Tour de Force (20 page)

‘And they'd have felt cheated if they'd discovered that the friend wasn't you at all?'

‘They'd have thought we'd been making fools of them.'

‘So you took it very seriously?'

She shook off her absorption. ‘My dear, it would have been catastrophic. I mean, they used to write in and bare their
souls!
So we decided that we must be even more careful. We emphasized the differences between us more and more, she got more and more unobtrusive, I got more ob. We thought up all sorts of gags, we both learnt this eighteenth-century script stuff – everyone was writing books about it just then, so it came in quite naturally and so we could manage about our writing …'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘I noticed she used it, in the blackmail book.'

‘… and then we thought we really ought not to share a home any more. Of course we had masses of money by then, we could afford to live as we liked.'

‘Miss Lane never grudged you your share?'

‘Oh, no,' said Louli. ‘Never for a moment. We got it very business-like in the end; a percentage of her earnings by way of a salary for the work I did, which was quite a lot, and then expenses – the expenses were the biggest item: after all, I had to live as Louvaine Barker was expected to live. It was Vanda who insisted on it, I was representing her. And as for grudging it, she always said that she'd never have been where she was without me – which I think was true; and that she certainly couldn't do without me now, which was also true. Anyway, she didn't miss it – there was lots for two.'

Cockrill thought back to the contents of the room in which she had died, to the Stiebel coat that had cost ‘fifty or sixty', to the unobtrusive excellence of all her possessions. It was clear that in whatever luxury she had supported her
alter ego
, the true Louvaine Barker had had more than enough left over for herself. ‘And no doubt she would feel that you were being prevented from earning a living in some other way; you might even have written yourself, perhaps.'

‘Well, as to that I wouldn't know.'

‘But you did the articles and reviews?'

‘Oh, well, those,' she said. She shrugged them off. ‘I don't call that writing.'

He turned the cigarette in his brown fingers and looked down at its glowing tip. ‘I was just thinking of something you said to Mr Cecil – that evening down on the beach.'

‘Something I said? What something?'

‘Just something,' he said. ‘It's puzzled me all along. Well, never mind. You took separate flats. And then?'

‘And then we grew more and more careful about being seen together, or even appearing to know one another. It became – well, almost an obsession. Yes.' She thought it over. ‘A game with me; an obsession with her. And the more elaborate the whole deception became, the more the danger grew. We just couldn't take risks.'

‘Of being recognized?'

‘Of the likeness being recognized. Supposing a reporter, for example, had tumbled to what was happening.'

‘You were together all the time on this tour. Nobody noticed anything.'

‘Nobody was looking for anything,' said Louli. She leaned forward across the small table, hands tightly clasped, blue eyes bright with the earnestness of her conviction. ‘In England, Louvaine Barker's news; I never know when I'm being watched, when I'm being followed about – I don't mean that I constantly am, but I never know. Wherever I'm recognized, people stare at me, they watch me, they talk about me. Magazine readers want to know about me, what does Louvaine Barker wear, what does Louvaine Barker eat, what does she read, what does she like,
who does she know?
Somebody notices that she knows one other girl particularly well, they spend a lot of time together; immediately that other girl becomes interesting, who is she, why are they friendly, how do they come to know one another? – she's approached for interviews, tell us what you know about Louvaine Barker. And then – somebody notices the likeness. But here, you see nobody would be interested in the other girl: everyone would know that she was nobody special, just someone else on a tour: if a likeness was noted, it would be purest coincidence, in two casual acquaintances. And anyway, we never did appear to become too friendly: we hardly spoke, we never sat near one another if we could help it so that people could make comparisons, we more and more exaggerated the differences in our appearance, it was easier abroad where one can wear such a variety of clothes. You see, these tours were one of our ways of spending some time together. We simply had to keep up with what we were each doing, I had to know what she was writing, she had to know what I was saying – it needed really constant discussion. But we didn't trust the telephone, it was too risky to put it all into writing, and anyway, as I say, discussion was part of it, and you've got to meet, to discuss. Of course we managed it quite a lot in England too: we used to go very occasionally to each other's flats, we used to stay in country hotels and meet outside and go for long walks; but, in the early summer, when Vanda was planning her new book, we got into the habit of coming abroad on these tours – we'd try to get rooms next to one another, and creep in silently at night and work and work and work, into the small hours …'

Inspector Cockrill recalled Vanda Lane's inexplicable preference for room number five, following Louvaine's apparently casual choice of number four. He reflected, however, that the ladies had done very little night work on the present tour: thanks to Leo Rodd.

And Leo Rodd. ‘Did Mr Rodd know about all this? What was to happen if either of you married?'

‘Oh, well,' she said, ‘we'd simply have told our husbands, I suppose. What had they got to lose? – they'd just have accepted it. I hadn't told Leo, because it was Vanda's secret too; but I would have. He wouldn't have cared.'

He thought again over that odd remark, down on the beach that evening. But he put the thought aside. ‘And your families? What had you told them?'

She shrugged. ‘They believed what everyone else believed. I told my mother and father, under oaths of secrecy; but – I don't know – we've both rather grown away from home since all this began. Vanda told her father, but he's dead now. Her mother – well, she was away, she was ill.'

‘She never told her own mother?'

‘Her mother was away,' insisted Louvaine.

‘What, away in hospital? All these years?'

She said rather defensively: ‘It's a sort of hospital. She's always there. She's – incurable.'

‘I see,' he said. It accounted perhaps for odd things in Vanda Lane's character. The exaggerated dread of meeting strange people which had led her to sacrifice her very identity as a famous and much loved writer, the entire absorption in her work, the anxiety complex which had obviously arisen about keeping the secret of the change of identities. Certainly, once started, it would have seemed imperative to keep the deception alive, and Louvaine had evidently herself agreed wholeheartedly in going to the lengths they did; but with her it had been ‘a sort of game'; with Vanda it had been an obsession.

And if the mother were mentally unhinged, had for many years been incurably insane, if there were that sort of instability in her family – might not this to some extent explain the business of the blackmail? After all, clearly enough there was no need for Vanda Lane to make money by this means. He remembered saying to Louvaine on the day of the murder, that Miss Lane had merely enjoyed seeing her victims wriggling on the hook; one might ascribe that to a not very pleasant human failing, but to go to the length of extorting money, or even only playing at extorting money that one could not possibly need, argued a mind surely not entirely sane?

It was the hour of the siesta. In and out of the long line of rooms, the new arrivals swarmed like a hive of bees through the sweltering heat of the afternoon, settling themselves in. In number two, Mr Cecil lay, unbeautiful in sleep, his pale mouth open, his pale hands flopping, his sunburnt arms flecked with delicate shavings of peeling skin, his doors fast bolted and locked against the prowler with the Toledo knife. In number four, Inspector Cockrill sat, short legs dangling, on Louli's white bed and thought and thought and thought. In number eight, Mr Fernando curved a heavy arm about the thin shoulders of his lady love and assured her that thus he would protect her from lurking danger, now and throughout their lives; and Miss Trapp, trembling in his embrace, reflected that this was the price one had to pay for the love of a good man, and wondered if, after all, it were not going to prove too high. In number seven …

In number seven, Helen Rodd picked up brushes and combs and mirrors and jars from the dressing-table and, with shaking hands, tossed them into her travelling case. Leo, sitting on the further of the two beds, struggling with his tie, looked up and said sharply: ‘What are you doing?'

She went on packing. ‘I'm taking my things. I've told them at the desk that I'll move into number five to-night.' She gave a small, cynical shrug of the unhurt shoulder; it was part of her make-up that when most her spirit cried out in pain, she must repel pity with a show of unfeelingness. ‘After all – it's vacant now.'

He said stupidly: ‘Moving? Into number five?'

‘It's only for to-night. We've all got to leave to-morrow.'

He was absolutely still for a moment: then he lifted his hand again and continued to wrench at his tie. ‘I see. So this is It?'

She jerked open a drawer and began to lift out the contents, the nighties and the nylons and the hand-embroidered lingerie, intimate paraphernalia of a woman of wealth and taste. ‘It isn't anything. I don't know what's going to happen, we must discuss that afterwards. But I can't go on sharing a room with you, Leo: going to bed, getting up, dressing, undressing – all the time knowing that you're looking at me and cursing me in your heart for being me; wishing to God that I was – that I was Her.' And she tumbled the lovely things into the case and blurted out suddenly, all defences down, that she had never in all her life known one moment of unkindness, of unlovingness, of humiliation – until she had known him; and she could bear no more. ‘Do what you like about it, Leo, leave me, marry her, cook up a divorce case, do what you damn well please about it: but do one thing or the other, don't keep me hanging around like a tiresome but necessary servant till it suits you both to dismiss me.' She added, lifting her face and looking at him for a long moment: ‘Or get rid of me in some other way.'

‘What do you mean by that, Helen?'

‘I mean that I'm not going to share a room with you, that's all.' She crushed the things down into the case and closed the lid. She said more quietly: ‘I'll see you through, I'll help you with your arm, I can come along any time you need me – I won't let you down. But I'm going to the other room.'

He had pulled off the tie at last and he sat with it dangling in his hand across his knees. He had gone very white. ‘Well, I don't understand that last crack; it doesn't make sense. But anyway, why all this now? Because of what Louvaine said to-day?'

‘She said that I killed Miss Lane – well, I don't care about that, I didn't and that's all. But she said other things that you weren't there to hear.' She had fastened the case and now stood still, just balancing her finger-tips on it, looking him in the face. ‘She says that if you ever loved me, you no longer do. She says you two are planning to go away.'

He said nothing, sitting looking down at the tie. ‘I've always known about your affairs, Leo: I'm not a fool, you know. But I've also always known that they were just affairs. If this one's different, why didn't you say so straight out?'

‘How can I say anything straight out?' said Leo. ‘I don't know myself.'

‘She says it's all planned.'

‘Nothing's planned,' he said wretchedly. ‘Damn it all, I've only known her a week.'

‘She says it
is
planned.'

His face took on the old, familiar, impatient scowl. ‘Dear God – women!'

A sick hope rose within her, but she forced it down. ‘Don't try to be kind to me, Leo, don't “let me down lightly”. I'd much rather be told.' She added bitterly: ‘I assure you I shan't make a scene;
or
any objections.'

He put his hand up to his head. ‘I don't know, Helen. This beastly murder's changed everything, everything seems different now, it's all sort of – well, I don't know, mixed up and ugly and distorted, it's as if the sunshine had suddenly gone out of the place.' And he thought of Louvaine, Louvaine with her bright head and the gay, sweet smile, suddenly bursting out like a virago, with her accusations against Helen; of her repudiation, coming back from the funeral, of pity for the dead woman they had just left in a lonely grave; of the little jokes and absurdities that in the first days had held such tender charm for him and now seemed often only silly and unkind. ‘It's the murder,' he said. ‘It colours everything.' The night before it had happened, he had held her in his arms and thought the world well lost for her indeed; but now, if he could recapture the magic of that evening – would it be the same? ‘I'm not trying to deceive you, Helen. I don't understand it myself. I'd tell you if I knew.' And yet, he thought, even as I say the words, I
am
deceiving her. For he knew, as he had known in the first moments of his surrender, that there in his arms he had held the one woman in the world for him, the true love of all the loves of a lifetime, the heart of his secret heart. ‘God help us, Helen, I just don't know how on earth it's going to end. I did love her; it was something real, that I couldn't help – people say that, but now and again it's true. It was true for me; and I can't pretend that when all this filthy business is over and we're back to normal, it won't be like that again. To be utterly honest with you – I hope it will; I can't help hoping it will – it was something so wonderful, you couldn't not want it again.' He looked at her in pity and tenderness. ‘Try to understand, darling. It's not that I haven't loved you, I always have, even though I know I've been unkind. But I suppose there are degrees of love; and this other love was something different from yours and mine, something we just didn't know existed,' He raised his head and looked into her bleak white face, so bemused with his own dreams that he did not see the draining away of the last dregs of her hope. ‘If it comes back – I just can't fight against it. Meanwhile, be patient with me and try not to mind too much.' He gave her the most truly spontaneous affectionate smile that she had had from him for many days. ‘In my own way, if you can bear to accept it from me, I love you and need you as much as I always have. This other thing – if you'll try to understand that it's sort of over and above, it doesn't affect my loving you and needing you …'