Before the Fact Read online

  Lina wriggled and smoothed her fingers into the new gloves and then studied the whole effect in her long mirror. It was good.

  “I bet there aren’t many women of forty who could carry off a hat like that,” she meditated: and then corrected herself quickly, even in her thoughts, “thirty-nine,” because there is a very great difference between thirty-nine-and-a-half and forty.

  Lina did not feel anything like forty. Forty marks an epoch in one’s life. At forty one cannot escape the suspicion that one is approaching middle age. Other people one considers definitely middle aged at forty. And yet Lina felt less middle-aged now than before she had married. She had been an elderly young woman, she knew; she now felt an exceptionally youthful one.

  And her looks had not let her down. At that distance from the glass, only a few feet, she still looked comparatively young: certainly no older than when Ronald had fallen in love with her so desperately. At that distance one could not see at all the faint clefts that ran from her nose to the corners of her mouth, and from the corners of her mouth down on either side of her chin. And when she held her head up, the little bagginess under her chin disappeared completely. She must remember to hold her head up.

  Mechanically she moved her head sharply from side to side and up and down, in the chin-reducing exercise which, with further exercises intended to tame the other more exuberant parts of her anatomy, she performed now very seriously every single morning, naked, in her bedroom, only smiling faintly in response to Johnnie’s ribaldries. Lina never locked her bedroom door against Johnnie, and never refused to say “come in” whenever he knocked; but she did wish he would not knock when she was doing her exercises.

  She looked at herself again in the glass, turning this way and that. No, she did not look the tiniest bit different from when Ronald had fallen in love with her.

  Lina still thought of Ronald, quite often. She felt very tender about him. Ronald had helped her over a terrible period; even now she did not know what she would have done without him then. But she was thankful, thankful, that she had not gone away with him. Ronald had been right. She was a one-man woman.

  Nevertheless, she still wondered, at times, what Ronald would have been like in bed. Lina had not a very good imagination, except, like most women, as concerned herself, and she could not quite picture Ronald in bed. She thought he would probably have been much too respectful (he always had kept her on a pedestal), and then she would have had, very tactfully, to educate him up to being less so, which would have been a bore. Johnnie had spoilt Lina for respect in love.

  She hoped Ronald was very happy with his wife; for Ronald was married now. Lina was not jealous of her in the least.

  She resettled her fur on her shoulders and went downstairs.

  “I’m ready, Johnnie.”

  Johnnie looked at her. “This the whole outfit? Fine!”

  “Do I look all right?” Johnnie had seen the new hat already, last night, surmounting a pair of pale-green step-ins, and had pronounced it with much enthusiasm the best ever.

  “All right? I’ll say you do. A little bit of all right. That hat’s going to knock ’em flat in Upcottery. Monkeyface, you’re a marvel. Come and be kissed this minute.”

  “Careful, then,” Lina smiled.

  “Isn’t it kiss-proof?”

  “No lipstick’s kiss-proof against you, Johnnie,” Lina retorted.

  She kissed him with carefully pursed lips, holding him from clasping her too closely with her palms against his chest, and mindful of her powdered nose, which was just a fraction of an inch too long and made kissing difficult after her face had been done. But it was wonderful of Johnnie still to want to kiss his wife in the middle of the afternoon ...

  “The car’s outside,” Johnnie said.

  Lina was going to pay a first call on some new people in the neighbourhood, upon whom report had been favourable. Johnnie was to drive her over, and she intended to walk back. The call was entirely an excuse to wear the new hat.

  2

  Lina called in for tea on old Lady Royde, a connection by marriage of Johnnie’s, who lived all alone in a large house, most of it shut up, little more than a mile from Upcottery. Lina was very fond of the old lady, and made a point of going over to see her at least once a fortnight.

  “My dear, how nice of you to call in. And what a charming hat!”

  “I’m rather pleased with it. You don’t think it’s a little too?”

  “No, I don’t. It suits you so well.”

  Over tea Lina recounted where she had been.

  “Ah, you have called? Then I will. I hear they’re very nice. You liked her? Yes. She was a Langthwaite, I understand; one of the Gloucestershire lot; but I don’t seem to know his name at all. However, my dear, if you’ve called ...”

  Lina walked back to Dellfield with the happy consciousness that she had had cream with her tea and did not care. Cream is good for one. It wraps up the nerves.

  Isobel Sedbusk and Major Scargill were coming to dinner, and she was looking forward to that.

  Life seemed very peaceful and very pleasant.

  3

  Miss Sedbusk was talking about murder. As usual. She talked emphatically, thumping her fist on the dinner table.

  “I believe in murder,” declaimed Miss Sedbusk. “All sorts of people ought to be murdered. It’s a great pity one isn’t allowed to do it.”

  Lina smiled nervously. She knew that Isobel was only talking nonsense, but she did wish that Miss Sedbusk would not talk nonsense about murder in front of Johnnie.

  “I saw in the paper this morning,” she said, “that income tax ought to come down again in the next budget. I hope—”

  “As things are, of course, it needs an amount of nerve that few of us have got. I don’t know,” said Miss Sedbusk to Major Scargill across the table, “whether you ever read a book of mine called Ruddy Death?”

  Major Scargill looked guilty. “Er – I don’t know ...”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter,” Miss Sedbusk forgave him. “The point is that I dealt with the idea there. I wrote ...” Miss Sedbusk explained at some length what she had written.

  She also explained other views.

  “Very interesting,” said Major Scargill. “Lombroso, eh? Very interesting.”

  “I thought Lombroso was quite exploded now, Isobel,” put in Lina perfunctorily.

  Miss Sedbusk leaned impatiently aside while the parlourmaid removed her plate.

  “So he is. But I still think there might be something in his premises, though not in the deductions he made from them. For instance, there may not be a murderer’s face, but there certainly is a degenerate’s face. And a good many degenerates come to murder. In other words, some murderers can be detected from their faces, but not all.”

  “Ha,” said Major Scargill.

  “But what I do think,” pursued Isobel, “is that one can often tell from a person’s face whether he or she is capable of murder; though not, of course, whether he’ll ever commit it. I find it quite amusing to look up and down a tube carriage and think: ‘Yes, old man, you could commit murder, if it came to the point.’ “

  “You do, eh? Well, what about dinner tables? What about us, eh, Miss Sedbusk? Could our hostess commit murder if it came to the point?”

  Miss Sedbusk shook her head regretfully. “Lina hasn’t the nerve, any more than I have. It’s a pity in a way, but very few women have. After all, murderers are comparatively rare birds, you know. You couldn’t, Major, for instance.”

  “Well, that’s comforting.”

  “And as for you, old man,” said Miss Sedbusk to Johnnie, “you couldn’t commit a murder if you tried for a hundred years.”

  Lina caught her breath and waited for some bantering reply. Instead Johnnie said, quite seriously, and almost regretfully:

  “No. I don’t believe I could.”

  Johnnie really thought that. He could not commit murder if he tried for a hundred years. Well, no doubt he was right. After all, he
never had committed murder. Lina was quite sure that Johnnie never could have murdered Beaky in cold blood. He had not got either enough or too little moral strength.

  She glanced down the table at him. His eyes were on her, but for once there was no twinkle in them. He was looking at her with an odd mixture of gloom and affection, quite unlike his usual expression.

  Her heart gave a little jump.

  Surely, she thought, Johnnie hasn’t been taking Isobel’s nonsense seriously?

  4

  In the drawing room after dinner Lina had a curious experience.

  The men had remained in the dining room only a very short time. They came into the drawing room for coffee. The tray had been put on a small table near the piano, and Lina had poured it out there. Johnnie handed the cups round and brought Lina hers.

  She sipped at it, unthinkingly, and noticed that it tasted a little peculiar. Instantly the thought jumped into her mind: Has Johnnie put arsenic in it?

  She sipped it again. It was peculiar.

  Johnnie would get hold of a lot of money if he had put arsenic in Lina’s coffee; and Johnnie nearly always wanted money.

  She thought, in a detached way: “Am I going mad?”

  She drank off the rest of her coffee.

  5

  June passed into July. There was a spell of dry, hot weather, and Lina played tennis almost every day. Johnnie was very good to her about tennis. It must have bored him very much, but he was always ready to play a set or two with her. Indeed, he came and asked her nearly every morning whether she would like a set. Lina enjoyed pottering about a court when there was no one to see her mistakes. Johnnie did his best to coach her too, very patiently; but Lina never seemed to improve.

  “No, it’s no good. I must be getting too old,” she laughed, after half an hour’s failure of the new, whizzing service that Johnnie was trying to teach her.

  “You are patient with me, darling,” she added, with sudden gratitude for Johnnie’s wasted time.

  “I like doing things with you, monkeyface,” Johnnie said: rather wistfully, Lina thought.

  “Well, I like doing them with you,” she smiled.

  It was true that Johnnie liked doing things with her nowadays. He did everything with her. He never went out anywhere without her, except, of course, on business or duty, and for the last month or two Lina had noticed that he was continually coming to her and asking if she wanted him, or if she would like to do anything with him. Lina was delighted. Never had Johnnie been more attentive to her. And that really was saying something, in Johnnie’s case. He was completely cured of his old fever for new women.

  In fact, Lina thought, since Beaky’s death her marriage had been practically ideal. There had been little quarrels, of course; and once, at the beginning of the present year, Johnnie had asked her to lend him five thousand pounds of her capital for some new scheme of his own, which Lina had refused with decision, not unjoined with one or two hard words; but on the whole things had been just about as good as they possibly could be. But for Johnnie’s moral weakness, their marriage always would have been ideal. Lina was thankful that the idyll had come later instead of at the beginning.

  For it really was an idyll, now. Lina thought, with a little giggle, that lately Johnnie had taken actually to following her about, just like a lovelorn boy of seventeen. It was extraordinary. And most gratifying. Lina was so much touched that she could not find the heart to hint to Johnnie that at times he was becoming a positive nuisance.

  The only odd thing was that Johnnie was not nearly so merry now.

  Lina had noticed him, at that dinner with Isobel Sedbusk and Major Scargill, looking at her down the table in an odd, most un-Johnnie-like way; and since then she had intercepted much the same sort of look several times. It was a peculiar look, as if Johnnie could not make up his mind whether he liked what she was wearing, but liked her so much that it did not matter what she wore. Lina had asked him once, with a smile, what he was thinking about; and Johnnie had seemed to give himself a mental shake, grinned, and replied that he was wondering whether to put on a clean pair of white trousers that afternoon, or make the others do once more. Lina had been quite disappointed.

  Johnnie’s maudlin behaviour had given Lina a new sense of that power which women feel when they are very much loved, and soon take for granted, and so often abuse. She had not had quite the same feeling ever since she had kept Ronald Kirby on his string. She had never been quite sure of Johnnie before, and any feeling of power there had been over him had been the influence of a steady mind over a shiftless one, and much resented. Now at last she was convinced that Johnnie would never again do anything that would upset or hurt her, not merely because he respected and was even a little frightened of her, but because he adored her. It was a very comfortable feeling.

  She tried hard not to be impatient, or snap at him, as she so often did when any suggestion, even of the most unimportant order, did not encounter her approval.

  6

  Isobel and Lina were talking about investments. Isobel had just sold the film rights of one of her books for a thousand pounds, and she was undecided what to do with the money.

  “I’d like to spend it on going round the world, but I suppose I’d better not. I can save up for that out of income, and this ought to be treated as capital. The rest of my money’s in War Loan, but I think I’d like something more exciting. What’s yours in, Lina?”

  “War Loan, too. A safe five per cent,” said Lina knowledgeably.

  “H’m, yes! Till the Bolshies take the country over.” Miss Sedbusk was inclined to take a gloomy view of England’s future: perhaps not more gloomy than the governors of England’s present warranted. “You wait and see what income tax will be then.”

  “Income tax is bad enough, but it’s the death duties I think are so monstrous. Do you know that when I die Johnnie will have to pay ten thousand pounds in death duties? Ten thousand!” said Lina with pain.

  “Nonsense,” replied Miss Sedbusk robustly.

  “Why nonsense?”

  “Because it is nonsense. Twenty per cent?”

  “Ten per cent.”

  “Hullo, you’re a richer woman than I thought. I didn’t know you’d got five thousand a year.”

  “I haven’t. Barely half that.”

  “Then your arithmetic’s wrong, my dear girl. Ten per cent of fifty thousand is five thousand.”

  “Is it?” said Lina. “Is it?”

  By the time she got home she had thought it out. It must have been a genuine mistake, because Johnnie had not benefited, Lina had made the cheque out to the insurance company, not to Johnnie. Johnnie could not possibly have benefited. After the first horrid apprehension, that had been a tremendous relief.

  But it was a nuisance, and extremely careless of Johnnie to have led her into paying just twice as much for her insurance as she need have done. Of course the policy would have to be cancelled.

  “Johnnie,” she said crossly, “you really are an idiot. What’s ten per cent. of fifty?”

  “Five, of course,” said Johnnie in surprise. “Why?”

  “Because in that case ten per cent. of fifty thousand is five thousand, of course. How could you have been so careless? You made me waste a hundred and twenty-eight pounds too much on my insurance premium last October. We don’t want a policy for ten thousand at all. It ought to have been five. Really, you ought – what’s the matter?” Johnnie had become quite white and was staring at her in the utmost alarm. Lina thought she had spoken most mildly, considering how foolish Johnnie had been. “What’s the matter?” she repeated more sharply. It annoyed her that Johnnie should look at her, when she had to remonstrate with him, like a schoolboy awaiting a caning.

  “Nothing’s the matter,” Johnnie said, rather gutturally.

  “Oh, I’m not going to stop it out of your allowance, if that’s what you’re frightened about,” Lina snapped, “though you certainly deserve it. You’d better write to-day and get that policy ca
ncelled and take one out for me for five. Do you understand, Johnnie?” she added impatiently.

  “Yes, all right, I will,” Johnnie mumbled.

  A week later Lina said to him:

  “By the way, what about that insurance policy of mine? Have you written?”

  “Not yet,” Johnnie said glibly. “No hurry. The premium’s not due till October.”

  “But I asked you to write last week.”

  “Much better to let it stand till it expires. Then there’s no question. You leave it to me, monkeyface. I’ll look after it all right.”

  Lina left it to him.

  7

  Johnnie had acquired a passion for detective stories.

  He had always read them, but only sporadically. Now he seemed to be always deep in one. Lina was kept quite busy ordering new ones for him from the library. However, she did so willingly enough. Any innocuous amusement of Johnnie’s was to be encouraged.

  He was forever discussing them with Isobel too: getting her recommendations, listening to her criticisms on the work of her fellow authors, just as eager as she was to find flaws in detection or method.

  “Hullo, Isobel,” he would greet her whenever she appeared at Dellfield, which was two or three times a week at least. “Hullo, begun the new book yet? Look here, I’ve thought up a new method of murder for you.”

  “Have you? Good man. Let’s have it.”

  And then they would plunge into discussion.

  It seemed to Lina that whenever she found Johnnie and Isobel together now, they were talking about new methods of murder. She did not altogether like it.

  Indeed, she did not like it at all. It seemed to Lina supremely ironical that Johnnie should be trying to find new methods of murder for Isobel. It seemed to her worse than ironical that he should listen so interestedly to Isobel’s own ingenious schemes. Of course it was absurd to wonder. Quite ridiculous. But still ...

  Lina did not like it.