Straight. Part 10

Better than tranquillizers, I thought. Alcohol loosened the stress, calmed the mental pain. The world's first anaesthetic. I could have done with some myself.

'Where are your letters?' I asked.

She switched on a table light. The on-creeping dusk in the garden deepened abruptly towards night and I wished she would hurry up because I wanted to go home.

She looked at a bookcase which covered a good deal of one wall.

'In there, I think. In a book.'

'Do start looking, then. It could take all night.'

'You don't need to wait.'

'I think I will,' I said.

'Don't you trust me?' she demanded.

'No.'

She stared at me hard. 'Why not?'

I didn't say that because of the diamonds I didn't trust anyone. I didn't know who I could safely ask to look out for them, or who would search to steal them, if they knew they might be found.

'I don't know you,' I said neutrally.

'But I...' She stopped and shrugged. 'I suppose I don't know you either.' She went over to the bookshelves. '

Some of these books are hollow,' she said.

Oh Greville, I thought. How would I ever find anything he had hidden? I liked straight paths. He'd had a mind like a labyrinth.

She began pulling out books from the lower shelves and opening the front covers. Not methodically book by book along any row but always, it seemed to me, those with predominantly blue spines. After a while, on her knees, she found a hollow one which she laid open on the floor with careful sarcasm, so that I could see she wasn't concealing anything.

The interior of the book was in effect a blue velvet box with a close-fitting lid that could be pulled out by a tab. When she pulled the lid out, the shallow blue velvet-lined s.p.a.ce beneath was revealed as being entirely empty.

Shrugging, she replaced the lid and closed the book, which immediately looked like any other book, and returned it to the shelves: and a few seconds later found another hollow one, this time with red velvet interiors.

Inside this one lay an envelope.

She looked at it without touching it, and then at me.

'It's not my letters,' she said. 'Not my writing paper.'

I said, 'Greville made a will leaving everything he possessed to me.'

She didn't seem to find it extraordinary, although I did: he had done it that way for simplicity when he was in a hurry, and he would certainly have changed it, given time.

'You'd better see what's in here, then,' she said calmly, and she picked the envelope out and stretched across to hand it to me.

The envelope, which hadn't been stuck down, contained a single ornate key, about four inches long, the top flattened and pierced like metal lace, the business end narrow with small but intricate teeth. I laid it on my palm and showed it to her, asking her if she knew what it unlocked.

She shook her head. 'I haven't seen it before.' She paused. 'He was a man of secrets,' she said.

I listened to the wistfulness in her voice. She might be strongly controlled at that moment, but she hadn't been before Annette told her Greville was dead. There had been raw panicky emotion on the tape. Annette had simply confirmed her frightful fears and put what I imagined was a false calmness in place of escalating despair. A man of secrets... Greville had apparently not opened his mind to her much more than he had to me.

I put the key back in its envelope and handed it across.

'It had better stay in the book for now,' I said, 'until I find a keyhole it fits.'

She put the key in the book and returned it to the shelves, and shortly afterwards found her letters. They were fastened not with romantic ribbons but held together by a prosaic rubber band; not a great many of them by the look of things but carefully kept.

She stared at me from her knees. 'I don't want you to read them,' she said. 'Whatever Greville left you, they're mine, not yours.'

I wondered why she needed so urgently to remove all traces of herself from the house. Out of curiosity I'd have read the letters with interest if I'd found them myself, but I could hardly demand now to see her love letters . . . if they were love letters.

'Show me just a short page,' I said.

She looked bitter. 'You really don't trust me, do you?

I'd like to know why.'

'Someone broke into Greville's office over the weekend,'

I said, 'and I'm not quite sure what they were looking for.'

'Not my Letters,' she said positively.

'Show me just a page,' I said, 'so I know they're what you say.'

I thought she would refuse altogether, but after a moment's thought she slid the rubber band off the letters and fingered through them, finally, with all expression repressed, handing me one small sheet.

It said: . . . and until next Monday my life will be a desert.

What am I to do? After your touch I shrink from him. It's dreadful. I am running out of headaches.

I adore you.

C.

I handed the page back in silence, embarra.s.sed at having intruded.

'Take them,' I said.

She blinked a few times, snapped the rubber band back round the small collection, and put them into a plain black leather handbag which lay beside her on the carpet.

I felt down onto the floor, collected the crutches and stood up, concentrating on at least holding the hand support of the left one, even if not putting much weight on it. Clarissa Williams watched me go over towards Greville's chair with a touch of awkwardness.

'Look,' she said, 'I didn't realize. . . I mean, when I came in here and saw you stealing things I thought you were stealing things . . . I didn't notice the crutches.'

I supposed that was the truth. Bona fide burglars didn't go around peg-legged, and I'd laid the supports aside at the time she'd come storming in. She'd been too fired up to ask questions: propelled no doubt by grief, anxiety and fear of the intruder. None of which lessened my contrary feeling that she d.a.m.ned well ought to have asked questions before waging war.

I wondered how she would have explained her presence to the police, if they had arrived, when she was urgent to remove all traces of herself from the house.

Perhaps she would have realized her mistake and simply departed, leaving the incapacitated burglar on the floor.

I went over to the telephone table and picked up the brutal little man-tamer. The heavy handle, a black cigarshaped cylinder, knurled for a good grip, was under an inch in diameter and about seven inches long. Protruding beyond that was a short length of solidly thick chromium- plated closely-coiled spring, with a similar but narrower spring extending beyond that, the whole tipped with a black metal k.n.o.b, fifteen or sixteen inches overall. A kick as hard as a horse.

'What is this?' I said, holding it, feeling its weight.

'Greville gave it to me. He said the streets aren't safe.

He wanted me to carry it always ready. He said all women should carry them because of muggers and rapists ... as a magistrate he heard so much about women being attacked ... he said one blow would render the toughest man helpless and give me time to escape.'

I hadn't much difficulty in believing it. I bent the black k.n.o.b to one side and watched the close heavy spring flex and straighten fast when I let it go. She got to her feet and said, 'I'm sorry. I've never used it before, not in anger. Greville showed me how . . . he just said to swing as hard as I could so that the springs would shoot out and do the maximum damage.'

My dear brother, I thought. Thank you very much.

'Does it go back into its sh.e.l.l?' I asked.

She nodded. 'Twist the bigger spring clockwise...

it'll come loose and slide into the casing.' I did that, but the smaller spring with the black k.n.o.b still stuck out.

'You have to give the k.n.o.b a bang against something, then it will slide in.'

I banged the k.n.o.b against the wall, and like a meek lamb the narrower spring slid smoothly into the wider, and the end of the k.n.o.b became the harmless-looking end of yet another gadget.

'What makes it work?' I asked, but she didn't know.

I found that the end opposite the k.n.o.b unscrewed if one tried, so I unscrewed it about twenty turns until the inch-long piece came off, and I discovered that the whole end section was a very strong magnet.

Simple, I thought. Ordinarily the magnet held the heavy springs inside the cylinder. Make a strong flicking arc, in effect throw the springs out, and the magnet couldn't hold them, but let them go, letting loose the full whipping strength of the thing.

I screwed back the cap, held the cylinder, swung it hard. The springs shot out, flexible, shining, horrific.

Wordlessly, I closed the thing up again and offered it to her.

'It's called a kiyoga,' she said.

I didn't care what it was called. I didn't care if I never saw it again. She put it familiarly into her raincoat pocket, every woman's ultimate reply to footpads, maniacs and a.s.sorted misogynists.

She looked unhappily and uncertainly at my face. 'I suppose I can't ask you to forget I came here?' she said.

'It would be impossible.'

'Could you just . . . not speak of it?'

If I'd met her in another way I suppose I might have liked her. She had generous eyes that would have looked better smiling, and an air of basic good humour which persisted despite her jumbling emotions.

With an effort she said, 'Please.'

'Don't beg,' I said sharply. It made me uncomfortable and it didn't suit her.

She swallowed. 'Greville told me about you. I guess . . . I'll have to trust to his judgement.'

She felt in the opposite pocket to the one with the kiyoga and brought out a plain keyring with three keys on it.

'You'd better have these,' she said. 'I won't be using them any more.' She put them down by the answering machine and in her eyes I saw the shininess of sudden tears.

'He died in Ipswich,' I said. 'He'll be cremated there on Friday aftErnoon. Two o'clock.'

She nodded speechlessly in acknowledgement, not looking at me, and went past me, through the doorway and down the hall and out of the front door, closing it with a quiet finality behind her.

With a sigh, I looked round the room. The book-box that had contained her letters still lay open on the floor and I bent down, picked it up, and restored it to the shelves. I wondered just how many books were hollow.

Tomorrow evening, I thought, after Elliot Trelawney, I would come and look.

Meanwhile I picked up the fallen green stone box and put it on the table by the chrysanthemums, reflecting that the oRNate key in the red-lined book-box was far too large to fit its tiny lock. Greville's bunch of keys was down on the carpet also. I returned to what I'd been doing before being so violently interrupted, but found that the smallest of the bunch was still too big for the green stone.

A whole load of no progress, I thought moodily.

I drank the soda water, which had lost its fizz.

I rubbed my arm, which didn't make it much better.

I wondered what judgement Greville had pa.s.sed on me, that could be trusted.

There was a polished cupboard that I hadn't investigated underneath the television set and, not expecting much, I bent down and pulled one of the doors open by its bra.s.s ring handle. The other door opened of its own accord and the contents of the cupboard slid outwards as a unit; a video machine on top with, on two shelves below, rows of black boxes holding recording tapes.

There were small uniform labEls on the boxes bearing, not formulas this Time, but dates.

I pulled one of the boxes out at random and was stunned to see the larger label stuck to its front: 'Race Video Club', it said in heavy print, and underneath, in typing,'July 7th, Sandown Park, Dozen Roses.'

The Race Video Club, as I knew well, sold tapes of races to owners, trainers and anyone else interested.

Greville, I thought in growing amazement as I looked further, must have given them a standing order: every race his horses had run in for the past two years, judged, was there on his shelves to be watched.

He'd told me once, when I asked why he didn't go to see his runners, that he saw them enough on television; and I'd thought he meant on the ordinary scheduled programmes, live from the racetracks in the afternoons.

The front doorbell rang, jarring and unexpected. I went along and looked through a small peephole and found Brad standing on the doorstep, blinking and blinded by two spotlights shining on his face. The lights came from above the door and lit up the whole path and the gate. I opened the door as he shielded his eyes with his arm.

'h.e.l.lo,' I said. 'Are you all right?'

'Turn the lights off. Can't see.'

I looked for a switch beside the front door, found several, and by pressing them all upwards indiscriminately, put out the blaze.

'Came to see you were OK,' Brad explained. 'Those lights just went on.'