detective work. There was a simple explanation of my being able to describe and identify — I had read so many of the Missing Persons and Divorce files. The band of ex-policemen who compiled them knew what to base identification on, the unchanging things like ears and hands, not hair colour or the wearing of spectacles or a moustache. One of them had told me without pride that wigs, beards, face-padding, and the wearing of or omission of cosmetics made no impression on him, because they were not what he looked at. ‘Ears and fingers,’ he said, ‘they can’t disguise those. They never think of trying. Stick to ears and fingers, and you don’t go far wrong.’
Ears and fingers were just about all there was left of Andrews to identify. The unappetising gristly bits.
The driver decanted me at Charles’ back door and I walked along the passage to the hall. When I had one foot on the bottom tread of the staircase Charles himself appeared at the drawing-room door.
‘Oh, hullo, I thought it might be you. Come in here and look at these.’
Reluctantly leaving the support of the banisters I followed him into the drawing-room.
‘There,’ he said, pointing. He had fixed up a strip of light inside his bookcase and it shone down on to the quartz gems, bringing them to sparkling life. The open doors with their red silk curtains made a softly glowing frame. It was an eye-catching and effective arrangement, and I told him so.
‘Good. The light goes on automatically when the doors are open… nifty, don’t you think?’ He laughed. ‘And you can set your mind at rest. They are now insured.’
‘That’s good.’
He shut the doors of the bookcase and the light inside went out. The red curtains discreetly hid their treasure. Turning to me more seriously, he said, ‘Whose body?’
‘Andrews.’
‘The man who shot you? How extraordinary. Suicide?’
‘No, I don’t think so. The gun wasn’t there, anyway.’
He made a quick gesture towards the chair. ‘My dear Sid, sit down, sit down. You look like d… er… a bit worn out. You shouldn’t have gone all that way. Put your feet up, I’ll get you a drink.’ He fussed over me like a mother hen, fetching me first water, then brandy, and finally a cup of warm beef juice from Mrs Cross, and sat opposite me watching while I despatched it.
‘Do you like that stuff?’ he asked.
‘Yes, luckily.’
‘We used to have it when we were children. A ritual once a week. My father used to drain it out of the Sunday joint, propping the dish on the carving fork. We all loved it, but I haven’t had any for years.’
‘Try some?’ I offered him the cup.
He took it and tasted it. ‘Yes, it’s good. Takes me back sixty years…’ He smiled companionably, relaxing in his chair, and I told him about Andrews and the long-dead state he was in.
‘It sounds,’ he said slowly, ‘as if he might have been murdered.’
‘I wouldn’t be surprised. He was young and healthy. He wouldn’t just lie down and die of exposure in Essex.’
Charles laughed.
‘What time are your guests expected?’ I asked, glancing at the clock. It was just after five.
‘About six.’
‘I think I’ll go up and lie on my bed for a while, then.’
‘You are all right, Sid, aren’t you? I mean, really all right?’
‘Oh yes. Just tired.’
‘Will you come down to dinner?’ There was the faintest undercurrent of disappointment in his casual voice. I thought of all his hard work with the rocks and the amount of manoeuvring he had done. Besides, I was getting definitely curious myself about his intentions.
‘Yes,’ I nodded, getting up. ‘Lay me a teaspoon.’
I made it upstairs and lay on my bed, sweating. And cursing. Although the bullet had missed everything vital in tearing holes through my gut, it had singed and upset a couple of nerves, and they had warned me in the hospital that it would be some time before I felt well. It didn’t please me that so far they were right.
I heard the visitors arrive, heard their loud cheerful voices as they were shown up to their rooms, the doors shutting, the bath waters running, the various bumps and murmurs from the adjoining rooms; and eventually the diminishing chatter as they finished changing and went downstairs past my door. I heaved myself off the bed, took off the loose-waisted slacks and jersey shirt I felt most comfortable in, and put on a white cotton shirt and dark grey suit.
My face looked back at me, pale, gaunt and dark-eyed, as I brushed my hair. A bit of death’s head at the feast. I grinned nastily at my reflection. It was only a slight improvement.
THREE
By the time I got to the foot of the stairs, Charles and his guests were coming across the hall from the drawing-room to the dining-room. The men all wore dinner jackets and the women, long dresses. Charles deliberately hadn’t warned me, I reflected. He knew my convalescent kit didn’t include a black tie.
He didn’t stop and introduce me to his guests, but nodded slightly and went straight on into the dining-room, talking with charm to the rounded, fluffy little woman who walked beside him. Behind came Viola and a tall dark girl of striking good looks. Viola, Charles’s elderly widowed cousin, gave me a passing half-smile, embarrassed and worried. I wondered what was the matter: normally she greeted me with affection, and it was only a short time since she had written warm wishes for my recovery. The girl beside her barely glanced in my direction, and the two men bringing up the rear didn’t look at me at all.
Shrugging, I followed them into the dining-room. There was no mistaking the place laid for me: it consisted, in actual fact, of a spoon, a mat, a glass, and a fork, and it was situated in the centre of one of the sides. Opposite me was an empty gap. Charles seated his guests, himself in his usual place at the end of the table, with fluffy Mrs van Dysart on his right, and the striking Mrs Kraye on his left. I sat between Mrs Kraye and Rex van Dysart. It was only gradually that I sorted everyone out. Charles made no introductions whatever.
The groups at each end of the table fell into animated chat and paid me as much attention as a speed limit. I began to think I would go back to bed.
The manservant whom Charles engaged on these occasions served small individual tureens of turtle soup. My tureen, I found, contained more beef juice. Bread was passed, spoons clinked, salt and pepper were shaken and the meal began. Still no one spoke to me, though the visitors were growing slightly curious. Mrs van Dysart flicked her sharp china blue eyes from Charles to me and back again, inviting an introduction. None came. He went on talking to the two women with almost overpowering charm, apparently oblivious.
Rex van Dysart on my left offered me bread with lifted eyebrows and a faint non-committal smile. He was a large man with a flat white face, heavy black rimmed spectacles and a domineering manner. When I refused the bread he put the basket down on the table, gave me the briefest of nods, and turned back to Viola.
Even before he brought quartz into his conversation I guessed it was for Howard Kraye that the show was being put on; and I disliked him on sight with a hackle-raising antipathy that disconcerted me. If Charles was planning that I should ever work for, or with, or near Mr Kraye, I thought, he could think again.
He was a substantial man of about forty-eight to fifty, with shoulders, waist and hips all knocking forty-four. The dinner jacket sat on him with the ease of a second skin, and when he shot his cuffs occasionally he did so without affectation, showing off noticeably well manicured hands.
He had tidy grey-brown hair, straight eyebrows, narrow nose, small firm mouth, rounded freshly shaven chin, and very high unwrinkled lower eyelids, which gave him a secret, shuttered look.
A neat enclosed face like a mask, with perhaps something rotten underneath. You could almost smell it across the dinner table. I guessed, rather fancifully, that he knew too much about too many vices. But on top he was smooth. Much too smooth. In my book, a nasty type of phony. I listened to him talking to Viola.
‘…So when Doria and I got to New York I looked up those fellows in that fancy crystal palace on First Avenue and got them moving. You have to give the clothes-horse diplomats a lead, you know, they’ve absolutely no initiative of their own. Look, I told them, unilateral action is not only inadvisable, its impracticable. But they are so
