Murder, London--South Africa Read online

  After another pause, Colonel Wiess said, “I will have to refer the matter to the Minister of Justice, but I will recommend it. I would not expect to have a decision until late tonight and perhaps tomorrow morning, Mr West. I wish I could ask you to have dinner with me and my wife, but we have a preoccupation.”

  He half smiled.

  “There has been a disturbance between Indians and Bantus near Johannesburg, and the matter is urgent. I can recommend a very good restaurant.”

  “And I could do with an early night,” Roger said. “Will you let Nightingale know that the suggestion is being considered?”

  “Yes, I will. And if you would like an escort back to your hotel—”

  “I’d like to walk round on my own,” said Roger.

  “As you wish. At least allow Captain Standish to recommend the most attractive area and the best arcades,” said Wiess.

  Standish walked with Roger to a corner of Church Square, pointing out the most interesting parts of the city centre. He was obviously in a hurry, and something had made him much less sardonic. Roger wondered if the ‘disturbance’ was, in fact, much more serious than Wiess had made out. He walked past shops which might have been in an English city, but every now and again came upon one which was so different that it could only be in Africa. There were not many people about, and most of the strollers were Bantu. All were in European dress. Most of them looked well kept and well nourished. On a corner a mountainous man and a tiny, fragile wife made a chain with three children, all hand in hand. Two girls had huge eyes and beautifully plaited hair tied in red ribbon; the boy’s head was a close crop of curls. They were all well dressed and immaculate. Two middle-aged white women, looking shabby and untidy, looked at the children with obvious approval.

  Here and there were big arcades, the shop-windows dressed almost as well as those of Burlington Arcade, and obviously cool even during the noonday heat. Now it was warm but dry and pleasant. Roger crossed where Standish had told him, and found an enormous souvenir store on a corner, with exquisite carvings of men and animals, drums, shields, spears, lion skins, zebra skins, at the back a magnificent stuffed leopard, against one wall some grotesque witchdoctor masks. Janet could have spent hours there. He spent five minutes and earmarked a tall giraffe with a surprised expression as a possible gift for Janet, and a tribal mask for Scoop; he could see nothing which might appeal to Richard. He strolled back to the hotel. No one followed him, no one showed any interest in him until he neared the lift, when the sergeant who had escorted him to police headquarters appeared and saluted but did not speak.

  Roger said, “Goodnight,” and went up in the lift. The lift-boy on duty hardly came up to his waist, and was all white teeth. Roger opened the door of his suite and went in, closed the door, and then heard a movement from inside the second room.

  Alarm shot through him, touched with fear.

  Before he could move, before he could even think, Faith Soames appeared in the communicating doorway.

  Roger was taken completely by surprise. Obviously the girl expected him to be, and her smile showed pleasure and satisfaction. She was beautifully groomed. She wore a one-piece dress which seemed to mould her figure, and she was fuller at the bosom than he remembered. She might have been one of the leading models of London, Paris, or New York, standing with one hand on the door frame, the other on her hip, smiling; and no one could have been blamed for calling the smile inscrutable.

  Roger said, “One day you’re going to grow up. How did you get in?”

  “A good newspaperwoman doesn’t allow locks to stop her.”

  “A good newspaperman has just allowed a faked passport to stop him, and isn’t enjoying the consequences. On the whole I’d say that forcing entry is a worse crime than faking a passport.”

  “Are you determined to be beastly?” Faith moved slowly from her pose, and came towards him, her hands raised to her waist, the long, delicate fingers slightly curled, as if she were inviting him to move towards her. The devil of it was, he had to fight against the impulse to go forward, to take her hands, to take her in his arms. Her honey-coloured eyes were bright and glowing, and he had the impression that she knew exactly what effect she was having on him.

  “Faith,” he said, “I don’t know what’s going on in that mind of yours, but I can tell you some things that aren’t.”

  His mouth was dry. She was still drawing nearer, and he wanted to move back and yet wanted to go forward at the same time; either way would be to acknowledge defeat.

  “Do you really want to make the situation worse for Nightingale?”

  That stopped her, giving him some cause for satisfaction. The glow faded from her eyes, and her arms fell by her side.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that whether you forced the lock, or found it open, or bribed the room-boy to let you in, the police know you’re here. They’re watching you as well as looking after me as their guest. They know who you are and why you’re here. If you start breaking their laws, they’ll take it for granted that this is a conspiracy between you and Nightingale, probably with the connivance of The Globe. Now do you understand why I wonder what’s going on in your mind? You couldn’t have done a sillier thing.”

  She had moved neither backwards nor forwards.

  “There’s one other way of looking at it,” she said flatly.

  “Tell me.”

  “I could have come here at your invitation.”

  Roger thought, ‘The little bitch.’ She was beginning to smile again, as if she knew that her comment worried him, and that once again she was in the ascendancy. He wondered whether she was really as ruthless as she tried to make out, and how much of what she said and implied was attempted bluff. The physical attraction which he had felt for her had faded, at least for the time being, and he no longer felt the urge to move forward towards her.

  “If they have to choose between believing you or believing me, they won’t choose you,” he retorted. He moved for the first time, past her, towards the window. The Venetian blinds were down again so no one could see into the room, and he wondered whether they had been lowered by the room-boy or by Faith. “I’ll tell you who could be in serious trouble.”

  She had turned round, but didn’t step towards him.

  “Who?”

  “Percival, my room-boy.”

  “What makes you so sure I bribed him?”

  “I’m not worried if you bribed him; he would take your money and rush to report to his boss. But if you came in when he left the door open, he could be in trouble for falling down on his job.”

  “Do you really think that?” She looked perturbed.

  “Yes.”

  “He came in to lower the blinds, and I slipped in behind him, and hid in the wall-cupboard by the door,” Faith said. “I’m in Room 501, just along the passage. He certainly doesn’t know I’m here.”

  She frowned.

  “He wouldn’t get in trouble for something as simple as that, surely.”

  Roger said, “Losing his job could be serious enough trouble for him.”

  He turned round from the window and sat down on a long contemporary-style settee, all foam rubber, highly polished wood and black mock mohair. He crossed his legs and looked up at the girl, completely sure of himself now, temptation firmly in check, policeman and detective fully in control of the man.

  “What do you want, anyway?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Am I supposed to guess?”

  “You ought to be able to guess, but you don’t have to,” said Faith. Now she began to smile as if she, too, had become more confident of herself. She pulled up a stool which had a thong seat, the thongs criss-crossed in little squares. She sat down on this, and it was impossible not to be aware of the grace of her movements, the fact that she lowered herself as
if without effort, and sat without support although the stool was low. She tucked her legs to one side and hugged her knees; the dress slid upwards, so that the nylon-clad legs showed as far up as the double layer of stocking; and above he caught a glimpse of her white skin. Everything about her was posed, and yet at the same time it had a contradictory naturalness.

  “All right,” Roger said. “I won’t guess.”

  “I came to suggest a fair exchange,” she said.

  “Did you?”

  “A very fair exchange.” She leaned backwards a little, and her eyes narrowed but they were glowing again, perhaps with the light which came in at the slats of the blinds; it was strange that in leaning backwards while hugging her knees, she gave a remarkable impression of seductiveness. It seemed to Roger that she could turn on that seductiveness at will; that one moment he had seen her simply as a witness and a rather silly young woman, and the next he felt as if all he wanted to do was to go closer to her. Siren-like, she was calling him, inviting him, promising . . .

  “An exchange of what?” he asked.

  “Roger,” she said, very softly, “I want to know what Jim Nightingale said, and I know that I won’t have a chance to talk to him. I also know you wouldn’t lie to me.”

  She paused, still smiling, still leaning away from him, and affecting him with that almost magnetic attraction.

  “So why don’t we exchange what you can tell me about Nightingale – just what Jim said, nothing else – for a night of passion?”

  19

  NIGHT OF PASSION

  Roger felt quite sure that she meant exactly what she said: that she was offering herself in exchange for information. Yet there was something else, something he only dimly understood, but which seemed to become clearer all the time he looked at her. She was quite beautiful, her skin was flawless, her body feline in its suppleness. Now she leaned farther back, almost as if she would fall off the stool, and her eyes were so narrow that he could hardly see beyond the sweeping lashes. She was smiling, and showing only a glimpse of white teeth. Roger felt an overwhelming temptation to go forward, to stretch out his hands, to draw her towards him; and at the same time he knew that it would be folly and it might be fatal to all prospects of success in the investigation. So he edged farther on to the corner of the couch, looking relaxed – hoping that he looked relaxed – and half smiling.

  “Passion,” he echoed. He managed to draw all the fire out of the word, to make it sound flat and lifeless.

  “Is it so long since you knew what it was like?” Faith asked.

  “You need two minds for passion,” he said.

  Her smile widened a little.

  “Two bodies, surely.”

  “Faith,” Roger said, “I don’t think we’re going to agree on what constitutes passion.”

  He searched for words which might break through her pose of sophisticated sexuality, and said deliberately, “It’s a long time since a nice girl asked me to go to bed with her. I’ve never seen bed as part of a business deal, though, and I’m not going to start in Pretoria.”

  He smiled; and he was pleased with the smile, it was brisk and bright and matter-of-fact.

  “Supposing we forget that.”

  “Handsome,” she said again, “you might never get another chance like it.”

  “I’ll take the risk.”

  “You’ve made one mistake for certain,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Thinking I’m a nice girl.”

  “A she-devil when roused?” mocked Roger. He shifted his position, sitting more upright; the triumph of mind over body had given him a lot of satisfaction, and he felt that the moment of danger was past. “The female of the species being more deadly than the male – is that what you mean?”

  Faith did not move, hardly seemed to be breathing, just looking at him, and trying to draw him towards her, and smiling in a way he could only think of as inscrutable.

  “My uncle always told me that there is a Puritan buried deep in every Englishman, and a Victorian in every father. I’m beginning to see what he meant. Are you really as wife-bound as you’re pretending?”

  It would be easy to resent the word ‘wife-bound.’ It would be foolish to show her any sign of resentment. Now he began to think more about Faith as a person rather than about her proposal, and again he wondered what was really going on in her mind.

  “Let’s say when I get home I’ll feel happier if I can look at my wife without hoping she doesn’t find out that a sex-kitten in South Africa seduced me.”

  “So it’s fear of being found out,” Faith retorted. “What are you really worrying about? We’re six thousand miles away from your wife and home. The only people who can possibly know we’re in this room together are the police, and they aren’t judges of morals – oh, I forgot! Here they are, but we’re not in any danger, our skins are both white. Our skins are both white,” she repeated, very softly. “Beautiful and white. Forget the possibility that someone will find out and betray you, Handsome. Your wife can’t believe that a man as virile as you, who has to spend so much time away from her, is so virtuous that he never makes a concession to his manliness.”

  “You might know what you believe, but you can’t guess what my wife thinks,” Roger retorted. “Now supposing we stop this nonsense. There are some things I may be able to tell you tomorrow, but I’m not going to say a word tonight. I’ve had a long day and I’m tired. But I’d like a good dinner before going to bed. Colonel Wiess recommended the Sky Room at the top of a new hotel – would you like to have dinner there with me?”

  “And forgiving, too,” Faith said. There seemed a touch of malice in the word, almost as if she was angry and possibly hurt in her pride, but did not want to let him know it. When he looked back on this interlude, he would probably regard it as one of the strangest in his life.

  He stood up, adding, “I’m assured that the food’s really good.”

  She didn’t stand up, but leaned a little to one side in order to see him more clearly.

  “Handsome,” she said, “I think you’re being very gallant. You needn’t be. And you’re being very old-fashioned, too. I suppose you work so hard that you don’t really have time to keep pace with modern thought. It is no longer a woman’s crowning glory to be chaste. Love is no longer an emotion which has to last for ever. It comes and goes; it blows hot and cold. I have heard it called sex for fun, and you’d be surprised how many of my generation believe in it. Don’t be afraid of it, Handsome, it’s a wonderful thing.”

  Her voice had become husky, and she was smiling more widely. She moved one hand and stretched it towards him, as if she wanted to pull him down on top of her.

  “You especially shouldn’t be afraid,” she whispered. “Have you forgotten how good looking you are? Have you forgotten that when you walk into a room every young girl looks up at you and starts to think about you, and to wonder what it would be like to have you alone, for an hour or for a night? You are an attractive male, a very attractive male, one of the most attractive males, and I don’t think any one woman has an exclusive right to you.”

  “Don’t you?” he asked harshly.

  “No,” she said. “Roger, darling, stop pretending. Stop resisting.”

  He would never be faced with greater temptation.

  She seemed to sense that he was poised on the edge of indecision, that she had broken through his defences, and that soon she would be able to have her way. He moved back.

  She stretched out and took his hand, and said, “Pull me up.”

  He said, hard-voiced, “You’re wasting your time.”

  He pulled, and she pulled also, so that in a moment she was on her feet in front of him, only a foot or two away. She raised her hands, linked the fingers together and seemed about to place them on top of her head, but with slow, del
iberate movements she lowered them behind her head, thrusting her bosom forward. He realised that she was unfastening the zipper of her dress. Even wearing that dress she was like a statue of a naked woman. She lowered her hands to her sides, then put her right hand up behind her, slowly, and moved it downwards; there was the faint sibilance of a zipper being pulled down.

  Roger stood rooted there. Faith was still smiling, and he thought as he had thought in London that there was only one word for her: ‘Desirable.’ She was wholly desirable and beautiful, and his for the taking. She was woman and he was man, and they were together and there was no other place in the world.

  He knew what she was going to do and he knew that he should stop her, that he should do something to break down the pose which seemed so natural to her.

  She began to shrug her shoulders.

  He reminded himself that he knew exactly what she was going to do; shrug that dress off her shoulders, shrug it until it fell and gathered about her waist, leaving her breasts bare or so nearly bare that it made no difference. And then she would slide the dress down over her long, lovely thighs and over her hips, and—

  She murmured, “Beautiful white skin, darling.”

  The dress was off her shoulders. He was still staring at her. His mouth was parched. His skin felt dry on the forehead and on his cheeks. He kept wanting to moisten his lips, but did not. If he waited any longer it would be too late, and as he acknowledged that he found a question creeping into his mind, a question she had put there – a question which seemed to grow louder.

  The question was: Why not?

  The question became: She’s utterly desirable, why shouldn’t I take her?

  And the question became: What’s wrong about it?

  The dress was right off her shoulders, now, tight for a moment across the tops of her breasts. She shrugged again and it began to fall lower, so that he could see the swelling shapes and the shallow valley between.