and once you’d seen him you knew Julian for what he was — a smudged carbon copy. Only Charles wasn’t interested in you and let you see it...” How well I remembered Charles telling me that women of Rita’s type bored him, and how closely Bianca approximated to that type! “You never understood what Charles wanted in a woman. He never did try to make you; that was a lie you made up to save your face after he rejected you. So what you couldn’t have, you set out to destroy, by involving him in the frame of the fraud case, by traducing him to J.B., by blackmail, and by torture. And the only result of your efforts was to throw me in Charles’ way. Did you know that he shared my bed from the night he left hospital? Perhaps you guessed he was lost to you for good when you visited me in my flat? Perhaps that was when you decided that Charles had to die. He died because you couldn’t bear to see him loved and be loved by anyone but yourself.”
The smile set rigid on her face, faded, and returned. Whatever I said, she would not allow her mouth to reflect the bitterness I saw in her eyes. I opened the front door. The sun had come out, but there was a cold wind blowing.
“Where are you going?” Ruth pulled on my arm.
“To Charles of course. He always felt the cold so much. I must go to him, and cover him over with something warm. I’ll sit with him until the police come.”
“Don’t be stupid!” said Ruth. “Why do you think we stopped you from going with him in the first place? There’s no need for you to get involved. He’s dead and discredited. Let’s leave it at that; no one else need get hurt.” She pushed between me and the doorway, speaking to the others over my shoulder. “She’s shocked. Get her a cup of tea, or a drink; something to make her see sense.”
“Let me go to him,” I said, pleading with her. She was so much stronger than she looked, and I was hardly able to keep on my feet. “It can’t matter now what I do.”
“You don’t understand,” said Ruth. “You can’t allow yourself to be associated with him anymore, for your own sake. He’s dead, and there’s nothing you can do to help him now. You’ve got to think of yourself. Life must go on. You must pack up and get out of here before we call the doctor for J.B. Don’t think about Charles; someone will find him, passing along the road, and inform the police in due course. You must go back to your own flat and forget what’s happened. Behave yourself, and everything will be all right, but we don’t want you weeping and wailing over Charles’ body in your present state. Why, if the police were to get at you now...”
“She’ll betray us, too!” hissed Robert. “You should have let her go with Charles.”
“She’ll be all right, if she only pulls herself together.”
“You can see she won’t. She doesn’t care about anything...”
“That’s right,” I said. “I don’t care about anything anymore. I just want to be with Charles, that’s all.”
A long, thin arm caught me round the waist and hauled me away from the door. Julian, breathing hard.
“There’s a car coming up the drive — can’t you hear it?”
Robert was peering through the window, his face reflecting shocked disbelief. “The man from the Fraud Squad? What... I don’t understand!”
In a flurry of movement, I was pushed and pulled to the centre of the room.
“The Old Man — he’s dead?”
“...must be. Leave him where he is... we can say we tried to phone...”
“Put her in the freezer!” That was Bianca’s voice lifting clear of the others. “I checked — there’s plenty of room for her. We can put something heavy on top so that she can’t get out. We can deal with her later, when the police have gone. No one will hear her if she screams, it’s so well insulated...”
“She might die!”
“So? We stage a little accident in her flat later on...”
“No!” I tried to scream and had a cushion held over my face. I fought, but hands grabbed me from every angle, and I was bundled through the kitchen and into the utility room as the doorbell rang.
“Up-sa-daisy!” said Bianca. I was swung up and then down, hitting the frozen packets of food with such a thump