Hot Money Part 34

'I'm to gush. Dreadful word, where did you learn it? I'm to let all this drip out as if it were of absolutely no importance but something I've just thought of? Darling, you can't mean I have to ring up Alicia}'

'Especially Alicia. Tell her I told you she has a boyfriend. That should stir her up nicely.'

'Darling, you don't mean it!'

'Ask her. And... er... do you know if the police are still guarding Quantum?'

'They told Donald that if he wanted constant guards, he'd have to get his own now. No one in the family wants to spend the money, so the police just have it on their occasional surveillance list, apparently.'

'And has anything else much happened in the family since we've been away?'

'No, nothing new. Thomas left Berenice, did you know that?'

'Yes... Is he still with Lucy?'

'Yes, darling, I think so. Do you want me to tell him too?'

'You might as well.'

'I'm to think of something to phone them about and gossip a bit, and then I'm to say that I don't really care who killed Moira, but I don't think the police were thorough. Is that right? They never thought of looking for her notepad, the one she used to keep in the kitchen, in one of the drawers of those dazzling white cabinets. When anyone telephoned when she was in the kitchen, which was a lot of the time, she doodled their names with stars and things round it and wrote notes like "Donald, Sunday, noon" when people were coming to visit. I'm to say the police could never have found it but I've just remembered it, and I wonder if it's still there. I'm thinking of telling the police about it after the weekend. Is that right?'

'That's right,' I said.

'And I'm to say, what if she wrote down the name of her murderer?'

'Yes,' I said.

'Darling, why do you think her murderer telephoned? To make an appointment to kill her? You don't mean that, do you?'

'To make an appointment to see her, yes. To kill her, I don't know.'

'But why, darling? Why do you think the killer telephoned?'

'Because Malcolm told me she didn't like people just dropping in,' I said. 'She preferred people to telephone first. And because Moira's greenhouse can't be seen from the road, the drive, or from any windows of Quantum. Malcolm made her put it where it was well out of sight on that patch of lawn surrounded by shrubs, because he didn't like it. If anyone had come to see Moira unannounced that evening, they'd have found the house empty. If they'd telephoned first, she'd have said to come round to the greenhouse, that's where she'd be.'

'I suppose that's logical, darling. The police always did say she knew her killer, but I didn't want to believe it unless it was Arthur Bellbrook. He knew her. He fits all round, darling.'

If Arthur had killed her, why would he go back later and find her body?'

'Darling, are you sure it wasn't Arthur Bellbrook?'

'Positive.'

'Oh dear. All right then, darling. You want me to start those phone calls tomorrow but definitely not before ten o'clock, and to go on all day until I've reached everyone? You do realise, I hope, that I'm playing in a sort of exhibition bridge game tomorrow evening?'

'Just keep plugging along.'

'What if they're out, or away?'

'Same thing. If nothing happens and we get no results, I'll phone you on Monday evening.'

'Darling, let me go to Quantum with you.'

'No, definitely not.' I was alarmed. 'Joyce, promise me you'll stay in Surrey. Promise!'

'Darling, don't be so vehement. All right, I promise,' She paused. 'Was that old b.u.g.g.e.r in good nick when you last saw him?'

In excellent nick,' I said.

'Can't help being fond of him, darling, but don't b.l.o.o.d.y tell him I said so. Can't go back, of course. But well, darling, if there's one thing I regret in my life it's getting that frightful man West to catch him with Alicia. If I'd had any b.l.o.o.d.y sense, darling, I'd have turned a blind eye and let him have his bit on the side. But there it is, I was too young to know any better.'

She said goodbye cheerfully, however, promising to do all the phone calls in the morning, and I put the receiver down slowly.

'Did you hear any of that last bit?' I asked Malcolm.

'Not a lot. Something about if she'd had any sense, she wouldn't have done something or other.'

'Wouldn't have divorced you,' I said.

He stared incredulously. 'She insisted on it.'

'Twenty-seven years later, she's changed her mind.'

He laughed. 'Poor old Joyce.' He spent no more thought on it. 'Moira didn't doodle on notepads that I know of.'

'I dare say she didn't. But if you were a murderer, would you bet on it?'

He imagined it briefly, i'd be very worried to hear from Joyce. I would think long and hard about going to Quantum to search for the notepad before she told the police.'

'And would you go? Or would you think, if the police didn't find it when Moira was first murdered, then it isn't there? Or if it is there, there's nothing incriminating on it?'

I don't know if I would risk it. I think I would go. If it turned out to be a silly trap of Joyce's, I could say I'd just come to see how the house was doing.' He looked at me questioningly. 'Are we both going down there?'

'Yes, but not until morning. I'm jet-lagged. Don't know about you. I need a good sleep.'

He nodded. 'Same for me.'

'And that shopping you were doing?' he eyed the several Fortnum & Mason carrier bags with tall parcels inside. 'Essential supplies?'

'Everything I could think of. We'll go down by train and...'

He waved his cigar in a negative gesture. 'Car and chauffeur.' He fished out his diary with the phone numbers. 'What time here?'

Accordingly, we went in the morning in great comfort and approached Quantum circ.u.mspectly from the far side, not past the eyes of the village.

The chauffeur goggled a bit at the sight of the house, with its missing centre section and boarded-up windows and large new sign saying: 'Keep out. Building unsafe.'

'Reconstructions,' Malcolm said.

The chauffeur nodded and left, and we carried the Fortnum & Mason bags across the windy central expanse and down the pa.s.sage on the far side of the staircase, going towards the playroom.

Black plastic sheeting still covered all the exposed floor s.p.a.ce, not taut and pegged down, but wrinkled and slack. Our feet made soft crunching noises on the grit under the plastic and there were small puddles here and there as if rain had blown in. The boarded-up doors and the barred stairs looked desolate, and far above, over the roof, the second black plastic sheet flapped like sails between the rafters.

Sad, sad house. Malcolm hadn't seen it like that, and was deeply depressed. He looked at the very solid job the police had made of hammering the plywood to the door-frame of the playroom and asked me politely how I proposed to get in.

'With your fingernails?' he suggested.

I produced a few tools from one of the bags. 'There are other shops in Piccadilly,' I said. 'Boy scouts come prepared.'

I'd thought it likely that I wouldn't be able to get the plywood off easily as I understood they'd used four-inch nails, so I'd brought a hammer and chisel and a saw, and before Malcolm's astonished gaze proceeded to dig a hole through the plywood and cut out a head-high, body-wide section instead. Much quicker, less sweat.

'You didn't think of all this since yesterday, did you?' he asked.

'No. On the plane. There were a lot of hours then.'

I freed the cut-out section and put it to one side, and we went inton the playroom. Nothing had changed in there. Malcolm fingered the bicycles when his eyes had adjusted to the partial light, and I could see the sorrow in his body.

It was by that time nine-thirty. If Joyce by any chance phoned the right person first, the earliest we could have a visitor was about half past ten. After that, anything was possible. Or nothing.

Malcolm had wanted to know what we would do if someone came.

'All the family have keys to the outside kitchen door,' I said. 'We never had the locks changed, remember? Our visitor will go into the kitchen that way and we will go round and... er...'

'Lock him in,' Malcolm said.

'Roughly, yes. And then talk about confessing. Talk about what to do with the future.'

I went round myself to the kitchen door and made sure it did still unlock normally, which it did. I locked it again after a brief look inside. Still a mess in there, unswept.

I returned to the playroom and from the bags produced two stick-on mirrors, each about eight inches by ten.

'I thought you'd brought champagne,' Malcolm grumbled. 'Not saws and b.l.o.o.d.y looking-gla.s.ses.'

'The champagne's there. No ice.'

'It's cold enough without any b.l.o.o.d.y ice.' He wandered aimlessly round the playroom, finally slumping into one of the armchairs. We had both worn layers of the warmest clothes we had, leaving the suitcases in the Ritz, but the raw November air looked as if it would be a match for the Simpson's vicuna overcoat and my new Barbour, and the gloves I had bought for us in the same shop the day before. We were at least out of the wind which swirled round and through the house, but there was no heat but our own.

I stuck one of the mirrors onto the cut-out piece of plywood, and the other at the same height onto the wall which faced the playroom door, the side wall of the staircase: stuck it not exactly opposite the door but a little further along towards the hall.

'What are you doing?' Malcolm asked.

'Just making it possible for us to see anyone come up the drive without showing ourselves. Would you mind sitting in the other chair, and telling me when the mirrors are at the right angle? Look into the one on the stair wall. I'll move the other. OK?'

He rose and sat in the other chair as I'd asked, and I moved the plywood along and angled it slightly until he said, 'Stop. That's it. I can see a good patch of drive.'

I went and took his place and had a look for myself. It would have been better if the mirrors had been bigger, but they served the purpose. Anyone who came to the house that way would be visible.

If they came across the fields we'd have to rely on our ears.

By eleven, Malcolm was bored. By eleven-thirty, we'd temporarily unbolted and unlocked the door at the end of the pa.s.sage and been out into the bushes to solve the problem posed by no plumbing. By twelve, we were into Bollinger in disposable gla.s.ses (disgusting, Malcolm said) and at twelve-thirty ate biscuits and pate.

No one came. It seemed to get colder. Malcolm huddled inside his overcoat in the armchair and said it had been a rotten idea in the first place.

I had had to promise him that we wouldn't stay overnight. I thought it unlikely anyway that someone would choose darkness rather than daylight for searching for a small piece of paper that could be anywhere in a fairly large room, and I'd agreed to the chauffeur returning to pick us up at about six. Left to myself, I might have waited all night, but the whole point of the exercise was that Malcolm himself should be there. We would return in the morning by daybreak.

He said, 'This person we're waiting for... you know who it is, don't you?'

'Well... I think so.'

'How sure are you, expressed as a percentage?'

'Um... ninety-five.'

'That's not enough.'

'No, that's why we're here.'

'Edwin,' he said. 'It's Edwin, isn't it?'

I glanced across at him, taking my gaze momentarily off the mirrors. He wanted it to be Edwin. He could bear it to be Edwin. In Edwin's own words, he could have faced it. Edwin might possibly have been capable of killing Moira, I thought: an unplanned killing, shoving her head into the potting compost because the open bag of it gave him the idea. I didn't think he had the driving force, the imagination or the guts to have attempted the rest.

When I didn't contradict him, Malcolm began saying, 'If Edwin comes...' and it was easier to leave it that way.

Time crept on. It was cold. By two-thirty, to stoke our internal fires, we were eating rich dark fruit cake and drinking claret. (Heresy, Malcolm said. We should have had the claret with the pate and the champagne with the cake. As at weddings? I asked. G.o.d d.a.m.n you, he said.) I didn't feel much like laughing. It was a vigil to which there could be no good end. Malcolm knew as well as I did that he might be going to learn something he fervently didn't want to know. He didn't deep down want anyone to come. And I wanted it profoundly.

By three-thirty, he was restless. 'You don't really mean to go through all this again tomorrow, do you?'

I watched the drive. No change, as before. 'The Ritz might give us a packed lunch.'

'And Monday? Not Monday as well.' He'd agreed on three days before we'd started. The actuality was proving too much.

'We'll give up on Monday when it gets dark,' I said.

'You're so b.l.o.o.d.y persistent.'

I watched the mirrors. Come, I thought. Come.

'Joyce might have forgotten the phone calls,' Malcolm said.

'She wouldn't forget.'

'Edwin might have been out.'

'That's more likely.'

A light-coloured car rolled up the drive, suddenly there.

No attempt at concealment. No creeping about, looking suspicious. AH confidence. Not a thought given to entrapment.