The Odd Flamingo Read online

  I said, “Did she have many friends? It would help if I knew who her friends were.”

  She frowned. “I don’t really remember. She was a friendly girl, of course, very eager to be liked. I think she was friendly with Mary Arnold the doctor’s daughter. At least, they appeared to be friendly at school; whether it went any further I can’t tell you.”

  “You can’t remember anyone else?”

  We had reached her house and I stopped the car. Emily made no move to get out; she was staring in front of her and I thought that she looked upset.

  She said, “Yes, I can, William. This girl left before Rose did. It was rather unpleasant. We had to ask her parents to remove her. Her family left the town shortly afterwards.”

  I said, “Will you tell me about her?”

  I thought she sounded reluctant. “I suppose it can do no harm. She was a wild sort of girl, lovely to look at. She was very gay and happy and very naughty. I think, if I hadn’t been her headmistress, I might have found her rather attractive. As it was she was too difficult for us. Her parents couldn’t control her and neither could we. She got mixed up with a lot of young hooligans from the town. Then she stole things from the cloakroom at school and in the end she had to go. I was sorry for her parents. They were nice people.”

  I said, “And Rose? How friendly was she with this girl?”

  She said, “For a time, anyway, they were inseparable. Young girls form very sudden and violent friendships, you know, and Rose looked up to this girl. She had a great deal more vitality than Rose and I suppose it was natural for Rose to admire her. I remember that we wondered for a short time whether Rose had had anything to do with the stealing episode, the two girls were so close together. But I’m sure we were wrong. Rose wasn’t that sort of girl at all. When it all came out she was terribly shocked and upset.”

  I stared ahead through the windscreen at the quiet road.

  “What was the girl’s name? I know so little about Rose. It might help.”

  She said unwillingly, “Her name was Jasmine Castle. I don’t know where she lives. Somewhere in London, I think. I told you that her family left the town.”

  She looked pensively at her lap. Then she said, “Rose had been kept in one afternoon for some minor misdeed—nothing very serious, I’m sure, because she gave very little trouble. The next day we had a letter from her mother. It was a long letter, rather incoherent and not very well spelt. It was the sort of letter we are always getting from mothers. The gist of it was that Rose had had a difficult and unhappy childhood and needed very careful handling. I showed it to Rose’s form-mistress and she said she thought it was Rose’s hand writing. We looked at one of her note books and saw that the writing was identical. I remember that we laughed about it and decided to say nothing. I’m not sure, now, that we should have done that. It was careless and casual of us. There must have been something wrong for the girl to have written a letter like that; perhaps we could have helped her.”

  I said, “I don’t think her mother is a particularly understanding sort of person. Do you think Rose was unhappy?”

  She was distressed. “How can I know, William?”

  I saw her into the house and went back to the car. I sat at the wheel for a while feeling insignificant and useless and a little appalled at the task I had set myself. Then I drove to a public telephone box and rang my mother to tell her that I should be late home and that she was not to keep dinner for me. She sounded ruffled and as if she thought I was being inconsiderate.

  I went to the Arnolds’ house. There was a dreary little queue outside the surgery and I guessed that they would not have started dinner yet.

  Mary Arnold was a fat, pale girl with a damp mouth. She wore a pink jersey that was too tight for her and a row of pearls. She sat with her knees spread out and she blushed when I spoke to her.

  I was not allowed to see her alone. Her mother explained, for her daughter, “Yes, my Mally was quite friendly with Rose when they were at school, but it was only a childish friendship. It didn’t go any further after they had left school. You see, Mr. Hunt, they weren’t quite in the same class. I’m sure you’ll appreciate that. It would have been different if she had been a secretary or something. A lot of very nice girls do secretarial work nowadays. But she worked in a shop. I don’t mean that it wasn’t very nice and suitable for her, but we have a position to keep up in the town. I’m sure you understand that, Mr. Hunt.”

  She gave a “we professional people” smile. Mary Arnold said, “Oh, Mother,” and blushed violently, but her mother went on like a steam-roller.

  “Mally is very kind-hearted, she didn’t want to upset Rose. But she saw my point when I explained that Rose was not a very suitable guest for our little parties.”

  I was furiously angry. I would have liked to have told Mrs. Arnold that she was as extinct as the dinosaur and just about as pleasant. I felt a sharp and angry pity for Rose. I thought, as I left the house, of the little snubs, the polite and careful withdrawals that must have shown her she was not wanted. I remembered that I had not asked Mary Arnold whether she had known Jasmine Castle; for a moment I toyed with the idea of going back and then dismissed it. It seemed so wretchedly useless. The chance that this other girl would know where Rose might be was as slender as thread. I told myself that no one but an inexperienced fool would think otherwise.

  I drove the car slowly back towards the centre of the town. It was mellow and golden and still. Outside the School the remains of Humphrey’s duty party were leaving. I saw Humphrey’s head bent towards a lilac-coloured hat and then he looked towards the car and raised his hand as though he wanted me to stop.

  I wondered, for perhaps half a second, whether I should see the signal. I wanted, more than anything else, to be at home and out of it for a while. I drew the car into the side of the road and Humphrey put his head in through the open window and said, “Will, the police have come back. They’re indoors. Came in the middle of the party. A nice, auspicious time to choose, wasn’t it?”

  If he was uneasy he didn’t show it. He stood back so that I could get out of the car.

  “I don’t know what they want,” he said.

  “Do you want me to come?”

  “If you don’t mind.” He gave a short, crowing laugh. It was the way he always laughed when he was nervous. He said, “I have a feeling that I could do with a henchman by my side.”

  Hartley was waiting in the study; he seemed faintly surprised to see me, even a little uncomfortable because I was there. With him there were a sergeant and a plainclothes man from Scotland Yard whom he introduced as Detective-Inspector Jennings. It was all very polite and almost social.

  The man from London said that they hoped Humphrey would reconsider his statement about the time he had returned to his brother’s flat on the night of the ninth of August. He was a gentle, little man with a soft voice and nice, amused eyes.

  Hartley added, and I think it must have been a little out of order for him to do so, because Jennings looked at him with a trace of mild reproof, that the woman who lived in the flat below Piers had made a statement to the police.

  It was a friendly gesture merely; it was obvious that he didn’t want to say any more. Later we found that the woman had been taking her dog for a walk and she had seen Humphrey going into the flat at about one o’clock or a little after. She knew Humphrey well and there was no possibility of her being mistaken. She had, anyway, no reason to lie.

  Humphrey looked at me and then at the policeman. His eyes were blank and amazed as though, he felt that this could not really be happening to him. He said, in a low voice, “I’m sorry. I’ll tell you the truth now. It was stupid of me to try to avoid trouble.”

  He gave me a wry kind of grin and explained, a little haltingly, what he had really done.

  It sounded bad, bad and lame. Hartley was staring at his boots and Jennings watched Humphrey in a quiet, inquiring fashion that made my heart sink. He looked like a kindly schoolmaster watching a sm
all boy catch himself out in a lie.

  I said, “But I understand that the dead girl is not Miss Blacker. If that is the case then my client has been unwise in not making a correct statement before, but surely there is not more to it than that?”

  Hartley growled something under his breath and then said hastily, “Hmm. It’s not as simple as that. We have some other evidence.” He glanced at Jennings who shook his head with a barely perceptible movement. Hartley went on, “We have reason to believe that Miss Blacker knew the dead girl. They were seen together.”

  I said, sensing disaster, “The girl has been identified, then?”

  Jennings said, “She was a young woman called Jasmine Castle.”

  After that there was an unreality about the rest of the evening. Humphrey was asked if he would go down to the station to make a statement. It was almost a social invitation.

  We drove to the station. I took Humphrey and Jennings in my car and on the way they talked, casually, about the countryside.

  The policeman said, “This is good walking country, isn’t it? I used to like walking when I lived out of London. I’m in Harrow now, you have to get out a goodish way before you find a stretch that isn’t built on.”

  He seemed a decent sort of man, disposed to be friendly.

  At the station they let Humphrey write out his own statement on a special form which had the usual printed caution at the top. Humphrey was rather surprised that he was allowed to do this. He spent a long time on the statement, staring for long periods at the white-washed wall in front of him. The station sergeant brought up cups of sweet tea.

  When he had finished writing the Inspector read the statement out to him and he signed it and was told he could go home. We drove back to the School in silence. Celia was waiting for us in the drawing-room, surrounded by the wreck of the party. We told her what had happened and she said, “Oh, my darling.” Then she cried a little and clung to Humphrey. She was very indignant with the police. She kept saying, “But now you’ve told the truth it’ll be all right? They must understand why you didn’t tell it in the beginning.”

  Later she went to the kitchen to make a cup of tea; Humphrey had suggested that she should do so and as soon as she had closed the door behind her he said urgently, “Will, I told them the truth this time. It will be all right, won’t it?”

  A jumpy tic had started at the corner of his right eye.

  I said, “I hope so.”

  He looked at me queerly; the twitch at his temple made him look ludicrously sly.

  He said, “Will, you’d better know the rest of it. I’d have told you before only it sounded so damned queer.” He stopped and a painful flush coloured his face but he stared at me quite steadily.

  “Go on,” I said.

  He said, in a rush, “I saw Rose that evening, Will. I didn’t think there was any need to tell you. Not because it didn’t matter but because I was rather ashamed of it.”

  I said, as calmly as I could, “Did you arrange to meet her?”

  He nodded. “I’d left a note for her at her father’s flat. I’d been thinking about the baby. I felt badly because I hadn’t answered her letters. It wasn’t my baby, Will, but I felt responsible. She’d nobody much to help her. I don’t know what I thought I was going to say to her; I had some vague idea of trying to find some way that I could help her without letting Celia know. It seems funny, now, but I was desperately afraid that Celia would find out.

  “Anyway, I said that I would meet her at about half-past eight. I asked her to be out in the street and waiting for me. I wasn’t too keen on going to the flat.

  “When I got there she was in the street and she had another girl with her. I think she’d brought her along as a sort of protection. Rose was shy and queer—of course she’d been to see Celia by this time, though I didn’t know it. As soon as we met she started to explain that she couldn’t have dinner with me because she’d arranged to go out with some friends. She was very jittery and the other girl kept chipping in to say that it was quite true about this other engagement as though they thought that I might not believe it.…

  “I felt a bit of a fool, gossiping on the pavement, so I took them into a pub and bought them a gin apiece. We stayed there for about half an hour, I suppose. It wasn’t very pleasant, we hadn’t anything to say to each other and I couldn’t say any of the things I had meant to say because of the other girl. In the end they said that they had to meet these friends of theirs and they went off together. I stayed in the pub for a bit and drank a bit more. After that I went to a Lyons and had something to eat and then I went to the Flamingo. You know the rest.”

  He hesitated and then he said, “You know, Will, I’ve been a prize ass, but nothing more than that.”

  He grinned at me boyishly, and for the first time in my life I though his smile was irritating and silly. It was all so plausible, I thought, too smooth and easy. I was conscious of being disloyal and I hated myself for it, but I could not change the way I felt. Humphrey had been so honest and open—almost like a caricature of a man being honest and open, making a clean breast of it. He even looked, I thought, quite pleased with himself.

  I said, “This other girl. Did you know her name? Would you recognise her again?”

  Humphrey’s eyes were as dead and cold as the windows in an empty house. He said, “I shan’t get the chance to recognise her. It was Jasmine Castle.”

  Curiously enough I felt nothing, not even surprise. I said, “You knew her, then?”

  It was impossible to tell what he was thinking. He said, “I’d seen her around. In the Flamingo and with Rose.”

  “What was she like?” I said. It was a polite, social conversation.

  He said calmly, “She was a striking creature. Not beautiful, like Rose, but with a lot of life about her. Big, soft mouth and a lot of movement in her face. She laughed a lot.” His whole face glowed suddenly with anger. “I think she was a bitch,” he said.

  I said, “How well did you know her?” His face became shut and guarded.

  “Not well,” he said. “She was just one of Rose’s friends. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that she was a bitch, perhaps it was unjust. I thought that she was a bad sort of friend for Rose.”

  I did not think that he was speaking the truth and I felt a kind of bleak despair that he should have to lie to me.

  I said, “You should have told all this to the police. Why didn’t you?”

  He said blandly, “They didn’t ask me.”

  I said, with brutal intention, “You can’t get out of it quite so easily, you know,” and it seemed to me then that the words which I regretted as soon as they left my mouth had an unpleasantly prophetic feel about them.

  Chapter Six

  He stared at me for perhaps a full minute, the skin stretched taut across his cheekbones and his eyes hard and angry and very bright. I had no idea what he was thinking.

  Then his mouth twisted suddenly into quite unfamiliar lines of bitterness and anger.

  He said, “Why the hell won’t you believe me? D’you think I killed that girl? Are you shocked because of Rose? I know the answer to that one. You’re shocked to the depths of your miserable little soul. I haven’t lived up to your idea of me, have I? The nice, upright English gent—the perpetual Boy Scout. I honestly believe that’s how you thought of me. You’ve no imagination, Will. No ordinary, human failings either. The shabbiest little bank clerk who pinches the barmaid’s bottom when his wife isn’t looking has more humanity than you. You don’t want anything beyond your narrow life, do you? That’s what sends me round the bend. You couldn’t understand how I felt about Rose, not in a thousand years. You think I should be ashamed of myself; you think the whole affair was mean and underhand and dirty. It wasn’t like that at all. It was one of the best things that ever happened to me. For a bit life wasn’t circumscribed or sham, it had meaning and purpose. I’m glad I was in love with her, even now. You think I’m mad, don’t you, Will?”

  His hands were
shaking; he glared at me as though I were his mortal enemy.

  I said, conscious of nothing beyond a sick desire to hit back, “I don’t think you’re mad. I think you have an enormous capacity for self-deception.”

  He shouted at me, “Oh, God, how I hate your prissy mouth,” and he went out of the room and banged the door.

  I felt as I had felt all these years before when I had quarrelled with Piers, ashamed and cold and deathly sick. I wanted to leave but I told myself that it would be running away.

  He was back in under ten minutes. He was carrying a tray in his hands. He said, “Celia’s all in. She’s gone to bed. Have some tea?”

  He didn’t look at me; he put the tray down on the table and poured out two cups with great concentration. Then he brought me one of the cups and said, “Will, can you forgive me?” He looked humiliated and tired. I tried to forget how I was feeling. It wasn’t important.

  I said, “You know you can say what you like to me.”

  He smiled with affection and, I think, contempt. He said, “Poor Will.” Then he grinned. “Perhaps it’s all for the best. Now you know how worthless I am, so don’t waste your pity. I’m not worth anyone’s pity. In fact it’ll be best if they hang me and have done.”

  I thought, for a moment, that he was being deliberately theatrical but he wasn’t. His nerves were stretched so tight that the most melodramatic words came naturally to him. He began to talk in a strung-up, garrulous fashion and everything he said was permeated with a sudden and maudlin self-pity that I found more embarrassing than all the abuse he had flung at me. He said that he was a hypocrite, a sham and a cheat, that he had behaved unforgivably and that he didn’t deserve to live. He went on in the same strain, vilifying himself, hating his own actions and emotions until I could no longer look at him. It seemed to me, then, the last depth of horror that a loved person could be reduced to this abject self-destruction.