Safer Dead

‘Will you hold the line?’ the voice said and there was silence. Time stood still, and then as I was beginning to wonder if he had forgotten me, Cornelia Van Blake came on the line.

‘Yes?’ she said. ‘Who is that?’

‘My name’s Sladen,’ I said, ‘I am a writer. Could I bother you for some information? It’s to do with a girl you met in Paris last year.’

There was a pause. I imagined I could hear her quick breathing, but I could have been wrong.

‘Information? What girl?’ The voice was as cool and as crisp as a refrigerated lettuce and as impersonal.

‘Could I see you? I could be over in twenty minutes.’

‘Why, no . . .’ She stopped short as if a sudden thought had dropped into her mind. ‘Well, I suppose you could,’ she went on. ‘I can’t give you very long.’

‘Ten minutes will cover it. That’s fine. I’ll be right over,’ I said and before she could change her mind, I hung up. Why had she granted me an interview? I wondered as I left the booth. I had expected to be turned down flat. This was almost too easy.

A cab crawled past and I waved.

‘Vanstone, West Summit,’ I said and got in. It took a little under twenty minutes to reach the high wrought iron gates that guarded the house.

A guard in a black uniform and peak cap came out of the lodge, opened one of the gates and walked up to the cab.

‘Mrs. Van Blake is expecting me,’ I said. ‘I’m Sladen.’

‘Got a card on you, sir?’ he asked.

I couldn’t see much of him in the darkness, but his voice sounded tough and alert.

I offered him my driving licence. He snapped on a flashlight, examined the licence, nodded and handed it back.

‘Thank you.’

He opened the other gate and the cab drove through.

‘First time I’ve been here,’ the driver said over his shoulder. ‘How the rich live! Guards, gates and all. Well, well!’

‘I’d sooner live my way,’ I said, peering through the open window into the darkness. I couldn’t see anything from the window, but the headlights of the cab picked out trees, a lot of shrubs and bushes, and the white, sand covered drive. There was no clear view of the gardens nor of the house from the approach. After a four minute drive, we swung on to a big stretch of tarmac at the foot of the steps leading to the house.

The cab door was opened by another black uniformed guard who had appeared from nowhere. I told the driver to wait for me, nodded to the guard and went up the steps to the main entrance. The door stood open. A tall, elderly man got up like a Hollywood butler, stood waiting.

The soft light from the hall lit up his aristocratic features. He was gaunt, and nudging seventy. He looked like a dignified statesman about to dine with Molotov, and he carried with him an atmosphere of baronial halls and lighted candelabra.

‘If you will follow me.’

His figure and voice were stiff with disapproval. He took me down a wide corridor, through a glass-panelled door, down some steps and into a vast lounge that ran the length of the house. There were enough sofas and lounging chairs to seat fifty people, and the ornate richly coloured Turkish carpet that covered the entire floor gave the room the millionaire’s touch.

‘If you will wait, I’ll inform Mrs. Van Blake you are here,’ the butler said as if reading from the script of a successful play. He went away as silently and as unobtrusively as an incarnate spirit.

The first thing that caught my attention when he had gone was a large oil painting of Mrs. Van Blake that hung over the fireplace.

She was sitting on the balustrade, looking at the distant garden, wearing a pale green summer frock. It was an extraordinarily good likeness, and the detail of the landscape had been worked in with incredible patience and care.

There was something about the style of the figure that was familiar to me, and moving closer to the picture I saw in the right hand corner the artist’s name: Lennox Hartley. I stepped back and examined the painting with closer attention.

I had no idea Hartley could paint as well as this. From the sketch of Fay Benson I had seen, I had assumed he was just a competent cover designer, but this painting showed he was a highly skilled artist.

He had caught the feeling I had had when I had first seen Cornelia Van Blake. Although, in his portrait, she looked as cold and as remote as she had done when I had seen her, there was that suggestion of a flame burning behind the impersonal mask that I had sensed. The picture was alive and compelling.

Then I saw her standing close to me. She gave me quite a start. She was within touching distance of me before I even knew she had come down the steps and crossed the vast expanse of carpet to where I was standing.

‘Mr. Sladen?’

She was in a topless white evening dress, and around her throat blazed a magnificent collar of emeralds. She really was something to look at. Her big green eyes, that glittered like her emeralds, looked right into mine, giving me an odd creepy sensation of uneasiness.