The Ka of Gifford Hillary (28 page)

‘Really!’ Ankaret’s apparent indignation was so excellently acted that one could hardly believe it was not real, as she stormed at him. ‘How dare you offer me your protection! I think you must be out of your mind! But if you are determined to play the amateur sleuth, go ahead. I couldn’t care less.’

‘I will,’ Johnny’s face hardened, and picking up the suitcase he dumped it on a chair and opened it. ‘As a first move I mean to relieve you of further temptation to make off with any of the papers in this desk. I shall take them back to
London with me and tomorrow evening I’ll go through them with a tooth-comb. If I don’t find some clue to Giff‘s death among them I’ll make you an abject apology; but I’ve a thundering big hunch that one or more of them is going to lead me somewhere.’

As he began to throw the contents of the desk higgledy-piggledy into the empty case, Ankaret made an instinctive gesture to stop him. But, evidently realising the futility of such an attempt, she checked it and now white to the lips but with her head held high walked out of the room.

She had put up a magnificent fight but lost it, and I could have wept for her at the thought of what she must be feeling. Through her aloof indifference of playing for safety when she had the chance, she had jeopardised the whole fabric of defence which she had built up with such skill. She knew, as I knew, that Johnny had now secured proof that she was an accessory to my murder.

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When Johnny had cleared the whole contents of the desk into the suit-case he carried it through to his room. As I followed, I wondered if his urge to get at the truth would lead him to take a first quick look through the papers at once and, perhaps, within the next hour come upon the dynamite with which to blow my beloved Ankaret sky-high that very evening. But the case was full almost to the brim with receipted bills, estimates, legal agreements, account books and scores of private letters that had accumulated over many years; and, evidently, tired as he was, he thought the mass too great even to glance through at the moment.

Having locked the case he took off his shoes, undid his tie and collar, and lay down on the bed for his belated nap. As soon as he had closed his eyes I left him and went up to Ankaret.

I found her seated in front of her dressing-table. She was sitting quite still staring into her mirror. Her lovely face was more drawn than ever. After a moment she quoted to herself in a low voice the famous line from Hamlet:

‘“To be or not to be. That is the question?”’

Then she looked down at her right hand. It had been
closed about something, and as she opened her fingers I saw to my horror that it was a small bottle of veronal tablets. She was contemplating suicide.

For me it was easy to read her thoughts. It could be only a matter of time now, a few hours perhaps, a day or two at the most, before Johnny would know that she had forged the letter on which was based the accepted explanation of my death. Why, I then did not know, but for some time past there had been a coldness between them. As he bore her no love but had been so devoted to me, it seemed hardly likely that he would show her mercy and keep her secret. If he took her forgeries to the police what possible explanation could she offer to account for them? Under hours of questioning she must eventually break down, or at least be trapped into admissions which would give them a clue to the truth. They would turn the whole house upside down. There could be no hiding Evans’s death ray machine, and she must reckon on my having examined it before it was used upon me; so my finger-prints would be on it.

Whether they would ever find out enough to link it with the crime and reconstruct the full sequence of events, it was impossible to say. But even if they could not prove her to be a murderess they would have a clear case against her as an accessory.

That would mean a long prison sentence; years of soul-shattering confinement, revolting food, a hard bed and being herded with the most vicious and debased women in the country. Appalling thought! Could she possibly face it? And then, when she came out, her looks gone and her life ruined.

Slowly she unscrewed the bottle top, shook a tablet into her left hand, put it in her mouth, threw back her head and swallowed it.

As I watched her my mind was in a turmoil. Johnny and my other friends had been right in their belief that I thought it wrong to take one’s own life. My immediate instinct was to exert all my will-power in an attempt to stop her. Yet on second thoughts I checked myself. Had I the right to do so? It was her life, not mine. And, even if I possessed the power to intervene, should I be using it in her best interests. Was it not kinder to let her slip away in a drug-induced sleep, than attempt to make her face years of misery?

Even as I hesitated she suddenly spoke aloud:

‘No! I’ll be damned if I do!’ And swiftly screwing on the top of the bottle she threw it back into an open drawer.

Probably the decision had never lain with me, but now that it had, beyond question, been taken out of my hands, my mind was momentarily submerged by a wave of relief.

Getting up from the dressing-table, she went over to her bed and lay down upon it. For a while she remained with her grey eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling. Then the one tablet she had swallowed began to take effect. Her long eyelashes fluttered once or twice and she fell asleep.

The two scenes to which I had been a silent witness during the past half hour had played the very devil with my emotions and I decided that a tour of the garden would be the best thing to quieten my agitated mind; so I drifted down to it.

The wonderful long hot spell we had had was at last breaking up. There had been several thunder-storms in the past few days and although the afternoon was fine I guessed that the chill of autumn could now be felt by living people. Insensible to it I wended my way along the familiar paths and borders, then went down to the beach, and so whiled away the best part of two hours before returning to the house.

Ankaret had evidently been woken by Mildred’s bringing up her tea and was now sitting up in bed reading. Her absorbed expression and the crumb-covered plate on the tea-tray implied that she had temporarily shrugged off her anxieties; so reassured about her I went down to Johnny.

I found him changing into a clean shirt and generally sprucing himself up. When he had done he checked the suitcase that held all my papers to see that both the locks on it were fast; then as he left the room he locked the door behind him and pocketed the key. I accompanied him out to the garage and into his car.

Had anyone else shown such determination to ferret out the truth about my death, highly proper, and altruistic as their activities might be, on account of the danger into which they were bringing Ankaret I should have felt a very definite antagonism towards them. But I had no such feelings towards Johnny. Knowing that all he was doing was out of love for me, even his lying in wait for Ankaret that afternoon and high-handed treatment of her when he caught her, made
no difference to my affection for him. Both of them had a bigger place in my heart than any other person in the world; so while I was infinitely more concerned about the dire peril in which Ankaret now stood I was still anxious that the rift I had unwittingly brought about in Johnny’s romance should be mended, and I wanted to learn for myself how far Sue had gone towards changing her mind.

We reached the rendezvous outside Beaulieu well before time and Sue, having been brought up in a family that respected the clock, arrived punctually. As Johnny threw open the door of the car for her I slipped over to the back seat; but she did not get in at once, and I took the chance to have a good long look at her. Normally, of course, one rarely really studies another person’s face, because it is rude to stare, but I was able to take advantage of my invisibility.

She was a small decidedly plump young person with a mop of thick dark short curls. Her brows were level, her eyes brown, her nose short and her mouth seductively full. I have no doubt she used similar beauty preparations to all the other girls of her class and generation, but I felt sure that the rich colouring of her lips and cheeks owed more to good red blood than make-up. No one who was not in love with her would have classed her as a beauty, but she was pretty, healthy, vivacious, and in short, as I had said to Ankaret on the last night of my life, just the sort of piece with whom a wicked old boy, given the chance, would have chosen to have a romp.

But that thought brought back to me Ankaret’s reply. For the first time I noticed the more delicate edition of the Admiral’s ‘battleship chin’ of which she had spoken, and at the moment Sue’s brown eyes, fixed unwaveringly on Johnny’s, held more than a hint of hardness.

While I was studying her she had said in answer to his eager greeting: ‘I must be frank with you, Johnny. This is only a—well, call it a conference if you like. I haven’t altered my opinion about Daddy’s being right, but I’ve never spent a more bloody week-end; so I know now that I’m much too fond of you to let you go without another try to see each other’s point of view. But unless you feel that we can reach some sort of compromise it’s not much good our talking.’

‘That’s fair enough,’ he agreed. ‘But need we start our
argument here and now? Couldn’t we forget the whole thing for an hour or two while we enjoy a jolly dinner together just as we used to, then talk matters over afterwards?’

I admired his tactics, and with very little persuasion she agreed to his suggestion. After she had settled herself in the car and Johnny had let in the clutch there fell an awkward silence between them for some moments; but she broke it by asking him about the inquest, and that set him off.

Having brought her up to date with events at Longshot till lunch time, he added: ‘All the same it’s my belief that someone has pulled the wool over the eyes of the police, and that the verdict given by the Coroner’s court is far from being the right one.’

‘What leads you to suppose that?’ she asked in surprise.

‘Because I am convinced that Giff did not commit suicide.’

‘As all the evidence points to his having done so, why should you believe otherwise?’

‘Because I know that the motive ascribed to him is a false one.’

There was a doubt in Sue’s voice, as she said: ‘Even knowing him as intimately as you did, I don’t see how you can judge the extent to which his mind might have become unbalanced if he was suddenly given reason to believe that Ankaret had been unfaithful to him.’

‘Ah, but that’s just it! Pure chance put me in a position to assess just how he would react to such a situation.’ Johnny hesitated a second, then went on. ‘Listen, Sue. I’m damnably worried about this thing and want to get it off my chest, but you must not breathe a word about it to anyone, because what I am going to say is highly slanderous. And quite apart from that, should it get about it might prejudice the case if there is one. I’ve no particular love for Ankaret, but if she is brought to trial I would hate to think that I’d helped to damn her before she even enters the court.’

‘You know that you can trust me, Johnny,’ Sue said quietly.

‘Of course I do, darling. Well, this is the gist of it. About a year ago, as I think I’ve told you, I was sent as an observer to the Army of the Rhine during a big exercise they carried out. The idea was that a certain number of R.A.F. officers like myself should get some idea of the needs and difficulties of the Army during active operations. On the Divisional Staff
to which I was attached there was a Captain named Desmond Chawton; very good looking, quite a clever chap, but a bit of a play-boy. One of his friends told me that he had been to Eton and Oxford and was very well blessed with this world’s goods.

‘The evening after the exercise was over a few of us went out to dinner, and as the party broke up Chawton offered to run me back to the Officers’ Club. On the way we chatted of this and that, and I happened to mention that I was Giff’s nephew. At that he grinned and asked: “How is the lovely Ankaret? I used to know her well before she married. I suppose she’s still kicking up her pretty heels with some lucky devil in the South of France every winter?”

‘In fairness to him I should mention that this was late at night and we’d both had our fill of good liquor. All the same he had no earthly right to say such a thing, even if it were true, and very naturally I was pretty nettled at what I then believed to be a wicked slander on Giff’s wife. I said so very bluntly, and told him that he must apologise, and give me his promise that he would never say such a thing about Ankaret in the future.

‘At first he pretended that I had misunderstood him, and he meant no more than that Ankaret had always been a girl who enjoyed having a good time. Being a bit tight I refused to accept that, and rather pompously insisted that he should admit to having said a disgraceful thing about her quite unwarrantably.

‘In turn he got on his high horse and brought the car to a standstill, and said: “All right then; since you’re so set on having the truth, here it is. I didn’t seduce Ankaret, but I came in first wicket down, and I can tell you her bowling was pretty terrific even in those days. She was only just over eighteen and I was a subaltern at Aldershot. She had no proper home and used to move around from one set of relatives to another every few weeks. Between visits she used to wangle a night or two to spend with me at some unfrequented little country pub. By jove! I wish I could have that affair over again; it really was something while it lasted. But after a few months she tired of me and went off for her romps with a young intellectual in the Foreign Office. I went abroad as A.D.C. to the Governor of Cyprus soon afterwards,
so I lost track of her for some years; but I met her again the winter before last in the South of France, and I know for a fact that while she was there she was sleeping most nights with a good-looking Spanish Marquis.”

‘“What reason have you for being so certain of that?” I asked.

Turns out the chap had an affair with her himself, before she got married, then bumped into her in the South of France again once after and invited him to dinner, where she boasted of her string of passionate nights with a good-looking Spanish Marquis. Apparently Giff knew all of this because she damn well told him so. She said that one reason she was so happy with him was because he understood her, and made allowances for the desperate urge she felt to go off the rails now and then. And there is no earthly reason why she should have lied to me about that.’