The car was riding more smoothly now. They must have thrown off the last tentacles of London and be in open country. By an effort of will she calmed herself. She was alive. She must hold on to that. There was still hope, and if in the end she had to die she would try to die bravely. Gerard and Claudia, both agnostics, would have died with courage even if they hadn’t been allowed to die with dignity. What was her religion worth if it couldn’t help her to do the same?
She said an act of contrition, then prayed for the souls of Gerard and Claudia and, last of all, prayed for herself and for her own safety. The well-worn comforting words brought their assurance that she was not alone. Then she tried to plan. Not knowing what he had in mind for her, it was difficult to decide on alternative courses of action, but one fact was certain. She couldn’t believe he was strong enough to carry her body unaided. That meant he would at least have to free her ankles. She was younger, stronger than he and could easily out-distance him. If she had the chance she would run for her life. But whatever happened at the end she wouldn’t plead for mercy.
In the meantime she must try to prevent her limbs from becoming too stiff. Her hands, wrenched behind her back, were tied with something soft, perhaps his tie or socks. He would not, after all, have come prepared for more than one victim. But he had done the job efficiently. She could not wriggle free. Her ankles were as strongly if more comfortably tied. But even bound she could tense and relax the muscles of her legs, and to make even this small preparation for escape gave her strength and courage. She told herself, too, that she mustn’t lose hope of rescue. How long would James wait before he discovered she was missing? He would probably take no action for an hour, imagining she was held up in the traffic or the underground. But then he would ring number 12 and, getting no answer, would try Claudia’s Barbican flat. Even then he might not be seriously worried. But surely he wouldn’t wait more than an hour and a half. Perhaps he would take a taxi to number 12. Perhaps, if she were lucky, even hear the sound of the running engine in the garage. Once Claudia’s body was found and Dauntsey’s absence known, all police forces would be alerted to intercept the car. She must hang on to that hope.
And still he drove. Unable to see her watch she could only guess at the time and had no idea of the direction in which they travelled. She didn’t waste energy wondering why Gabriel had killed. That was fruitless; only he could tell her that, and perhaps at the end he would. Instead she thought about her own life. What had it been but a series of compromises? What had she given her father but a timid acquiescence which had only reinforced his insensitivity and contempt? Why had she come so meekly into the firm at his bidding to be trained to take over contracts and rights? She could do the work well enough; she was conscientious and methodical, punctilious about detail; but it wasn’t what she had wanted to do with her life. And Gerard? In her heart she had known his sexual exploitation for what it was. He had treated her with contempt because she had made herself contemptible. Who was she? What was she? Frances Peverell, meek, obliging, gentle, uncomplaining, the appendage of her father, her lover, the firm. Now when her life might be nearing its end she could at least say, ‘I am Frances Peverell. I am myself.’ If she lived to marry James, she could at least be offering an equal partnership. She had found the courage to face death, but that, after all, was not so difficult. Thousands, including children, did it every day. It was time she found an equal courage to face life.
And now she felt curiously at peace. From time to time she said a prayer, mentally spoke the lines of a favourite poem, looked back on moments of joy. She even tried to doze and might have succeeded if the car hadn’t suddenly jolted her mind awake. Gabriel must be driving over rough country. The Rover lurched, rolled, struck potholes, bounded from side to side, and she rolled with it. And then there was another stretch, but less uneven, probably, she thought, a country track. And then the car stopped and she heard him open his door.
64
In Hillgate Village James glanced at the carriage clock on the mantelpiece. It was 7.42, just over an hour since he had rung Frances. She should have arrived by now. He did again the quick calculation he had been making during the last sixty minutes. There were ten stations between the Bank and Not ting Hill Gate. Allow two minutes per station, say twenty minutes for the journey, and fifteen to get to the Bank. But perhaps she had missed Claudia and had had to ring for a taxi. Even so the journey shouldn’t have taken sixty minutes, not even in the rush hour and in central London, not unless there had been an unusual hold-up, roads closed or a terrorist alert. He rang Frances’s flat again. As expected there was no reply. Then once more he tried Claudia’s number, again unsuccessfully. That didn’t surprise him. She might have driven straight on to see Declan Cartwright, or had a theatre or a dinner engagement. There was no reason why Claudia should be at home. He switched on the radio to the local London station. Another ten minutes passed before there was the news flash. Travellers were warned of a hold-up on the Central Line. No reason was given, which usually meant an IRA alert, but four stations between Holborn and Marble Arch were closed. So that was the explanation. It could be another hour before Frances arrived. There was nothing to do but wait in patience.
He paced the sitting-room. Frances was slightly claustrophobic. He knew how much she hated using the Greenwich foot tunnel. She disliked travelling by underground. She wouldn’t be trapped there now if she hadn’t wanted to hurry to his side. He hoped that the lights were on in the train, that she wasn’t sitting there unfriended in total darkness. And suddenly he had an extraordinarily vivid and disturbing image of Frances, abandoned, dying, in a dark enclosing tunnel somewhere far from him, unreachable and alone. He thrust it out of his mind as a morbid imagining and looked at the clock again. He would wait half an hour and try to get through to London Transport and find out if the line was open, how long the delay was likely to be. He went over to the window and, moving behind the curtains, stared down on the lighted street, willing her to appear.
65
And now at last Daniel was on the A12 and the road was clearer. He kept within the speed limit; it would be disastrous if he were caught by a police patrol. But Dauntsey would be equally careful not to attract attention, not to be held up. To that extent they were driving on equal terms, but he had the faster car. He planned how best to get ahead once his quarry was in sight. In normal circumstances Dauntsey would almost certainly know the car, would probably recognize him even at a glance, but it was unlikely that he knew he was being followed. He wouldn’t be watching for a pursuer. The best plan would be to wait until the road was busy then take his chance to overtake in a stream of traffic.
And now for the first time he remembered Claudia Etienne. It horrified him that the possibility of her danger hadn’t occurred to him in his concern to get to Dauntsey and warn him. But she would be all right. He had last seen her when she proposed to go home and she must be safe now. Dauntsey was ahead of him in his Rover. The only risk was that she had decided to visit her father and might even now be on her way to Othona House. But that was one more reason for getting there first. There was no point in trying to stop Dauntsey, to overtake him, wave him down. Dauntsey wouldn’t stop unless forced to. Daniel needed to speak to him, to warn him, but in calmness, not by ramming his car. The last scene of this tragedy was to be played out in peace.
And then at last he caught sight of the Rover. They were now nearing the Chelmsford by-pass and the traffic was building up. He waited his moment and then joined the stream of cars in the overtaking lane and shot past.
Esmé Carling must have had a few very bad days after the news of the discovery of the body. She would have expected the police to arrive with questions about the notice pinned to the board, the discarded manuscript. But he and Robbins had come with their harmless questions about an alibi and the alibi had been provided. She had kept her nerve admirably, he had to give her that. Never once had he suspected that there was more to learn. And after that? What thoughts had gone throug
h her mind? Had Dauntsey telephoned her first or had she got in touch with him? Almost certainly the latter. Dauntsey would have had no need to kill her if she hadn’t told him that she’d actually seen him walking downstairs carrying the vacuum cleaner. He, too, must have had some very bad moments. He, too, had kept his nerve. Esmé Carling had said nothing and he must have thought he was safe.
And then would have come the telephone call, the suggestion that they should meet, the implied threat that unless her book was published she would go to the police. The threat was, of course, baseless. She couldn’t go to the police without revealing that she, too, had been in Innocent House that night. She had as strong a motive for getting rid of Etienne as anyone. But she was a woman whose mind, ingenious, scheming, devious, a little obsessional, had its limitations. She was not clear-thinking nor was she highly intelligent.
How exactly, he wondered, had Dauntsey enticed her to that meeting? Did he say that he knew or suspected who had killed Etienne and that together they could arrive at the truth and enjoy a joint triumph? Had they reached at least a provisional understanding that she would remain silent and he would return the manuscript and the paper and ensure that her book was published? She had told Daisy Reed that Peverell Press would have to publish. Who else but one of the partners could have given her that assurance? Had he presented himself in that brief conversation as her defender and saviour, or as a fellow conspirator? They would now never know unless Dauntsey chose to tell them.
One thing was certain; Esmé Carling had gone to that interview without fear. She hadn’t known who the murderer had been but she was confident she knew who it couldn’t have been. She had been the visitor in Etienne’s office when the call came through and, at first, had waited for him to return. Then, growing impatient, she had gone up to the little archives room, glimpsing Dauntsey carrying down the vacuum cleaner as she was about to leave Miss Blackett’s office. Outside the door she had seen the snake and heard the voice. Someone inside the room was speaking. The door was not substantial and she probably realized that it wasn’t Etienne’s voice. When the body was discovered, she could be certain that Dauntsey at least was innocent. She had seen him herself walking down the stairs while Etienne was still alive and in the little archives room talking with his killer.
How had he managed that alibi for Esmé Carling’s murder? But of course; he and Bartrum had been the only two left alone with her body before the police arrived. Wasn’t it Dauntsey who had suggested that the women should be taken indoors, that he and Bartrum would wait by the body? He must have arranged his alibi then. But it was surprising that Bartrum had agreed. Had Dauntsey promised to support him in keeping his job? To get him promotion? Or was there an existing obligation to be repaid? Whatever the reason, the alibi had been given. And the pub at which they had met half an hour later than they claimed had been well-chosen. No one at the Sailor’s Return had been able to say precisely when two particular customers had entered that large, raucous and overcrowded tavern.
The murder itself would have presented few problems, the only moment of danger the moving of the launch. But that, of course, would have been necessary. He needed the launch; only in the safety of its cabin could he kill, unseen both from the land and the river. Esmé Carling had been a thin woman and not heavy, but Dauntsey was seventy-six and it would have been easier to string her up from the launch than to manoeuvre her body, dead or alive, down the slippery tide-washed steps. And moving the launch would be safe enough if he kept the engine low. The only person living close was Frances and Dauntsey knew from experience how little could be heard from her sitting-room with the curtains drawn. And even if she had heard the noise of an engine, would she really have taken the trouble to investigate? This, after all, was a common sound of the river. But after the murder the launch had to be moved back. He couldn’t be certain that there wouldn’t be a trace of her, however small, in the cabin, particularly if there was a struggle. It was important that no one should associate the launch with her death.
She had come to this last fatal appointment by taxi. That must have been by Dauntsey’s suggestion, and his suggestion, too, that she should be put down at the end of Innocent Passage. He would be waiting there in the shadows, standing in the doorway. What had he told her? That they could speak in greater privacy if they went on the river? He would have placed the manuscript and her message to the partners ready in the cabin. What else would have been there? A rope for the strangling, a scarf, a belt? But he must have hoped that she would be carrying her usual shoulder-bag with the strong strap. He must have seen her with it often enough.
And now, with his eyes fixed on the road ahead, his hands lightly on the wheel, Daniel pictured the scene in that narrow cabin. How long would they have talked? Perhaps not at all. She must already have told Dauntsey on the telephone that she had seen him at Innocent House coming down the stairs carrying the vacuum cleaner. That in itself was damning. There was nothing else he needed to know from her. It would have been easiest and safest to waste no time. Daniel could see Dauntsey standing a little aside, politely waiting for her to enter the cabin first, the strap of her bag over her shoulder. Then the quick flick upwards of the strap, the falling and thrashing on the cabin floor, the old hands ineffectively clutching at the leather noose as with both hands he tugged it tight. There must have been at least a second of horrified realization before merciful unconsciousness blacked out her mind for ever.
And this was the man he was driving to warn, not because there could now be any escape for him, but because even the horror of Esmé Carling’s death seemed only one small and inevitable part of a greater and more universal tragedy. All her life she had fabricated mysteries, exploited coincidence, arranged facts to conform to theory, manipulated her characters, relished the self-importance of vicarious power. It was her tragedy that in the end she had confused fiction with real life.
It was after he had left Maldon and turned south by the B1018 that Daniel got lost. He had earlier stopped the car in a lay-by for a minute to consult the map, resenting every second of lost time. The shorter route to Bradwell-on-Sea was by a left-hand turn off the B1018 and through the villages of Steeple and St Lawrence. He folded the map away and drove on through the dark, desolate landscape. But the road, wider than he had expected, stretched on with two left-hand turns which he hadn’t remembered from the map, and with no sign of the first village. Some instinct which he never was able to explain told him that he was driving south, not east. He stopped at a crossroads to consult a signpost and by the lights of the car saw the name Southminster. Somehow he had got himself on to the more southerly and longer road. The darkness was intense and thick as a fog. And then the clouds moved from the moon and he saw a roadside pub, closed and derelict, two brick-built cottages with dim lights behind their curtains, and a single wind-distorted tree with a fragment of a white notice nailed to the bark, fluttering like a pinioned bird. On either side of the road the desolate country lay wind-scoured and eerie in the moon’s cold light.
He drove on. The road with its twists and turns seemed endless. The wind was strengthening now, gently buffeting the car. And here at last was the right-hand turn to Bradwell-on-Sea and he saw that he was passing through the outskirts of the village to the squat tower of the church and the lights of the pub. He turned once again, towards the marshlands and the sea. There was no sign of Dauntsey’s car and he couldn’t tell which of them would reach Othona House first. He only knew that for both of them this would be the journey’s end.
66
He opened the rear door. After the enclosing darkness, the smell of petrol, of the rug, of her own fear, the fresh moonlit air touched her face like a blessing. She could hear nothing but the sighing of the wind, see nothing but his dark form leaning over her. His hands stretched towards her and he fumbled the gag. She felt the brush of his fingers momentarily against her cheek. Then he bent and untied her ankles. The knots were not difficult. If her hands had been free she could have untied th
em herself. He didn’t need to cut them free. Did that mean that he hadn’t a knife? But she was no longer worried about her own safety. Suddenly she knew that he hadn’t brought her here to kill her. He had other, and for him more important, preoccupations.
He said, with a voice as ordinary, as gentle, as the voice she had known, relied upon, liked to hear: ‘Frances, if you turn over I can get more easily at your hands.’
It could have been her rescuer speaking, not her gaoler. She turned, and it took only a few seconds to free her. She tried to ease her legs out of the car but they were stiff and he put out his hand to help.
She said: ‘Don’t touch me.’
The words were indistinct. The gag had been tighter than she had thought and her jaw was fixed in a painful rictus. But he understood. He stepped back at once and watched while she dragged herself out and stood upright, leaning against the car for support. This was the moment for which she had planned, the chance to outrun him, it hardly mattered where. But he had turned from her and she knew that there was no need to run, no point in trying to escape. He had brought her here from necessity, but she was no longer dangerous, no longer important. His thoughts were elsewhere. She could try to stumble away on her cramped legs but he wouldn’t prevent her and he wouldn’t follow. He was moving away from her, staring at the dark outline of a house and she could feel the intensity of his gaze. For him this was the end of a long journey.