Питер Ловси - On the Edge

Rose didn’t have that much energy left. She turned on the engine and drove out of the Park, into the traffic moving up Park Lane. She was incapable of saying any more. She was blitzed. It was all she could do, all she wanted to do, to perform the mindless functions of controlling the car. It was some kind of link with normality, like hanging out washing the morning after an air raid that had shattered every window in the house.

Mercifully Antonia also went silent.

The street lights were on already. Outside the Dorchester a man was selling evening papers. Rose switched on the headlamps as she swung the Bentley into Oxford Street and the predictable jam. While they were inching towards Oxford Circus the subversive aroma of roast chestnuts wafted from a street corner.

‘It’s past teatime.’

‘Shall we?’

‘A bag of chestnuts won’t go far.’

They stopped at Yarner’s in Langham Place and sat by an upstairs window at one of the glass-topped tables with a pot of tea in front of them. They had a corpse at home to dispose of and they blandly ordered Bismarck Herring sandwiches, buttered crumpets and chocolate cake from the silver-haired waitress in her black dress, pink apron and cap. The imminent prospect of returning to the house without the slightest idea what to do with Hector appalled them both. Tea was a convenient hiatus. They didn’t speak, except to place the order and pay the bill. They were long past the point of small talk.

Back in the car, Rose handed across a cigarette and lit one herself. ‘It’s got to be faced. You can’t use an undertaker now.’

‘What do you mean — you?’

‘All right. Slip of the tongue. We’re in this together.’

Another half-minute passed.

Antonia said, ‘Nobody knows he’s dead except you and me.’

‘And Mr Greely.’

‘That undertaker? He didn’t use my name once. He’ll forget all about us.’

‘Some hopes! I should think you’re indelibly fixed in his memory. I can’t imagine anyone else has ever changed their mind in a funeral parlour.’

‘Greely might remember me, but he didn’t meet Hector, did he?’

‘You’d better tell me what you’re driving at.’

Antonia blew out a thin plume of smoke. Suddenly the bleak look had slipped from her features and was supplanted by an expression Rose had seen before, that afternoon they were standing outside the Ritz — lips pressed together into a secret smile, pleased with itself and scornful of the world, eyes slightly glazed and looking at nothing in particular. ‘Hector will just have to disappear.’

Rose frowned.

‘Go missing, darling. Plenty do.’

‘That’s going to take some believing. He wasn’t the type.’

‘What?’

‘Successful businessmen don’t go missing. How are you going to account for it?’

‘I won’t. It’s not my job.’ ‘But you’ll have to notify the police.’ ‘Eventually.’ ‘And?’

‘I’ll tell them he didn’t come home one night.’

Rose shook her head and sighed. ‘It’s not much good, Antonia. What are they supposed to think?’

‘Anything you bloody well like.’ Antonia rattled off a list. ‘He fell down a manhole. He lost his memory. He was robbed and pushed into the river. He refused to pay protection money to a gang. He seduced the entire Luton Girls’ Choir and fled the country. He got religion and went into—’

Rose cut in. ‘For God’s sake, Antonia! How will you get rid of the body?’

‘We, my little helpmate.’

‘We, then.’

Antonia waved a dismissive hand. ‘Bury him somewhere. Out in the country. A Surrey wood.’

‘Have you any idea how hard it is to dig a grave in uncultivated ground?’

‘Why? Have you?’

Rose gave her a glare that would have sunk a battleship. ‘The newspaper reports always say the victim was found in a shallow grave.’

‘What’s your suggestion?’

‘I don’t have one.’ Any minute they would be at each other’s throats. ‘All right. We’ll go back to the house.’ She succeeded in sounding calm, but her hands shook when she tried fitting the key into the ignition. She didn’t know which was worse, the hostility from Antonia or the terror boiling inside herself.

She drove slowly up Portland Place and brought the car round the Devonshire Street turn to the Mews. Antonia got out and ran into the house. Rose pulled out the key of the car and followed.

Antonia’s voice hailed her excitedly from the sitting room where they had left the body. ‘He’s starting to loosen up. I think we can move him tonight.’

Rose thought, what’s the point? She remained in the kitchen, sparing herself another sight of the corpse.

Antonia appeared again, radiant with her discovery. Her dead husband might have been a bread-mix from the way she talked about him. ‘I’ll put some heat in there and he’ll be ready in no time.’

Rose looked round for something else to occupy her. The cat had walked in and wanted feeding, so she opened the fridge. Some uncooked meat was in there on a plate. ‘Is it safe to feed this to Raffles?’

‘What do you mean — safe?’

‘Free from poison.’

‘For crying out loud, you halfwit. There was never any poison.’

‘No poison?’

‘Only the chloroform.’

‘For Hector?’

‘No — for you, stupid.’ The barb sprang from Antonia’s tongue and she immediately tried to cover it with words. ‘The point is, you can feed the bloody cat with perfect safety. I’ve got to find an electric fire.’ She quit the room.

Rose stood rigid. Now she knew. Hector’s murder had been an afterthought, one of Antonia’s devil-may-care decisions after the murder attempt failed. The whole charade of Antonia going away and Hector requiring cooked meals had been dreamed up to bring Rose herself to the house to be chloroformed and killed.

Why?

How could she have so antagonized Antonia? The worst she was guilty of was an innocent meal out with Hector.

What did Antonia hope to gain by it?

She thought back to Barry’s death. That had been casual and coldblooded. Barry had been insufferable, but not to Antonia. She had no grudge against him, yet she had calmly offered to kill him. And kept her promise.

Antonia didn’t need a bloodlust or a brainstorm. She murdered with detachment. Yet not without reason. Surely not without reason.

She must have killed Barry because it put Rose under an obligation to her. Something was wanted in return.

The opportunity to steal the death certificate from the registrar? Not just that.

Rose clenched her fists.

My identity .

I assumed all along that she wanted me to square the account by killing Hector, possibly without knowing what I was doing. I was wrong. If she’d wanted Hector dead she’d have done it herself. She didn’t need me for that. But if she killed me she could write her own name on the death certificate and ‘die’. She’d have my handbag with all my papers and my house keys. She’d become Rose Bell and she’d be free to go to America with Vic and marry him.

And Hector, could he have known about this? Was it possible that he’d gone along with it? Did he know of the plan that evening in Reggiori’s?

Rose thought back to what she had heard about the drowning of Hector’s first wife. He’d connived at that. Why shouldn’t he have also connived at another murder?

The cat mewed.

She took the meat from the fridge and looked for a knife with a good, sharp edge.

Just what are you doing with that knife?’

Antonia stood in the doorway, her right hand gripping the door frame.

Rose looked up. She’d taken it from a drawer containing wooden spoons, tin openers, meat skewers and a selection of knives and cleavers. This had been the obvious one to choose, a long bone-handled carver with a blade that may once have been uniformly wide. Years of sharpening had honed it to a point.