Before the Fact Page 25

  What she particularly did not like was that the method of murder, to meet Isobel’s requirements, had to be practically undetectable.

  One afternoon, as they were sitting in the garden of Miss Sedbusk’s cottage, Lina’s nervous exasperation caused her to burst in on the discussion. She had been annoyed, because it was she who had been going over to tea with Isobel, and Johnnie, in his doglike way of this summer, had insisted on going with her.

  “But you’ll only be bored. We shall talk about women’s things,” said Lina, who felt as if she had hardly seen Isobel alone for weeks and had been looking forward to doing so that afternoon.

  “I think I’ll come along,” Johnnie had replied airily. “I’d be much more bored alone here, without you.”

  “Really, Johnnie, can’t you bear to let me out of your sight for a couple of hours? I really can’t understand what’s the matter with you this year.”

  “I like being with you, monkeyface,” Johnnie said pathetically. “You don’t mind if I come along, do you?”

  “Oh, come if you must,” Lina snapped.

  So Johnnie had come.

  And of course the conversation very soon came round to the usual subject. Miss Sedbusk never minded talking her own particular shop, and she did so with gusto.

  “Why must you be so complicated?” Lina burst in at last. “Live electric wires inside the springs of an easy chair, indeed! Why not use arsenic and have done with it?”

  “Because, my good woman, arsenic of all poisons is the easiest to detect. Arsenic remains in the body—”

  “Well, that’s what people do in real life. Why don’t you try to keep your books somewhere near real life, Isobel?”

  “They are near real life,” snorted Miss Sedbusk, stung. “As near as the conventions of the detective story allow. What you don’t seem to realize, my dear girl, is that the kind of method I’m always looking for – perhaps the electric wires are a bit too complicated – is precisely what hundreds of people do use in real life: the people we never hear about, because they’re never caught out.”

  “I – I don’t think murder’s as common as all that,” Lina said weakly. Why must Isobel be always talking about murder?

  “Huh! Well, all I can say is, you don’t know much about it. Believe me, hundreds of people walking about to-day have put somebody out of the way in their time. Why, it’s as easy as falling into a bog. Just a nudge with the elbow as they’re walking along the edge of a cliff; just a—Hullo, what’s up?”

  Lina was standing up. “I must be getting home.”

  “But you’ve hardly finished your tea.”

  “I know. But – I’ve got rather a head. You don’t mind if I go a little early, do you? Are you ready, Johnnie?”

  “Me? Oh, well, I think I’ll sit on a bit here and smoke a pipe, monkeyface.”

  “I’d rather you came with me,” Lina said palely. Seeing Isobel’s puzzled face, she added. “I do feel a little queer.”

  “My dear woman, lie down for a bit here, on my bed.”

  “No, I think I’ll get home. Are you ready, Johnnie?”

  Lina bore Johnnie away.

  This was really beginning to be too much of a good thing.

  8

  Once a year or so Lina glanced at her will.

  She kept it in a sealed envelope, in a drawer in her bureau. Her solicitor had told her she ought to keep it at the bank, but Lina liked to have it under her hand.

  Each year she took it out of its envelope, read it through, and put it back in a fresh one.

  On the day following her visit to Isobel’s something prompted her to perform the annual rite for the present year.

  She did not know why, but her heart beat rather oddly as she took the long envelope out of the drawer. For the first time, she scrutinized it with minute care before she tore it open. She pretended she did not know what she was looking for.

  She found it.

  Not at the flap end but at the other, whose fastening was less secure, she discovered the tiny wrinkles and the smudgy appearance of an envelope that has been steamed open.

  9

  She went straight into the morning room.

  Johnnie was not in the house.

  For some minutes she stood stock-still, looking at Johnnie’s desk.

  Then she pulled open the little drawer at the side, and examined Johnnie’s betting book. The last entry was still the Attaboy of last October.

  Lina drew a breath of relief.

  But her relief was only for a moment. Almost instantly the thumping of her heart began again.

  She stood uncertainly by the desk, her hands clenched at her sides.

  “It is all right,” she whispered, half fiercely and half distractedly. “It is all right.”

  With a little swoop she pulled open the drawer in which, three years ago, she had found the moneylenders’ letters.

  It was full of papers. Lina pulled them out and, laying them on the desk, turned them rapidly through. They seemed harmless enough. Bills, letters from friends ...

  DEAR SIR:

  We thank you for the acceptance of the eight thousand pounds (£8,000) signed by Mrs. Aysgarth. This will be perfectly satisfactory.

  Yours faithfully,

  p. p. S. V. PRITCHETT & CO.

  Lina pressed her hand to her forehead. Her mind seemed numb. She could not understand. What acceptance? What did it mean? What was an “acceptance”?

  With shaking fingers she searched further.

  DEAR SIR:

  In reply to your inquiry, we beg to state that an acceptance signed by your wife, in respect of the three thousand pounds for which you are indebted to us, will quite meet our requirements.

  Yours faithfully,

  p. p. MORLEY BROS.

  There were others too, but it was enough.

  A sudden flaring illumination had at last seared its way into Lina’s mind.

  CHAPTER XIX

  Johnnie was going to kill her.

  Huddled on her bed, Lina was trying to realize that. Johnnie was going to kill even her.

  She could not realize it. It was more than incredible. It was a conception which her distraught mind could not yet grasp at all. Johnnie, her child – Johnnie, her whole life, was going to kill her.

  Never for a moment had it entered Lina’s wildest fears that she herself could ever be in danger from Johnnie. Johnnie, driven to desperation, might have planned the deaths of other people, if only they could be led into killing themselves: but not hers. Never hers. Johnnie loved her. Johnnie adored her. Johnnie could never get on without her. It was just inconceivable that Johnnie could possibly contemplate killing her.

  But it was true. Johnnie could contemplate even that.

  Lina might not be able to realize it yet, but she knew it. Unable still to think clearly, her mind leapt from one to another in a series of distracted little pictures that carried their own conviction: Johnnie so attentive to her, just as he had been to Beaky before he killed him (and she, blind idiot, so pleased with Johnnie’s attentions, and latterly so bored with them!); Johnnie trying to get hints from Isobel on murder; the way she had caught Johnnie looking at her sometimes; oh, a hundred things. Yes, she knew it. For weeks now, perhaps for months (the insurance, as long ago as last October!), Johnnie had been planning to kill her.

  Johnnie ...

  Lina flung herself down among the pillows. Let him, then! Quickly! If Johnnie could do that, Lina no longer wanted to live.

  She burst into a torrent of sobbing.

  No, it was impossible. Johnnie could not be going to kill her. Not Johnnie.

  2

  But it was true.

  As Lina bathed her eyes, a dull misery of certainty succeeded the chaos in her mind. The incomprehensible idea had become comprehensible. Without doubt Johnnie did intend to kill her.

  And what was she going to do about it?

  Curiously, there had been no panic. It was impossible to be afraid of Johnnie. Lina felt no terrified
urge to get away from the danger: to flee helter-skelter to Joyce for safety. Not in the least.

  Not of course that she was going to stay at Dellfield, for Johnnie to kill at his leisure. But she would go in her own good time. She was not in danger yet.

  Or was she?

  She began to tremble. Supposing at tea that very afternoon Johnnie put ... Supposing at dinner ...

  Oh, God, she could not stand it. The panic which shock had so far held in check began to break loose. At any moment Johnnie might come in – break the door down and kill her in her own bedroom: throw her out of the window on to the flags below and say she had fallen – anything. At any moment Johnnie might come and kill her; and what was she going to do?

  Lina tore a suitcase out of the cupboard and began feverishly to pack. She must get away; she must get away; she must get away.

  3

  By tea-time the suitcase was back in the cupboard, her things again in their drawers. Lina was not going to run away. It was impossible to be afraid of Johnnie.

  At tea she was exceedingly bright, in the hard, artificial manner she used to adopt towards strangers when she felt nervous. Johnnie looked at her with surprise as she prattled wittily from her dry mouth about this and that.

  “What’s the matter with you, monkeyface?”

  “The matter? Nothing at all. What should be the matter?”

  “I mean, why are you going on like this?”

  “I thought you’d like me to talk to you,” said Lina, with a bright smile. “Perhaps you’d rather read a detective story?”

  She thought to herself:

  How do I do it? I’d never have thought I was capable of it. Oh, God, let me keep it up. So long as he doesn’t suspect ...

  Johnnie looked puzzled, but he did not suspect.

  As tea went on, Lina had an odd sensation that she was living a play. It was the middle of the second act. The audience knew that at the end of the third act she was to be killed, to bring down the curtain; but she did not know it. She was to sparkle gaily and nonchalantly right up to the end. Unconsciously she found herself acting up to this nonexistent audience.

  But this illusion of unreality led to a conviction of unreality.

  It was impossible, really it was impossible, seeing Johnnie there so normal and unconcerned, to take seriously the idea that he was actually meditating her own death. What she had forced herself, when alone, to regard as an actual fact seemed now, in the presence of Johnnie himself, utterly fantastic. Johnnie could not be so inhuman. Not the Johnnie she knew and loved: the real Johnnie sitting there, so different from the monstrous Johnnie of her imaginings upstairs.

  She looked at him. Johnnie smiled back at her.

  No, it was fantastic.

  She very nearly said to him:

  “I had such a funny idea this afternoon, darling. I thought you were going to poison me.”

  Very nearly.

  And yet she checked herself. Supposing Johnnie turned white, and ...

  She caught her breath. Johnnie had turned white, not long ago, when she taxed him with that mistake in her insurance policy; and ... Mistake! It had not been a mistake, of course. She had forgotten for the moment that Johnnie was going to kill her. He had overinsured her life for that purpose.

  But Johnnie was not going to kill her. She had just seen how fantastic that was. Johnnie loved her far too much ever to do anything again that would hurt or upset her. And as for killing her ... Of course it was fantastic!

  She cupped her chin on her palm, staring at him.

  Johnnie shifted in his chair. “What on earth’s the matter with you this afternoon, monkeyface? Just now you were chattering away nineteen to the dozen, and now you’ve gone all boxed up. What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing!” Lina jumped up and sat on Johnnie’s knee. She looked down into his eyes. “Johnnie, you do love me, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do.” But Johnnie looked uneasy.

  “You’d never do anything again to hurt or upset me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just that. You wouldn’t, would you?”

  “Of course I wouldn’t.”

  They stared at each other.

  Then Johnnie caught her closer to him. “You know how I love you, my darling,” he whispered, and there was a catch in his voice.

  Lina did know it. She felt quite reassured now. One does not kill a person whom one loves like that, not even for her money.

  How could she for one moment have imagined such a thing?

  4

  But it was no good.

  Lina might persuade herself sometimes that it had all been a nightmare; she might have moments when, seeing Johnnie laugh, feeling Johnnie’s arms round her, she was completely certain that it had all been a nightmare, just as she had been completely certain that her premonitions of Beaky’s death had been a nightmare. But all the time, against persuasion, against conviction even, she knew.

  Johnnie really did intend to bring about her death. And she did nothing about it.

  But Lina was not frightened any longer. After the first shock she had seen how extremely simple her solution was. She had only to buy back her life from Johnnie. She had only to tell him that she knew he was in financial trouble, forgive him once more, forgive him once more too for forging her name again, and settle his debts. That was all. And that, in time, was what she would do.

  But somehow she never did it.

  At first, still shirking action even at such a juncture, she put off speaking to Johnnie from day to day. She shrank from it; she would do it to-morrow. Then actual resentment at having to buy back her own life and part with precious capital made her stubborn. Johnnie thought he was going to kill her, did he? Kill her, to cover up his own rottenness! Well, let him try. She was not going to help him out of his mess yet. Let him try what he damned well liked. She was ready for him.

  Lina was not frightened now. She knew Johnnie’s mind. He would never kill her outright, just as he had not killed her father or Beaky. He would only try to make her kill herself. All she had to do was to be on her guard against doing anything that might prove rash. That was where Johnnie would find the difference. Her father and Beaky had not been on their guard.

  Lina felt so confident that she could never be led into killing herself that at times she would smile, though bitterly, at the mere idea.

  So she did nothing.

  For of course there was always the feeling that though Johnnie might possibly be going to try to cause her death to-morrow, it was out of the question that he should be doing so to-day.

  5

  Lina sat bolt upright in bed.

  She had heard sounds. They had woken her up. Somebody was moving about. It must be in Johnnie’s dressing room.

  She strained her ears into the darkness.

  Nothing.

  But something – somebody was waiting, just as she was waiting. Something – somebody was crouching behind Johnnie’s dressing-room door, listening just as she was listening.

  Lina knew what it was. It was Johnnie, coming to kill her – now! She had left things too long.

  Oh, God, she had left things too long. How could she have been so insane?

  She stared through the blackness towards the dressing-room door. Since Lina had discovered what Johnnie was planning, she had made him sleep in his dressing room. Johnnie had grumbled bitterly, but Lina had not cared about that. She turned him out and locked both the doors of her bedroom. Without that she would never have got a wink of sleep at all.

  And now Johnnie had got hold of a second key and was coming through, to kill her. Oh, why, why had she not thought to have bolts put on the doors too?

  She jerked with terror, biting her knuckles to keep back the screams. Had that been a footstep?

  She hardly drew breath, listening so desperately.

  There was nothing. Johnnie was still waiting.

  She had just one hope: to creep out of the room without making a sound, creep out of
the house, and run over to Maybury and Isobel – just as she was, in her nightgown, even with bare feet.

  Very, very slowly, inch by inch, she edged towards the side of the big bed, turned back the clothes, and crept out. Her breath made funny little whistling noises in her throat. Cautiously she felt for her mules and put them on. She glanced fearfully towards the dressing-room door. A sudden ray of moonlight had made its whiteness just discernible. And it was opening.

  Lina screamed and collapsed on the floor.

  She was paralyzed with terror. If Johnnie had come in at that moment he could have killed her by any method he liked and she could not have done anything but watch him.

  But Johnnie did not come in, because he was so sound asleep that not even Lina’s scream woke him up.

  Lina did not realize till after her breakfast the next morning, when she saw the sun produce exactly the same effect, that when one of the window curtains was moved by the wind, its shadow on the dressing-room door gave a momentary illusion that the door was opening.

  But that same day she had bolts put on both doors in her bedroom.

  6

  Things could not go on like that.

  One cannot live under the daily dread of death and quite keep one’s normal balance. Lina’s courage wilted. She did dread death now, actively.

  Slowly the acid of fear had bitten into her nerves until at times they were barely capable of control. Once or twice in Johnnie’s presence she was filled with an impulse to scream out her terrors and accusations at him, and had to push her handkerchief into her mouth to keep silent. A dozen times she packed a suitcase, to run away from them; and then unpacked it again when her nerves came back once more to the normal, and she could not decide whether to run away or not. And since with Lina indecision meant inaction, she remained.

  She actually did cry out one day at Isobel that she could not bear to hear the word “murder” again as long as she lived. Offended, Isobel now confined her conversation to matters of philosophy and dress.