Before the Fact Page 22

  Johnnie had saved Beaky’s life because he had not been ready for him to die.

  The money was in a Paris bank, under an alias. Only Beaky could draw a cheque for it. Until Johnnie had Beaky’s cheque, Beaky must not die.

  Lina knew that this revelation meant that she could delude herself no longer. She had two minutes in which to act. And if she did not act, Beaky’s life might be the price of her complacence.

  It was her last chance. And his.

  Johnnie did mean to kill Beaky – sometime. Lina knew it. She always had known it, really.

  Once Beaky drove away from here ...

  “Beaky!” she gasped out. Her teeth were chattering, and the skin of her face felt as if it had been drawn tight, like parchment on a drum.

  “Hullo? Here, I say, you are cold. I knew you were. What? You hop indoors.”

  “Yes, but Beaky ...” She must stop him going – detain him somehow, till she could decide what to do.

  “Consider it said,” replied Beaky firmly, and propelled her through the doorway. “Anyhow, here comes the old bean with the water. I’ll be pushing off in a minute. Well, good-bye, and all that sort of rot. I mean, cheer-oh. What?”

  Through the morning-room window, a minute later, Lina watched him drive away.

  11

  The next morning Johnnie had a telegram.

  It came over the telephone, and Lina herself received it.

  It was from Johnnie’s brother, Alec, asking Johnnie to meet him in London for dinner that evening on urgent business.

  “Damn!” said Johnnie. “That’s a bit inconvenient. I’ve been putting off a lot of jobs till Beaky went. Think I ought to go, monkeyface?”

  “Yes,” said Lina. “Of course you must. How long will you be away?”

  “Oh, not more than a couple of nights, if that. Well, I suppose I’d better pack.”

  Lina was not sorry that Johnnie was going away for two days. She wanted to be alone. It would help her to get things into their right perspective and rid herself of the lingering shadow of the bogey. She knew now that that moment of absurd panic on the doorstep yesterday morning had been caused by a last flick of the bogey’s tail. It had been extremely lucky that Beaky pushed her indoors before she said anything too dreadful.

  And in any case Beaky was safe enough in Yorkshire, with Johnnie under Alec’s eye in London.

  Not of course that there was any question of safety, really. Had not Johnnie actually saved his life?

  Still, Beaky was safe.

  She went upstairs to see what Johnnie was forgetting to pack.

  12

  Lina forced herself to read the little paragraph again.

  PARIS TRAGEDY

  ENGLISHMAN DEAD

  The Englishman who was found dead in a house of amusement in Paris, as reported in our later editions yesterday, has now been identified as Mr. Gordon Cochrane Thwaite, of Penshaze Court, Yorkshire. Further details are now to hand of the manner in which the tragedy occurred.

  It appears that Mr. Thwaite visited the resort, which has a questionable reputation, in the company of another Englishman. Both men had evidently been drinking during the evening, and on arrival Mr. Thwaite ordered a bottle of brandy. They then passed into a smaller room, together with two young women belonging to the establishment, and all four partook of the brandy. According to the statement of one of the girls, the brandy being of a good brand, Mr. Thwaite’s companion asked for it to be served in large beakers, and these were provided. In a spirit of bravado, Mr. Thwaite filled one of these to the brim and drank it off. Owing to the fact that neither of the girls understands more than a few words of English, it is not clear how Mr. Thwaite came to perform such a foolhardy action, but their impression is that the men were having a bet on whether Mr. Thwaite would do it or not.

  Mr. Thwaite’s companion was not present when the tragedy happened, having left the house a few moments after the incident of the brandy. The French police have not yet succeeded in establishing his identity. They would be grateful if he would communicate with them, in order that he may confirm the young women’s account of what took place. His name would appear to be Allbeam, or Holebean.

  We understand that Penshaze Court is entailed and will pass to a distant cousin of the deceased.

  13

  Lina was searching feverishly in Johnnie’s desk in the morning room.

  Johnnie was out. She had not seen him since she had read the paragraph in the newspaper in bed, after her breakfast.

  How she had managed to get up, dress, talk to the cook, and perform her other routine jobs just as if this was a morning exactly like any other morning, she hardly knew. She hoped dully that the servants had got no inkling of the panic, the horror, and the sick despair through which her mind had had to fight as she talked with them.

  Now she was free; and, outraging every canon of her upbringing, she was searching Johnnie’s private papers. She searched partly in a desperate hope that she might find proof that the man in Paris had not been Johnnie, and that it really had been Alec himself and not poor, unsuspecting Beaky who had sent that telegram; partly in a still more desperate fear that she would find proof of quite another sort. In any case she must know.

  She found her proof.

  Among the old receipts, the letters, and all the other unsorted rubbish of years, in a little drawer by itself, there was a small black account book. Lina looked at it cursorily at first, and then, because she did not understand the entries, more carefully. It was full of lists of curious names, preceded each by a date and followed by a sum in pounds; and in front of the pounds there was a plus or a minus sign, in red ink.

  One or two familiar names in the lists caught her eye, and she realized at what she was looking. It was Johnnie’s betting book.

  There was no need for her to do any calculations. Johnnie had done them for her, on the opposite pages. At the time of Beaky’s death Johnnie had been nearly thirteen thousand pounds on the wrong side. He had been betting continuously, ever since he had first begun nearly eight years ago. There was no gap shown even after Lina had come back to him at the beginning of last summer.

  In another drawer Lina found the rest of the story: demands from bookmakers, letters from moneylenders, threats of proceedings, and all the rest. Her mind had been so bludgeoned that it hardly felt the extra blow of learning that Johnnie had actually borrowed money on the strength of his expectations under her own will.

  But the thing was plain enough. There were letters dated within the last month whose tone was unmistakable. Their writers meant business. If Johnnie did not pay, Johnnie would be jailed. Johnnie had been desperate.

  And Johnnie had taken desperate steps.

  There could be no glossing over the thing this time: no finding smooth words to veneer plain facts. This was murder. Lina knew that in whatever light she might have persuaded herself to regard her father’s death, she could not do the same thing now. This was murder.

  With mechanical neatness she put the papers back in the drawer exactly as she had found them and went upstairs to lock herself in her bedroom.

  She had been wrong. Johnnie had not touched bottom before. He had found yet another profundity to plumb.

  But this time it did not even enter Lina’s head to run desperately away from him.

  14

  For a fortnight or more Lina lived in almost continuous panic.

  Her terror was so great that it very nearly swamped every other emotion. Horror and despair were almost lost in fear.

  Her panic was lest Johnnie should be caught.

  At first it seemed to her impossible that Johnnie should not be traced. Every time there was a knock at the door, every time the telephone bell rang, she lived through Johnnie’s arrest and conviction for murder. In Bournemouth she found herself hurrying past policemen. Even the village policeman at home ceased to be a rather quick-witted rustic and became a figure of sinister significance.

  Her nerves were worn into rags. She would lo
ok at Johnnie, sitting there so merry and unperturbed, and could hardly stop herself from screaming.

  She felt herself and Johnnie cut off from the world: outcasts from humanity: marooned on a desert island of guilt. She and Johnnie, all alone.

  For this time she was as guilty as Johnnie. Guiltier, because she was the responsible one of the two.

  She had known – she had known that Beaky was going to be killed; and she had not uttered a word to prevent it. And Beaky had paid for her pusillanimity with his life.

  Lina wept and wept for Beaky and her own cowardice till she could hardly use her eyes for anything but weeping. Johnnie was much surprised that she should show so much feeling for a man whom she had always professed to dislike.

  Bitter, self-accusatory remorse was the only feeling which could struggle through the panic to the surface of her mind.

  There was scarcely any repulsion against Johnnie. Lina knew exactly what had been the process of his twisted mentality. “I know that half-a-pint of brandy will kill a man. Beaky ought to know it. If Beaky, with the knowledge that he ought to and indeed may have, is such a condemned idiot as to swallow half-a-pint of brandy, then that’s Beaky’s funeral. Nothing to do with me at all.”

  It had been Beaky’s funeral.

  And Johnnie had merely profited by it, just as the distant cousin had profited by it. Murder? What an extraordinary idea!

  If anything, Lina felt more protectively responsible for Johnnie than ever. Johnnie could not be held to account for what he did: Johnnie simply did not know. Lina’s protectiveness did not extend to the world in which Johnnie was loose.

  But if there was not repulsion, there were moments of horror. There was horror when Lina, watching the progress of Johnnie’s betting book and Johnnie’s drawers now every day, came across a batch of receipts five days after Beaky’s death: receipts from moneylenders, totalling nearly fourteen thousand pounds. They underlined Beaky’s death so dreadfully. Johnnie had been desperate, and now Johnnie was square again. Beaky had fulfilled his purpose.

  But there were no more entries in Johnnie’s betting book. Perhaps Johnnie too had known something about panic.

  There was more horror when Lina remembered that evening in the drawing room, when Johnnie had seemed to be trying to make Beaky drunk, for no reason at all. Lina knew now that there had been a reason. She knew now that she had been present at a rehearsal of Beaky’s murder.

  Gradually her panic subsided.

  There were no further references at all in the newspaper to Beaky’s death. The French police had probably despaired of finding Beaky’s companion. Slowly Johnnie’s complete confidence had its influence on Lina. She became calmer; her nerves rehabilitated themselves; her trembling fits ceased; she could pass the policemen in Bournemouth without averting her head.

  But she still had that curious cut-off feeling, as if she and Johnnie ought not to be mixing at all with decent, law-respecting people.

  However, there were still no more entries in Johnnie’s betting book. Lina almost cried again, with relief, about that. She was ashamed to catch herself thinking quite seriously, that if only Beaky, so useless in life, had by his death cured Johnnie of that terrible fever, he had not died for nothing.

  When she felt better, her conscience would not let her rest till she had tackled Johnnie on that point. To tackle him on that other, and so much greater point, had never once entered her mind. She could not have done it.

  “Johnnie, look here, I want to speak seriously to you about something. I’ve got more than a good idea that you’ve been betting a lot lately. No, don’t say anything. I know you have. Well, darling, I just want to tell you this. I can’t bear that any more.”

  “As how?” Johnnie grinned – the carefree grin of one who owes money to no man.

  “What I want to tell you is that if you ever make a bet on a horse again, Johnnie, I shall leave you. I mean that. And I shall know.”

  “You would, would you? How?”

  “Never mind. I should. And you ought to know me well enough to be sure that when I tell you I should, I should. And if you do, I’m finished. That’s all.”

  “Well, darling, I don’t see how the devil you can know, but it’s perfectly true: I have had a bet or two lately,” Johnnie said seriously. “But I’ll swear to you, if you like, that I never will again. Never! The game isn’t worth it. My God, no!”

  “Oh, do please stick to that, Johnnie,” Lina cried.

  She really believed that this time Johnnie would stick to it. There had been a look on his face as he said that the game wasn’t worth it. He meant that.

  Lina had not the least doubt that Johnnie must have killed Beaky only with the greatest regret.

  CHAPTER XVII

  Lina wished sometimes that there were a few more people of her own age in Upcottery; they all seemed so much older or so much younger. Lina felt herself at least a generation more youthful than anyone at all older than herself, for in the country people age so quickly; and of the younger ones, like Marjorie and Joan Boldron, the very knowledgeable daughters of the vicar, she was almost afraid; they were so very much more sophisticated than she could ever be. Lina felt uncomfortable when people made sex abnormalities a subject of drawing-room conversation, even among their own sex.

  Now that Martin Caddis was permanently away and Janet, fleeing, as Lina suspected, from Johnnie, had got work with a business firm in London, Lina found herself very much alone. Her mother, too, of whom she had always been very fond, had died the year before. But Lina was interested in her house and actually liked housekeeping, so that she was seldom really lonely. And she still read a great deal.

  Nevertheless, she had been very glad to get a letter one day from Joyce, after she had been back with Johnnie about two years.

  DEAREST LINA:

  Did you ever meet Isobel Sedbusk when you were with us? I hear she has taken a cottage for the summer quite close to you, at Maybury. You might like to get in touch with her. Don’t be alarmed if you haven’t met her before; she’s not nearly so formidable as she looks. In fact, she’s a very good sort. No nonsense. And intelligent; but keep off religion. I’ve written to her that you may look her up.

  Your affectionate sister,

  JOYCE.

  P. S. – In case you didn’t know, she writes detective stories.

  Lina had known that, of course. Anyone who ever read anything knew that Isobel Sedbusk wrote detective stories.

  She did not, however, think that she had met her in London, and when she went over to Maybury to call she was sure of it. No one who had once met Isobel Sedbusk could ever have any doubts on the point afterwards. Miss Sedbusk impressed.

  That had been at the beginning of the previous summer, and Lina, who had liked Miss Sedbusk at sight, had seen quite a lot of her. Johnnie was delighted with her, too. Miss Sedbusk, who boasted of weighing fifteen stone, and boomed in proportion, was a very easy person to get to know. She was inclined to talk a little too much about her own line of work, and liked showing her familiarity with the tools of her trade, such as blood and rigor mortis; but she was amusing and had plenty of other interests as well. In spite of the fact that she wore black sombreros and had a masculine cut about her clothes, she was an ardent feminist.

  Within six weeks she was calling Johnnie “old man” and rating Lina for not trying to write detective stories.

  “Anyone can,” affirmed Miss Sedbusk. “It’s just a matter of hard work, that’s all. Lucky for us that more people don’t know that, though. The market’s overcrowded enough as it is. My publisher tells me ...”

  The next summer Miss Sedbusk took the same cottage again. Lina was surprised to find how pleased she was to hear it.

  Within two days of her arrival Miss Sedbusk appeared in person, demanding tea. She had walked the four miles from Maybury, and quite intended to walk them back again.

  The two women bumped cheeks.

  “Well, how are you, Lina? Fit?”

  “I am gl
ad to see you, Isobel. I’ve missed you.”

  “Have you? Good. I like people to miss me.”

  “I’ll tell Ethel to bring tea at once. Shall we have it in the garden? It’s such a lovely day.”

  “Anywhere you like,” acquiesced Miss Sedbusk. “What I want is the tea itself. Well, how’s Johnnie?”

  “Johnnie’s very fit. He’s in the garden somewhere. He’s taking up roses this year in real earnest.”

  “Well, I suppose we all come down to it one day,” pronounced Miss Sedbusk.

  Lina took her guest into the garden, and they sat under the cedar by the tennis court. It came into Lina’s mind that it was on this spot that Lady Fortnum had lost her diamond pendant so many years ago. (How many was it? It must be nearly nine.) She no longer had any illusions about that loss. It was lucky that there had been no writer of detective stories present then.

  “How’s the new book going, Isobel? I suppose you’re in the middle of one, as usual.”

  “Not yet. I’ve been putting it off till I got down here. I’m held up for an idea.”

  “Oh? You usually have so many ideas.”

  “I want a new method of murder. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to think up new methods of murder. Everything’s been done.” It was a favourite complaint of Miss Sedbusk’s: the difficulty of finding new methods of murder.

  Something prompted Lina to say:

  “How about one man persuading another to drink a tumblerful of neat whisky, the first man knowing it will kill him and the second not knowing it?”

  “Been done,” said Miss Sedbusk briefly.

  “Oh!”

  “Been done in real life too.”

  Lina started. “Has it?”

  “Palmer got rid of one of his victims that way. Abbey.”

  Miss Sedbusk knew the names of all the historical murderers and their victims. She really was interested in murder, besides making it, vicariously, her profession.