_THEY RETURN AT EVENING_
_THEY RETURN AT
EVENING_
_A BOOK OF GHOST STORIES_
_by
H. R. WAKEFIELD_
[Illustration]
_Quality Court
Philip Allan & Co., Ltd.
London_
_First Edition_ 1928
_Printed in Great Britain by Mackays Ltd., Chatham_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THAT DIETH NOT 9
II OR PERSONS UNKNOWN 49
III “HE COMETH AND HE PASSETH BY” 81
IV PROFESSOR POWNALL’S OVERSIGHT 131
V THE THIRD COACH 157
VI THE RED LODGE 185
VII “AND HE SHALL SING....” 211
VIII THE SEVENTEENTH HOLE AT DUNCASTER 237
IX A PEG ON WHICH TO HANG 263
X AN ECHO 287
THAT DIETH NOT
THAT DIETH NOT
PART I
Well, that’s over! I expected an ordeal and found almost a farce.
There is something to be said for being a Local Notable. For example,
deferential condolences and preferential treatment (and no awkward
questions) from the Coroner when one’s wife is found dead at the bottom
of the steps into the garden. With what censorious disdain old Weldon
brushed aside the curiosity of Mr. Trench Senior! Now I have prosecuted
Trench Junior for poaching three times; consequently Trench Senior
does not love me. So I was none too pleased to see him on the Jury. I
knew he would be nasty if he saw a chance, and he asked a very nasty
and intelligent question. For if she had tripped on the top steps I
doubt if she would have fallen so far, and if she had slipped lower
down, why such shattering injury? Why indeed! You didn’t deserve such a
pulverising rebuke, Mr. Trench, but I’m very glad you got it!
And now that it is all over I can reflect without anxiety. Reflect
that I am a murderer and, as such, if I got my deserts, a doomed and
execrated pariah. No more loose generalisation was ever made than that
whoever commits adultery--and, of course, any other sin or crime--in
his heart, is guilty of that offence. Every man of imagination who
is tempted commits sins in his heart as often as he is tempted, but
not one in ten thousand commits them with his hand. Myriads of men
must have played with the idea of killing their wives, but _I killed
mine_. Is there no difference? Consult the Shade of Ethel! No, I
realise perfectly that I possess a kink which should have resulted in a
six-foot drop. That I might never kill again, and that it was only by
an acute combination of circumstances that I did so once, is beside the
point.
A murderer should die--if he is sane and sober and selfish.
And am I so sure I could never commit another? I am not so sure. I have
no remorse. There might be something to be said for a murderer who
bitterly repents (though I’d hang him), but as for me--why shouldn’t
I murder again if someone again drove me to such an extremity of
exasperation?
I rehearse all this--why and to whom? Why, because, murderer though
I am, I feel compelled to tell the story of this repulsive episode
impartially, and so rid my mind of it and, perhaps, forget it, for,
murderer though I am, otherwise I believe myself to be reasonably
decent and civilised, and I want to see what sort of defence I can
muster. And to whom do I address myself? Well, it has long been a
theory of mine--more than that, a profound conviction--that the
minds of men are far more complex, bifurcated and stratified than is
generally accepted or perceived. There is more than one “I” pervading
my consciousness. There is the “I,” the murderer, who is sitting here
recalling, sifting and writing down. “I” number one, let us call him;
but there is also “I” number two, who is compelled to observe “I”
number one. It has been suggested that there is also a “number three”
watching “number two,” and so on _ad infinitum_. It may be so, but for
me there is a limit set to the terms in the series, and it is fixed
at “number two.” I often feel compelled to explain to him the actions
of “number one,” though I do not feel he is or wants to be a judge,
but just an aloofly interested spectator; in no sense a “conscience,”
but poised in another layer of consciousness. It is with such vague
precision that this duality works in me. And I want to explain to
this watcher just how I came to kill Ethel. He may or may not be
particularly interested, but he is in the unfortunate position of being
compelled to listen!
* * * * *
I was thirty-one, wanting an heir, an ingenuous lover of beauty, and
Ethel was certainly beautiful, and, I thought, a destined mother of
robust children. That is why I proposed to her. I am wealthy, “a
prominent local figure”; Ethel had an allowance of £40 a year--that
is why she accepted me. She was highly intelligent in a debased
feminine way, and she never used her brains to better purpose than in
her behaviour to me during our engagement. A lovely piece of acting!
Quite flawless. Such a lover of the country, adoring children, so
docile, unselfish and interested in everything which interested me!
What a treasure I believed I was about to acquire! Before the end of
our honeymoon I began desperately to doubt it. She let me know quite
uncompromisingly that she intended to “social push” with vigour and
success. Now I am by nature a recluse, a detester of crowds, a loather
of London: I make friends slowly and doubtingly, though most firmly
now and again. But I flinch from “acquaintances” and the claims upon
one’s time and nerves they entail. It was, therefore, with incredulous
dismay that I discovered Ethel was determined that we should spend six
months in London and three months in fashionable resorts, and that I
was to spend those six months playing the sedulous host and involving
myself in an incessant spate of fatuous entertainment. When I had
somewhat absorbed this shock I told her that it was the tradition in
my family personally to look after the estate during most of the year,
that I must work very hard if my book on “The Future of the Novel as
an Art Form” was to be ready in time, that I wanted children, and that
her programme was impossible. And then I had my first taste of that
most wicked temper. Had I faced up to it and fought her, I believe I
could have gained a precarious victory, but it was so horrible, so
disgusting and intolerable that I gave way. It was a fatal blunder, for
she then knew she possessed a most potent weapon against me. I did not
capitulate unconditionally, but I felt exasperatedly certain that I
should have to renew the battle before I should be able to enforce my
side of the bargain.
Well, I agreed to do what she wanted for one year; to take a house
in London for the Season and a Villa on the Riviera for the winter.
I should have considered this quite reasonable if she had not been
granted every opportunity before our marriage to understand what
sort of person I am; and if she had not so cunningly and wickedly
concealed from me what manner of woman she was. And though it is very
plausible to say that my love for her should have made me delighted
to please her, that is really vast rubbish, for the deep, dominating
characteristics of a man’s temperament can never be changed, while one
can love and cease to love and love again.
Though it caused my vitality to droop and drain, I fulfilled my part
of the contract. I took a monstrosity in Bruton Street, gave four huge
parties, attended dozens of other huge parties, was forced to carry on
disjointed chat through _Tristan_ in a box, sit through _Rigoletto_ in
a stall, and poison my system in Night Clubs; so learning to despise
humanity--or rather that brand of it--as no man should be taught.
Had I possessed a constitution which would have allowed me to drink
my critical sense to drowsing point, I might have tolerated such a
_régime_, but, unfortunately, my grandfather had mortgaged the family
liver.
As I withered Ethel bloomed. Her polluted sense of values and her
intense social vanity made her revel in this frenetic round of
snobbery, this eternal return of jostling, aimless futility.
I was not a success. My temperament nipped me below the arm-pits and
dragged me round, the skeleton at the feast, though I never caused any
awed hush to fall upon the assembly.
“Arthur, I do wish you’d make an effort to seem to enjoy things,”
Ethel once said. “The other night I overheard George Willard say that
you were the World’s Worst Flat-tyre at a party. It makes me feel so
ashamed and embarrassed.”
“Do you think I care what that chinless, brainless, Bateman-drawing
thinks about me?” I replied, knowing I was a fool to argue.
“Well, he’s the son of a Duke,” said Ethel; “and what do you mean by a
‘Bateman-drawing’?”
“Oh, he was a pupil of Rembrandt,” I replied inanely.
“You pretend to know all about Art, but the other day, when Lady Frowse
was trying to discuss the Academy with you, you looked absolutely
‘gaga.’”
“Lady Frowse,” I replied, “was quoting verbatim from the notice in the
_Times_, which, unfortunately, I had already read.”
Then Ascot, jostle, clothes, and equine interludes--then Cowes,
jostle, different clothes and the occasional belching of a decrepit
cannon. And then Ethel went off to twitter in butts, and I, thank God,
to Paradown and peace.
I made good progress with my book; my intense feeling of release
fortunately stimulating my creative energy. I had also plenty of
time to think, though nothing very pleasant to think about. I had
the most bitter and smarting self-contempt. To think that I could
have been such an utter flaming fool as to have ruined my life by a
fatuous idealisation of a certain fortuitous combination of pigment,
cuticle--and the way the blood shone through it, hair--and the way
the light caught it, bones--and the way their envelope draped round
them. A perilous privilege, “a sense of beauty.” But had I ruined
it? I considered the chances. Ethel was perfectly happy, rapidly
stabilising her position amongst the Right People, with my cheque book
as her entrenching tool and her temper to animate my fountain pen,
with her beauty and her sexlessness and her unscrupulousness to get
what she wanted from men and to keep her from ever repaying the debt.
What a way to think about one’s wife! Humbug! There was no other way
to think about her. No, there would be no co-respondent to encourage
and supplicate! And I could do nothing, unless I refused to fill my
fountain pen, and I could not do that, for I had only myself to blame,
and I was ready to blame myself. At present I could see no hope.
I lived a life of extreme asceticism, feeling feebly that by so doing I
was defying and rejecting Ethel. Once I had been fool enough to regard
women as mentally almost indistinguishable, and it had been merely by
the physical criterion I had separated one from another in my mind. Now
that I had been taught to despise the dangerous deceptiveness of eyes
and breasts, colouring and curves and all those superficial stimulants
which excite the featherless biped man to idealise the featherless
biped woman, I realised what I should have known a year before--that I
could only love someone with a mind I could respect. “What care I how
fair she be, if she’s naught but fair to me?”
Ethel came down at the end of October, her waist heavy with social
scalps. A title had the same effect on her as the sound of a hunting
horn on a pack of hounds. It gave her a delicious sense of excitement
and well-being. When on one occasion she was addressed by a Minor
Royalty for one thrilling moment, I believed she was about to die of
joy. And, bitterly as she learned to loathe me, I am certain the fact
she was loathing the current number of one of the oldest baronetcies in
England gave her a soothing sense of social pride.
I had been working very hard on a delicate and highly contentious
section of my book, and was inclined to be irritable and “on edge.”
Luckily at first Ethel was fairly amenable. For one thing, she had the
Riviera to which to look forward, for another she was learning to ride,
an art which she had been instructed was a necessary accomplishment
for an English Gentlewoman. She learned quickly, and looked as nearly
palatable as any Gentlewoman can when topped by a silk hat. The
servants hated her, for her attitude towards them veered from touchy
insolence to obviously insincere blandishments, and that they disliked
both variants they showed most definitely though courteously.
As a Local Notable it was my duty to introduce Ethel to those of my
neighbours and friends she had not already met in London, and for this
purpose I gave a series of week-end parties. The fact that I do not
puncture or pursue the fauna of Wiltshire by any of the traditional
methods has not prevented me from being on most excellent terms with
my neighbours. I think I can say I have worked pretty hard at those
often tiresome jobs which the occupation of a prominent local position
entail. I am regarded as a bit of a freak--as was my father before me,
but my idiosyncrasies give them something to talk about, and there is
a “Dear Oldness” about their references to me which mark the absence
or passing of criticism. I was curious to observe how my good friends
would regard my good lady. Well, the Elderly Ladies Who Knew, knew she
was not quite a lady. The young women envied her clothes and looks,
but I do not think they envied _me_. The men behaved in a robustly
gallant manner towards her, partly out of consideration to me and
partly because her beauty was within limits overwhelming. But I think
they reserved judgment. A few fledglings fell in love with her and they
_did_ envy me. How I should have rejoiced to have settled some money on
her and danced at her wedding to one of them!
She played her part rather well, but that which has fundamental flaws
betrays itself inevitably by superficial cracks. Her breaks were not
shattering, but they were palpable, and not one of them went by the
Elderly Ladies Who Knew. She was quite unconscious of them. I usually
said nothing, but I had to protest against one. She had repeated with
the eager placid certainty of the natural scandal-monger a scabrous
little rumour about the morals of Lady Pount’s niece in the presence
of her Aunt. While undressing, I suggested that the study of Debrett
should not be pursued too academically, and that the art of knowing Who
is Who should be an applied art, in so much as it might prevent awkward
pauses in the hour of anecdote. And I gave as an instance the choice
little canard she had repeated that evening. At which she lost her
temper uneasily.
“I can’t remember all those people! How was I to know they were
related? It’s true, anyway, and I think she ought to be shown up, it’s
disgusting.”
“Nothing,” I said, “is worth an awkward pause, not even the exposure of
notorious evil-livers. Some people have a sixth sense for knowing how
to avoid them. Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.”
A short but violent scene ensued.
So we scrambled along the broad, well mile-stoned path to mutual
hostility. I made occasional half-hearted attempts to persuade myself
that Ethel was other than she was. She felt, when she inspected her
wardrobe and my broad acres and stable, and all those joys which I
had brought into her life, that there were sufficiently compensating
“Betters” for the “Worse.”
And then it was time for the Riviera, its boomed beauty, its bloody
brood. What a region! I have cruised the Mediterranean fairly
extensively, and it is no Sea for me. What merits the Southern Latins
may once have possessed is a matter of opinion; that they retain
any to-day seems to me untenable. A breed of pimps, parasites and
horse-torturers, the choicest surviving examples of that _cretin_
civilisation which is Catholicism’s legacy to the world. And it has
always seemed to me that members of races vastly their intellectual and
moral superiors become debased and degraded when brought in contact
with them, though I know the region attracts the worst.
Ethel was so happy. She changed her clothes at intervals during the
day, and made the acquaintance of a Grand-Duke, who was accompanied
by a selection from his harem. Her delight in this encounter was so
unconcealed that the nobleman for some time believed that she was
anxious to be enrolled in his service! She “adored” the Casino. I
took one look at those tables. A vice is known by the company it
collects. There must be something to be said for opium. It makes glad
the heart of Chinks, it induced _The Ancient Mariner_, and made De
Quincey immortal. Booze has many excellent songs, Boris Goudonov, and
missed partridges to its credit. Even murder can point to detective
stories--the favourite literature of our Great Ones, and the support
of hangmen’s families. But gambling has nothing to justify its
existence unless it be Revolver Smith’s dividends and A New Use for Old
Piano Cases. My absence from this Rouge et Noir midden didn’t matter,
for Ethel had many friends who considered it a Green Baize Paradise.
I mooned about aimlessly, did a little work, pretended at dropsical
meals that I was having a good time, and then one day decided I could
stick no more of it. So I informed Ethel and quelled the inevitable
typhoon by reminding her she was there at my expense and that she could
stay there _alone_ at my expense if she chose, otherwise we’d both
return to England at my expense. This syllogistic presentation of the
case impressed her, and I returned alone.
On the journey home I had an opportunity for coolly regarding things
in themselves, with particular reference to my marriage. By then I
knew for certain that Ethel would never leave me of her own accord.
She had everything she wanted, a title, money to burn, a circle of
sycophants, a husband she could dominate. Could she? I supposed so, for
the dread of scenes is the beginning and end of feminine domination
in the case of men of my type, weak, introspective, with sensitive
ears and a tantalising tolerance. I say _tantalising_ because, were I
asked to prescribe for the matrimonial troubles of others, I should be
cool, hard, a rationalist, a regarder of facts in the face. I should
prescribe for those in my state a drastic, cauteristic remedy, and feel
confident of its efficacy. “No sentimentalist need apply” I should
inscribe on my brass plate.
“Physician, heal thyself,” the hardest of all hard sayings! But this is
how I should prescribe in a case such as mine. “Force a divorce, you
will never be happy. You know her chief concern is money, settle some
on her. Living with her seems the Devil, well, take him by the horns.”
Perfectly sound, common sense itself, but I couldn’t do it.
A week after getting back I received a cable, “Returning immediately.
Ethel.”
This unexpected announcement filled me with a vague excitement. What
had she been up to? Something which might lead to a solution--a
dissolution? I enjoyed twenty-four hours of such straw-clutching, and
then she arrived, and, as was her wont, went straight and viciously to
the point. “I’m going to have a baby, and I won’t have a baby. You’ve
got to help me. It’ll spoil everything. I don’t care how much you want
it. Tell me someone to go to.”
“I shall do nothing of the kind,” I replied. “Certainly I want you to
have a child, and you’ll be much happier. Now, Ethel, be unselfish
about this!”
“Happier! Unselfish! I like that. You don’t have to spend nine foul
months, be cut out of everything, and probably have your figure ruined.
I refuse to argue about it. Will you help me?”
“No, I won’t,” I said.
She said no more, but in ten minutes she was on her way to London.
I heard nothing more from her for a fortnight, and then one evening she
came back. She went straight to her room, refused to see me, and dined
in bed.
However, I went up to her after dinner.
She was shaking with anger, and her eyes were those of a trapped lynx.
“I told you I didn’t want to see you, but now you’re here let me tell
you this, I will _never_ bear your child.”
I think it was then, when I saw her hatred for me, that I first knew I
hated her, and I suppose the murderer in me first woke to life.
She was as good as her word. She had a miscarriage two weeks later,
and became quite light-hearted again. One day she came into my
dressing-room when I was shaving to tell me that, as she was not quite
fit enough to hunt, she was going up to London, and had taken a suite
at Claridge’s. And then I received the worst shock of my life. She bent
down for a moment to smell a bowl of roses on the dressing table. I had
my razor in my hand, and for a moment I believed I could not restrain
myself from cutting that lovely throat. With an agonising effort of
self-control, I flung the razor on the floor. Ethel glanced up quickly,
and, I suppose, partially understood the look in my face, for she put
her hands to her eyes and ran from the room. She went up to London
after breakfast, leaving me to my thoughts.
For the rest of the day I could not control my nerves nor stay still
for a moment, for my brain continually forced that hideous picture
before my eyes. I could see her writhing on the carpet, the blood
gushing from her throat. And that night, each time I fell into an
uneasy doze, it came as a fleeting dream vision more vivid and
more vile. I knew I was receiving a most urgent warning, that my
subconsciousness was telling me that inevitably, if I continued to see
her, one day I should kill her.
The next morning I met Margaret Pascal. It was the only time I have
figured in one of those coy sexual situations beloved by the authors of
scenarios, for I found her embraced by barbed wire in Far Wood. After
I had disentangled her and noticed the lovely junction of her legs and
feet, we began a vague little talk. I told her my name. “This is all
yours then,” she said. “Was I trespassing?”
“Technically, yes,” I replied. “But please commit the offence as often
as you like.”
“I am staying with the Franks,” she said, “and was just wandering
about. As a matter of fact, I adore birds, and there’s a shrike’s
larder in that thorn just there, and I wanted to examine the grisly
little feast.”
She had a curiously deep and individual voice, and one can fall in love
with a voice at first hearing, as I did. While we inspected the sorry
and dismembered collation, each drawn, quartered and impaled remnant
fluttering in the breeze, I appraised her. I had learned bitterly to
distrust women’s looks, so I paid little attention to her physical
attributes. It was a certain combination of sweetness and intelligence,
of gentleness and determination, and her all-pervading rightness, which
lulled and soothed and stirred and excited me. She told me afterwards
that I had the same immediate effect on her. A certain tension
established itself, a happy unease.
When we parted I asked her if she would like me to show her over a part
of the estate which was specially famous for its birds and beasts, for
I had forbidden my keepers to shoot or trap there. She said she would
love it, and I arranged to fetch her in the car early next day.
I found my mood had completely changed. I could even examine Ethel’s
photograph with a whistling ease, for everything else I had a bounding
pulse and a flattering eye. And I knew why--it was because I was
falling in love with Miss Pascal, and that it would make me exquisitely
happy so to do. I could hardly realise Ethel existed, and felt quite
care-free whether she did or not. I knew the reaction must come, but
for the moment I was anæsthetised and thinking only of the morrow.
I called for Margaret early. The Franks are pleasant hunting, shooting
and horticultural nonentities, and I think they were a little
astonished at my precipitance; for my reputation is not exactly that
of one who chooses to spend a whole day alone with a strange female.
But it was the happiest day I had ever spent. I found in Margaret just
that congruent complement of myself--association with which makes life
worth living--and nothing else does. She was twenty-nine, very straight
and strong. Her features I never have bothered about, though I gathered
that a good many other men had. She has an admirable instinct for
pictures, music and the written word, and her critical sense is quick
and certain. I gathered she had practised at all three for a time,
but had gallantly renounced each in turn, realising she could never
transcend mediocrity. “I prefer,” she said, “to criticise the successes
of others happily, than to face my own failures with angry tears in my
eyes. In many a second-rate painter and writer is buried a first-rate
critic. A little talent is a cruel thing.”
In the afternoon I took her for a fifty-mile run. Driving a car is one
of my few accomplishments, and a lust for speed one of the very few
unexpected traits in my character (a capacity for flinging my wife down
a row of steps is the only other one I can recall).
My Ponitz has done 110 miles an hour at Brooklands and is the fastest
car on the road I have ever known. Motor shop is the most boring
of all, for fooling about with a car is for most people merely a
substitute for thought. It is not so with me. Timid by nature, I
resolved to conquer this timidity. Driving was an agony to me at first;
I imagined a crash at every corner, and a corpse in every adjacent
pedestrian, but slowly I gained confidence, and then my curious,
restless mania for speed asserted itself.
I asked Margaret if she minded fast driving. “Go ahead,” she replied,
“and I’ll tell you afterwards.” There was a perfect three-mile straight
on the way home, and we touched eighty. She was in her element. “Take
me again,” she cried. “It was simply glorious, and I’ve never seen such
perfect control. I don’t mean to be personal, but it seemed to me you
became a different person as soon as we reached sixty, somehow defiant
and austere.”
“How far would you like to go next time?” I asked. “Past the Plunge
of Plummet?” and felt a fool for asking. She looked at me sharply and
flushed slightly.
“Your wife might have something to say to that. By the way, when is she
coming back?”
“Not yet awhile,” I answered irritably. “Would you like to come
to-morrow?”
“I’d love it,” said Margaret, “but till I know you better you mustn’t
take me too far.” She said that lightly, but with a certain emphasis.
My recent social experiences had taught me that the average young woman
of her class was at best a _demi-vierge_, and such a remark from such
an one would merely have implied encouragement for a casual intrigue,
but I knew Margaret hadn’t a trace of the promiscuous rip in her
make-up, and I knew she knew I loved her, and that she mistrusted her
powers of resistance. This went to my heart.
So it began, and it moved swiftly. A few days later we decided that it
was impossible for her to stay on with the Franks and continue to see
me each day. So I took a flat in Paris, and there we lived together.
“In sin,” you suggest, number two. If you like to, call it so. When one
has lost and found oneself in a woman, what the respectable sensualist
focuses his smutty spectacles upon and the Law deliciously terms
“misconduct” becomes of the most petty importance. It is not quite
negligible, for in that hopeless, tantalising longing for complete
fusion, when four eyes almost become two, and two minds just not one,
when in fleeting seconds of ecstasy the illusion of this complete
unison is attained, that mechanical conjunction is inevitable. But
to those who love imaginatively and therefore hunger and thirst and
lust and strive to isolate themselves from the rest of mankind, this
physically compelled commonplace loses its significance. It was only
Margaret who could make me dread to die.
I told Ethel I should be abroad for a while, but she showed no
interest in the information. By the time a month was up Margaret and I
were just not one person, and I the unhappiest man in the world, for
even if the view Prometheus enjoyed from his eyrie was the loveliest in
the world, he must for ever have turned his eyes away from it to search
for that speck in the sky. And often when I was alone with Margaret and
for the moment utterly happy and at peace, it seemed that Ethel’s face
crept in between us, and once again I felt that foul longing to get my
hands to her throat. She would never divorce me. I knew it, and I could
not force permanently on Margaret the uneasy, furtive alternative. She
would have accepted it gladly and made the best of it, but I could not
do it. “You preferred to murder your wife,” I hear you murmur with some
irony, number two. Yes, number two, I preferred to murder my wife.
We travelled back together, and I drove Margaret back to her flat in
Gloucester Place. On the way we were held up by a traffic block at the
Marble Arch. A car halted beside us, and as I glanced casually at it it
seemed familiar. And then I saw Ethel, smoking a cigarette and talking
to an elderly man with jackal’s eyes. She saw me a second later. The
cigarette dropped from her hand, and she craned forward to see who was
with me, and then the dam broke and we went on down Great Cumberland
Place.
“That was my wife in that car,” I said to Margaret.
I saw her hand tremble. “Did she see us? Does it matter?”
“She certainly saw me,” I replied, “and it matters not at all. But if I
know her, she’s the most frightened woman in London.”
We parted miserably and uncertainly, comforting each other with vague
hopes of some solution.
When I got back to Paradown, Ethel was waiting for me. She was shaking
with the rage of terror as she rushed at me.
“Who was that woman you were with? Someone you picked up in Paris, I
suppose. That’s what you call working at your rotten book! Who is she?”
“A Miss Pascal,” I said.
“Have you been living in Paris together?”
“Yes.”
“Are you in love with her?”
“Yes,” I said wearily.
“Oh, you are, are you? and planning to get rid of me. Well, I’m afraid
you won’t find it so easy. Remember this; I’ll never divorce you or
give you a chance to divorce me. You beast and hypocrite! Pretending
to be so cold and pious, and then sneaking off to Paris with the first
low woman you can find!”
I said nothing. The only chance to bring her scenes to a close was to
keep silence. Replying merely fed them.
“Can’t you speak, you beastly fool? Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“No,” I replied, “but I think we’d do better to separate.”
“Oh, you do! Well, you’ve had my answer. I’ll never leave you. I’ve
seen you look like a fiend at me, as if you wished I were dead, but if
I were, I’d still come between you and that strumpet.”
The application of that disgusting epithet to Margaret began to rouse
the killer in me, but I rallied all my self-control to subdue it.
“Well, then,” I said, “there’s no need for such a scene as this. If you
insist, you shall remain my wife in name, but in nothing more. I cannot
inhabit the same house with you, but I will make you as generous an
allowance as I can afford.”
“I imagine,” sneered Ethel, “that when that little drab has been
through your pockets it won’t be so generous!”
I got up to leave the room, and this completely destroyed the remnant
of her self-control. Her lips pouring out a stream of foul abuse,
she came for me, struck me with all her force in the mouth, spat in
my face, and then rushed over to my writing table, opened the drawer
which contained all the notes I had been working on for the last six
months, and flung them by handfuls in the fire. Something snapped in
my brain. When she had finished she ran from the room, and I followed
her stealthily. She went through the door into the garden to get
air, I suppose. Just as she reached the top step I seized her by the
shoulders and hurled her down. Her head struck the bottom step, and she
writhed over on to her back and lay still. Trembling with horror and
yet elation, I crept back to my study, and the butler found her an hour
later.
Well, number two, there is my story. I suppose rather a commonplace
sex-crime narrative. I’ll read it again in ten years’ time. I wonder if
I shall believe it ever happened!
PART TWO
_Which consists of a letter written by Sir Arthur Paradown to his
friend, Mr. Weldon, the Coroner._
My dear Weldon,
Seven months ago you held an inquest on my first wife. It will now
be your dubious pleasure to perform that office on me, and I am
sending you with this letter an account of the events leading up to
that first inquest; this will reveal the incidents leading up to the
second. And I am doing so because I have a favour to ask of you.
Can you forget for a few hours the fact that I was a murderer, and
remember that I was a fairly conscientious landowner and did my best
for the County and helped a few people to be a little happier? If
you can, do you think you can be a little unprofessional and tell
the Jury that I have written you a private letter which explains my
suicide, and that it has persuaded you that I was not insane, and
then treat these documents as secret? What harm can it do! And it
can do good, for my present wife is expecting to have a child in six
months’ time, and I do not want the stigma of my insanity to rest on
Margaret’s baby. Will you do this for me? Read what follows, and then
decide----
Murderer’s sob-stuff is a peculiarly repellent brand, so I will merely
state that when, six months later, I married Margaret, I knew for the
first time utter cloudless happiness--for just six weeks, and then one
evening after dinner, when we were sitting in my study, the telephone
bell rang. Margaret took off the receiver and listened for a moment.
“It’s making such a weird noise,” she said.
“Give it to me,” I replied, and put it to my ear.
“You thought you were rid of me, didn’t you, you murderer! But as you
killed me, I shall kill you!”
I knew the voice.
I made a casual remark, lest Margaret should suspect something was
wrong, and went out into the garden to recover from what had been a
terrific shock, and to regain my balance.
“Subjective or objective?” That is the old, old question on these
occasions. In the first case I was mad, subject to hallucinations, in
the second--well, then, a mystery of a different sort. There was little
to choose between the alternatives. I certainly felt as sane as ever,
but perhaps murder itself is a symptom of deep-rooted mental disease
which could break out in other ways. My whole being rejected this
hypothesis. But I had a dreadful certainty that in either case my doom
had been spoken. This certainly must have branded itself upon my face,
for Margaret was only half persuaded there was nothing wrong when I
went in again.
I had three days’ respite.
Margaret tolerated broadcasting, and our set was in use on most
evenings. I used to stop work and come in to hear the news. On this
occasion, after the usual ponderous catalogue of minutiæ, listeners,
as usual, were promised a “Little Piano Music” as a reward for their
patience. Instead--as far as I was concerned, a voice suddenly cried
out, “Sir Arthur Paradown murdered me, his wife, on March 9th.”
I gripped my chair and glanced at Margaret, but she was placidly
reading. “It’s very clear to-night,” she said.
It was ridiculous and yet dreadful. I felt a deep horror of myself, an
awful sense of isolation and distress. The question was--could I face
this persecution? But then, I might be mad! I’d see a specialist the
next day. In any case I was involved in something foul. My loathing for
Ethel was such that, had she been with me, I would have strangled her
in cold blood.
The specialist found nothing the matter, and was obviously puzzled at
my visit. I told him I fancied I heard sounds which were imperceptible
to others. It sounded vague and lame. He made a few obvious remarks
about possible over-work, which were so nauseatingly inadequate to my
trouble that I hurried away. Of course I’d only gone to him in panic,
it was a witch-doctor I needed.
Margaret, as arranged, rang me up at the club at lunch-time. Just as
she had finished reciting a list of things she wanted me to do for her,
her voice went blurred, and through it came another: “Are you beginning
to be sorry you murdered me? You can tell me when I come to you at
Paradown.”
In the agonised daze which from then on always ensued on these
occasions, I drove back home. “When I come to you.” What had she meant
by that?
When Margaret came out to greet me, I took her in my arms and kissed
her, and let the small, clean fraction of my soul sink into her.
“What’s the matter, my darling?” she asked, looking anxiously into my
eyes.
“Sweetest,” I replied, “if I should die, think only this of me. I
adored you. There might have been a time for such a word.” I felt
unstrung, diseased, clinging to her, yet forced from her by that deadly
secret she never could nor should share.
“What is it, Arthur, my dearest? You’ve suddenly changed. Something has
happened. Tell me! Tell me! Whatever it is you can tell _me_.”
A surging, clanging fury of despair and self-pity raced through me and
then suddenly left me, left me limp and lying with a certain despair
and subtlety about over-work and liver and moodiness, rounded off with
a desperate sort of “Soon be all right again” coda.
Margaret forced some sort of reassurance on herself and went to bed. I
stayed up with my thoughts.
The bitterest knowledge which flays the brain of those who are at once
vile and highly sensitive is that of the misery they inflict on those
who love them. I know some who with a hardy egoism declare that the
simple must suffer and the complex must cause them to suffer, that that
is an inexorable law of life, and that the sufferings of the simple
are simple, tolerable little pangs, those of the complex insufferable
agonies, and that the only judge of a complex temperament should be
another equally complex. Alas, when murder is the symptom of complexity
that flattering unction fails of its purpose. Ethel had timed her
re-entry well. She just gave me time to realise the full extent of the
happiness of which she would deprive me, and she doubled my misery by
reflecting it back again from Margaret. How I longed to get my hands on
her!
Just before going up to bed I went out into the garden. As I came
through the door I saw her standing there on the top step with her back
to me, just as at that other time. And then it seemed as though I was
rent and torn apart, and that a shadow leapt from me, a furtive poised
thing, which took her by the shoulders and hurled her--hurled her----
Margaret found me lying there, and, poor darling, sent for dear old
Fritaker, who tried to pretend his feet were scientifically pacing the
bottom when he was hopelessly out of his depth.
“Nervous strain,” he diagnosed. “Bed, and feeding up,” he prescribed. I
felt like quoting _Macbeth_ to him.
Yet bed and feeding up and an aching determination to spare Margaret
contrived to patch me up, and for fleeting moments I felt some little
reassurance. The “symptoms” of my disorder were not renewed, still I
felt that Ethel knew her business, and would torture me with finesse.
In that case could I train myself to nerve myself against her? Could I
face the worst she could do, leading otherwise a normal, sufficiently
tolerable existence? Could I deceive and so protect Margaret? I
must fight for her. My rotting brain might merely be breeding these
phantoms in its corruption, though relatively there seemed to me little
difference between being haunted by Ethel objectively and haunting
myself with her subjectively. In any case I would fight. I sent for my
lawyer and had my affairs put finally in order, and a week later got up
and resumed my normal life. And for some days nothing happened, and I
began to wonder if, perhaps, I had had some obscure nervous disorder--a
lesion which had healed itself.
And then one evening, just before dusk, when Margaret was in the
garden, I had occasion to go up to my dressing-room for some papers.
I opened the door. There was a coffin almost at my feet, housing a
shrouded figure. There was a dark patch where the head of this figure
should have been, and from it came something which slithered writhing
down the shroud, and then the figure began slowly to rise.
I shut the door and cowered shuddering in the passage. When I felt I
had strength to move I went down, drank a glass of brandy, and kept
out of Margaret’s way till dinner. But by that time she was seriously
frightened about me and watching me closely, so she knew at once I
had had a “relapse.” I assured her that such ups and downs were to be
expected, but agreed to go up to London with her for a change. Anything
to make her happy, and one place was as good as another to one in my
case. We went up the next day.
I was out alone seeing my publisher the next morning, and when I got
back to the hotel I asked the lift-attendant if my wife was in. He said
she was, as he’d seen a lady entering our suite. She was not there,
however, so I asked him if he was quite certain, and he said that he
was. Just then his bell rang, and a moment later he came up again with
Margaret. His face was a study in astonishment. I tipped him and told
him it was all right. I imagine he suspected that Salt Lake City was my
spiritual home.
I only mention this little incident, Weldon, as evidence that these
appearances were, up to a point at least, perceived by others, and
therefore some evidence of my sanity.
What undermined and pierced me was that as my life grew more shadowed
Margaret and I were being prised apart. She was still my darling, and
the fact that she loved me the sole justification for my living, but I
felt I was living in an extra dimension, as it were, that the shadow of
what I had done and what I was suffering was erecting a barrier between
us, and soon I should be alone with my secret, isolated and yet in some
deadly way still Ethel’s husband. I could see that Margaret felt this
vaguely, too, and that she knew something was sweeping us apart. I used
to wonder miserably how I seemed to her, and what torturing, confused,
despairing realisation must have come to her. If only I could have told
her! But her belief in me was all I had to cling to, and I could not
tell her that I had flung Ethel down those steps! And yet, if I could
have got my hands on Ethel’s throat, I’d have been a murderer again.
That obscene, meagre, despicable, mercenary, murdered fool! The best
thing I ever did was to crack that evil little skull. She may have had
her revenge, but if there are steps in Hell--melodrama! and likely to
make a bad impression on you, my dear Weldon.
My poor darling Margaret thought a little amusement would be good for
me, so we went to see some picture by Charlie Chaplin that evening. It
would have done me more good if Ethel hadn’t come in and sat down next
to me and begun to produce the picture, for something went snap in my
head and there were the steps at Paradown, and Ethel came out, and I
behind her, and down she went, and then her crushed and bleeding face
grew and grew and thrust itself into mine. And I found myself back at
Paradown in bed in my room and Margaret, white and wretched, and with
a certain dread and despair on her face, bending over me. And then I
remembered, and could not face her eyes. That was yesterday morning.
In the evening old Fritaker doped me, and Margaret went to bed in
another room. Eventually I dozed off, and woke again, and then, as I
turned sleepily, someone slipped into my arms. For a moment I had the
ecstasy of feeling Margaret’s heart beating against mine. And then I
doubted, shook, and turned on the reading lamp beside the bed, and
there was Ethel. For a moment she was warm and whole, and then she
glazed, swelled and burst asunder, and became a seething bladder of
corruption.
That, my dear Weldon, was five hours ago. It is now 6.30. This dirty
little tale is ready for its envelope addressed to you. One bullet
stands between me and release--for I can’t fight _that_--and, I hope,
between my hands and Ethel’s throat. I’m not mad, I’m not mad, I swear
it!
OR PERSONS UNKNOWN
OR PERSONS UNKNOWN
Mr. James Ponders rubbed his nose, and then read again his brother’s
letter:--
“Dear Jim,
“I’ve just got back from Madeira, and am so sorry to hear about poor
old Reynolds. How you must miss him! Have you got anyone else yet?
If not, I have someone I can recommend with perfect confidence. He
is a man of the name of Millin, who was my valet for a time many
years ago; I don’t suppose you remember him. He left me to take up
‘butling,’ and was with Harry Roper till his death. He then went to
Sir Roger Wallington, a very curious cove. You may remember that
there was a mighty mystery about his passing. Well, Millin was
suspected of having murdered him, not that there was any motive
brought forward, but simply because he was sleeping in a room near
by, and there was no other man in the house. Superficially it looked
fishy. However, there was no real evidence against him, and he was
never arrested. Now when I read the case I _knew_ quite positively
that Millin was innocent. He is one of the best fellows in the world,
kind, thoughtful, a gentleman if ever there was one, besides being as
efficient and hard-working as they’re made. So I asked him to come to
see me. When he came, looking weary and worn, he suddenly blurted out
the very curious story which I hope you’ll permit him to tell to you.
“Now you know what an arrant old sceptic I am, nevertheless I
believed every word of this very curious story, though it tends
to drive a hole clean through all my scandalous and antediluvian
materialism.
“Now there are many more things in _your_ heaven and earth than in
mine, so if I can believe it, you should have no difficulty in doing
likewise. If you can, that act of faith will give you the finest
servant in Europe, and a charming companion. His past has made it
impossible for him to get a decent job, so I have been looking after
him for the last two years. This seems a heaven-sent opportunity to
do you and him a very good turn. At any rate see him. He is 46 and a
bachelor. I hope you’re flourishing; I should like to pay you a visit
in June some time, if you’d like to have me.
“LEONARD.
“P.S.--His address is 38, Mustard Row, Clapham.”
Certainly Mr. Ponders missed Reynolds, his devoted companion for 25
years. To middle-aged bachelors with large Tudor houses, dwarfed
social senses and a great appreciation of personal comfort, to perhaps
a little bit selfish gentry of this sort, their butlers are, next to
themselves, the most important people in the world. Mrs. Dupine did her
best, Mr. Ponders conceded, but he had noted several little unpleasant
omissions during the last three weeks. He had interviewed several
highly recommended and rotund individuals since Reynolds’ death, but
none of them had really appealed to him.
But was there anything less appealing than to have always near
one somebody who had been seriously suspected of having cut his
master’s throat! for that was how Sir Roger had come to his end, as
he remembered. Might not such an one, encouraged by the success of
his first--if it were his first--butchery, proceed with careful and
cunning planning to commit another!
Had these questions been raised by anyone but his brother Leonard, Mr.
Ponders would have scorned to put himself to the trouble of answering
them. But his brother Leonard was without exception the finest judge of
character he knew. He was _inspired_, his instinct flawless. He _could_
not disregard his opinion in this case. Mr. Ponders was rather a timid,
and perhaps a little old-fashioned and prejudiced person, but he prided
himself on his courage and open-mindedness. Would he have a claim to
either if he refused to see this Mr. Millin? He would not. Besides, it
sounded as though his story might be of interest to an earnest student
of psychic phenomena. And he _did_ want a butler. So he straightway sat
down at his bureau in that glorious study, the pride of that famous
show-place, Ponders Manor, in the County of Bucks, the ancestral seat
of the Ponders line, and wrote a note to Mr. Millin in his flowing yet
staccato script, asking him, were it convenient to him, to come down
the following Thursday. He suggested the 11.30 train from Marylebone. A
car would meet him at Great Missenden. All this would be, of course, at
his, Mr. Ponders’ expense.
He also wrote to his brother Leonard. Then he looked at his watch and
found it was 4.30. Chess time for a man of habit, so out came the ivory
pieces, the chequered board, and the book of the New York Tourney,
and he began studiously analysing that mighty tilt, “Capablanca _v._
Alechin, Round I.”
On the next evening he received a note from Mr. Millin respectfully
announcing his intention of catching the 11.30 next Thursday.
Mr. Ponders looked forward to this interview with controlled
trepidation. Fancy meeting someone--all alone in his study--who but for
the lack of a little evidence might have been hanged--might have been
“jerked,” they called it, didn’t they?
Certainly, but for Leonard, he would not have put himself in such a
position.