Paws for Alarm (20 page)

‘You could use a drink,' Arnold diagnosed, bringing her a large measure of the duty-free brandy we had picked up in Boulogne.

‘Thank you.' She took it humbly and sat waiting for the blow to fall.

‘I guess ...' She smiled faintly. ‘I guess perhaps I have.' Guilt shadowed her eyes. ‘How did you find out?'

‘It got to be obvious that something was wrong –' I looked at her steadily – ‘when somebody kept trying to murder Arnold.'

‘Murder Arnold?' She paled. ‘You can't mean it!'

‘First, John Blake.' I underlined. ‘Then, Arnold. And the only thing they had in common was that they'd both been putting in overtime being nice to you.'

‘No!' I thought she was going to faint. ‘No – that can't be true!'

‘Can't it?'

‘Then –' She looked around wildly. ‘Then – they've found me!'

‘Who's found you?' Richard was shaken by the intensity of her emotion.

‘Her husband and his friends,' I said. ‘Remember that hostile character at the cocktail party?' I turned back to Hazel. ‘Since you've got a husband jealous to the point of homicidal mania, didn't it ever occur to you that the least you could do was discourage the attentions of other men?'

‘Oh, God!' she choked. ‘If it were
only
that!' And burst into tears.

I stepped back, my bolt shot, and looked at her blankly. Arnold rushed forward and topped up her glass, although she'd scarcely taken a sip from it. Richard groped for a handkerchief and thrust it into her hand.

‘Look, Hazel —' She didn't look; she just kept sobbing into the handkerchief. I began to feel as though I were bullying a kitten, but I had to go on – for Arnold's sake. ‘Hazel –'

‘Actually –' she raised her head – ‘it's Mavis. My name is Mavis. It took me a long time to get used to Hazel, but now I can forget it again, can't I?'

‘Mavis? ... Hazel?' She'd lost me – or almost lost me. I looked at Richard. ‘Then she isn't deaf, after all.' When she was off guard, she simply failed to respond to a name that was not really her own.

‘I suppose there are children? Somewhere ...?'

‘Somewhere safe!' She glared at me defiantly. ‘They changed schools – and I'll never tell you where they are. They've got to be kept out of this!'

‘I wasn't planning to drag them in,' I assured her. ‘I was just curious.'

‘I've had enough of curiosity.' Her voice was flat. She dabbed at her eyes, but she had stopped crying. ‘You don't know what it's like. Everyone staring ... whispering ... all the speculation. People thought I must have been involved, too. They wouldn't believe that I knew nothing about it. And then ... the threats began ...'

‘So you got the children away to safety.' Bits of it were beginning to come clear.

‘The police did.' Another piece clicked into place. ‘They were ... very good. Of course,' she smiled wanly, ‘they've got it down to a fine art now. Terry wasn't the first ... he won't be the last.'

‘Terry, I take it, is your husband? And he's not a wildly jealous homicidal maniac?'

‘Nothing of the sort! He's sweet and gentle – he'd never hurt anyone.'

‘I take it he's not a Sales Director, either? He's not behind the Iron Curtain on an Export Drive? He's just behind the Iron Curtain.'

‘He's not!' She was furious at the insinuation. ‘He's only in prison. In this country. He was never a spy – he was only a ... a Supergrass.'

‘So that's it!' Richard whistled softly. ‘Which trial was it? One of the IRA ones, or —' He broke off. ‘Forgive me. I don't mean to pry.'

‘Well, I
do
!' I wasn't going to be stopped by Richard's jolly old English reticence – which wasn't so evident when he decided he wanted a fight with his wife. ‘I think we have a right to know. Damn it – somebody keeps trying to murder Arnold!'

‘I'm afraid so,' she said. ‘I'm terribly sorry about that.'

‘
You're
sorry!' Arnold's sang-froid slipped.

‘It was a ... criminal case.' She found it easier to answer Richard. ‘Terry got involved without realizing it at first. He was so pleased to get a job as Chief Accountant. But it was a dummy company, set up to ... launder money from rackets and robberies. Even when he found out, it didn't seem too bad to go on working for them. He never knew the worst of the things they were doing – not until ... the police arrested him.

‘He wasn't wicked – even the police admitted that.' It was terribly important to her that we believe her. ‘He was just weak. When the Fraud Squad swooped – they'd been investigating, gathering evidence, for a long time – he was horrified. He agreed to help them. He's a good, kind man, really – he just wanted to be able to buy nice things for me and the children – he'd never have hurt a fly.'

‘So how come John Blake died?' I was sorry for her, but even sorrier for the innocent bystanders who had somehow got in the way of that great guy of hers.

‘That wasn't Terry's fault! Not the way you mean it. After ... after Terry testified, he knew the Directors would never forgive him. He helped the police trace a lot of the money, too. He ... made it a condition that the police got his family away to safety. And they did. Rather, we thought they did –'

‘His bosses put out a contract on Terry.' Richard supplied the only logical answer. ‘Or am I wrong?'

‘No ...' She shook her head sadly. ‘You're not wrong.'

‘You seem to know a lot about it,' Arnold said to Richard, rather tactlessly.

‘There have been so many cases reported over the past few years.' Richard shrugged. ‘Inevitably, one has learned about such things.'

‘Not nearly as much as I've learned.' Hazel was grim. ‘The big men want revenge at any price. Even though they're behind bars, they manage to get word out. A contract on the Supergrass, open to anyone – and there are no end of takers. The money is good. The cheapest contract is five thousand pounds – it can go up to fifty thousand.'

Richard and Arnold both whistled. ‘How much -?' Arnold began, but even he realized that was too tactless.

‘How much for Terry? It would be towards the upper end of the bracket. They hated him so much. The police expected the contract, they got me and the children away before the trial began. They gave me a new identity, sent the children to boarding school at the other end of the country, found this place for us to buy a house –' Her voice broke. ‘I've liked it here, I really have. I thought we could settle down and be happy here after Terry finished his sentence and joined me. We could have brought the children home then ... once it seemed safe ...'

‘But it wasn't as safe as you thought,' I said. ‘Someone had taken up the contract, found you and staked you out – waiting for your husband to turn up. Is that why John Blake was killed? Because he was mistaken for your husband?'

‘I'm afraid so,' she said. ‘Not that I realized it until now. I'd thought it was a genuine accident, although I still felt guilty because it wouldn't have happened if he hadn't been over that evening helping me.'

‘Wait a minute –' Arnold said. ‘I thought your husband was still in prison. Why were they watching you? Why didn't one of the other prisoners kill him quietly and collect the money when he got out?'

‘Oh, well ...' She looked embarrassed. ‘You see, Terry had been in protective custody for so long before the trial that it counted towards his sentence. Then there were all the usual remissions –'

‘Quite often –' Richard said coldly; the enormity of John's death was just coming home to him – ‘
too
often, these people are allowed out to visit their families. The law can be very grateful to a useful supergrass.'

Hazel winced. She hadn't missed the fact that she was becoming one of ‘these people'. The pleasant respectable life she had yearned for was slipping away ... again.

‘If it's any comfort,' she said, ‘it's quite probable that the person who killed John Blake has already been punished. Not for killing the wrong man, but because he might have drawn police attention to the contract by doing so. He might have alerted me, so that I moved away – perhaps to a place where I couldn't be found again. I – I wish I hadn't been so foolishly complacent. I suspected nothing.'

‘And so they kept watching you, waiting for your husband to join you.' Richard was cold as a judge. ‘Or visit you.'

‘Actually, I've seen Terry several times – but never near here.' She seemed proud of having outwitted her enemies that much. ‘The last time was in Boulogne.'

‘The Invisible Man!' I exclaimed.

‘What?' She was startled.

‘That's where he comes in. He was there when the twins discovered you. A man in bandages.'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘I'll have to get used to the new face when the bandages come off. Terry had to have a bit of plastic surgery. It seemed safer — he had quite distinctive features.'

‘Of course!' I said. ‘Plastic surgery
had
to be part of the package. That was why they couldn't be sure which man was your husband. They didn't know what face he'd be wearing now.'

‘You don't mean they thought
I
was her husband –' Arnold was aghast. ‘But I'm an American – and I've got the wife and kids to prove it. How could anybody have thought that?'

I narrowed my eyes and gave him a look he had no trouble interpreting as:
Because you've been snuggling up to her at every opportunity, the same way you wrapped yourself around that blonde at Pixie's New Year's Eve Party!

‘They're very suspicious –' Hazel almost blushed. ‘And you have no idea of the elaborate scenarios that are constructed to reunite husband and wife.'

‘How could I fit into that kind of scenario?' Arnold asked incredulously. ‘I've got a wife and kids of my own.'

‘They might have thought the children were yours – ours –' Hazel was growing embarrassed; she did not look at me. ‘But they might have been very doubtful about the wife.'

‘What?
' Now
I
was incredulous.

‘Well, you and Arnold
do
fight a lot, Nancy.' The stab in the back came from Lania, standing behind me. ‘You know you're always nagging him – and in public, too.'

‘You
were
shouting about divorce in the supermarket,' Hazel reminded me. ‘Everyone heard you. My neighbour thought you meant it. It could have given anyone already suspicious the idea that you were ... masquerading as his wife. No one would have been surprised if there had been one final public display – and then you returned to the States to get that divorce. Leaving Arnold – Terry – free to keep the children and move in with me.'

‘I never thought of such a thing,' Arnold denied instantly. ‘Besides, I'm
not
Terry. I'm Arnold Harper and I can prove it.'

The trouble is,' I told him, ‘nobody ever asked you to prove anything. They were willing to kill you for yourself alone. For which, I would be the last to blame them –'

‘You see?' Lania's voice soared triumphantly. She was enjoying herself for the first time in days. ‘You're doing it again!'

‘Look –' I said. ‘Isn't it about time we stopped horsing around with side issues and called in the police?'

They all looked at me as though I'd suddenly grown a second head.

‘Why?' Richard asked.

‘What would you tell them?' Hazel wanted to know.

‘The truth,' I said blankly. ‘Somebody killed John Blake. Somebody's been trying to kill Arnold. Somebody should be arrested and put in jail.'

‘But they
are
in jail,' Hazel said softly. ‘The ones who are really guilty. The ones who put out the contract, although you could never prove it. And it would be almost impossible to discover the hit man who tried to kill Arnold. It might not even have been the same person each attempt.'

‘There's not much that can be done,' Richard agreed.

‘You mean my car's been sabotaged, I've been stabbed, kicked around, shoved under a bus —' Arnold's voice rose – ‘and I'm just supposed to shrug and forget it? John Q. Public gets screwed again!'

‘That's what crime is all about,' Richard said. ‘Us against them. All the grubby anonymous little chancers, striking in darkness and confusion and disappearing before they can be identified. Perhaps the only thing any of us can do is try to keep some order in our own lives and hope for the best.'

‘I'm sorry.' Hazel choked back tears. ‘I'd give anything if this hadn't happened – any of it!'

‘It's not your fault,' I said. But it was. If she hadn't come to this town to start her new life, none of it would have happened. John Blake would still be alive and Rosemary's life unshattered. But Hazel – Mavis – was a victim, too.

‘What will you do?' I asked softly.

‘I'll let the police know my cover's blown. They'll have me out of here in a couple of hours.' She pushed herself slowly to her feet. She seemed to have aged ten years. ‘Don't worry. After I've gone, they'll realize they were wrong again and Arnold will be all right.'

‘But will you be all right?'

‘Eventually, I suppose. It means we start all over again –' She walked blindly towards the door. ‘Another name, another town – perhaps even another country.'

‘I'll drive you back,' Richard said.

‘Do you think it's safe?' It slipped out; I could have bitten my tongue.

‘I'd go with them,' Lania said quickly. ‘It ought to be all right with another woman in the car.'

Richard looked at his wife thoughtfully. For a moment, I thought he'd refuse, then he nodded slowly.