Some expression on my face must have given me away. Ginger was quick.
"I'm sorry," she said. "Have I raked up something that hurts?"
"No," I said. "It doesn't hurt. It was a long time ago. I rather doubt if there's anyone now who knows about it."
"You married someone?"
"Yes. While I was at the University. We kept it dark. She wasn't - well, my people would have cut up rough. I wasn't even of age. We lied about our ages."
I was silent a moment or two, reliving the past.
"It wouldn't have lasted," I said slowly. "I know that now. She was pretty and she could be very sweet... ut..."
"What happened?"
"We went to Italy in the long vacation. There was an accident - a car accident. She was killed outright."
"And you?"
"I wasn't in the car. She was - with a friend."
Ginger gave me a quick glance. I think she understood the way it had been. The shock of my discovery that the girl I had married was not the kind who makes a faithful wife.
Ginger reverted to practical matters.
"You were married in England?"
"Yes. Registry office in Peterborough."
"But she died in Italy?"
"Yes."
"So there will be no record of her death in England?"
"No."
"Then what more do you want? It's an answer to prayer! Nothing could be simpler! You're desperately in love with someone and you want to marry her - but you don't know whether your wife is still alive. You've parted years ago and never heard from her since. Dare you risk it? While you're thinking it out, sudden reappearance of the wife! She turns up out of the blue, refuses to give you a divorce, and threatens to go to your young woman and spill the beans."
"Who's my young woman?" I asked, slightly confused. "You?"
Ginger looked shocked.
"Certainly not. I'm quite the wrong type - I'd probably go and live in sin with you. No, you know quite well who I mean - and she'll be exactly right, I should say. That statuesque brunette you go around with. Very highbrow and serious."
"Hermia Redcliffe?"
"That's right. Your steady."
"Who told you about her?"
"Poppy of course. She's rich, too, isn't she?"
"She's extremely well off. But really -"
"All right, all right. I'm not saying you're marrying her for her money. You're not the kind. But nasty minds like Bradley's could easily think so... very well then. Here's the position. You are about to pop the question to Hermia when up turns the unwanted wife from the past. She arrives in London and the fat's in the fire. You urge a divorce - she won't play. She's vindictive. And then - you hear of the Pale Horse. I'll bet anything you like that Thyrza, and that half-witted peasant Bella, thought that that was why you came that day. They took it as a tentative approach, and that's why Thyrza was so forthcoming. It was a sales talk they were giving you."
"It could have been, I suppose." I went over that day in my mind.
"And your going to Bradley soon after fits in perfectly. You're hooked! You're a prospect."
She paused triumphantly. There was something in what she said - but I didn't quite see...
"I still think," I said, "that they'll investigate very carefully."
"Sure to," Ginger agreed.
"It's all very well to invent a fictitious wife, resurrected from the past - but they'll want details - where she lives - all that. And when I try to hedge -"
"You won't need to hedge. To do the thing properly the wife has got to be there - and she will be there!
"Brace yourself," said Ginger. "I'm your wife!"
II
I stared at her. Goggled, I suppose, would be a better term. I wonder, really, that she didn't burst out laughing.
I was just recovering myself when she spoke again.
"There's no need to be so taken aback," she said. "It's not a proposal."
I found my tongue.
"You don't know what you're saying."
"Of course I do. What I'm suggesting is perfectly feasible - and it has the advantage of not dragging some innocent person into possible danger."
"It's putting yourself in danger."
"That's my lookout."
"No, it isn't. And anyway, it wouldn't hold water for a moment."
"Oh yes, it would. I've been thinking it out. I arrive at a furnished flat, with a suitcase or two with foreign labels. I take the flat in the name of Mrs Easterbrook - and who on earth is to say I'm not Mrs Easterbrook?"
"Anyone who knows you."
"Anyone who knows me won't see me. I'm away from my job, ill. A spot of hair dye - what was your wife, by the way, dark or blonde? - not that it really matters."
"Dark," I said mechanically.
"Good, I'd hate a bleach. Different clothes and lots of makeup, and my best friend wouldn't look at me twice. And since you haven't had a wife in evidence for the last fifteen years or so - no one's likely to spot that I'm not her. Why should anyone in the Pale Horse doubt I'm who I say I am? If you're prepared to sign papers wagering large sums of money that I'll stay alive, there's not likely to be any doubt as to my being the bona fide article. You're not connected with the police in any way - you're a genuine client. They can verify the marriage by looking up old records in Somerset House. They can check up on your friendship with Hermia and all that - so why should there be any doubts?"
"You don't realise the difficulties - the risk."
"Risk - Hell!" said Ginger. "I'd love to help you win a miserly hundred pounds or whatever it is from that shark Bradley."
I looked at her. I liked her very much... her red hair, her freckles, her gallant spirit. But I couldn't let her take the risks she wanted to take.
"I can't stand for it, Ginger," I said. "Suppose - something happened."
"To me?"
"Yes."
"Isn't that my affair?"
"No. I got you in on all this."
She nodded thoughtfully.
"Yes, perhaps you did. But who got there first doesn't matter much. We're both in it now - and we've got to do something. I'm being serious now, Mark. I'm not pretending this is all just fun. If what we believe to be true is true, it's a sickening beastly thing. And it's got to be stopped! You see, it's not hot-blooded murder, from hate or jealousy; it's not even murder from cupidity, the human frailty of murder for gain but taking the risk yourself. It's murder as a business - murder that takes no account of who or what the victim may be.
"That is," she added, "if the whole thing is true?"
She looked at me in momentary doubt.
"It is true," I said. "That's why I'm afraid for you."
Ginger put both elbows on the table, and began to argue.
We thrashed it out, to and fro, ding-dong, repeating ourselves while the hands of the clock on my mantelpiece moved slowly round.
Finally Ginger summed up.
"It's like this. I'm forewarned and forearmed. I know what someone is trying to do to me. And I don't believe for one moment she can do it! If everyone's got a 'desire for death' mine isn't well developed! I've good health. And I simply cannot believe that I'll develop gallstones, or meningitis just because old Thyrza draws pentagrams on the floor, or Sybil throws a trance - or whatever it is those women do do."
"Bella sacrifices a white cock, I should imagine," I said thoughtfully.
"You must admit it's all terribly bogus!"
"We don't know what actually does happen," I pointed out.
"No. That's why it's important to find out. But do you believe, really believe, that because of what three women can do in the barn of the Pale Horse, I, in a flat in London will develop some fatal disease? You can't!"
"No," I said. "I can't believe it."
"But," I added. "I do..."
We looked at each other.
"Yes," said Ginger. "That's our weakness."
"Look here," I said. "Let's make it the other way round. Let me be the one in London. You be the client. We can cook up something -"
But Ginger was vigorously shaking her head.
"No, Mark," she said. "It won't work that way. For several reasons. The most important is that I'm known at the Pale Horse already - as my carefree self. They could get all the dope about my life from Rhoda - and there's nothing there. But you are in the ideal position already - you're a nervous client, sniffing around, not able yet to commit yourself. No, it's got to be this way."
"I don't like it. I don't like to think of you - alone in some place under a false name - with nobody to keep an eye on you. I think, before we embark on this, we ought to go to the police - now - before we try anything else."
"I'm agreeable to that," said Ginger slowly. "In fact I think it's what you ought to do. You've got something to go on. What police? Scotland Yard?"
"No," I said. "I think Divisional Detective-Inspector Lejeune is the best bet."
Chapter 15
I liked Divisional Detective-Inspector Lejeune at first sight. He had an air of quiet ability. I thought, too, that he was an imaginative man - the kind of man who would be willing to consider possibilities that were not orthodox.
He said:
"Dr Corrigan has told me of his meeting with you. He's taken a great interest in this business from the first. Father Gorman, of course, was very well-known and respected in the district. Now you say you have some special information for us?"
"It concerns," I said, "a place called the Pale Horse."
"In, I understand, a village called Much Deeping?"
"Yes."
"Tell me about it."
I told him of the first mention of the Pale Horse at the Fantasie. Then I described my visit to Rhoda, and my introduction to the "three weird sisters." I related, as accurately as I could, Thyrza Grey's conversation on that particular afternoon.
"And you were impressed by what she said?"
I felt embarrassed.
"Well, not really. I mean, I didn't seriously believe -"
"Didn't you, Mr Easterbrook? I rather think you did."
"I suppose you're right. One just doesn't like admitting how credulous one is."
Lejeune smiled.
"But you've left something out, haven't you? You were already interested when you came to Much Deeping - why?"
"I think it was the girl looking so scared."
"The young lady in the flower shop?"
"Yes. She'd thrown out her remark about the Pale Horse so casually. Her being so scared seemed to underline the fact that there was - well, something to be scared about. And then I met Dr Corrigan and he told me about the list of names. Two of them I already knew. Both were dead. A third name seemed familiar. Afterwards I found that she, too, had died."
"That would be Mrs Delafontaine?"
"Yes."
"Go on."
"I made up my mind that I'd got to find out more about this business."
"And you set about it, how?"
I told him of my call on Mrs Tuckerton. Finally I came to Mr Bradley and the Municipal Square Buildings in Birmingham.
I had his full interest now. He repeated the name.
"Bradley," he said. "So Bradley's in this?"
"You know him?"
"Oh, yes, we know all about Mr Bradley. He's given us a lot of trouble. He's a smooth dealer, an adept at never doing anything that we can pin on him. He knows every trick and dodge of the legal game. He's always just on the right side of the line. He's the kind of man who could write a book like those old cookery books 'A hundred ways of evading the law.' But murder, such a thing as organized murder - I should have said that that was right off his beat. Yes - right off his beat."
"Now that I've told you about our conversation, could you act upon it?"
Lejeune slowly shook his head.
"No, we couldn't act on it. To begin with, there were no witnesses to your conversation. It was just between the two of you and he could deny the whole thing if he wanted to! Apart from that, he was quite right when he told you that a man can bet on anything. He bets somebody won't die - and he loses. What is there criminal about that? Unless we can connect Bradley in some way with the actual crime in question - and that, I imagine, will not be easy."
He left it with a shrug of his shoulders. He paused a minute and then said:
"Did you, by any chance, come across a man called Venables when you were down in Much Deeping?"
"Yes," I said, "I did. I was taken over to lunch with him one day."
"Ah! What impression, if I may ask, did he make upon you?"
"A very powerful impression. He's a man of great personality. An invalid."
"Yes. Crippled by polio?"
"He can only move about in a wheelchair. But his disability seems to have heightened his determination to live and enjoy living."
"Tell me all you can about him."
I described Venables' house, his art treasures, the range and sweep of his interests.
Lejeune said:
"It's a pity."
"What is a pity?"
He said dryly: "That Venables is a cripple."
"Excuse me, but you are quite certain he really is a cripple? He couldn't be - well - faking the whole thing?"
"We're as sure of his being a cripple as one can be sure of anything. His doctor is Sir William Dugdale of Harley Street, a man absolutely above suspicion. We have Sir William's assurance that the limbs are atrophied. Our little Mr Osborne may be certain that Venables was the man he saw walking along Barton street that night. But he's wrong."
