19

 

 

For a fearful moment, Murray’s mind was crowded with visions of a possible future. If Delgado were so eager to—well the phrase was true enough—poison him, where would he stop? The tins remaining in the cupboard looked as innocuous as those he had opened for Heather; he scrutinized them and saw no hint of tampering.

What should he do? Take one of the cans and offer it to Blizzard as evidence—of something which Blizzard might refuse to believe? The cans need not all contain alcohol; he might by chance have selected the only two, because they were placed in front of the others and fell under the hand.

And where next? In the glass of limejuice and soda brought to him at dinner by Valentine? Running out of the taps over the washbasin? There was no knowing, and therefore Murray felt himself to be in a kind of Dracula’s castle, where from now on every shadow would hold a threat.

And it was shadows he had to contend with, too. There was a grand absurdity in trying to poison an ex-alcoholic with alcohol which he had seen foreshadowed on Blizzard’s face when he was presented with Dr Cromarty’s certificate. To stay and argue things out offered little hope. He would have to run, and the hell with everything. He felt sick with terror.

Behind him, Heather turned dizzily away from the washbasin; there was a sour smell in the air, and she had left the cold tap running to wash away what she had brought up. He moved, to steady her as she went towards the bed.

‘Leave me alone,’ she said. ‘Oh God, leave me alone. I mean it.’

‘Heather, I didn’t spike what you drank,’ Murray said. ‘It was meant for me, not you.’

She didn’t reply. Possibly she couldn’t. If the single taste Murray had taken was any guide, she must have drunk the equivalent of a tumblerful of over-proof spirits in less than ten minutes, and even if she had vomited back half—which he doubted—it would have hit her hard.

She half fell on the bed, one leg trailing to the floor, her head pillowed on her arms. Her breathing was thick and irregular, and after a few moments she started to moan softly.

Murray clenched his hands by his sides. Running was only half the answer. He had been so blinded by his own plight that he had forgotten the obvious: Delgado wouldn’t be concerned solely with him, Murray, but with the corruption of everyone in his temporary domain. The plainest example was here before his eyes, wasn’t it?

He had to think. He had to plan. Somehow he had to make not only his own escape, but one for Heather at least, and if humanly possible he had to prevent Delgado repeating this—

Click.

Paris. Garrigue’s suicide. He had been going to call Roger Grady.

With sweating hands he picked up the phone and told the smooth-voiced steward to try the number again. Then, waiting for the call to go through, he locked the door after a cautious glance both ways along the passage. No one was in sight.

He came back and sat by the phone, his mind once again itching with a point Heather had suggested by implication. She had said she too broke the connection to the tape-deck under the pillow …

He snatched breath in jumping to his feet. As though she were a baby, he lifted her up and turned her bodily around on the bed. She didn’t protest. He gently moved aside her feet, so that he could raise the pillows. Yes, the usual had happened. What he had stripped off last night had been duly replaced. It was the merest guess that it might affect the sleeper’s head, but it made better sense than any alternative.

Some sort of—electric field? Lester compared the pattern of wires to a field antenna—

The phone went. He seized it, and could barely speak his name for relief when he heard Roger’s familiar tones.

‘Roger, thank God! Murray here!’

‘Oh, you!’ The line was not very good, but he could picture the movement that went with the words: a kind of drawing together. ‘What the hell do you want at this time of night? You realize that as a result of your poking Burnett in the jaw last week he’s mounting a kind of hate-campaign against not just the Delgado play but everything with a spark of intelligence that’s—’

‘Roger, shut up and let me talk. There isn’t likely to be a Delgado play the way things are going.’

‘I already have that impression,’ Roger grunted. ‘I don’t know what strings Burnett’s been pulling, but they work. You may not get the Margrave after all.’

‘The hell with that. Will you listen? Roger, this man Delgado is a lunatic. I am not exaggerating. Delgado is a certifiable maniac and ought to be in an asylum. In the past week we’ve had catastrophes enough to last most productions through a year’s run—he’s had a fit of pique and torn up the draft and been cooled down by Sam—’

‘In that case what are you worrying about?’

‘Roger,’ Murray said in a tight voice, ‘unless you let me finish, I’ll climb down this phone and strangle you with the cord. Gerry Hoading has come within inches of killing himself because Delgado’s got him unlimited quantities of uncut heroin. The place is full of all kinds of incomprehensible electronic gadgetry which Lester Harkham says is just a load of mystical rubbish—but I’m not sure, because …’

His voice trailed away. He’d spotted the point he’d almost had from Heather. Besides himself, she was the only person asking awkward questions about the set-up. She was accustomed to disconnect the tape-deck under her pillow. She, Ida, and Gerry Hoading were the only people apart from Lester to whom he’d directly demonstrated the existence of the gadgets. And, except for Blizzard, those were also the people who seemed least under Delgado’s spell, readiest to talk back to him or to listen to Murray.

Coincidence?

‘Hello, hello!’ Roger was saying irritably. Murray came back to the here and now.

‘Yes—well, that’s not all. There’s a girl here who apparently wasn’t hired for the play at all—just to be seduced by Ida. Laid on the same way as Gerry’s horse and a library of dirty books for Constant Baines. And topping the lot, as far as I’m concerned, someone—I don’t see it can be anyone else except Delgado—is trying to get me back on the bottle, I don’t mean pressing me openly. I mean spiking cans of fruit juice and leaving them in my room.’

‘Murray, is this true?’

‘Do you want to come out here and have it proved? I’d be crazy with relief if someone came and poked around and proved what I suspect. Right now, I—well, I’m doubting my own sanity half the time.’

‘Hmmm…’ from Roger.

‘Roger, you’re keeping something back, damn you! Spit it out. God knows, it’s late enough!’

He was almost panting with impatience when Roger finally made up his mind.

‘Yes, I suppose I am. I mean, I didn’t credit it before, but—did I tell you why Léa Martinez wound up in the bin after the Paris production of Trots Fois?’

‘No. You dropped some heavy hints, and I was too glad to have the offer of a decent job to pick them up. Go on.’

‘She claimed that Delgado was persecuting her and trying to drive her insane. If he was, he did a damned good job. Listen, Murray—you know why I didn’t spell this out to you, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ Murray said bitterly. ‘It’s something I appear to be pretty good at myself.’

‘I was afraid you’d say that. So I kept my mouth shut.’ Roger hesitated. ‘Damn it, though, Murray! If the place is as much of a madhouse as you claim, how come Sam Blizzard—or Ida and Ade, come to that—how come everyone else is putting up with it? Is the gun supposed to be pointing just at your head and no one else’s?’

‘No. But—’ Murray checked, biting his lip. How to explain his weird suspicions about Delgado’s methods? ‘Roger, I can’t give you details over the phone. I’m going to try and get away. I don’t know if I’ll be able to—’

‘What?’

‘I’m still not kidding. The grounds are fenced all around—chain-link fencing with three strands of barbed wire—and the main gate is locked every night at eleven. I may have to leave the car and sneak out on foot.’

‘Murray, I’m beginning not to believe you now.’

‘Oh, Jesus!’ Murray repressed an urge to throw the phone at the wall. ‘Well, will this satisfy you? If I get out at all, I’ll head for a doctor’s place in the nearest village—I met him the other day, and he’s a very reasonable guy. Make a note of him, will you? The village is called—uh—Bakesford, I think, and the doctor’s name is Cromarty. Got that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Roger, don’t think I’m quitting easily. But I think we’re all set for a repeat of what happened with Delgado in Paris, and I don’t want to be another Jean-Paul Garrigue.’

‘Anybody would think Delgado was a reincarnation of the Marquis de Sade,’ Roger said heavily. ‘All right, Murray, I believe you—mostly. I know how much you wanted that job, and I guess things must have got really bad to make you cry uncle. But you realize that if you quit, you’ll be in bad with Sam?’

‘If Sam has to learn the hard way, by seeing his cast head one by one for jail, asylums, or cemeteries, let him. Roger, I’ll try and get back to town. If I don’t show up tomorrow morning, call that doctor; if he hasn’t heard from me, call here, and if they refuse to pass the call or say I’m not available, then for Christ’s sake come and see for yourself. Will you?’

‘See what? If it was that obvious, Sam would have seen it, wouldn’t he? Come off it, Murray—you’re not in jail. I’ll expect to see you tomorrow, but if I don’t, and you’re not with this doctor, I’ll assume you changed your mind and decided to stick it out.’

‘There’s no chance of that,’ Murray said earnestly. ‘No chance at all.’

‘Maybe not. But get this.’ Roger’s voice went hard. ‘If you quit, and they get out a play and it’s a success and nobody kills himself because of it, that’ll be that, Murray. I’ll be clean out of patience with you.’

‘I’ll take the risk,’ Murray said and cradled the phone.

Talking to Roger had cleared his mind. He lit a cigarette and sat down in the chair Heather had been using. She was lying asleep on the bed now, her mouth half open. He caught up the side of the bedcover and tossed it over her, but the room was fairly warm and he wasn’t concerned about the effects of what she’d drunk—she’d recover quickly in the morning.

She’d already been talking about leaving. So …

He was going to have to wait out the night, he decided. It was absurd to think of calling Valentine to open the main gate and carrying an unconscious girl to his car now. In the morning, then. Persuade Heather to come with him. Take whatever he could find that might serve as evidence—of what, he couldn’t say, but he needed something.

Of course. The wire embroidery. He jumped out of the chair and felt for his pocket-knife. Carefully, trying not to disturb the pattern of the wires, he cut away the whole area of cloth on which it was laid out, broke the filament linking them to the tape-deck under the mattress, and rolled it up and stuffed it in his pocket.

The spool of tape, too. Why not? He held back the mattress with one hand and opened the lid over the recorder with the other. He expected to have to wind the tape back slowly by hand, but someone had been here; there was a fresh tape in position.

Oh. That figures.

He removed the spool and put it in his travelling bag. He looked wistfully at the TV set—but whatever enigma had been introduced into its vitals, it was too big to carry off. He wouldn’t have much to show to back up his story.

The cans of fruit juice. He dropped them in the bag, too. And then it occurred to him that he might be able to get into Heather’s room and remove her tape. That was an extra. Whatever was on the tape might prove meaningless, but it would be comforting to have solid objects he could show.

He would have to wait for his chance to sneak into Heather’s room though. Someone else might forestall him, unfortunately—Ida might come calling, and not finding her there might investigate.

Too bad. Let her.

He returned to his chair and his burning cigarette. It was bound to be a miserable wait, but it was going to have to be endured.