Rehearsals for Murder (7 page)

“Where's he got to?” said Roger impatiently.

“How should we know?” said Lisbeth.

“But the inspector wants him.”

“Then tell the inspector to find him.”

Roger went out.

Toby spoke softly to Druna: “Gillett's the young man in the torn shirt, is he?”

“Yes.”

“I knew there was someone missing.”

“Your chubby little friend,” she said, “he's missing too.”

“He's often missing,” said Toby. “It never matters.”

Vanner came in. He was irritated and more strident than usual. “I said that no one was to leave just yet,” he said.

“Well, there's no need to lecture
us
about it,” said Lisbeth. “We're the ones who haven't left.”

“Where's Mr Gillett?”

“Not concealed in here.”

“When did you last see him?”

Charlie replied: “In the hall, while that child was giving that—exhibition. I was standing next to him. But I thought he'd come in here. He's such a silent chap except—when he isn't—you know what I mean?”

“I don't,” said Vanner.

“He means,” said Lisbeth, “that except when Mr Gillett reads wicked, lying articles in the newspapers, particularly if they're about science, of course—he's very sensitive about what journalists do with science, and music's another of the things that excite him, and foreign policy, and so on—well, except when that happens he just sits and thinks his own thoughts, and no one notices, naturally, whether he's there or not.”

“Perhaps,” said Adolphus Fry, “he's gone home.”

“I gave orders——”

But Mr Fry, with a rather roguish smirk, said: “Oh, Inspector, orders to a young man like Colin Gillett! He would take it as positive provocation.”

“Where's he live?” asked Vanner. “That cottage in Green Lane, isn't it?”

“It's not five minutes' walk if you go through the wood,” said Mr Fry.

Vanner ordered a constable off to search for Colin Gillett in his cottage. Toby, watching the constable set off across the lawn towards the line of trees beyond it, saw the burly figure merge with the trees and the twilight and disappear. He heard Vanner demanding the presence of Mr Fry in the other room. Toby, too, stepped out into the garden. Between his feet and the stones of the terrace crunched fragments of the glass Eve had hurled down there. He strolled out onto the lawn. It was a tennis lawn, carefully kept, with markings that still showed sharp and white through the evening shadows. Turning, he took a long look at the house. A pleasant old house in a garden fragrant and quiet.

Toby stuck a cigarette in his mouth. His match spurted in the dusk. He could see through the lighted square of the doorway Druna Merton perching herself on the arm of Charlie Widdison's chair; he could see Lisbeth Gask going on with her knitting and Mr Fry coming in, sitting down beside Eve, who had flung herself full length on a settee, and talking earnestly. Another lighted window told Toby where he had sat with Vanner.

Toby dropped the match on the grass and unthinkingly ground it into the smooth turf. A bat swung past his face, in the distance a dog barked. Milky-white clumps of tree lupines, over to the right, sent their heavy, sweet perfume towards him. There was lavender, too, somewhere.

Toby looked towards the lighted square of window, and his lips moved in inaudible curses. Then something touched his arm, and he started violently.

“Oh,” he said, as he saw the short, plump figure beside him, “hullo, George, where 've you been?”

“What was that you was just sayin'?” George asked him.

“I didn't say anything,” Toby replied.

“Yes, you did. You were talkin' to yourself.”

“Was I? In that case it was probably ‘fifteen pounds in notes and a cheque for fifteen pounds.' That's what I was thinking about.”

He strolled on a few steps. George kept at his side. Toby told him of his talk with Vanner and all that had followed. At the end he repeated: “And where've you been, George?”

“Just havin' a look round.” George dropped his voice still lower. “Tobe, when you were a kid, were you afraid of zeppelins?”

“Now, look here, George——”

“Were you, Tobe?”

“Not that I remember.”

“Neither was I. Kids haven't got any sense. But I used to say I was.”

“George,” said Toby, “if someone's been persuading you you ought to be psychoanalyzed, I can recommend you a man who'll only charge you three guineas a sitting and give you three sittings a week for six months and who'll then try to persuade you that the only reason you don't want to pay his bill is that you've got him mixed up in your mind with your father. It 'll be grand for you. But let's talk about that another time. The present point of interest is, banks don't open before ten o'clock, do they?”

“No banks I know anything about do,” said George. “But, Tobe, about the zeppelins. I
wasn
'
t
afraid of them—I was afraid of the devil. But when I started hollerin' and someone asked me what I was scared of it seemed pretty silly to say I was scared of the devil, so I always said it was zeppelins. Well, tonight when——”

“George, I'm very sorry,” said Toby. “I ought to have known you too well to treat profound observations of yours with flippancy. You mean it wasn't policemen at all that that child was afraid of.”

“That's right,” said George. “As soon as she said it was policemen that had scared her I started thinkin' of those zeppelins and I said to myself: ‘My girl, you've only said it was policemen because you don't want to say what it really was.' There was a policeman standin' right in front of her, so I reckon it was the first thing that come into her head. So when the old lady took her off up to bed I went up quiet after them and had a look round to see if I could find out what it really was that made her yell. And”—he took a quick look round, then thrust his round face closer still to Toby's ear—“I reckon I found it.”

“
T
here,” said George, “though it don't make sense even so.”

They had slipped quietly up the stairs together, and George had taken Toby to a room at one end of a long passage. Down below they had heard Vanner cursing into the telephone because Colin Gillett was not to be found in his cottage. At the other end of the passage the sound of voices told them that men were still busy in Lou Capell's room.

Toby looked down at what George was showing him.

“Just as you say, George—it don't make sense.”

“Not that it mightn't if one understood it,” said George soberly.

“That's modest and broad-minded of you.” Toby looked round the room. It was a bedroom, and, like most of the rooms in the house, its furnishing had a fanciful kind of perversity. There was a wilful contrasting of the very old and very new, of the dignified and the bizarre. The dressing table was a riot of cosmetics, objects of chiffon and lace frothed out of half-open drawers, yet books of unexpectedly solid appearance lay about on tables and floor.

“Mrs Clare's room?” said Toby.

George nodded.

“So the child was coming to her mother. But”—and Toby looked towards a couple of leather suitcases standing in one corner—“what are those doing there?”

“Haven't had time to go into the matter,” said George. “Maybe she's goin' away.”

“Maybe,” said Toby, and he stooped over the curious thing that George had found.

Concealed from the room by a wide and deep settee, it seemed as purposeless a contraption as could have been devised. It consisted of a small paper folder for matches tacked to the wainscot; the folder was of the kind in which the matches light of themselves by rasping against sandpaper as they are pulled away. One of the matches had been wired onto the end of a piece of fine string. The string ran along the wall, held against it at intervals by small staples driven into the panelling. Its other end was secured to the frame of the door in such a way that when the door was opened the string would be pulled at and the match wrenched out of the folder.

This had already happened. The match had plainly lit itself, fallen to the floor and burnt out. That is to say, it had fallen, not onto the polished floor boards, but onto a cloth spread out on the floor behind the settee. The cloth was soaked in water.

Toby chewed at his lower lip.

“If that cloth had been soaked in petrol, George, this'd be quite a neat little dodge for starting a fire, but water makes it just silly.”

“You see, what I reckon happened was this,” said George. “The kid wakes up and hears voices and lots of people walkin' around and all that. So she gets up and puts on her dressin' gown to go and see what it's all about. She goes to her mother's room and opens the door, and this bit of string gets her right across the face. A grownup'd get it somewhere about the middle and ten to one'd break it by walking into it; quite likely they'd never know it was there. But it gets the kid across the eyes, or maybe the mouth. So she lets out a yell and bolts.”

“And then she doesn't want to say why she yelled, and so she says it was policemen. But,” said Toby, “why didn't she want to say what it was?”

“Maybe she isn't allowed in her mother's bedroom and didn't want to let on she'd been goin' in.”

“Perhaps,” said Toby, unconvinced. “Anyway, why water?”

“To prevent a fire, of course.”

Toby sighed. “Of course, of course.”

“It might be someone experimentin' like, about how to start a fire in case of need.”

“I was afraid you'd say that,” said Toby, and he turned away, picked up a book, looked at its title and muttered: “The woman reads psychology.”

“Why afraid?” said George.

“Well, it isn't nice to have a person about the place experimenting with fire raising, is it? In a well-conducted household, the sort of household you and I feel really at home in, one might assume it was some kind of joke, but in houses where murders happen it might be to the common advantage to treat it seriously.”

“Goin' to tell old man Vanner about it?”

“No, leave the thing as it is so that he can find it for himself if he looks in the right place. But for the moment——” He swung round.

Smiling at him coldly from the doorway was Eve Clare.

She came in and softly closed the door. Toby waited.

She said in a low, harsh voice: “So it's true, is it, that you're addicted to investigation?”

George, still squatting on the floor by the settee, replied: “We call it snoopin', lady.”

She stood in the middle of the room, looking round her.

“It's a mess, isn't it?” she murmured absent-mindedly, but whether she was referring to the untidiness of her bedroom or the death of Lou Capell was not apparent.

“You've seen this, have you?” said Toby, pointing at the match folder tacked to the wainscot.

She gave it a glance, but indifferently, and nodded.

“Just now—and I heard what you were saying. You know, you're in my bedroom, and uninvited.” But as Toby was about to reply she went on with jerky inconsequentiality while her eyes still roved about the room: “My husband—my late husband, if that's the right term for him—you and he know each other, don't you? He was telling me that you—I was wondering perhaps——” She gave a slight shake to her head. The small movement had a sort of pathos; it was as if she were trying to shake out of her mind thoughts that were utterly distracting her. “Would you like a room here?” she asked abruptly.

With gravity that did not disguise the irony, Toby replied: “You are kindness itself.”

“I'll tell them to see about it. They—the servants—they're being questioned now. But
why
”—suddenly her voice was fiercely raised—“why did it have to happen here—and now? Will you tell me that?”

“Why did it have to happen at all?” said Toby.

She drew a deep breath and seemed to attempt a new grip on her wandering thoughts. Deliberately she stared into Toby's face. Her eyes as they appraised his tolerable good looks grew bold, her mouth curved with the sensuousness that appeared so much more appropriate to her features than that look of harrowed distraction.

“At any rate,” she said, “I'm glad you're staying.”

“So am I,” he said.

“Only I wish the circumstances were different.”

“So do I,” he said.

“D'you think I'm dreadful, the way I keep thinking of how this thing affects me, the way it grabs at one's existence and pulls it out of shape?”

“Fair to medium dreadful,” he answered.

She looked down at her sandalled feet.

“Most people,” she said, “wouldn't have said that.”

“No?” said Toby.

“Most people,” she said, “would have said it was quite understandable and that was how almost everyone would react if they were honest.”

“Most people,” said Toby, “are fair to medium dreadful too.”

“I suppose so. Only…” She looked up at him. “Really I'm sorry, terribly sorry.”

“All right,” he said, “I believe you.”

She frowned. “You don't. People never believe I'm anything but completely selfish. They never give me a chance.”

“Poor little Eve Clare.”

“Don't laugh at me,” she said quickly. “It's true. I've never had a chance. There's always something… somebody. … Even now something like this has to happen. Oh, but I don't mean——”

“No, no,” he said, “it's really better not to mean anything. Well, suppose we go downstairs.”

“But you
are
staying, aren't you? You do think it's your job to stay and try to find out what really happened? You won't go? Lou was your friend, wasn't she? Oh——” And she gave a laugh, avoiding his hard stare. “It isn't only because of this awful thing that I want you to stay. Ever since I heard of you from Roger——”

“No,” said Toby thoughtfully, “definitely you don't mean anything.”

“But you're staying?”

“Of course. Only,” he said, manoeuvring himself and Eve into the passage, “if I stay I shall ask questions. Will you advise your friends to answer them?” When she nodded he added: “And I wonder how long it 'll be before you tell me why you want me to stay. You're frightened somehow, aren't you?”

“I was just telling you,” she said, “ever since I heard of you from Roger I've been longing to meet you. There's always such a difference between the——”

“I know, I know.” He set foot on the first stair. “Between the people who've done things and those who've only written about them or read about them or played round with them in a laboratory.”

Flushing, she said: “The things people play around with in laboratories can be very important.”

“Matters of life and death,” said Toby.

She came to a stop at the foot of the stairs. Since she had left her bedroom she had seemed uneasy; she had kept looking round as if she felt she had forgotten something.

“Life and death,” she repeated. “When life's got such a hell of a lot of problems, Mr Dyke, it seems unfair that a person's death should be smothered in such a lot more of them. I hope when I die I shall do it neatly and tidily.” But still her eyes roamed uneasily as, behind the words she spoke, her mind was busy searching for what it had forgotten.

What she had forgotten was George, still in her bedroom, but no longer squatting on the floor beside the settee.

People went to bed early that night. They went with tired but wide-awake faces and books under their arms. Someone said there was no point in going to bed. Yet there seemed no point either in the desultory talk that was all that happened while they remained together. After a little while, even, there seemed little point in the whisky.

The French windows were closed; the lights downstairs were turned out; upstairs the lights flashed on.

Toby stood in the middle of the room that had been prepared for him, fingering his sharp chin and looking round him.

A pair of pyjamas had been laid out on the bed—Roger Clare's perhaps, or possibly Max Potter's.

But Toby made no move to undress. There was an easy chair in one corner of the room; pulling it forward so that it faced the open window, he flung himself into it. The deep indigo of the night sky had its pattern of stars. Toby smoked a cigarette, then another, and then a third. But when his hand groped for a fourth he found the packet was empty. He tossed it away from him. The sound it made striking against a silver ash tray which it sent skidding across the small table and clanging down onto the floor made him start as if a shot had gone off. His nerves were on edge, his mind was restless.

Presently he stood up, opened the door a few inches and listened. The house was silent. He opened the door further and looked out. Under one or two doors light was still shining. Toby slid quietly out.

Some way down the passage which, as the mood seemed to suit it, dropped a step or went up a couple and turned corners with the wilfulness of old age a smaller passage turned off to the left. Out of this opened the door of the room that had been given to George. Without knocking Toby let himself in. The room was in darkness.

“George,” said Toby in a whisper, “have you got any cigarettes?”

There was no answer. Toby closed the door, groped for the light switch and pressed it. Nothing resulted.

With a muttered curse or two Toby felt his way across to the bed. “George!” he repeated.

His exploring hands encountered a table by the bed and a reading lamp on the table. This turned out to be the point where the light could be switched on. But even before the light had sprung up under the parchment shade Toby had realized that the bed was empty.

That George had ever been in the room was revealed only by a little ash in an ash tray on the dressing table. Not even the stub of the cigarette was there. He could not have remained in the room long enough to smoke one cigarette to the end. The bed was creaseless.

Toby, his hand still on the switch on the reading lamp, looked round him uneasily. He examined the utter tidiness of the room with great dissatisfaction. He waited. For nearly half an hour he waited. Then he went to his own room.

About an hour later he again slipped out into the passage and visited George's room. It was still empty.

The next morning when Toby came down there was no one left at breakfast but Lisbeth Gask.

She greeted him: “Thank God someone looks as if they've slept.”

The bitterness of his reply drew an apology from her.

“But what,” she said, “have you done with your little plump friend?”

“I don't know where he is,” he said grimly.

Lisbeth Gask rose and left him to his ill humour. She strolled out into the garden, sat down on a cane chair in the sunlight and began to knit. She knitted with that intimidating speed and regularity of which a few women are capable. When she had been sitting there about twenty minutes Toby joined her. He said nothing, dropping down onto the grass at her side.

At length she said: “Well, whom are they going to suspect?”

“How should I know?” said Toby.

“Of course you know.”

“I don't.”

“I'm not asking you whom
you
suspect,” she said, “I was asking whom they do.”

“All the same, I don't know,” said Toby.

She clicked her tongue with impatience. “I've just gone and promised Eve not to leave until things are cleared up a bit. But, really, a weekend in this house is quite enough for anyone. Besides, I'm in the middle of some work I want to get on with.”

“What do you do?” asked Toby.

“Design carpets. That's one of mine in Eve's hall, but it's a rotten one.”