I suppose Maxime had told him about the plight I’d got myself into. Or else – or else from the beginning the whole business had been a set-up job between the two of them. Whichever it was, Ray just chanced to know of a Chinawoman in Toulon who would perform a nearly painless operation – I recall the relish, the malevolent relish, with which he enunciated that word nearly – for a few francs. How few, I asked him. Twenty, he replied. Twenty francs? I repeated. I was relieved but also disbelieving. No, was his answer, twenty thousand.
That’s right. Twenty thousand francs. It was blackmail pure and simple, though Raymond naturally never used the word nor any euphemism for it. Nor did he even hint that, if I were to refuse to pay up, he’d start spreading the dirt all along the Côte d’Azur – as smoothly as marmalade on toast. He didn’t have to drop any hints. We both knew exactly what he was up to.
So now it was my turn to be the bearer of bad news to Henry. We were a sorry pair all right, he and I. And maybe – maybe we each of us had to drink our poison to the very dregs before we could face ourselves again.
Without, I have to say, a single word of reproach, Henry gave me what I needed. I went to Toulon and had my insides skewered by a cackling Chinese witch, skewered so crudely – yes, I see from your faces you’re ahead of me – skewered so crudely that, even if I still wanted children, I couldn’t have any. Though, as it happens, all I do want (now she turned to gaze straight into her husband’s eyes), all I do want, for the very first time in my life, is what I already have.
Well (she went on after a long reflective pause), there was just enough left of his aunt’s legacy for Henry to buy Butterworth’s practice and, seven years ago, we settled down here and eventually gathered a little set of friends around us – Roger and Mary, the Vicar and his wife, Mr Withers, our local librarian, Miss Read the postmistress, and a handful of others.
Ours is a dull existence, I suppose, but we don’t mind – well, not much. To be honest, we’ve had all the fun and excitement we’ll ever demand of this world. Beyond a certain age, that phrase that people toss about so casually, ‘a waste of time’, well, it starts to acquire a real meaning, doesn’t it, a real weight. You realise you’ve been wasting something you’re fated to have less and less of. You’ve been dipping into your capital. You forget you’ve got a leasehold on life, not a freehold.
She sat for a moment without speaking, without even lighting up one of her Player’s, before continuing:
Then abruptly, on Christmas Eve, with Ray Gentry’s arrival at ffolkes Manor, our past was dragged out of the closet that we’d hoped it had been consigned to for ever. You’ve read those notes, Chief-Inspector. So I leave you to imagine just how he set about torturing us both. It shouldn’t be too difficult.
Trubshawe, who had said next to nothing during their linked testimony, now took a quiet moment to thank them both. Then he asked Henry Rolfe:
‘Dr Rolfe, did you kill Raymond Gentry?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ replied the Doctor, adding, ‘Don’t you see, Trubshawe, I had no cause to.’
‘No cause, you say?’ said the Chief-Inspector. ‘What about jealousy?’
‘Jealousy? I tell you, there was no reason for me to be jealous of Gentry. After all, his role in the affair was only that of go-between. When Madge told me about the necessity of a – of an operation, she never once mentioned his name and I always assumed, until just five minutes ago, that her blackmailer had been Pavesco himself. Him I might well have wanted to murder, but he disappeared from circulation almost at once, probably after splitting up the spoils with Gentry. Last thing we heard, he’d been sighted in Anacapri in the company of a flashy South American Jewess.
‘So, as I say, I had absolutely no knowledge of Raymond Gentry’s existence until he drove down here with Selina and Don.’
‘Well, thank you again for your testimony.’
The Chief-Inspector now turned to Madge Rolfe.
‘Mrs Rolfe, I know I’ve already given you, along with the other ladies, a chance to answer this question, but I’ll ask it once more if you don’t mind. Was it you who quarrelled with Gentry in the attic?’
‘No, it wasn’t. There was nothing I had to say to him, either in public or in private.’
‘Did you murder him?’
‘No again. And shall I tell you why you ought to believe me?’
‘Yes, indeed, why don’t you?’
‘Because if I had murdered Gentry I wouldn’t have shot him. I wouldn’t have stabbed him. I wouldn’t have poisoned him. I’d have done it – had God given me the strength – I’d have done it with my own two bare hands. I wouldn’t have wanted anything – not a gun, not a knife, not a drop of cyanide, not even a piece of string – I wouldn’t have wanted anything, do you hear, to come between me and the pain I inflicted on the rat!’
It was only when she’d finished speaking that everyone realised Selina ffolkes had been standing on the threshold of the library during the whole of her tirade.
Chapter Eight
For a moment the atmosphere was just too electric for anyone to react.
Then Mary ffolkes hurriedly rose from her chair and, followed by Don and the Colonel, rushed over to the door.
‘Oh, my darling Selina!’ she cried, sweeping her daughter up in her arms and asking so many anxiously commiserative questions at once it was hard to tell where one ended and the next began. ‘Are you all right?’ and ‘You really feel you should have got up so soon?’ and ‘You’ve had a dreadful, dreadful shock, you know – would you like me to have Mrs Varley prepare you a cold compress or a nice cup of camomile tea?’
To all of which Selina offered a series of unexpectedly self-controlled responses, whether it was ‘Yes, Mummy, I’m quite all right’ or ‘Yes, yes, I’m all recovered now’ or ‘No thank you, Mummy, I really don’t need a cold compress. Or a cup of camomile tea.’
Don also fussed and fretted around her, cooing, ‘You poor kid! Oh, you poor, poor kid!’ over and over again. But even if his hand ached to establish a consoling contact with her shoulder or tenderly disentangle a stray wisp of hair from one of her pale cheeks, it was again noticeable that it continued to hover a few inches from her without ever daring to settle.
In the meantime, making sympathetic tut-tutting noises with his tongue, the Colonel helped shepherd her into the library under the watchful eyes of his guests. Giving up his own chair for her to sit on, he asked:
‘Is there anything I can get you?’
‘No thank you, Daddy, I have everything I need.’
She slowly ran her eyes around the room.
‘But … but what’s going on?’
‘Ah, yes …’ replied the Colonel. ‘It’s true, something has been going on here. I want you to listen very carefully, my love. We have a policeman among us – don’t you remember, it was Chitty who came up with the suggestion – and, well, here he is, Chief-Inspector Trubshawe from Scotland Yard.’
‘Miss Selina,’ said Trubshawe with an avuncular nod of his head.
Appearing to display little surprise at his presence, Selina acknowledged it with a wan smile.
‘The Chief-Inspector,’ explained her father, ‘lives quite near us – close to the level-crossing – and he very kindly agreed to come here – it was Rolfe and your friend Don, you know, who went and fetched him – and he agreed to come over and see what could be done about this horrible situation.’