all this. This is in
your
mind.” He was thrashing about, turning this way and that. “It’s hysteria, old dear. Dreams.” He paused suspiciously, warned by her expression. “What have you remembered, Polly?”

“Listen.” She was struggling to control her breathing. “A Superintendent of police came here today.”

“Oh. What did he want?” He spoke lightly and she found his assumed casualness terrifying.

“Nothing, as it happened. He was disappointed, I saw it. Some witness was confused about where he had seen two wax figures before and the local police thought he might have noticed them in our museum.”

“Did you tell him I’d taken them?”

“No. He wasn’t very interested in what had happened to them. All he wanted to know was if they had ever existed. If I know the police they’ll be sending the witness along to see if the place recalls anything to him.”

Gerry sat looking at the fire, his eyes round and without expression, his lips parted slightly.

“A chance in eight million,” he said softly. “Tenacious clots, aren’t they? It won’t help them. I may have to alter things down there a bit to stop argument, but even if I didn’t they couldn’t prove a thing.”

Polly did not speak at once. She was huddled in her chair where she seemed to have shrunk as her suspicions became relentless certainty. Only her blue eyes were still very bright.

“That night when it rained you sent me the taxi,” she said at last. “I knew that in my heart. And when I got the postcard telling me quite unnecessarily that you were somewhere else that night, I was even more certain. But I wouldn’t, I couldn’t believe it. That country ’bus with the old wax figures in it to stop questions, that was the sort of idea,
you’d
have, Gerry. I thought that when I first read it, but I shut my eyes to it. I sat here and prayed to Jesus that I was getting a bit touched, living alone imagining nonsense.”

He put a hand on her arm and shook it not without kindness.

“You ruddy silly old thing,” he said softly. “Why don’t you shut up?”

She did not answer him and after a while he went on. He spoke very reasonably and in an intimate conversational way, as if he were making a business confidence.

“I’m in no danger at all, Polly. There’s never any need to worry about me. You see, I’m careful and I’m thorough always, every moment of the time. I keep my feet on the ground and my eyes open and I never forget a possibility. I’ve never needed an alibi, yet I’ve always had one you know. Besides, I have no sentiment to make me shrink from any move when the need arises. Even if a miracle happened and the police came to suspect me, they’d never prove anything. I clear up as I go.”

Polly rubbed her hands over her face as if to brush away cobwebs.

“But to
kill
,” she whispered. “To
murder
,
Gerry.”

He scowled and scrambled to his feet. He was red and irritable.

“That’s a damned silly term. Murder is a word, a shibboleth. People get killed every day and sometimes it’s called murder and sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes it’s war and sometimes it’s accident, sometimes it’s … well, it’s just the logical conclusion of a sequence of events. You’re trying to
make
something metaphysical of it, setting it up as the one unforgivable crime. That’s hocus-pocus. If you’re prepared to strip everything else from a man, why not finish the job logically and take his life? You’re going to sit there and tell me God wouldn’t like it, I suppose. Is that it?”

Polly struggled to sit up in her chair and there was a flash of the old authority in her eyes when she faced him.

“I don’t know about God,” she said, “but I can tell you one thing. It’s
men
who won’t have murder. God’s first commandment doesn’t concern murder, but it’s the first crime in man’s law all right. If a man is a man with a spirit, and not a poor beast who hasn’t one, he won’t put up with murder even
if he’s a murderer himself
. Men who murder turn against themselves and commit suicide by giving themselves away. They don’t want to, but they can’t help it. It’s in the make-up, born there. You said you were finding it boring. That’s the beginning.”

“For God’s sake, Polly, be quiet, and don’t talk such cracking rot.”

“I can’t.
Murder will out
, Gerry.
That’s what it means
.” There was a moment of stillness after the words like the silence after a thunderclap. The terrifying idea took the man by surprise and he escaped into anger. He swung away from her with an effort which contracted the muscles at the sides of his temples and drove the blood out of his face.

“It’s time for these,” he announced, turning to the drinks on the table. “I’ve also learnt to keep my temper, old girl. That’s lesson A. No anger, no feeling, nothing to get in the way.”

He handed her the beaker which was on a saucer and frowned as he saw that some of the milk had spilled over.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “The old hand isn’t as steady as it ought to be. Drink up. I put some whisky in it.”

Polly took the beaker obediently, her glance resting on his face. He looked older than she had ever seen him, she thought, the lines deeper, the muscles more pronounced. There was sweat standing out on his forehead and she was relieved to see it, despite her sense of paralysed dismay. She comforted herself; at least he was alive to it all, still there.

She sipped the milk and made a face, but drank it down as if it were medicine.

“You shouldn’t have done that. It’s filthy,” she said absently. “The kid must have put sugar in as well, or salt or something, and the whisky makes it worse. Look, Gerry, I’ve been thinking. Whether you like to believe it or not, sooner or later we’re going to need money for the lawyers. They won’t all be like poor old Matt. They’ll have to be paid. Well, I’ve got it, and when you need it both Freddy and I would never hesitate….”

He made a gesture of blind exasperation but she persisted.

“Don’t look like that, dear. We’ve got to face things. I’m telling you this because I want you to know I’ll see you through, so don’t do anything barmy like trying to run for it, or … or … thinking you can do again what you did at Church Row. You can’t shoot your way out all the time.”

She sat looking up at him, the empty beaker on her knee. She was mild and gentle and kindly, and her affection for him transfigured her face. He remained staring at her, an extraordinary conflict growing in his eyes, part apprehension, part eagerness, part passionate despair.

“You’d have given me away,” he burst out at last, dropping on the rug before her, putting his arms round her, and peering into her face. “Admit it. You couldn’t have helped it. You and the kid between you, you’re like glass. You can’t hide a thing. Can you? Can you?”

Polly closed her eyes tightly and opened them again. An expression of childlike astonishment had appeared on her face.

“I can’t see you properly,” she said. “It’s funny. I feel … oh, Gerry!
The milk
. What have you done? What is it? The chloral? It was still in the chest.”

“Darling, it’s all right, it’s all right. Don’t be frightened. It’s only a little. Only enough to put you out.”

He was agonised, weeping even, suffocated by the relentless compulsion. Polly looked very earnestly and stupidly into his face, so close to her own.

“I … am the last thing you love,” she said thickly, struggling with the drug as its waves broke over her. “If … you … kill me, Gerry, you will lose contact with … your kind. There’ll be nothing … to keep you alive. You’ll wither like a leaf off a tree.”

Chapter 20

BETRAYAL

ANNABELLE CAME QUICKLY
down the fire escape in the rain, her cautious feet making no sound on the wet iron. Richard saw her white face in the darkness and heard her sigh as her hand touched his shoulder. She let herself drop gratefully into the arms he held up for her, and returned his squeeze with a wholeheartedness which warmed him with a glow to last a lifetime.

“What happened?” He was whispering but she made a warning movement and he seized her bag with one hand and, putting his other arm round her shoulders, led her round the back of the house under the single lighted window. In the few minutes he had been waiting he had explored the position and had discovered that, as he had feared, to return the way he had come was going to be impossible. However, the narrow path led through an archway into the adjoining plot where the museum stood, and he suspected that apart from the entrance to the collection there was a second way out through the gardens to the other road at the back of the houses.