‘Yes, of course,’ Bob Cherry assured them. ‘Now tell me, what are your ambitions for the group over the next year?’
And, to allay their suspicions, Charles Paris condemned himself to another half-hour of corybantic aspirations.
He caught a bus from East Croydon Station. The investigation was beginning to get rather costly in travel. After paying off a few debts and building up his stock of Bell’s whiskey, the fee for The Alexander Harvey Show was almost gone. Soon he’d have to get some more work. He’d call Maurice. It wouldn’t get him a job, but it would make him feel he was doing something about it.
On the bus he thought about Janine Bentley. Strange how different people’s views of her were. From almost everyone there came this picture of the quiet little girl, possibly rather repressed, living in a claustrophobic and private relationship with the unknown boy-friend. But how did that tally with Carla Pratt’s description of the phone call to her, of this unbalanced ‘spooky’ character? Maybe Janine did have a split personality, her quiet manner hiding the seethings of a sick mind. That would make her motivation for murdering Bill Peaky much more comprehensible.
But Charles still had difficulty in relating this image of her with her appearance. He had only seen her on stage and in the publicity photographs (and had recent cause to remember how much the skills of make-up and hairdressing could falsify in such circumstances), but he had got an impression of a certain honesty in her, something that made a direct appeal to him. Not just a sexual attraction, but a warmth.
He also got the feeling that she was naturally beautiful. Though hairdressing had helped her long blonde hair to its bounce and sparkle, its luxurious abundance owed nothing to artifice. And her large blue eyes could not have been faked; they were God-given.
Yet he was looking for this girl as a murderer. All the evidence and logic pointed towards her guilt. Well, he was too old to be side-tracked by a pretty face.
The face, when he saw it, was not pretty.
He had rung the door chimes of the suburban semi where Mrs. Bentley lived and been greeted by a voice from the other side of the door. A young voice, frightened, strained. ‘What do you want?’
‘Hello, I’ve come to see Mrs. Bentley.’
‘What about?’
‘About her daughter, Janine.’
There was a pause for some reaction which he could not see. Then ‘Mrs. Bentley’s out. What was it about exactly?’
Time for a risk, or at least a shock tactic. ‘It’s about Bill Peaky.’
This time the sound of the reaction was unmistakable. A little whimper of fear.
Another silence, then the door opened a crack. It was held inside with a chain. Charles could not see the face of the person who opened it.
‘I don’t recognize you.’ There was still an undercurrent of fear, but a new note of fatalism flattened the tone.
‘May I come in and talk?’
‘I suppose it was only A matter of time before someone came,’ the voice went on. ‘I couldn’t hope to hide here forever.’
‘May I come in?’
‘Why not? You can’t do any worse.’ The door nearly closed as the chain was released, then opened.
And Charles saw the face.
It was Janine. He could recognize that. But it was a distorted Janine, almost a cartoon version. One cheek bulged sideways, pulling the face out of true. The memorable blue eyes glinted pinkly through the slits which were all the bruised eyelids left to open. The lips, puffy and cut, were slightly parted, stiff with pain, revealing the stump of a broken front tooth. Scratches carved straight roads over the irregular terrain of bruises.
But worst of all was the hair. The splendid opulence he remembered was gone. In some places it was bare to the scalp where it had been pulled out, in others straight edges showed where scissors had been enlisted to complete the destruction.
‘Good God,’ said Charles. ‘Whatever happened to you?’
‘There’s no need to make it worse by pretending you don’t know. Come inside. My mother will be back in half an hour, so you won’t have long.’
Charles stepped inside the door and the girl closed it quickly. Then she stood back. He could not take his eyes off the ruin of her face.
‘All right,’ she said defiantly. ‘Do your worst. I can’t believe that anything can hurt me more than I’ve been hurt already.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He said he would kill me. Is that why you’ve come? If it is, just make it quick.’
‘What are you talking about? I haven’t come to hurt you.’
‘Don’t play with me.’
‘Listen, my name is Charles Paris. I was in Hunstanton when Bill Peaky died. I have reason to believe that his death was not as straight-forward as it may have appeared.’
‘Then you haven’t come to hurt me?’
Charles shook his head gently. Slowly the girl sagged as the fierce tension left her. Then the first wave of crying struck and her body shook as the emotion took over. Charles took her gently by the shoulders and led her into the sitting room.
After about five minutes the weeping subsided and she lay back in her chair, limp as a rag doll.
Charles felt an enormous weight of pity for the girl, but at the same time he knew that while she was weak and relaxed was a good time to tackle her about Peaky’s death. ‘Janine, I think someone tampered with the wiring of Bill Peaky’s guitar and killed him deliberately.’
‘Oh.’ The inflated face looked at him vaguely. ‘You mean he was murdered?’
Charles nodded.
‘I never thought of that,’ said the girl, still bemused. But then she seemed to see some logical consequence of the premise and became animated. ‘No. He couldn’t have been. You must be wrong.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Charles didn’t like bullying this poor ruined child but, having started, he pressed on. Make the conclusion swift. ‘I know quite a lot about you, Janine. I know you were having an affair with Bill Peaky and I know he broke it off the day he died. I also know that you were ill, or pretended to be ill, after that scene with him. I am suggesting that you took your revenge on him by changing the wiring on his amplifier lead and thus causing his death.’
The girl’s expression had altered subtly. Now it looked as if a smile might be on the broken lips. Charles knew that his speech didn’t have the rhetorical force he had hoped for and he added, rather feebly, ‘Well, what do you say?’
‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’ Her surprise sounded genuine. ‘I changed the wires on his amplifier? I don’t know what an amplifier looks like and I can’t even change a plug. I think you are giving me credit for technical abilities I just don’t possess. Where am I supposed to have picked up all this electrical knowledge?’
‘You learned it from your guitarist boy-friend.’
‘Who, Bill?’
‘No, the one before. The one in the rock group.’
‘I never had a boy-friend in a rock group.’
He felt an enormous desire to believe her. She looked so vulnerable, poised gingerly on the armchair. But he knew he must not be swayed by sentiment. If the girl were really mentally ill, with homicidal tendencies, then he must take no risks.
‘Listen, Janine, I’ve been through it all and the evidence against you is pretty convincing. Unless you can persuade me that you have an alibi for the time when the wiring was tampered with, then I think you had better start explaining a few things.’
‘An alibi? What is this?’
‘Let me refresh your memory about that afternoon. You danced with the rest of the group in the opening number of the show. Then you went to see Bill Peaky, who told you he didn’t want to marry you. You had a row and then started to feel ill, either genuinely or for tactical reasons. As a result you didn’t dance in the first-half closer. A taxi was summoned to take you home, but I happen to know that it didn’t arrive until the second half had started. That gave you plenty of time to fix the wiring. The old cable had been broken during Lennie Barber’s act, but the new one was checked out at the beginning of the interval. So during the interval you crept backstage and changed the wiring.’