On the Edge [= Dead Gorgeous]

28

Through the rear-view mirror of the Bentley, Rose’s eyes were fixed on the farthest pillar in a row of housefronts at one end of Lowndes Square, the point where she would first catch sight of somebody approaching from the Stationery Office Depot. She had the engine running and her hands gripping the wheel.

Please God let it be Antonia, she thought.

Yet how absurd. She was sitting here waiting for the woman who had tried to chloroform her, who would surely have murdered her, whatever she claimed afterwards. A callous, unpredictable killer for whose arrival Rose was praying fervently. She had no illusions about Antonia. The charm was totally resistible now. Remarks that once seemed witty left her cold, yet she couldn’t ignore the certainty that she herself was destined for the gallows if Antonia was arrested and persuaded to confess. What a mess! She didn’t see any way to untangle herself.

So she waited in the car.

Two more minutes went by. Rose drummed her fingers on the rim of the wheel.

Then Antonia appeared, her fair hair springing against the black velvet collar as she clattered around the corner in her high heels. She flashed a wide smile when their eyes met. Bravado, Rose thought sourly as she leaned across and lifted the lock on the door, but smiled back.

Antonia hauled it open, sank into the seat and swung her legs in.

‘Any joy?’

‘Behind you.’

Antonia turned, looked at the packet of forms on the back seat and whistled. ‘Hell’s bells, Rosie, we only needed one.’

‘It was easier to take the packet.’

‘Five hundred! Gordon Bennett! Are you going into business?’ She started to laugh.

Rose joined in the peal of giggles, a frankly hysterical reaction as they shattered the tension.

‘You don’t do things by halves, ducky!’

Their laughter shrilled at least an octave higher, recalling that hilarious moment — Rose had forgotten the cause of the hilarity — in the Black and White Milk Bar just after they had met in Piccadilly. For a few blissful seconds it blotted out everything that had happened since that afternoon.

Someone had to say something when the laughter died and it was Antonia. ‘Ah well, who knows, the extra ones may come in useful.’

‘What?’ Rose almost swung the car into a taxi she was overtaking.

‘In case the pen slips and I mess it up, darling.’ She gave a chesty laugh. ‘What else?’ This time Rose didn’t join in.

As they approached the traffic lights at the top of Sloane Street, she returned to practicalities and suggested they stopped somewhere in Hyde Park. ‘If we fill the form in right away, we can get to an undertaker’s before they close.’ She got a nod from Antonia so she turned right, through the Albert Gate into South Carriage Drive. ‘How did you cope with Gascoigne?’

‘Told him you’d had trouble with your suspenders.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake.’

‘What’s up? It was the perfect thing to say. He went pink and twitchy at the thought and his eyes glazed over, dirty old sod, so I knew what to talk about — stocking-tops, belts, garters, corsets and quivering thighs, forests of them. And how to hitch up your stocking with a sixpence. Oh, and the shortage of elastic. That really got his smutty little mind going. The steam was coming out of his ears by then. He forgot all about his precious coding system and he didn’t mention you for ten minutes.’

‘How did you get away?’

‘With ease. When I’d run out of things to say about suspenders I passed on the thought that perhaps we ought to find out whether you were all right. We had a look up and down the aisles, by which time I felt sure you must have found the form and cleared off, so I told Gascoigne that you must have got extremely embarrassed and quit the building minus stockings or worse. He had no difficulty visualizing that. I think he found it very believable. We went down to the entrance and the doorman told us you’d left in a hurry. I winked at Gascoigne and followed you.’

Rose stopped the car. The light was already going and they still had to get to an undertaker’s. She fished in her handbag for Barry’s fountain pen while Antonia ripped the brown paper off the packet of disposal forms.

‘Don’t bother, darling. I’d better use mine. I filled in the registration form with it.’ She took it out and unscrewed the top. ‘Can’t be too careful.’

Rose wanted her to concentrate. They couldn’t afford a mistake in the form-filling, but Antonia continued to talk. ‘There’s a dear little undertaker called Hopkinson at the top end of Tottenham Court Road. Much nicer than Greely. We can go straight there and hand him this. Then I’ll get you to come home with me and see if Hector’s any easier to move before they come for him. It would look more natural if he was lying in bed. By now he ought to be more pliable, didn’t he?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘I will need your pen after all. There’s a short bit here that I’m supposed to fill in as myself. Different ink, you see, and bolder handwriting. No flies on me. What was I about to say? Yes, after you’ve helped me upstairs with Hector I suggest we shake hands and go our different ways.’

‘I’m all for that.’

‘Fine, but don’t sound so bloody pleased about it, my flower. I’m not looking for gratitude for what I did, but you don’t have to treat me like a case of measles. Considering the mess your marriage was in when we met, you haven’t come out of it at all badly.’ She returned the pen to Rose. ‘Do you want to check it? The other part has to be filled in by the undertaker.’

‘What?’ Rose felt a tightening in her stomach. ‘What did you say? Let me see.’

‘Part C. Part A is the registrar’s bit authorizing the disposal, which I’ve filled in. Part B is for the informant to complete. That’s me, and I’ve done it. And C is for the undertaker. “Notification of Disposal”. Oh my God!’ She clapped her hand to her mouth.

Rose quietly studied Part C. ‘A person disposing of a body must within ninety-six hours deliver to the registrar this notification as to the date, place and means of the disposal of the body.’ She was churning inside, but she spoke mechanically, chanting out the obvious as if she were playing consequences, except that it felt and sounded like the death sentence. ‘Who does the undertaker notify? The registrar. And the registrar checks it against his records. And if it’s a name that doesn’t appear in his records, he wants to know why. When he doesn’t get a satisfactory answer he asks the police to investigate.’ She paused. ‘You know, Antonia, we’ve had it. This perfect murder is a perfect dud.’

‘Bloody hell!’ Antonia screwed up the paper and drummed her fists against the dashboard. ‘Five hundred sodding forms and we can’t use one of them.’

Rose didn’t have that much energy left. She turned on the engine and drove out of the Park, into the traffic moving up Park Lane. She was incapable of saying any more. She was blitzed. It was all she could do, all she wanted to do, to perform the mindless functions of controlling the car. It was some kind of link with normality, like hanging out washing the morning after an air raid that had shattered every window in the house.

Mercifully Antonia also went silent.

The street lights were on already. Outside the Dorchester a man was selling evening papers. Rose switched on the headlamps as she swung the Bentley into Oxford Street and the predictable jam. While they were inching towards Oxford Circus the subversive aroma of roast chestnuts wafted from a street corner.

‘It’s past teatime.’

‘Shall we?’

‘A bag of chestnuts won’t go far.’

They stopped at Yarner’s in Langham Place and sat by an upstairs window at one of the glass-topped tables with a pot of tea in front of them. They had a corpse at home to dispose of and they blandly ordered Bismarck Herring sandwiches, buttered crumpets and chocolate cake from the silver-haired waitress in her black dress, pink apron and cap. The imminent prospect of returning to the house without the slightest idea what to do with Hector appalled them both. Tea was a convenient hiatus. They didn’t speak, except to place the order and pay the bill. They were long past the point of small talk.

Back in the car, Rose handed across a cigarette and lit one herself. ‘It’s got to be faced. You can’t use an undertaker now.’

‘What do you mean — you?’

‘All right. Slip of the tongue. We’re in this together.’

Another half-minute passed.

Antonia said, ‘Nobody knows he’s dead except you and me.’

‘And Mr Greely.’

‘That undertaker? He didn’t use my name once. He’ll forget all about us.’

‘Some hopes! I should think you’re indelibly fixed in his memory. I can’t imagine anyone else has ever changed their mind in a funeral parlour.’

‘Greely might remember me, but he didn’t meet Hector, did he?’

‘You’d better tell me what you’re driving at.’

Antonia blew out a thin plume of smoke. Suddenly the bleak look had slipped from her features and was supplanted by an expression Rose had seen before, that afternoon they were standing outside the Ritz — lips pressed together into a secret smile, pleased with itself and scornful of the world, eyes slightly glazed and looking at nothing in particular. ‘Hector will just have to disappear.’

Rose frowned.

‘Go missing, darling. Plenty do.’

‘That’s going to take some believing. He wasn’t the type.’

‘What?’

‘Successful businessmen don’t go missing. How are you going to account for it?’

‘I won’t. It’s not my job.’ ‘But you’ll have to notify the police.’ ‘Eventually.’ ‘And?’

‘I’ll tell them he didn’t come home one night.’

Rose shook her head and sighed. ‘It’s not much good, Antonia. What are they supposed to think?’

‘Anything you bloody well like.’ Antonia rattled off a list. ‘He fell down a manhole. He lost his memory. He was robbed and pushed into the river. He refused to pay protection money to a gang. He seduced the entire Luton Girls’ Choir and fled the country. He got religion and went into—’

Rose cut in. ‘For God’s sake, Antonia! How will you get rid of the body?’

‘We, my little helpmate.’

‘We, then.’

Antonia waved a dismissive hand. ‘Bury him somewhere. Out in the country. A Surrey wood.’

‘Have you any idea how hard it is to dig a grave in uncultivated ground?’

‘Why? Have you?’

Rose gave her a glare that would have sunk a battleship. ‘The newspaper reports always say the victim was found in a shallow grave.’

‘What’s your suggestion?’

‘I don’t have one.’ Any minute they would be at each other’s throats. ‘All right. We’ll go back to the house.’ She succeeded in sounding calm, but her hands shook when she tried fitting the key into the ignition. She didn’t know which was worse, the hostility from Antonia or the terror boiling inside herself.

She drove slowly up Portland Place and brought the car round the Devonshire Street turn to the Mews. Antonia got out and ran into the house. Rose pulled out the key of the car and followed.

Antonia’s voice hailed her excitedly from the sitting room where they had left the body. ‘He’s starting to loosen up. I think we can move him tonight.’

Rose thought, what’s the point? She remained in the kitchen, sparing herself another sight of the corpse.

Antonia appeared again, radiant with her discovery. Her dead husband might have been a bread-mix from the way she talked about him. ‘I’ll put some heat in there and he’ll be ready in no time.’

Rose looked round for something else to occupy her. The cat had walked in and wanted feeding, so she opened the fridge. Some uncooked meat was in there on a plate. ‘Is it safe to feed this to Raffles?’

‘What do you mean — safe?’

‘Free from poison.’

‘For crying out loud, you halfwit. There was never any poison.’

‘No poison?’

‘Only the chloroform.’

‘For Hector?’

‘No — for you, stupid.’ The barb sprang from Antonia’s tongue and she immediately tried to cover it with words. ‘The point is, you can feed the bloody cat with perfect safety. I’ve got to find an electric fire.’ She quit the room.

Rose stood rigid. Now she knew. Hector’s murder had been an afterthought, one of Antonia’s devil-may-care decisions after the murder attempt failed. The whole charade of Antonia going away and Hector requiring cooked meals had been dreamed up to bring Rose herself to the house to be chloroformed and killed.

Why?

How could she have so antagonized Antonia? The worst she was guilty of was an innocent meal out with Hector.

What did Antonia hope to gain by it?

She thought back to Barry’s death. That had been casual and coldblooded. Barry had been insufferable, but not to Antonia. She had no grudge against him, yet she had calmly offered to kill him. And kept her promise.

Antonia didn’t need a bloodlust or a brainstorm. She murdered with detachment. Yet not without reason. Surely not without reason.

She must have killed Barry because it put Rose under an obligation to her. Something was wanted in return.

The opportunity to steal the death certificate from the registrar? Not just that.

Rose clenched her fists.

My identity.

I assumed all along that she wanted me to square the account by killing Hector, possibly without knowing what I was doing. I was wrong. If she’d wanted Hector dead she’d have done it herself. She didn’t need me for that. But if she killed me she could write her own name on the death certificate and ‘die’. She’d have my handbag with all my papers and my house keys. She’d become Rose Bell and she’d be free to go to America with Vic and marry him.

And Hector, could he have known about this? Was it possible that he’d gone along with it? Did he know of the plan that evening in Reggiori’s?

Rose thought back to what she had heard about the drowning of Hector’s first wife. He’d connived at that. Why shouldn’t he have also connived at another murder?

The cat mewed.

She took the meat from the fridge and looked for a knife with a good, sharp edge.