Bruno Crane
The Friend
‘I don’t have to talk to you,’ I say. ‘I can wait for the real police.’
The Frenchman shrugs. He’s too good-looking.
He looks like the pretty-boy hero from some foreign film, not a proper plod.
It’s like Narracott: easy to charm if you look the part.
I’ve had the cards stacked against me ever since I was born with this face.
Then I remember that Narracott is dead, so in the end his cards were worse than mine and, what do you know, it makes me feel a little better!
‘It might be … wise,’ the French chap says now. ‘Some of the other guests are keen on locking you up until the real’ (he puts an emphasis on the word) ‘police arrive here. But I think perhaps if you can explain a few things, I can set their minds at ease.’
What business does he have speaking such good English?
‘Fine,’ I say. I suppose sitting here talking to this Frenchman beats being locked up in some hotel broom cupboard.
‘But I don’t want her here,’ I say, per the madwoman who chased me onto the train earlier.
‘I’d never have crashed the blasted train if it weren’t for her meddling.
Try telling the others she’s the reason we’re all stuck in this place.
And what in the blazes is she doing here?
’ I nod towards the old woman sitting next to him.
‘Do the French police employ ancient crones to do their work for them, too?’
‘Madame Marple,’ says the Frenchman, ‘is helping me in my investigations. And with my English, should I need it.’
The tweedy old cat smiles at me. She’s probably senile anyway. I study her as she looks back at me with a half-smile on her face, head tilted to one side. No: definitely not all there. Maybe this is some assist-the-demented-elderly scheme. ‘Suit yourself,’ I say.
‘Thank you, Mr Crane,’ the Marple woman says, her smile widening.
‘I will be so interested to listen to your account of everything.’ She doesn’t sound all that demented, but you never can tell.
My old man went a few years back and towards the end he’d be talking sense one moment and trying to beat me with his walking stick like the good old days of my joyful childhood the next.
The Frenchman starts by asking me where I was, that morning, blah blah blah, just like they would in some half-baked detective book. I tell him: ‘Face-down in my pillows, sleeping off the night before. Had a few too many cognacs after dinner.’
‘And can anyone vouch for this?’
‘No, of course they can’t, because why should anything in my life be easy?’
I don’t like the way the old fossil is watching me. She’s a little too beady for my liking, come to think of it. Wish I’d refused to have her in here but no point making a fuss now.
‘Mr Crane, I passed your room on my way to breakfast,’ she says, ‘and the housekeeping team were just coming out of it, carrying your linens. I do not think they would have been able to do that if you were asleep in bed all morning, as you have told us.’
Fool. Dolt. Dunce. Christ, I can hear his voice as loud as if he were sitting here beside me. Shut up, I tell him, silently.
‘Excuse me?’ the French detective asks. Or perhaps not so silently. ‘Did you say something, Monsieur Crane?’ God. What’s happening to me?
‘So maybe I wasn’t there at nine o’clock on the dot,’ I say. ‘Well, for God’s sake, I wasn’t checking my watch every moment! I’m on holiday. Perhaps I got up earlier than I’d thought and …’ I finish rather lamely: ‘went for a walk.’
‘Where?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Just outside. It’s all white and cold, isn’t it? And like I said, I’m on holiday.’
There’s a long silence. They’re waiting for me to fill it, I’m sure – incriminate myself. Well, I won’t do it. I could do with one of those cigars. Just not sure I could trust myself to hold it without my hand jerking around all over the place.
‘And the pill,’ the Frenchman says.
‘What of it?’ I say, and then realise that was a stupid thing to say. But when has that ever stopped me before? ‘I mean, what pill?’ I correct, quickly, but it’s too late.
The Frenchman smiles, very slightly, and I think of Narracott smirking at me that day up on the mountain. Fool. Dolt. Dunce.
‘Oh dear,’ the old woman says. ‘Is that jumper causing you some discomfort? I do sympathise – the heating is positively barbaric. And wool: so effective yet so abrasive. I heard recently of a wonderful trick of using Brilliantine in one’s washing … it softens the fibres, you know.’
I force myself to stop tugging at the neck.
‘The pill you kept in your room,’ the detective says. ‘Quite a few guests heard you discussing it the other night. What did you call it?’ He turns to the old crone.
‘An S pill, I believe,’ she supplies.
‘Yes. That was it,’ the Frenchman says. ‘We had something similar. A little capsule, filled with cyanide. Kept on one’s person always.
Find oneself in a tricky spot, pop it between the back teeth and – voila!
? oblivion. Anyway, I heard you were in possession of one of these.
In fact, most of the guests heard that you had one of these because you had a particularly loud conversation about it with your dead friend. Tell me,’ he says. ‘Where is it now?’
‘It’s gone,’ I tell him. ‘I think Narracott probably destroyed it that very night. I swear to you …’
‘You do see how this appears?’ he asks. ‘Your friend is poisoned. You have been heard to loudly discuss a poison pill in your possession which now you cannot produce.’
‘Perhaps someone knew it was there and took it—’
‘Ah,’ the old woman says. ‘I think quite a number of people knew it was there, Mr Crane. I almost wondered,’ she says, earnestly, ‘if that was no accident.’
‘What do you mean?’ For God’s sake, does the woman ever blink?
‘I mean only that a large number of us, hotel guests I mean, heard you discussing it last night. I think if twenty or so people heard you speak of it then twenty or so people might also have been minded to steal it from you. And therefore twenty or so people might have had the means to poison your friend, besides you, and could become suspects, if motives were found. Yes, it does certainly widen the field.’
‘Yes,’ I say, uncertainly. ‘Exactly! Or … are you trying to imply something, Madam?’
‘Oh, not at all, not at all,’ she twitters. ‘I apologise – sometimes I like to do my thinking out loud.’
‘Anyway …’ I say, still wondering if the old cat was just trying to spin some sort of trap, ‘I tell you. If it was the pill, then I’ve been framed.
Someone has it in for me. I think someone here has it in for both of us.
Narracott knew it, too. You should have heard him. “Someone is out for blood,” he said.’
The Frenchman frowns, very slightly. ‘But how odd! Two friends, here for a skiing holiday in a country foreign to both of you! Why should somebody here “have it in for you” as you say? Is there some aspect of which I am unaware?’
I could almost swear. Walked into that trap too, didn’t I?
‘Look,’ I say, trying a different track.
‘There are things that I cannot talk about here. Things that happened in the war. Perhaps you have heard of something called the Official Secrets Act?’ Oh yes, I like that.
It sounds bona fide, a whiff of heroism.
And it feels right, too! After all, I could have been heroic, in different circumstances.
‘Anyway. Suffice to say there were things that both of us did – had to do – that made us some enemies. I think they came for him.’
The French detective just looks at me. His eyes are a weird colour. In this light they seem to have no pupil. I feel a sudden chill.
‘And now,’ I say, ‘I think they’re coming for me.’