Питер Ловси - On the Edge

‘How much does he know?’

‘Vic? Sweet F.A., darling. He thinks all this was a love trap for you and my sneaky little husband, and I must say, I had suspicions of my own when I learned from Hector’s own lips that he’d taken you out to dinner.’ She let that sink in. ‘I’d better confess that it wasn’t the total surprise to me that I registered yesterday. That was a little mischief on my part. I wanted to hear it from your own angelic lips. Actually I’d already talked to Hec on the telephone yesterday morning, playing the doting wife, enquiring whether you’d made him a decent curry. He was positively chirpy when he told me he’d taken you to Reggiori’s instead. Apart from being bloody annoyed I was curious to know what it amounted to. After all, if you two had given me evidence of adultery I could have divorced him. No need for a funeral. Unluckily for Hector, Vic couldn’t find a single brown hair on the pillows.’ She let the towel unfurl and tossed it to Rose. ‘Pity. You could have saved me no end of bother.’

Antonia had left the Bentley round the corner in Charlwood Street. She didn’t speak until they were travelling in slow convoy up Vauxhall Bridge Road with the early morning traffic from south of the river.

‘Rose.’

‘Yes?’

‘Why are you doing this?’

‘Doing what?’

‘Coming back to the house with me. It’s only for Hector’s sake, isn’t it?’

‘Does it matter?’ Rose stared ahead at the adverts on the back of a bus. She felt weary, but more in control. Before leaving the house she had fitted in a wash and forced herself to eat a slice of bread and Marmite. She was wearing stockings and shoes again and a jumper and skirt. She had also dug out her grey demob overcoat that buttoned at the neck.

Antonia persisted with her point about Hector. ‘The fact is, you want to find out for yourself if he’s really dead. You don’t know whether to believe me.’

‘Can you blame me?’

Antonia smirked. ‘He cared bugger all about you. You know that, don’t you? Women were always making fools of themselves over bloody Hector, wanting to mother him.’

‘Who said I wanted to mother him?’

She gave a single, high-pitched laugh. ‘If it was sex you wanted, he just wasn’t up to it, sweetie, believe me.’

‘It takes two.’

‘Go to hell,’ Antonia snapped back, no longer amused. ‘That’s bloody good coming from you. It takes two! How was it with Barry, then? Did you satisfy him? You and who else? Was it two or two hundred?’

Rose didn’t answer. Her other compelling reason for agreeing to come was that she needed to keep tabs on this murderous woman after two nasty shocks in twenty-four hours. She meant to stick with her now until it was safe to be alone again.

Antonia steered the car through the mews entrance behind Park Crescent and into a garage.

‘Come on, then. Come and see for yourself.’

She opened a gate and let them into the yard at the back of the house where the two dustbins stood. Then she unlocked the kitchen door and led the way in. Yesterday’s shopping still lay unused on the table.

Rose followed, her skin suddenly so sensitive that she was acutely conscious of every movement of her clothes. Pulses throbbed in her face and neck. She said a silent, desperate prayer that Hector might still be alive.

Antonia crossed the room and hesitated at the door that led to the hall. Rose tensed, sensing that she ought to be ready to defend herself against another sudden attack. Then Antonia spoke over her shoulder. ‘Take a long, deep breath, my poppet.’

They stepped into the hall.

Rose took the breath, and held it. And held it longer.

Just inside the front door, where Antonia had said it would be, lay a corpse in a camelhair overcoat like the one Hector had worn to Reggiori’s. Dark trousers and brown shoes. Hands still in leather gloves. An ear partly covered by a black woollen scarf. Curly red-gold hair.

‘Want to look at the face?’ Antonia was standing beside the body preparing to give the shoulder a prod with her foot.

‘There’s no need.’ Rose heard herself say in a flat voice that sounded like someone reading lines without understanding them. She picked up a green porkpie hat that was lying against the skirting board. ‘It can’t be anyone else.’

Outwardly controlled, she ached from her throat to the pit of her stomach. It wasn’t the piercing pain of shock; she had felt increasingly certain from the way Antonia had been behaving that this time she had spoken the truth. No, it was grief that she felt, a bitter, grinding grief for Hector and for the loss of a life that she had known was threatened and she would have saved.

‘Feeling strong?’ Antonia took off her coat and threw it over a chair. ‘Do you need a snifter first or shall we get started?’

‘Do you want to move him?’

‘I didn’t bring you here for tea and biscuits.’

‘All right. Let’s do it now.’ Rose steeled herself. Numb as she felt, she was determined not to give way to panic in front of Antonia. She placed Hector’s hat respectfully on a chair and stepped closer.

She wasn’t new to the sight of death. She had seen air-raid victims brought out on stretchers from bombed buildings and she had gone through the ordeal of identifying Barry at the mortuary. But this was the first time she had been called upon to touch a corpse.

‘You take the legs, then. We’d better get him straight first.’

The body was lying on its side in a bowed attitude with the left leg bent into a near right angle and the other almost straight. His left arm lay along the length of the body and the right was trapped under the head.

It was necessary to bring the legs together to lift them. She moistened her lips and told herself to treat it straightforwardly as a simple, mechanical task. To forget that this had been Hector. Stooping, she took hold of the bent leg above the ankle. She gave a gasp of shock and let go at once. Through the trousers it felt as if the limb were encased in plaster.

Antonia had taken hold of the arm that lay under the head and was trying unsuccessfully to straighten it. ‘God, he’s as stiff as a board.’

‘Is it rigor mortis?’

‘It must be.’

‘I think I do need that drink.’

‘You’re not the only one.’

They moved into one of the sitting rooms and Antonia poured generous brandies into wine glasses. She spilled some and didn’t even notice. She had gone very pale.

Rose made an effort to be practical. ‘It wears off after a time, I believe.’

‘Any idea how long?’

‘No.’

‘There’s no movement at all. It’ll be the devil to get upstairs. It’s the arms and legs. They’re in such awkward positions.’

‘Can we wait for it to wear off?’

‘And leave him lying in the hall? It could be hours and hours. It only wants someone to knock at the door and we’re sunk. Christ Almighty, Rose, why didn’t I think of this?’

Rose was incapable of dealing with anyone else’s state of panic, least of all Antonia’s. The revulsion she’d felt when she handled that hardened limb had taken a grip on her mind.

Antonia stood in the middle of the room with hunched shoulders and folded arms. ‘Even if we managed to get him up to the bedroom how would I get him into pyjamas? I’d have to rip them apart to get the arms and legs in. Blast you, Hector!’

‘Is it important to have him in pyjamas?’

‘Important ? He’s supposed to have died in bed, of cardiac failure. I’ve written it on the death certificate.’

To Rose there seemed only one feasible course of action, but she wasn’t going to suggest it herself. She waited for it to come from Antonia, as it eventually did.