I listened to the wistfulness in her voice. She might be strongly controlled at that moment, but she hadn’t been before Annette told her Greville was dead. There had been raw panicky emotion on the tape. Annette had simply confirmed her frightful fears and put what I imagined was a false calmness in place of escalating despair. A man of secrets... Greville had apparently not opened his mind to her much more than he had to me.
I put the key back into its envelope and handed it across.
“It had better stay in the book for now,” I said, “until I find a keyhole it fits.”
She put the key into the book and returned it to the shelves, and shortly afterward found her letters. They were fastened not with romantic ribbons but held together by a prosaic rubber band; not a great many of them by the look of things but carefully kept.
She stared at me from her knees. “I don’t want you to read them,” she said. “Whatever Greville left you, they’re mine, not yours.”
I wondered why she needed so urgently to remove all traces of herself from the house. Out of curiosity I’d have read the letters with interest if I’d found them myself, but I could hardly demand now to see her love letters... if they were love letters.
“Show me just a short page,” I said.
She looked bitter. “You really don’t trust me, do you? I’d like to know why.”
“Someone broke into Greville’s office over the weekend,” I said, “and I’m not quite sure what they were looking for.”
“Not my letters,” she said positively.
“Show me just a page,” I said, “so I know they’re what you say.”
I thought she would refuse altogether, but after a moment’s thought she slid the rubber band off the letters and fingered through them, finally, with all expression repressed, handing me one small sheet.
It said,
... and until next Monday my life will be a desert. What am I to do? After your touch I shrink from him. It’s dreadful. I am running out of headaches. I adore you.
I handed the page back in silence, embarrassed at having intruded.
“Take them,” I said.
She blinked a few times, snapped the rubber band back round the small collection, and put them into a plain black leather handbag which lay beside her on the carpet.
I felt down onto the floor, collected the crutches and stood up, concentrating on at least holding the hand support of the left one, even if not putting much weight on it. Clarissa Williams watched me go over toward Greville’s chair with a touch of awkwardness.
“Look,” she said. “I didn’t realize... I mean, when I came in here and saw you stealing things... I thought you were stealing things... I didn’t notice the crutches.”
I supposed that was the truth. Bona fide burglars didn’t go around peg-legged, and I’d laid the supports aside at the time she’d come storming in. She’d been too fired up to ask questions: propelled no doubt by grief, anxiety and fear of the intruder. None of which lessened my contrary feeling that she damned well ought to have asked questions before waging war.
I wondered how she would have explained her presence to the police, if they had arrived, when she was urgent to remove all traces of herself from the house. Perhaps she would have realized her mistake and simply departed, leaving the incapacitated burglar on the floor.
I went over to the telephone table and picked up the brutal little man-tamer. The heavy handle, a black cigar-shaped cylinder, knurled for a good grip, was under an inch in diameter and about seven inches long. Protruding beyond that was a short length of solidly thick chromium-plated closely-coiled spring, with a similar but narrower spring extending beyond that, the whole tipped with a black metal knob, fifteen or sixteen inches overall. A kick as hard as a horse.
“What is this?” I said, holding it, feeling its weight.
“Greville gave it to me. He said the streets aren’t safe. He wanted me to carry it always ready. He said all women should carry them because of muggers and rapists... as a magistrate he heard so much about women being attacked. He said one blow would render the toughest man helpless and give me time to escape.”
I hadn’t much difficulty in believing it. I bent the black knob to one side and watched the close heavy spring flex and straighten fast when I let it go. She got to her feet and said, “I’m sorry. I’ve never used it before, not in anger. Greville showed me how... he just said to swing as hard as I could so that the springs would shoot out and do the maximum damage.”
My dear brother, I thought. Thank you very much.
“Does it go back into its shell?” I asked.
She nodded. “Twist the bigger spring clockwise... it’ll come loose and slide into the casing.” I did that, but the smaller spring with the black knob still stuck out. “You have to give the knob a bang against something, then it will slide in.”
I banged the knob against the wall, and like a meek lamb the narrower spring slid smoothly into the wider, and the end of the knob became the harmless-looking end of yet another gadget.
“What makes it work?” I asked, but she didn’t know.
I found that the end opposite the knob unscrewed if one tried, so I unscrewed it about twenty turns until the inch-long piece came off, and I discovered that the whole end section was a very strong magnet.
Simple, I thought. Ordinarily the magnet held the heavy springs inside the cylinder. Make a strong flicking arc, in effect throw the springs out, and the magnet couldn’t hold them, but let them go, letting loose the full whipping strength of the thing.
I screwed back the cap, held the cylinder, swung it hard. The springs shot out, flexible, shining, horrific.
Wordlessly I closed the thing up again and offered it to her.
“It’s called a kiyoga,” she said.
I didn’t care what it was called. I didn’t care if I never saw it again. She put it familiarly into her raincoat pocket, Everywoman’s ultimate reply to footpads, maniacs and assorted misogynists.
She looked unhappily and uncertainly at my face.
“I suppose I can’t ask you to forget I came here?” she said.
“It would be impossible.”
“Could you just... not speak of it?”
If I’d met her in another way I suppose I might have liked her. She had generous eyes that would have looked better smiling, and an air of basic good humor which persisted despite her jumbling emotions.
With an effort she said, “Please.”
“Don’t beg,” I said sharply. It made me uncomfortable and it didn’t suit her.
She swallowed. “Greville told me about you. I guess... I’ll have to trust to his judgment.”
She felt in the opposite pocket to the one with the kiyoga and brought out a plain key ring with three keys on it.
“You’d better have these,” she said. “I won’t be using them anymore.” She put them down by the answering machine and in her eyes I saw the shininess of sudden tears.
“He died in Ipswich,” I said. “He’ll be cremated there on Friday afternoon. Two o’clock.”
She nodded speechlessly in acknowledgment, not looking at me, and went past me, through the doorway and down the hall and out of the front door, closing it with a quiet finality behind her.
With a sigh, I looked round the room. The book box that had contained her letters still lay open on the floor and I bent down, picked it up, and restored it to the shelves. I wondered just how many books were hollow. Tomorrow evening, I thought, after Elliot Trelawney, I would come and look.
Meanwhile I picked up the fallen green stone box and put it on the table by the chrysanthemums, reflecting that the ornate key in the red-lined book-box was far too large to fit its tiny lock. Greville’s bunch of keys was down on the carpet also. I returned to what I’d been doing before being so violently interrupted, but found that the smallest of the bunch was still too big for the green stone.