CHAPTER SIXTEEN

1.

Philip Vane learned all about the switch the trial had taken when he arrived at Caernarvon on Saturday afternoon.

Leaving London early that morning, he had driven up filled with a kind of obsessive concentration as if competing in a rally, and with a constricted feeling underneath his heart. He didn’t enjoy driving this way. He liked to be relaxed.

He went to see Royston at the Caernarvon Arms, where all the lawyers were staying during the trial. Mr. Justice Lane was staying with a local V.I.P. outside the town.

Vane had tried to kid himself that it would be a good idea to have a chat with Royston about Merrill’s prospects, after all hadn’t he a vested interest in the outcome of the trial? The confessions of a guilty man would be more appealing to the newspaper and the paperback readers, than if he got the verdict.

Vane had tried to kid himself that it wasn’t because he wanted more than he had ever wanted anything in the world to see Margot Stone. Not that, anyway, he needed to be told how tricky it would be trying to talk to her. She was a witness in the case, and it would be almost impossible for him to reach her without her husband knowing.

Royston was having his after-lunch coffee when Vane found him.

He was surprised to see Vane, who gave him a glib answer about what he was doing up there. Yes, Dick Merrill’s future looked pretty rosy, Royston assured him. Deveen’s speech that morning had transformed the atmosphere of the court. The jury had got all weekend to mull it over, and whichever way they listened to its echoes ringing in their ears it would still sound powerful, impregnable stuff.

Vane left Royston, who went off to join Deveen and Ainger and some of the others in the Bar Mess, a room on the first floor set apart for the lawyers, and where any tension and professional acrimony was forgotten, all were the best of friends.

Vane drove to Castlebay, he would stay there overnight, he thought. He might find Davies and learn how it looked to him. He gave the idea of telephoning Dr. Griffiths some brief thought. But it wasn’t Dr. Griffiths he wanted to see, and it wouldn’t get him anywhere talking to him.

He couldn’t help slowing his car as Tamarisk came into view. He hadn’t remembered the road at all on the way from Caernarvon, he could have run down an elephant, he told himself, and he wouldn’t have noticed.

The constriction right there under his heart intensified as he glimpsed the white Jag there, outside the front door of the white-pillared portico of the large, bungalow-style house.

When he got to the hotel at Castlebay he went straight to the telephone booth. The palm of his hand was moist as he picked up the receiver and dialled the number.

‘Hello?’

It was her voice, and Vane grinned to himself. It was a lucky break that her husband hadn’t answered. He would have hung up and he probably wouldn’t have had the guts enough to try again. She sounded a little breathless, as if the phone ringing had taken her by surprise. He wondered where her husband was, if he was nearby; if Stone could hear his voice at the other end of the telephone.

He kept his voice low.

‘Remember me? I wore a pointed beard and there was that duelling scar down the side of my face.’

He did his best to keep it flip and glib; but he could hear the tremor in his tone.

She didn’t answer. He thought he caught the quick intake of breath, and something told him that she knew who it was at the other end of the telephone. So that he was alert for the odd intonation in her voice, and sensed the reason for it.

‘I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong number,’ she said.

Her husband must be near her, in the room.

Vane said quickly: ‘Okay. I’ll drive past at four-thirty. The same car. Try and be around.’

‘Yes.’

It was a quick gasp, and then she had hung up.

The telephone booth was stifling, he could feel the perspiration at his temples; the sweat was running down from his armpits under his shirt. He came out of the telephone booth, grinning triumphantly to himself again.

They had a room for him and he went up and sprawled on the bed, his senses heavy with the weight of her, his nerves tingling with the feel of her flesh.

A little later he lay in a bath; he worked the electric-shaver over his face meticulously, scowling at himself in the mirror, making sure no stubble showed under the hard line of his jaw. And all the time it wasn’t his face he saw. His eyes saw his face, but the screen of his mind was crowded with hers.

He saw the white Jag parked facing him, about two hundred yards before Tamarisk, which lay beyond the gradual curve in the road. The road was empty. She didn’t smile when he pulled up alongside. Her face was tense, her voice harsh and taut.

‘I thought you were dead,’ she said.

‘I didn’t know if—’ he began, but she cut in.

‘You’ll have to follow me. Not too close.’

He nodded.

She had kept her engine running, and she used a four-letter word as she took off the brake and crashed the gears. She was nervous as hell. The road was still empty, and he reversed swiftly and went after her. She drove fast, the road she took swung off the main road, away from Conway and up the valley. He didn’t know it and the road curved and narrowed like a snake, so that it took him all his time to keep her in sight.

Over to his right lay the River Conway, and the hills and woods stretched away to the left. Then the Jag was slowing and stopped at a stone bridge. Vane pulled up behind it. There was a waterfall below, and the air was moist. It was a lonely place, and they found themselves keeping their voices low.

He was explaining why he had made no attempt to reach her again, after that first meeting. He talked quickly and plausibly, while she stared at him, her expression mocking and half-filled with disbelief. He didn’t tell her it was because he was afraid she would find out about his transaction with Merrill. He hadn’t wanted her to know that. If it turned out to be a condemned cell confession he wouldn’t want her to know he had ever had any part of that.

He made it sound that it was because he hadn’t guessed there was someone else, until he had read about the case. That was why a time like this, especially, was a time for him to stay in the background.

‘And when it’s all over?’

‘Depends,’ he said.

‘You mean, on how it goes for him?’

He nodded.

She said nothing. She was close to him, her fingers were twining round his hand. He thought he could feel her trembling against him. But it might have been his own blood quickening and tensing every nerve. He slid his free hand up her waist to cup her breast. He realized she was wearing a thin sweater, similar to the one she had worn before. He knew she wasn’t wearing a bra this time, either.

She pushed his hand away gently, turning to him.

‘In your car,’ she said. ‘There’s more room.’

He glanced round. A few yards behind him a track turned off from the road and ended in a clump of trees. It was shadowy and dark there. She was already getting into his car. He made to follow her, then he walked quickly to the Jag. He came back holding her ignition key out to her. She took it, smiling at him.

‘You think of everything,’ she said.

He reversed his car off the road, up the track and into the trees which screened them from the road. The air was tangy and silent, the shadows of the trees fell across the car. He had barely cut the engine, when in that claustrophobic darkness, Margot Stone’s hands reached for him with a fierce wordless urgency.

Afterwards, he watched her from under narrowed eyelids. Her head was thrown back so that her throat glimmered white. Her eyes were closed, her shadowed face held an exhausted expression, so that he experienced a moment of pity towards her. His fingers smoothed the softness of her neck and then moved down under her sweater.

She began moaning a little, and he took his hand away. She opened her eyes and stared at him questioningly.

‘I don’t quite—’ He broke off. ‘About you and him,’ he muttered.

‘Do there have to be any explanations?’

He gave a shrug. She began talking, jerkily as if it was costing her a great effort to force out the words. She was talking about herself. About being a schoolmaster’s daughter, living at Richmond, and how her prettiness had given her ideas about going places. She had won a couple of beauty competitions, and after she had left school she had tried the modelling racket.

Then she had married Stone. She had seen herself as secure and not unhappy, with possibilities of a harmless romance or two. Stone’s idea of living at Castlebay had not been included in her calculations. But nor had Dick Merrill.

‘Will you marry him?’

‘You mean when—?’

She broke off. He noticed that she did not say: ‘if’: so, the inference was, that she felt confident of his acquittal. He wondered if she felt equally confident of his innocence. And the question gripped his thoughts, as it already had done, how much did she know about his wife’s death? It was a question, which together with one or two others that had also inevitably formed themselves in his thoughts, he could not frame.

Or dare not, for fear that she might reveal, wittingly or otherwise, the extent of her knowledge of the truth?

‘I suppose so,’ she was saying. ‘If I didn’t, it might make other people wonder why.’

‘Seems an odd reason for marrying someone,’ he heard himself say. He tried to sound casual, to keep out of his voice the cold jealousy that crawled through his senses. While at the same time he clutched at the implication in her words that it was not because she was in love with Merrill anymore.

She turned her face to him, that faintly mocking expression on it, while her gaze travelled down from his eyes to his mouth. ‘We’re talking too much,’ she said, ‘I’ll have to be going, soon.’

Half an hour later, she saw the time on the dash clock, and using that four-letter word of hers, pulled down her skirt and said she really must go. He drove back to the road, and she got into the Jag. He said he would reach her again after the trial, and waited to see how she would reply. Her face was enigmatic.

‘All right,’ she said.

He watched the white Jag disappear round a curve in the road, and then he walked slowly back to his car, sick to the stomach with black depression and bitter hatred.

It was only when he got back to his hotel in Castlebay that he remembered he had intended looking up Davies. He didn’t think it would mean anything, but he went to find him.

2.

Next morning, after breakfast, Harry Deveen had the idea that he would like to visit Mrs. Merrill’s grave in Castlebay churchyard.

He told Royston, and though Royston thought it was a morbid idea, and would have preferred to have browsed through the Sunday newspapers, he drove over to Castlebay with him.

Royston waited while Deveen went into the churchyard and disappeared in the direction of the grave.

He returned in a few moments looking white and it took him quite some time before he could tell Royston what had happened while he stood at the graveside.

The graveyard had appeared empty and silent, but as he approached Mrs. Merrill’s grave a mongrel dog suddenly appeared, stood on the grave and snarled at him. Deveen spoke to it in a friendly way, but the mongrel would have gone for him, and he had to come away. He and Royston inquired at the church if the dog had been seen there before. Nobody knew of such a dog. People went to look, but there was no sign of the mongrel.

That night in the Bar Mess Royston was with Harry Deveen when the other put down his brandy to say to Ainger: ‘I want, if I can, to get back to town by midweek. I’ve a case coming into the list next week.’

‘We shan’t finish until Wednesday, that’s clear.’

‘You have practically finished,’ Deveen said.

‘But you are calling Merrill, and there are the speeches and the summing-up; Lane doesn’t like sitting after five, and I don’t blame him.’

‘It looks as if it’ll go into the middle of the week; you’ll be some time cross-examining Merrill.’

‘Depends on what sort of a witness he is.’

‘I think he’ll put up a good show,’

Deveen said. ‘The jury may want to take some time; I’ve been trying to size them up. I really can’t make anything of them at all.’

‘They may really be waiting for the summing-up; this is not an easy case, after all. Lane seems to have an open mind; he’ll give your client a good run.’

A waiter came in and whispered in Claud Smithson’s ear. Smithson followed him out. A few minutes later Smithson came back and spoke to Wells, and then went out of the room again. Wells came over to Ainger and Royston heard him say: ‘Smithson would like to have a word with you. He says it’s something important.’

Ainger got up and went to the door.

‘What’s the matter?’ he said to Smithson who was waiting outside in the passage.

‘Can I see you for a moment?’

Ainger nodded and went out of the room, closing the door behind him.

‘Wonder what’s up now?’ Harry Deveen said to Wells, who gave him a noncommittal grin and walked across to the bookcase as if to read the titles of the books there. His manner was too obviously casual. Deveen looked across at Royston and they both sensed something in the atmosphere. And then Ainger came back into the room. He came straight over to Harry Deveen and Royston.

‘Bit of a new development,’ he said. ‘The clerk, William Llewellyn, who used to be with your client, has turned up. Made a statement to the police about your client having arsenic in his possession. I don’t know the details.’

Deveen got to his feet and glanced at Ainger uneasily. ‘It’s too late now,’ he said, ‘you’ve closed your case.’

‘Yes, that’s true. But if the effect of this statement is what I feel it might be, I shall certainly ask permission to call Llewellyn as a witness.’

Deveen scratched his chin. ‘You have not given any notice of intention to call any additional witness,’ he said; his tone was frank. ‘I shall object to any fresh evidence being sprung upon us at the last moment.’

‘It will hardly be sprung on you,’ Ainger retorted, ‘I’ve asked Smithson to let me have a copy of any statement made by Llewellyn, and his clerk’s typing it out now. When I’ve seen it, he will let your solicitor have a copy, and give him notice of intention to call this additional witness. Sorry, but there it is.’

Harry Deveen said nothing, and sat down again; Smithson came in with some typewritten sheets in his hand, which he gave to Ainger, Wells, Deveen, and Royston. The latter two went to Deveen’s room to talk over this sudden threat to Merrill. Royston thought Deveen looked a bit pale; and then suddenly he turned to him.

‘I feel pretty rotten,’ Deveen said.

‘Excitement caused by this new twist,’ Royston said.

‘No, it’s not that.’

‘Chicken curry you had for dinner. You had a lot of it.’

‘I feel a bit faint.’ Deveen closed his eyes.

Royston helped him on to the bed, then hurried off and found Dr. Mortlake who was in his bedroom, and who put on a dressing-gown and went along to Deveen’s room. ‘Nothing seriously wrong,’ he said to Deveen, after a few moments’ examination, ‘severe attack of indigestion. I’ve got some bismuth tablets; they’ll soon put you right.’

Deveen groaned, and said to Mortlake: ‘Don’t confuse the tablets with anything else—arsenic, for example.’

Mortlake was back in a couple of minutes, and it was not long before Deveen reported that he felt much better.

‘Too much chicken curry,’ Royston said. ‘I thought you overdid it.’

But Deveen had almost forgotten his indigestion attack; what he didn’t feel so good about now was the idea of this new witness.