CHAPTER SIX

It was pushing three-thirty when Philip Vane left Merrill’s office; and he called at the local newspaper and took a reporter named Davies for a cup of tea at a café. He was a grubby, shiny-eyed character and didn’t sound too bright. But you couldn’t have it both ways; if he’d been any brighter he would have started working out that there ought to be more in it for him. All Vane needed him to do was to keep his mouth shut and dig up all he could about Merrill, his late wife, and Stone.

As soon as Vane mentioned Stone, Davies stopped noisily swallowing his tea, and he fitted another piece into the jigsaw. Merrill and Mrs. Stone had been seen together, Davies said. Mrs. Stone was quite a piece. She was younger than her husband. Quite a bit younger.

When the British had pulled out of India, Edward Stone had arrived back in England a little while after his elder brother’s death, and he had found himself with a sizeable private income on his hands. It had quite an impact; after having been unmarried all these years Stone had met a certain Margot Bell at a cocktail party and went overboard for her. Three months later this dullish, middle-aged man and this attractive young woman were married.

Stone took his wife on a motor-tour of North Wales for their honeymoon. They drove up the west coast from Barmouth to the Lleyn Peninsular. They drove from Harlech down to Pwllheli, back through Caernarvon and Conway, pausing at Castlebay.

It so happened that a bungalow-type house which a Liverpool business tycoon had built overlooking the estuary was up for sale. Stone saw it: it was called Tamarisk, and had an Eastern aura probably, reminiscent of Stone’s life in India. There wasn’t much his wife could do.

Then the Stones moved in and subsequently were introduced to the Merrills.

Vane impressed on Davies that he was to keep tabs on the Merrill situation, but not try anything on his own. Vane had started back to Conway when he made a sudden decision to call on Stone himself. He turned back to Castlebay, where he found the bungalow called Tamarisk. Just as he approached what he took to be the gates leading to the drive, a white Jaguar came out, and headed towards him. This was the car that Dr. Griffiths’s Ford had outlined in the headlights, with two silhouettes inside, intimately close together. This could be Stone’s wife, and then as the Jag flashed past Vane saw her face. It was her, for sure.

He drove past Tamarisk, reversed into the drive and chased after Mrs. Stone, making it fast in the direction he had come, and it occurred to him that she might be going into Conway to keep a rendezvous with Merrill. He wondered if she had been delayed for some reason or other and was hurrying to get to wherever she was meeting Merrill on time.

Perhaps, Vane thought, his call at Merrill’s office had delayed him, and then he wondered if on his way to the rendezvous Merrill might overtake the two of them. But the way she was taking the white Jaguar along it looked like Mrs. Stone was an habitually fast driver. She slowed through Conway and then turned up the hill to the hotel where Vane was staying and he guessed that this was the rendezvous.

Vane slowed up as she parked outside, and he watched her get out of the car. Her skirt was tight and her behind was small and rounded as she moved, fairly leisurely, into the hotel. Vane switched his thoughts and he noticed she hadn’t taken the ignition key with her. Vane put his car into the garage; then he walked back, and he made it leisurely, to the hotel.

He was asking himself if she had any inkling of what had happened about Merrill, if she had learned that the Scotland Yard detectives had arrived in Castlebay, investigating not only her husband’s illness but the death of Merrill’s wife. It was unlikely, otherwise she surely would not be at the hotel waiting, which was Vane’s guess, for Merrill.

But people in the sort of situation which she and Merrill had found themselves didn’t react so normally. Hadn’t they risked discovery that night, for instance, in the headlights of Dr. Griffiths’s car? One thing about a secret love-affair was it produced a recklessness in the parties concerned. That way murder happened.

Vane was trying to think how to introduce himself to her. He had to do it before Merrill showed up, if he was due to show, or whoever else.

Then Vane passed the Jaguar and saw the ignition key.

He went into the hotel just in time to see the waiter at the corner table where she was alone and he overheard him say that she was wanted on the telephone. She got up and followed the waiter out of the lounge. Merrill, Vane thought, phoning to let her know he couldn’t make it, or he would be late.

She was away several minutes, and when she came back Vane was watching her face, and it did not seem to have changed. It gave him no indication that she was upset or annoyed, or scared or angry. The waiter was at her table and she was ordering tea. Vane hesitated a few moments then he started towards her.

‘You left this in your car,’ he said.

She looked up at him casually, and then saw the ignition key and the St. Christopher tag. The tag was enamel and silver, and on the back was inscribed: ‘Take care of darling Margot.’ She gave him the impression this was something she was always forgetting to remember, to take the ignition key with her.

She glanced at her watch. ‘I ought to be going,’ she said.

Vane looked at her steadily.

‘What’s the rush?’ he said. ‘Why don’t you stay and have a drink? If you don’t have to hurry back to your husband, stay a little longer, at any rate and have a drink with me.’

‘I would like that,’ she said. ‘I would very much like a gin-and-soda.’

Vane made it scotch-and-soda for himself.

The ignition key introduction had worked. He had chatted about the Jag, and then he lit a cigarette for her; and then he was sitting at her table, and she was asking him about his car, and he had talked to her about that, how it was a souped-up job and that he had managed to come up to North Wales from London averaging 40 m.p.h. And the other cars he had driven, down Le Route Bleu and the autobahns.

‘It’s the sort of thing I’d like to have gone in for,’ she had said. ‘Driving cars; most of my boyfriends drove them fast, and I still get a kick out of putting my foot down. This part of the world the roads aren’t quite up to the roads you’ve mentioned.’

By now, people had come in from their boating or fishing and the shadows were beginning to obtrude from outside, while the Welsh waiter got another gin for her, and scotch for him.

‘I’d love to see your car,’ she said, and he gave her a smile over his drink and they got up from the table and went out of the hotel. She slipped her arm through his as they turned round the corner of the hotel down to the garage.

He lifted the bonnet of the car and described the inside to her. He played the radio a little and explained the gadgets to her, the heating-device and the rev counter he had fitted below the dash.

‘Why not let me take you for a spin?’ he said.

‘I’m not fussy,’ she said and began to get into the car as he held the door open for her.

He got into the driving seat and then turned to her and said: ‘I always like to have an objective when I’m driving. Let’s go somewhere for eats.’

‘Okay,’ she said.

‘Be okay with your husband?’

‘He’s not expecting me back until later on.’

She let a little smile play around the corners of her mouth. He had a sudden feeling she knew what his game was.

Only he didn’t see how she could know.