Home through the Dark (14 page)

Here we go! I was determined not to help her. “Yes,” I said baldly, and waited.

The coffee came and we were both silent until the waitress had moved away. “Oh, God!” She put her fingers against her shaking lips. “I don't know how to say this.”

“You want me to speak to him?” I prompted, relenting at her obvious distress. “I'm afraid I really –”

“What?” Her eyes flew to my face. “You mean you know – ?” She drew a long, rasping breath, fighting to control herself. “Sorry, speak to whom?”

I stared at her, nonplussed. “Why, Carl. I thought –”

“Oh, Carl.” She relaxed, if it could be called that. “No, no, I was only making conversation. Carl Clements doesn't concern me. At least, not directly.”

“Then I really don't see –”

“I went to the show last night,” she said rapidly, her fingers compulsively folding the napkin, “and afterwards, backstage, Liz Payne was saying that you – that you mentioned – that you'd said you knew Madame Lefevre.”

Quite suddenly the whole episode was fraught with danger. Instinctively my eyes went round the small room preliminary to escape. I had learned the hard way that no good came of the mention of that name. Sensing my withdrawal her fingers, long and tapering but as unyielding as steel, closed on my hand. “Miss Durrell, do you know –” her tongue darted out over her lips. “Did you know Etienne as well?”

“Etienne?”

“Her son, Etienne Lefevre.”

“I never met him, no. He was killed in a road accident a few months ago.”

She shook her head convulsively. “No, no, he wasn't. He was here in Westhampton only four weeks ago.”

I said slowly, “You know, I think we must be speaking of two different people. Laurence said something about having met her daughter –”

“Laurence did?”

Belatedly I remembered I was speaking to Laurence's wife. I went on hastily, “The Madame Lefevre I know certainly had no daughter and her only son was killed in a car crash in France.”

She took a quick sip of coffee. The steam from it misted up her glasses and she took them off, polishing them absent-mindedly. Seeing her face bare, I was appalled at the strain written all over it: the mass of tiny lines at the corner of her eyes, the spasmodic twitching of an eyelid, the skin drawn tightly over high cheekbones.

“That's what she
said,
” she answered jerkily. “I know that's what she told people, but it isn't true.”

“Then suppose you tell me the truth,” I suggested, hardly daring to hope that at last some of the riddle might be explained.

“Look, perhaps we'd better leave it. If you don't know him you can't really help me after all.” To my consternation her eyes brimmed with tears. “It was a forlorn hope, anyway.”

“Suzanne, I might be able to help, but I have to know the whole story.” I was trying to keep the urgency out of my voice. At last it seemed as though I might learn something which would shed a light on the conundrums which had plagued my weeks in Westhampton. I added cunningly, “And it might help you, too, to talk about it. You look as though you've been bottling things up too long.”

“Yes.” She let her breath out on a shuddering sigh. “You won't tell Laurence I've spoken to you?”

“No.”

She stirred her coffee slowly while I waited in an agony of impatience, terrified she might change her mind after all. At last she began slowly, “It all started in July. We – the company, that is – were over in France to attend the St. Luc Drama Festival.” I nodded encouragingly. I remembered hearing Carl speak of it at the time. “While we were there, there was a tremendous hue and cry one night, and we gathered that a man had escaped from the local prison.”

She paused, fumbled in her bag and drew out cigarettes. Her fingers were trembling so much I thought she would never manage to light one, but she did. “Well, to cut a long story short, we found him some days later hiding in the basement of the dingy little pension where we were staying.” Her eyes, protected once more, flickered at me and away. “You realize, of course, that it was Etienne. We were sorry for him; he was like a hunted animal, dirty and unshaven, and that first night we smuggled some food down to him. He – ate it like a ravening dog, tearing it apart with his hands.” She shuddered, drew deeply on her cigarette, and continued more calmly, “Well, I don't suppose you've ever been in a comparable position, but you can take it from me that once you've committed yourself to the extent of feeding a starving man, it's not the easiest thing in the world to turn him over to the authorities. He spoke a little English, said his mother lived in London and if he could only get to her – well, you see the position we were in.”

She stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette and lit another. “Almost before we knew it, we found we'd agreed to smuggle him back with us. Of course it was madness, but I think we were all a little mad at the time and he was so charming, so – plausible. He was much the same build as Robert and once they'd let him get cleaned up and into one of Robert's suits, the scruffy fugitive was suddenly a man again, presentable, acceptable, and incidentally very attractive.”

Her voice shook. “He made some grand promises of payment once we reached England, and talked rather wildly about how incredibly rich his mother was. I don't think any of us took much notice. Fortunately we were travelling by boat and train, which made things rather easier than all the controls at an airport. I don't know exactly how they managed it, Steve and Laurence and Robert, but they did.”

“So, you got him safely to England. Then what?”

“We parted at Folkstone and he caught the London train. We didn't expect to hear from him again, but he came down to Westhampton about two weeks later, bringing a wad of ten-pound notes in an envelope.” She gave a choke of laughter. “I don't think many of us had even seen one before. That should have been the end of it, but it turned out to be only the beginning, for me.”

I waited, scarcely breathing, and after a minute she went on. “There'd been some sort of spark between us right from the start. It strengthened during the journey home, and when he came to the theatre that night he asked if I could slip away and have a drink with him. After that – well, it became a kind of obsession, for both of us I think. He came down at least once a week and stayed at a rather unpleasant little hotel on the outskirts of the town. Its main advantage was that no one asked questions. I slipped away to meet him whenever I could. It went on all through the summer, up until about a month ago.” The shaking had started again and she quickly placed her left hand over her right wrist to steady the cigarette.

“I don't know what happened. That's the god-awful thing. I met him as usual on the Wednesday evening and arranged to go back on the Thursday, but when I got there he'd cleared out – simply vanished. The woman said he'd left that morning, ‘with another gentleman.' I just couldn't understand it. He'd never have gone off like that without letting me know, and no other gentleman knew he was even in town.”

I said with an effort, “He hadn't said anything the previous day which could have given you a lead?”

“No, nothing.”

“No mention of anything at all that was different from usual?”

“No. Oh, he did mention he'd hit another car outside the town, but he hadn't stopped. Obviously he couldn't afford to start exchanging names and addresses, being in the country illegally. But that couldn't have had anything to do with his disappearance, surely?”

I shook my head. There was a kind of numb resignation in my acceptance of this. Obviously my tie-up with the whole thing had been inevitable even before I reached Westhampton. In my mind's eye I saw the Fiat hurtling out of sight and Mrs. Baillie bending anxiously over me. That, had Carl but known it, had been the direct reason for my coming to Westhampton. I moistened my lips.

“And that's all?”

“Almost. I was frantic, of course. When a week had passed without any word and he didn't return to the hotel, I went to London and called on his mother. I looked up the address in the phone book, but I didn't dare phone, not knowing who might answer.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, at first she denied everything, but eventually she asked me in and listened to what I had to say. And finally – Lord, it was unbelievable, Miss Durrell, like a bad movie – she produced a typewritten note demanding money with menaces – isn't that the phrase?”

I said carefully, “You've still no idea where he is?”

“None!” she answered wildly. “He did mention once that he'd run into someone he knew from prison. I imagine they must have taken him, knowing his mother had money. But she was so hard, so unbelievably hard! She was convinced that Etienne himself had a hand in it, to get more money out of her. I tried to convince her he wouldn't have gone without letting me know if he'd had the chance to, but she wouldn't listen. Ranted on about his being a black sheep all his life, in and out of prison and always touching her for money. But if he couldn't go to her, his own mother, who could he turn to? And she said he'd made her life a misery since he came to London, demanding more and more money, and she'd decided it had to end and he wouldn't get any more.”

After a long silence, I asked tentatively, “You never mentioned to anyone at the theatre that you were meeting him?”

She threw me a look of contempt. “Do you take me for a fool? Laurence would have killed me, and Steve –”

“Steve?”

She said flatly, “Stephen Darby is always nagging at me to go to bed with him. If he found out someone else had succeeded where he'd failed, I imagine he could be quite nasty about it. But it couldn't be anyone from the theatre who's responsible! Is that what you're thinking? No, you're wrong. It must be one of his French acquaintances. It's just not knowing that's driving me crazy. And then when I heard that you'd mentioned Madame, and also that you were married to Carl Clements and that he'd been down here this week – well, I wondered if she'd contacted him and he had come down to see if he could find out anything. But obviously I jumped to the wrong conclusion. I'm sorry to have burdened you with all this.”

“He's in it too, isn't he?” Carl had said, and I'd thought he was referring to Marcus again. Suzanne was probably more right than she knew.

“What had he been in prison for?” I asked, not that it mattered.

“Drug peddling. Not very pleasant, I grant you, but lucrative. That's really all that counts with Etienne. I've no illusions about him. But I still love him, heaven help me. Can you understand that?”

“What are you going to do now?” I asked quietly.

“What can I do? Nothing at all. Go mad, probably.” She stood up abruptly, tall and slim in the faultless grey trousers. “Thanks for hearing me out. I'm trusting you to keep it all in confidence.”

“I'm sorry not to have been of more help,” I replied, but she was already halfway across the room. I hadn't told her of the phone call. It might well have driven her over the edge of hysteria, but obviously either Stephen or Laurence had found out about the affair and, presumably with each other's help, had engineered the whole thing. Rachel had been brought in principally, I imagined, to see to the feeding of the prisoner, though as things turned out Stephen would have had to have taken over while she was incapacitated. It seemed unlikely that anyone else at the theatre was in on the secret. They had all reacted to the name of Lefevre because they had all been involved in bringing him into the country, but only Stephen, Laurence and Rachel had extra reason to be wary of me.

I signalled to the waitress for another cup of coffee. At least I now knew the identity of the man from Room 127. I knew, even if I could not prove, who had typed the ransom note and who had received it. I also understood why Carl had questioned me so closely about my coming to Westhampton and my connection with the theatre. Obviously, as Suzanne had guessed, Madame had consulted Carl after her visit. It may have been because of his connection with the theatre – and although she couldn't have known it, his existing interest in Robert Harling had provided the perfect cover for his coming; or it may have been that Carl had over the years been more like a son to her than her own. She obviously idolized him, and for our part we had both been very fond of the old lady. Carl had good cause to be grateful to her for her backing of productions for him before he became so well-known.

I wondered again whether I now had sufficient information to go to the police. At least I knew Carl wasn't criminally involved, but the implications of the whole affair had escalated alarmingly. If I did report it, Etienne would be sent straight back to France, merely exchanging one prison for another, but Laurence and Stephen would face heavy sentences themselves and the whole group be severely penalized for smuggling Etienne into the country. There would be unpleasant publicity all round, for the theatre, which obviously would have to close, for Madame Lefevre, and probably also for Carl. And the ironic thing was that Madame did not want her son back anyway. I knew she would never have gone so far as to turn him over to the police, but she was nonetheless glad to be relieved of the embarrassment of his presence. It began to look as though going to the police would help nobody and there was always the possibility that in the ensuing panic Etienne might come to real physical harm. All in all, by far the most satisfactory solution seemed to be to find out exactly where he was and set him free myself. The incredible simplicity of it stunned me. Laurence and Stephen, who seemed badly frightened by the misfiring of their plan, would feel only relief, knowing Etienne was in no position to report them; the theatre crowd would come to no harm at least as a direct result of any action of mine, and as far as I was concerned, Etienne and Suzanne could do whatever they liked.