deep breath. “I’m going to get you for that.”
“Are you now?” Vernon said calmly. “Well let me tell you something, Mr. Bloody Miller. I knew a girl called Joanna Craig just like I know a hell of a lot of other girls. She painted some murals in the main casino downstairs. You or anyone else can see them whenever you like. Anything else is pure phantasy. You try bringing it out in an open court and I’ll knock you down so hard you’ll never get up again. Now I’m giving you one minute to get out of here or I’m calling my lawyer and you know what that means.”
“Perfectly,” Miller said. “It means you’re frightened to death.” He smiled coldly. “See you in court, Vernon.”
He turned and nodded to Brady who opened the door and they went out. For a while Vernon sat there staring into space and then he lifted the ’phone and pushed a button.
“Is that you, Ben?” he said. “Send Stratton up right away. I’ve got a little job for him.”
Monica Grey came out of the bathroom listlessly. She’d hoped a good hot tub would make her feel better. Instead, she felt depressed, drained of all energy. How she was going to get through the long night at the Flamingo, she didn’t know.
The knock, when it came, was so faint that at first she thought she’d imagined it. She hesitated, fastening the belt of her robe quickly, and it sounded again.
When she opened the door, she had a vague impression of someone standing there, of an arm sweeping up and then liquid splashed across her face. She staggered back, a scream rising in her throat, her hands covering her eyes as they began to burn. She was aware of the door closing and then a hand slammed against her shoulder, spinning her round so that she fell across the bed.
Someone laughed coldly and fingers fastened in her hair, jerking her head back painfully. “Come on now, dearie, open up for Uncle Billy.”
She opened her eyes, aware that the smarting had somehow eased, and looked into Billy Stratton’s white, bloodless face. Only his lips had any colour and he smiled showing a row of sharp, even teeth.
“Water, dearie, mixed with a little disinfectant to make your eyes sting. Just imagine what it could have been — vitriol, for instance.” He chuckled mirthlessly. “You’d have been blind now.”
She was absolutely terrified and lay there staring up at him in horror as he patted her on the cheek. “You’ve been a naughty girl, haven’t you? You’ve been talking to the wrong people. Mr. Vernon doesn’t like that — he doesn’t like that at all. Now get your clothes on. You’re coming with me.”
It was almost dusk when Miller turned the Cooper in through the gates of the house in Grange Avenue and braked to a halt at the bottom of the steps leading up to the front door. It had been a long day and he was so tired that he sat at the wheel for a moment before getting out.
When he rang the bell, the door was opened by Jenny, the young maid, and her eyes were red and swollen from weeping. “Sergeant Miller,” she said. “You’d better come in.”
“There was a message for me at Headquarters,” Miller said. “Apparently Colonel Craig called at the Mortuary to view his daughter’s body. I understand he’d like to see me.”
“The Colonel and Miss Harriet are out walking in the garden,” Jenny said. “I’ll get him for you.”
“That’s all right,” Miller told her. “I’ll find him for myself.”
It was cold in the garden and rooks cawed uneasily in the bare branches of the beech trees as he crossed the lawn already damp with the evening dew. Somewhere there was a low murmur of voices above the rattle of a small stream over stones and then a familiar voice called to him on the quiet air. “Over here, Sergeant Miller.”
Harriet Craig leaned against the rail of a tiny rustic bridge. The man who stood with her was perhaps a shade under six feet in height with iron grey hair cut close to his skull.
The eyes were very calm above high cheekbones. For a moment they considered Miller and then he held out his hand. “It was good of you to come so quickly.”
There was an extraordinary impression of vitality about him, of controlled force that Miller found strangely disturbing. He must have been at least forty-eight or — nine and yet he carried himself with the easy confidence of a man half his age.
“Your message said that you’d like to talk things over with me,” Miller said. “I’ll be happy to help in any way I can.”
“I’ve seen your Superintendent Grant,” Colonel Craig said. “He gave me as comprehensive a report as he could, but felt that the full details would be better coming from you.” He hesitated and then went on, “I believe Harriet gave you some indication of the trouble we were having with Joanna.”
“That’s right.”
“I’ve been given to understand that she’d become addicted to the drug heroin.”
“Which explains what otherwise would have been her completely inexplicable change in character,” Miller told him. “You must understand that heroin produces a feeling of well-being and buoyancy, but in between fixes an addict is sick, unwell and has only one thought in mind — to get another fix. They become paranoid, irritable, subject to extremes of emotion.”
“And that’s what happened to Joanna?”
“The girl who gave you all that trouble wasn’t your daughter, colonel,” Miller said gently. “She only looked like her.”
For a long, long moment there was silence and then Colonel Craig said, “Thank you for that, sergeant. And now, if you don’t mind, I’d like you to tell me everything — everything there is to know about this whole sorry affair.”
It didn’t take long, that was the strange thing, and when he had finished, Harriet Craig leaned against the rail crying quietly, her father’s arm about her shoulders.
“This man Vernon,” Craig said. “He’ll be called as a witness at the inquest?”
“That’s right.”
“Is there any possibility of a criminal charge being preferred against him?”
Miller sighed heavily and shook his head. “I might as well be honest with you. I don’t hold out much hope.”
“But he murdered Joanna,” Harriet Craig cried passionately. “Murdered her as surely as if he’d used a gun or a knife.”
“I know that,” Miller said. “Morally he’s as guilty as any man could be, but the facts are all that matters and this is how it will look in court. Your sister committed suicide. She was pregnant and she was also a drug addict. One witness, Monica Grey, has indicated that someone gave your daughter an injection of heroin at a party at Max Vernon’s after she’d passed out, but even she can’t swear definitely that it was Vernon. She wouldn’t last five minutes on the stand with the kind of counsel he’d bring in. Another thing, this isn’t a criminal matter at the moment. All she’s done is give me a general verbal statement that she might change completely once she’s on the stand.”
“But Vernon was responsible,” Harriet said. “He was responsible for everything. You believe that yourself.”
“Proving it is something else again.”
There was another long silence and then Craig said, “There’s just one thing I don’t understand. Joanna did everything she could to conceal her identity before she killed herself. Why would she do that?”
“Do you really want me to answer that, colonel?”
“More than anything else in the world.”
“All right. I’d say she did it for you.”
The expression on Craig’s face didn’t alter. “Please go on.”
“In those final moments, I think she must have been thinking more clearly than she had for a long time. She’d let you down enough. She didn’t want to shame you any more. I think she wanted the river to swallow her up as if she’d never been.”
When Craig replied, only the slightest of tremor disturbed the even tenor of his voice. “Thank you, sergeant.
