Nursery Crimes Part 29

As he looked out of the bathroom window now he was reminded of that other awful morning nine years ago. It was a small fat Zanny in those days with a bow in her hair. Ferret-sharp little Dolly. Two different policemen. Nowadays, a posher, bigger car. Had they come to say that Murphy had been hanged? Surely not. It would be an unusual courtesy. Courtesy? (Was he still drunk?) It would be in the papers soon. On the wireless. He went in to alert Clare.

"You'd better get dressed."

"I feel sick."

Her lips were dry and flaking and her skin seemed to be drawn too tightly over her cheek-bones.

"You'll be better when you've freshened up," he told her. It was trite, but true. Ablutions didn't wash away guilt, but you felt slightly more normal afterwards.

She looked at him with bitter enmity and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Why were the police here now? Would she have time to have a bath? Why did life keep ticking on? Why couldn't one take a huge chunk of it and bury it somewhere deep and dark? She wished she were sixty and on the threshold of senility. If Graham had made her pregnant during the night she would abort it.

The bell rang.

"Nice garden," said Thomas to Warrilow, making conversation Warrilow didn't answer. Given en couragement Thomas would start complimenting Moncrief on his chrysanthemums and write down details of his favourite fertiliser. He could hear Moncrief coming across the hall. When he opened the door he bade him a polite good morning, and introduced himself and Thomas.

"You have heard," he said, "that Murphy has been reprieved?"

Quite obviously Moncrief hadn't. His reaction, Warrilow observed, was distinctly out of proportion to the news. He reacted like a relative. He didn't know what to do with himself. A few steps back into the hall. A fiddling with the bra.s.s gong on the hall table. (For a moment Warrilow thought he was going to beat it.) A few steps up the stairs - and then down again. "Do please go into the sitting-room and pour yourselves a drink." Followed by: "I must tell my wife -- and good Christ - Zanny!"

Warrilow was abrupt. "Not for a moment, sir."

But Clare, at the top of the stairs, had heard. She was in her dressing-gown and her feet were bare. She came down the stairs softly as if not quite sure where the steps were. She sat on the bottom step and began to cry. Graham sat beside her. "Bit of a shock," he said.

"So I see," Warrilow observed dryly. "I wasn't aware you were -acquainted with the man."

Graham and Clare, like two punch-drunk fighters in a ring, heard the warning bell for a new round and struggled out of their corners to face whatever came next. Surely nothing came next? This was it. Victory for Murphy. Victory for life over death. Amen. Draw down your own personal curtain. You've lived through a horror that didn't happen. You've been battered and beaten and b.l.o.o.d.y and bowed -- now pick up your towel and go home. Tonight you'll sleep. In the meantime there are two policemen over there looking very curiously at you. The sitting-room door is open and the room is dusty and untidy. There's half a bottle of scotch on the table and empty gla.s.ses. There's a cushion on the floor and yesterday's newspaper.

Yesterday, Murphy, you faced death. You shouldn't have faced it. Even if you had committed the crime the death penalty should have been commuted long ago. Well - the reformists had argued it that way. Thin, circ.u.mstantial evidence. Nothing solid to go on.

"So," said Clare, becoming calm again, "the judges in the appeal court saw sense?" (But they hadn't - had they? At this late stage it would be the Home Secretary -- wouldn't it? Why wasn't Warrilow answering?) She got up and led the way into the sitting-room. "It was very good of you to come and tell us." She picked up the cushion, smoothed it, and put it on the sofa.

"You would have phoned, I suppose," Graham conjectured, "had the phone been working?"

Warrilow, who had already noticed the cut wire, didn't comment on it. He and Thomas sat on a couple of chairs in the window recess. That this was a repet.i.tion of a scene from the past he wasn't to know. The room was chintzy - cosy. He was aware that Thomas had settled back comfortably against the cushions.

"Pretty little gel," Thomas remarked, noticing the photograph of ten-year-old Zanny on the piano. She wore her hair in two plaits then and her eyes gazed into the middle distance.

Warrilow scowled at him.

"It now seems perfectly possible," Warrilow said, "that Murphy didn't murder Bridget O'Hare."

He watched Clare and Graham for their reaction. They were seated side by side on the sofa and were facing the window. They had themselves in hand. They were cool. The mother's eyes had narrowed slightly as if she were defending the pupils from close scrutiny. Emotional reaction showed in the pupils. She wouldn't know that; probably. The father had reached over to the box on the small bra.s.s table for a cigarette and then the fingers had seemed to forget temporarily what they were searching for. He had touched air before the brain messages activated the fingers again.

"Cigarette, Inspector?"

Warrilow declined.

"Sergeant?"

Thomas, who would have liked one, refused. He felt like a deacon in the big seat under the eye of a h.e.l.l-fire minister. All he would be allowed would be an occasional amen while Warrilow rent the air. A quiet h.e.l.l-raiser, Warrilow - a whispered amen.

"You mean," Graham suggested, "that the O'Hare girl's death was accidental?"

"I had no intention of implying that," Warrilow answered.

"Then . . .?"

"I should like to break the news of Murphy's reprieve to your daughter," Warrilow said. "I believe she's on the premises?"

"Yes, asleep in bed." (What in h.e.l.l are you getting at? This is no joyous breaking of good news.) "Then could you perhaps give her a shout from the hall? Tell her she is wanted downstairs."

Graham, busily erecting staves of protection around his threatened young, was about to burst out into a furious tirade against police methods when Clare stopped him.

"Of course you want to break the good news," she said silkily. "It must have amused you very much when Zanny took the blame on herself. It's good of you to take the time to bother." She looked at Graham in warning. He drew shakily on his cigarette and was silent.

Zanny was at a tea-dance with Caradoc when she heard her mother calling. Her dress was of bright blue satin with white bows on the shoulder. "Blasted pretty dress," he was saying, "but prettier without." They were on their honeymoon in Greece. "d.a.m.n fine place for a honeymoon," he had told her. And it was. Very hot sand. Very hot Greek food. Very hot love-making in the little white villa on the seash.o.r.e. "Blasted interruption," said Caradoc inside her head. She was coming awake slowly, her body warm and lethargic. Mummy was shouting in the hall.

So breakfast was ready.

Well - she was hungry for it.

It was strange that she had known Doctor Caradoc for such a short time and felt that she knew him so well. She had a vague idea that there was a Mrs. Caradoc who ran a riding school. A rough, tough, horsy, female, probably. Perhaps that was where he had learnt to swear so much. Not that she minded. Riding schools were dangerous places. Horses ran amok. Trampled people. If a horse ran amok in a confined s.p.a.ce - like a stable - the chances of getting out alive were remote. Horses were excitable creatures. It would take very little to make them excited. It might be possible during the holidays to ask Daddy if she might take riding lessons. It would be very interesting to get to know Mrs. Caradoc, Mrs. Caradoc would ask her over to the house. In time the strained relationship between the doctor and his wife would become clear. "My dear child," Caradoc would say to her, "you see how it is. You're a b.l.o.o.d.y comfort to me - do you know that?" Their hands would touch in silent understanding.

Zanny began to dress.

She put on the first dress that came to hand -- a green cotton one. Her school shoes didn't go with it, but it didn't matter. After breakfast she'd take a walk into the village. Surgery would probably be over by then and he would be out on his rounds. She wondered what kind of car he'd have. Nothing too smooth. He might offer to give her a lift.

She washed perfunctorily and ran a comb through her hair. It was & lovely day. There was sun everywhere.

The shadows began to crawl around her when she walked into the hall. There was no smell of bacon. There were strangers in the sitting-room. Not strangers. She knew one of them. Thomas from the local police.

Thomas?

Murphy?

The hall clock struck the half-hour of nine. He had been dead one and a half hours and she hadn't given him a single thought. Stricken, she walked into the room.

A small, thin man, with a lot of dark hair and eyes like Daddy's razor blades, was standing up and coming over to her. He was telling her that Murphy wasn't dead. Murphy was reprieved. How terribly nice of him! What awfully good news! The sun was out again in a great big burst of yellow.

"By G.o.d!" Zanny said, startling everyone. "What bloodily, awfully, splendid news!"

She sat down on the nearest chair and grinned widely at them all.

"A reprieve," Warrilow said, recovering himself, "doesn't mean that Murphy walks out a free man. It means that instead of being hanged, he will spend the rest of his life in prison."

"While there's life," Zanny said, "there's hope."

They had been set an exercise once on cliches. It was desirable, apparently, to learn them. As white as snow. As black as coal. As white and shiny and gorgeous as our future together, Caradoc. And nothing awfully black and terrible happening to Murphy. I'm not fickle. Not really. I was awfully fond of him for quite a long time. It was just when you touched me last night . , . he'd never touched me. Now the last thing I want in the world is for him to touch me. You're very clean. I like the way you smell. I think that night in the cottage he must have been drunk. I didn't want to admit it then, but I do now. After all, the truth is the truth. And I didn't much like his not having all his teeth. I pretended I didn't mind. But I think I did, really. You have to learn by going from man to man. Only I think I'll stop with you. I'm sure I'll stop with you. Dinner in five years, you said. Don't be silly, Caradoc. In five years I'll be twenty. I'm not going to throw all that time away. We've got now - now - now!