‘In the event,’ Antonia continued in the same breezy manner, ‘you ran off into the fog, which saved me some trouble. When Hector came in I was ready for him. And now I need your help with some lifting.’
Rose stared at her.
‘The corpse, darling. It’s lying in the hall at home. We’ve got to move it upstairs to the bedroom before we fetch the undertaker. It’s got to look as if he died in bed. The face is slightly marked like yours. Not enough to cause comment, fortunately.’
Every muscle tightened. ‘This isn’t true. You’re a liar.’
Antonia sighed. ‘I can’t deny that, kitten. I did mislead you yesterday. Didn’t want you getting in the way. This time Hector really is dead. I slapped the chloroform over his face the minute he stepped through the front door yesterday evening. Put him to sleep and then smothered him with a cushion.’ She picked her handbag off a chair and unfastened it. ‘Look, I’ve filled in his name on the death registration certificate. And the date.’
Rose saw the name boldly inked in. A few words written on paper proved nothing and she wanted to say so but her throat had tightened too much for speech. The description of Hector’s death in that entrance hall in Park Crescent was horribly credible. Suddenly she wanted Antonia to be lying, desperately wanted her to have invented this grotesque admission of murder, even though it meant another deathtrap had been set for herself. She couldn’t cope with the thought of Hector dead.
She’d thought she was beyond the point where anything could hurt her. This extinguished the last hope of any future. She handed back the paper.
Antonia took her silence as satisfaction. ‘Get something on your feet and we’ll go now. I’ll get you some breakfast there. There’s nothing here.’
Rose stayed seated. She had just come to her senses. There was a flaw in what was being suggested. ‘You don’t need my help. You’ve got Vic to assist you. If there really was a body he could lift it.’
‘Vic?’ From the pitch of the voice it might have been the Archbishop of Canterbury. ‘Vic doesn’t know Hector is dead. God, we don’t want Vic to find out.’
‘Stop playing the innocent, Antonia. He’s your lover. I know you’ve told him everything because I was there in your house yesterday morning when you sent him to check whether Hector was poisoned. Do you understand? I was there. I came early. He didn’t see me, but I saw him. He went up to the bedroom and looked inside. And then he went downstairs and used the telephone and I’m certain he was phoning you.’
She treated it casually, walking out of the room and into the kitchen as she spoke. ‘You’re right about one thing, Rosie dear, he did phone me. Weren’t you near enough to listen? Pity. Listen, how can I get it into your head that there wasn’t any poison in the damned curry? That meat was perfectly edible and so was everything else.’
Rose dug her fingers into the arms of the chair. ‘In that case, why did you give Vic a key and send him to the house?’
‘This is gospel truth,’ the answer came back from the kitchen. ‘He wasn’t looking for a corpse. He was trying to find out whether you’d spent the night with Hec.’
Rose frowned.
Antonia came back with a towel that she was twisting between her hands. ‘Yes, I sent him round, Rosie. I’ve been staying with him in Knightsbridge instead of visiting my wretched old Mum in Manchester, as if you hadn’t guessed.’
‘How much does he know?’
‘Vic? Sweet F.A., darling. He thinks all this was a love trap for you and my sneaky little husband, and I must say, I had suspicions of my own when I learned from Hector’s own lips that he’d taken you out to dinner.’ She let that sink in. ‘I’d better confess that it wasn’t the total surprise to me that I registered yesterday. That was a little mischief on my part. I wanted to hear it from your own angelic lips. Actually I’d already talked to Hec on the telephone yesterday morning, playing the doting wife, enquiring whether you’d made him a decent curry. He was positively chirpy when he told me he’d taken you to Reggiori’s instead. Apart from being bloody annoyed I was curious to know what it amounted to. After all, if you two had given me evidence of adultery I could have divorced him. No need for a funeral. Unluckily for Hector, Vic couldn’t find a single brown hair on the pillows.’ She let the towel unfurl and tossed it to Rose. ‘Pity. You could have saved me no end of bother.’
25
Antonia had left the Bentley round the corner in Charlwood Street. She didn’t speak until they were travelling in slow convoy up Vauxhall Bridge Road with the early morning traffic from south of the river.
‘Rose.’
‘Yes?’
‘Why are you doing this?’
‘Doing what?’
‘Coming back to the house with me. It’s only for Hector’s sake, isn’t it?’
‘Does it matter?’ Rose stared ahead at the adverts on the back of a bus. She felt weary, but more in control. Before leaving the house she had fitted in a wash and forced herself to eat a slice of bread and Marmite. She was wearing stockings and shoes again and a jumper and skirt. She had also dug out her grey demob overcoat that buttoned at the neck.
Antonia persisted with her point about Hector. ‘The fact is, you want to find out for yourself if he’s really dead. You don’t know whether to believe me.’
‘Can you blame me?’
Antonia smirked. ‘He cared bugger all about you. You know that, don’t you? Women were always making fools of themselves over bloody Hector, wanting to mother him.’
‘Who said I wanted to mother him?’
She gave a single, high-pitched laugh. ‘If it was sex you wanted, he just wasn’t up to it, sweetie, believe me.’
‘It takes two.’
‘Go to hell,’ Antonia snapped back, no longer amused. ‘That’s bloody good coming from you. It takes two! How was it with Barry, then? Did you satisfy him? You and who else? Was it two or two hundred?’
Rose didn’t answer. Her other compelling reason for agreeing to come was that she needed to keep tabs on this murderous woman after two nasty shocks in twenty-four hours. She meant to stick with her now until it was safe to be alone again.
Antonia steered the car through the mews entrance behind Park Crescent and into a garage.
‘Come on, then. Come and see for yourself.’
She opened a gate and let them into the yard at the back of the house where the two dustbins stood. Then she unlocked the kitchen door and led the way in. Yesterday’s shopping still lay unused on the table.
Rose followed, her skin suddenly so sensitive that she was acutely conscious of every movement of her clothes. Pulses throbbed in her face and neck. She said a silent, desperate prayer that Hector might still be alive.
Antonia crossed the room and hesitated at the door that led to the hall. Rose tensed, sensing that she ought to be ready to defend herself against another sudden attack. Then Antonia spoke over her shoulder. ‘Take a long, deep breath, my poppet.’
They stepped into the hall.
Rose took the breath, and held it. And held it longer.
Just inside the front door, where Antonia had said it would be, lay a corpse in a camelhair overcoat like the one Hector had worn to Reggiori’s. Dark trousers and brown shoes. Hands still in leather gloves. An ear partly covered by a black woollen scarf. Curly red-gold hair.
‘Want to look at the face?’ Antonia was standing beside the body preparing to give the shoulder a prod with her foot.
‘There’s no need.’ Rose heard herself say in a flat voice that sounded like someone reading lines without understanding them. She picked up a green porkpie hat that was lying against the skirting board. ‘It can’t be anyone else.’