The Zig Zag Girl, page 22
‘I’m going in,’ said Max. ‘You go round the front.’
‘What shall I do there?’ said PC Granger, who was evidently not a leader of men.
‘Wait until I call you. Don’t let anyone in.’
Max pushed open the back door.
*
Max’s dressing room was just like his dressing room in Eastbourne and, Edgar supposed, dressing rooms everywhere. The mirror with lights around it, the make-up carelessly strewn on the table, the sink with a bottle cooling in the water. An Egyptian headdress lay on the floor and beside it was a string of pearls. The room smelt of cigarettes and Max’s cologne.
*
Edgar sent Archie to search in the wings. He knew that it was a vain hope that Max would have left the note lying about, but he had to try. He scrabbled on the floor, disturbing years of dust and several spiders. Behind him, he heard the door open.
‘Did you find it?’ he asked, not turning round.
Then, with a sound like a curtain falling, darkness.
*
The back door opened immediately. Max was in a small kitchen: cooker, yellow-painted cupboards, Formica table. The whole place had a forlorn look, as if it had been empty a long time. The only signs of occupation were two cups on the table. Max thought of the cups on Tony’s bedside table, of Ethel being forced to drink belladonna. Beautiful woman. Ruby was a beautiful woman and now she might be dead. There was a hatch through to a sitting room with a stained chintz sofa and chairs. The dust was thick and undisturbed on the floor. Max stood in the tiny hallway, he could see PC Granger’s shadow through bubbled glass in the front door. Where was Ruby? Was she here at all? Was this just another false pass, more misdirection? He ran up the short flight of stairs and searched the two small bedrooms. Both were completely empty. In the bathroom a tap was dripping, leaving a green stain on the chipped pink bath. Max stood still for a moment, listening to muffled plunk of the water, eerily amplified by the complete silence. Ruby, where are you? Had the killer taken her somewhere else entirely, leaving Max trapped in this empty house, this stage set? Perhaps he should telephone Edgar, but by the time that he’d driven from Brighton, it would be too late.
Then he heard it. A slight sound, like a chair moving. He leapt down the stairs in one bound and stood, listening, in the hallway. The policeman still stood with his back to the door, oblivious to everything. There it was again and another noise too, a sort of dry slither. It wasn’t coming from the kitchen but seemingly from somewhere below his feet. Then he noticed the door at the foot of the stairs. Treading lightly, as if he were on stage, he crossed the hall and opened the door.
Stone steps led into a cellar which was lit by a single bulb. The room was windowless and damp. It was empty apart from a few packing cases and a single bed on which lay Ruby, bound hand and foot. In an instant, Max was at her side.
‘Ruby!’
She opened her eyes. ‘Max.’ She didn’t even sound surprised. Her pupils were huge. He didn’t know whether that was the belladonna or fear.
‘Are you hurt?’ He fumbled with the ropes. He, who could – in the dark – undo a different knot with each hand.
Ruby shook her head, but she was looking past him, her eyes wide.
‘Is he here?’ asked Max. ‘Is he in the house?’
Ruby had her hands free and she used them, not to cling to him but to point towards the door.
Max turned, clenching his fists, expecting to face Hugh D. Nee, the man who had killed three times and surely planned to do so again.
Instead he saw a vast, moving coil, a creature moving towards them across the dusty floor, primeval and deadly.
‘The snake,’ whispered Ruby.
Chapter 31
Edgar was floating out to sea. He was being rocked to and fro and a voice was singing from the depths. He saw Jonathan, his hair long and wet like seaweed. These were the pearls that were his eyes. He saw Diablo and Max, side by side in a beautiful pea-green boat:
Willows whiten, aspens quiver Little
breezes dusk and shiver.
Thro’ the wave that runs forever
Flowing down to Camelot.
He saw the Major standing in his garden. He saw a ship blazing on the sea. He saw Max leaning over a girl on a table. He saw the empty cabinet, the swords thrust through its sides. He saw Ruby twirling in her sequinned costume. The Zig Zag Girl. The Zig Zag Girl.
He opened his eyes. He was still in the dressing room, but somehow it seemed to be underwater. The air was wavery and uncertain, edges blurred into each other and, in the foreground, a vast mirror loomed, surrounded by glittering lights.
‘Don’t worry,’ said a voice, ‘it’s the belladonna. It makes your eyes go funny.’
And moving thro’ a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year
Shadows of the world appear.
‘Am I dead?’ he asked.
The voice was amused. ‘Not yet.’
He saw Tony staring at him from the incident wall. A line of cabaret girls were high-kicking their way across the stage, their lips bared in manic grins. He saw the Ptolemy, blood-red in the sunset. He saw Jean snarling at him from inside a cage.
He saw Charis.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s me.’
He shut his eyes. The room rocked a little bit more and then was still. He opened his eyes again and the watery effect was gone. His head still hurt, though, and he couldn’t move his arms or legs.
‘You’re tied up, that’s why.’ Again, the voice sounded amused.
‘Charis?’
She was standing in front of him. She looked the same – flaming hair, creamy skin – but different, her features indistinct, as if she were wearing a veil.
‘I thought you were dead.’
‘Oh, a lot of people thought that,’ said Charis, taking the chair opposite him. ‘It was what you were meant to think, of course. I got off that stupid boat. Not entirely unscathed though.’
‘But, how …?’
‘I was the spy. Typical of you not to suspect. The Major did, and I think Max did too. That’s why I had to get out. They sent a plane for me and got me out of the wreck.’
‘Who’s “they”?’
‘Oh, Ed, you really are too stupid. The Germans, of course. Our friend Jerry, as the Major used to call them. I was a double agent. A zig zag, they used to call us.’
‘The Zig Zag Girl.’
‘Yes, that’s what gave me the idea. I practised on that stupid girl, the one who’d been Max’s assistant. She lived near me in Brighton and she was always showing off about it in the pub. So I decided to start with her. I wanted to kill you all in really inventive ways, you see. They always thought they were so clever, the magicians. Sleight of hand, misdirection, all that. But they were no match for me, were they?’
‘But why? Why did you want to kill us?’
She walked right up to him with all her old, sexy swagger. Then she thrust her face into his.
‘Look at me!’
One side of her face was scarred. It wasn’t so noticeable at first, but, close up, her lovely skin was criss-crossed with tiny lines. It was this that had given her the odd, veiled appearance. Edgar couldn’t stop himself from turning away.
‘Look at me!’ She forced his head back and he thought about her strength. She had killed three people and had mutilated their bodies. He had no doubt that she was about to do the same to him.
‘You used to think I was beautiful, didn’t you? God, you were pathetic. You and Bill and all the rest. I knew you’d never suspect me because you were sooo in love with me.’ Her voice soared mockingly, but, to Edgar’s relief, she drew away from him.
‘Did you kill Tony and Jean too?’ He tried to see the clock on Max’s dressing table. Surely the police would come soon? Charis must have locked them in, but Archie would raise the alarm, wouldn’t he?
Charis saw the glance. ‘Oh, everyone’s gone home. The show’s over and all that. I got the key from that idiot stagehand. Told him I was Max’s girlfriend and, of course, he believed that. Everyone knows about Max’s girlfriends.’
‘What have you done with Max?’
‘Oh, I took care of Max. The wolf trap. Did you get it? I just told him where Ruby was. When he gets there, he’ll find a nice little surprise waiting for him. He won’t be able to magic his way out of that one, the smug bastard.’
Edgar’s head was still swimming, but he knew that, somehow, he had to keep her talking. ‘Why?’ he said, trying to sound friendly and innocent. ‘I don’t understand.’
She had sat down at the dressing table. He could see her face in mirror, the ruined side turned towards the light. Her hands reached up to her hair. They, too, were horribly scarred, much worse than her face. Old hands, the flower-seller had said. But they were small hands too. Women’s hands.
‘You always were stupid, Ed,’ Charis said carelessly. ‘Oh I know you were supposed to be brilliant at Oxford and all that, but you were always so stupid about real life. Even Tony was cleverer than you. He saw me at Brighton, you see, that’s why I had to kill him.’
‘He saw you? Where?’
She laughed. He remembered how he had once thought it the most beautiful sound in the world. ‘I was in the chorus line. At the Theatre Royal. Oh, I can cover this up with thick make-up.’ She gestured at her face. ‘It doesn’t show from a distance and I made sure I was always at the end with my good side on the outside. He stood right next to me, the great Max Mephisto. “Magic is all about seeing.”’ She imitated Max’s deep voice. ‘Well, he stood next to me and he didn’t see me at all. Of course, chorus girls are beneath his notice. He thinks he’s God’s gift. Always did.’ Her voice changed again. ‘But Tony did see me. He was one to look at the dancing girls, Tony. Well, he looked and he saw. He recognised me.’
That was why Tony had asked him and Bill to come to his digs that day, thought Edgar. Typical of Tony to want to tell the two of them together. They were the men who had loved Charis; they would receive the stunning news that she was alive.
‘Is that why you killed Tony?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said Charis. ‘I might have killed him anyway. I was planning to kill all of you. But that’s why he had to die first. I thought I’d make it look like the sword cabinet because that was Max’s act that week. Not that he did it so brilliantly, in my opinion, and I thought his assistant was really common.’
‘Ruby?’
‘Yes, Ruby.’ Her voice was sneering again. ‘I’ve shared a dressing room with her and she’s not everything she seems, believe me.’
‘Is she all right?’
‘No,’ said Charis casually, peering at her face in the mirror. ‘She’s probably dead by now.’
For the first time Edgar felt himself near to despair. Ruby was dead; he was about to die. The girl he had loved had turned into this creature in the mirror. For a moment he felt that he would actually prefer to be dead. He closed his eyes and felt almost peaceful. Charis’s voice jerked him awake again.
‘No one guessed it was me. They all thought I was a man. All it takes is a cap and a bit of make-up.’
Charis was a tall woman, but a tall woman becomes a small man. Only little Desdemona had described her as tall. But it had been the voice that had scared the landlady’s daughter. The ‘whispery’ voice of a woman trying to sound like a man.
‘I sat just as close to Jean as I am to you and she still thought I was a man. Silly cow with her prissy house and her ugly baby. I almost killed him too, the way he kept screaming.’
‘Why did you kill Jean? She hadn’t done anything to you.’ Edgar hadn’t much liked Jean, but he suddenly felt a real pang for her, sitting down in her neat little sitting room to have tea with her deadly guest. He remembered the weight of Barney in his arms. He had seen his mother murdered. No wonder the poor kid had screamed.
‘I was going to kill Bill,’ said Charis. ‘I expected him to come home for lunch. But, then, he wasn’t there and Jean was. And I’d always hated her, the way she kept hanging around making eyes at you.’
Even after everything that had happened, Edgar was still amazed to think that Charis could be jealous of anyone. And jealous over him too.
‘I never looked at her,’ he said honestly. ‘I never looked at anyone but you. I loved you.’
‘No you didn’t,’ said Charis, taking a knife from her inside pocket. ‘You’ve only ever loved one person. Max.’
‘Max?’
‘Yes, Max. You see, I knew Max would try to save Ruby and I knew you’d try to save Max. I know everything about all of you. And now, if Max escapes from his trap, he’ll come back here and find you dead. It’ll be my last little surprise for him. I hate him the most.’
‘Why?’ He wasn’t even trying to keep her talking any more. He really wanted to know.
‘Because he did this,’ she held the knife blade to her cheek. ‘He destroyed my face.’ For a moment, she looked almost pleadingly at Edgar. ‘I was beautiful, wasn’t I?’
‘You still are.’
‘No.’ Her voice was hard again. ‘People look away from me. They cross the road to avoid me. It’s like being one of the walking dead.’
‘What are you going to do now?’ Edgar stared at the knife. If she tried to stab him, he thought he had just enough strength to make the chair overbalance backwards. Then, if he could just get one hand free …
Charis saw where he was looking. She laughed. ‘This? Oh, this is just for my own pleasure. I’m not going to cut you. I’m going to burn you. Remember Max’s famous trick where he burns the table with the girl on it? Well, you and I are going to re-enact it.’
‘As I remember it, the girl gets away.’
‘Not in my version.’
*
Max edged towards the snake. He knew nothing about reptiles, but this looked like a particularly nasty one, earthy-coloured with a dark, wedge-shaped head.
‘I suppose there’s no chance this thing is harmless,’ he said, almost to himself. But Ruby answered seriously, ‘It’s an African rock python, I think. They’re very dangerous.’
‘Oh good.’
The snake was between them and the door. Max must have almost stepped over it in his haste to get to Ruby. He held out his hand to her now. ‘Come on, let’s try to get past. No sudden movements.’
Ruby put her hand in his. For a moment, despite everything, he was only aware of the absolute rightness of it. It wasn’t a sensual feeling at all, more like a great wave of protectiveness flowing over him. The snake watched them, its head waving slightly from side to side. Max moved in front of Ruby. That way it would get him first.
‘It’s all right, Ruby,’ he said. ‘I’ll look after you.’
But, with a quick squeeze of his hand, she let go. Then she approached the snake.
‘Ruby!’
Ruby crouched down and began to sing.
*
Charis took the bottle from the sink and doused him with the contents. Neat gin, by the smell of it. Then she kicked at his chair which collapsed, cracking his head on the floor. For a moment he saw black again, then he was sure he was going to be sick. In a haze of pain and nausea, he saw Charis looking down on him.
‘Deckchair,’ she said. ‘Useful things, deckchairs. Nice and flammable too.’
‘You can’t just set fire to me. The whole pier will go up in smoke.’
She shrugged. ‘Well, it’s not the first time, is it? Good thing too, in my opinion. I hate piers. I hate Hastings and Brighton too. Bloody English seaside.’
‘I suppose you prefer Germany.’ It felt ridiculous to be bandying words while he lay trussed up at her feet, but he was damned if he was just going to lie there and die. Surely someone would come to rescue him soon. What had happened to the bloody Hastings police force?
She considered the point seriously. ‘I’m not a big fan of Germany. Anyway, it’s pretty depressing there at the moment. No, it was more that – everyone was so pleased with themselves during the war. We’ll fight them on the beaches, all that rot. You should have heard the rubbish they talked to us WAAFs: ‘Even women can do their bit.’ Well, I didn’t want to be on the same side as idiots like Major Gormley, thank you very much.’
‘The Major’s not stupid.’ He had known that it was a woman, even if he’d got the wrong woman. And, by Charis’s own admission, he had suspected her, all that time ago in Inverness.
‘He’s an idiot. The Magic Men! Of all the ludicrous ideas. As if a bunch of has-been magicians could defeat the German army.’
‘Well, they were defeated, weren’t they?’ muttered Edgar.
‘Not by you,’ spat Charis. ‘All you lot ever did was set fire to a boat.’
‘Max felt terrible about that.’
‘Did he? Well, he’s going to feel even worse when he finds your body, what’s left of it. It’s a horrible way to die, you know.’
He didn’t know, but he could imagine. He almost hoped that she’d stab him first.
‘Goodbye, Edgar,’ said Charis, and her voice seemed to come from a long way away. ‘It was fun while it lasted.’
He saw her turn away and heard the spark of a match. He tried, for one last time, to free his hands, but now they had the whole weight of his body on them. His legs too seemed to be bound by iron chains. If only he were Max, with all his escapology prowess. But Max was probably dead too. He thought briefly of his mother. He wished that he’d been nicer to her, he wished that he’d smiled in a few more photographs, he wished that he’d driven her to the incurables and sat with her while she tried to cheer them up. He wished he’d taken her out to lunch afterwards, somewhere genteel with lace tablecloths. He wished that he’d been a better son.
Charis threw down the match and, with a crack, the deckchair burst into flames.
*
Ruby continued to sing. The snake watched her, head swaying.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Max. But he was awestruck all the same.
Ruby raised her hand and the snake followed her, stretching, expanding vertically. Then she made a circular movement and, with sinuous ease, the snake began to coil up again. Her song changed and became slower. Max almost found his own eyes closing.
