Before the Fact Read online

  Things could not go on like this. Lina began seriously to wonder whether she would not actually let Johnnie kill her and put an end to it all.

  It was an idea that had been prompted by a book which Isobel had lent her before Lina flew out at her. It was a penetrating piece of work, about murder and murderers. Analyzing her subject, the authoress had suggested that just as there are born murderers so there are born victims: murderees, whose natural destiny it is to get murdered: persons who, even when they see murder bearing down on them, are incapable of moving out of its way.

  Lina laid the book on her lap, and stared into vacancy. Was she a murderee?

  She was not at all sure that she might not be.

  For, after all, if Johnnie could find the heart to kill her ... The tears would come into her eyes that Johnnie could have the heart to kill her, just for her wretched money.

  She often came back now to that first reaction of all: if Johnnie could want to kill her, then Lina no longer wanted to live.

  She would watch Johnnie broodingly. How could he – how could he, after all she had done for him?

  “A penny for your thoughts, monkeyface,” Johnnie would say.

  And Lina would laugh and put him off.

  Afterwards she would wonder how she had managed to laugh.

  7

  Lina took up the telephone receiver. It was Mrs. Forcett, on whom Lina had called that day she went on to tea with Lady Royde. Lina liked her.

  Mrs. Forcett wanted to know if she and Johnnie could come to tennis next Wednesday.

  “Next Wednesday? Yes, I think we’re free. Will you just hold on a minute while I look in my engagement book? Yes, quite free. That will be delightful. Half-past three? Yes. Good-bye.”

  Lina was pleased. Not only did she like the Forcetts, but one met interesting people there. And Mrs. Forcett was a good hostess. She looked forward to Wednesday.

  Before she had got through the morning-room door there had come, like a sickening thud between her shoulders, the remembrance of the horror that now lived with her. What was the good of making that or any other arrangement? By next Wednesday she might be dead.

  It was odd that one could forget that by next Wednesday one might be dead. And yet this kind of thing was always happening.

  8

  July dragged into August, and August into September; and still Lina was alive and at Dellfield.

  She and Johnnie even talked about their summer holiday.

  Lina listened, with detached fascination, to Johnnie making plans – plans which she might be no longer alive to share. He wanted to go to a little village on the Mediterranean, just on the border between France and Spain.

  “Not the seaside this year, Johnnie,” Lina would say, wondering at her own calm. At the seaside one could be capsized out of a boat; or held under the water while bathing, under the pretense of a rescue; or ...

  “Well, what about a walking tour in the Pyrenees? I hear one can have quite a good time there.”

  “No, no,” Lina shuddered. So that had been Johnnie’s plan all the time! To push her over ...

  But Johnnie did not seem to press the Pyrenees. Perhaps it had not been his plan after all.

  Lina kept wondering, with a sick sensation, what Johnnie’s plan really was. She thought he had found one now. He no longer discussed methods of murder with Isobel. He no longer pored over detective stories. Where had he found his plan? Could Lina trace it out and so forestall it?

  But did she want to forestall it?

  Oh, God, what did she want?

  She was wretched, and she wanted to die. Johnnie did not want her any more. He only wanted her money.

  No, no, no. She did not want to die. She wanted to live. Johnnie loved her.

  It really was an odd comfort to Lina all this time that Johnnie loved her. Johnnie intended to kill her, yes; but he did not want to kill her. Johnnie was looking just as miserable in these days as Lina herself was feeling. The idea of killing her plainly depressed him very much indeed. He would do it with tears in his eyes.

  But a man must live.

  Lina quite understood Johnnie’s feelings. And it certainly was a very great comfort to her that he was not indifferent to the idea of her death.

  It seemed a pity, however, when neither Lina nor Johnnie at all desired Lina’s death, that Lina should have to die.

  Well, Lina had not got to die. She had only to go in Johnnie, tell him she knew he was in financial trouble, and ...

  But Lina never went.

  And Lina never went either to Joyce, to Isobel, or to Lady Newsham. She did exactly what she had sworn so indignantly she would never do, and waited on at Dellfield, wondering dejectedly whether she would take the chance of Johnnie’s killing her or whether she would drag out a wretched existence in safety away from Johnnie. Or even whether, if Johnnie did not do something soon, she would not kill herself and have a little peace.

  9

  “To the left,” said Lina.

  “No, darling,” Johnnie retorted. “Straight on here. Left at the next fork.” He drove straight on.

  “Nonsense!” Lina snapped. “You know you never remember. Why on earth can’t you listen to me? Very well; go on; I don’t care.”

  Johnnie did not answer. He drove on, frowning.

  Lina glanced at him. Johnnie was angry.

  She began to feel uneasy. It had been foolish to snap at Johnnie, now. Johnnie might resent it. He always had resented her snapping at him. Now it might goad him into ...

  How could she have been so foolish?

  “I’m sorry I spoke like that, Johnnie. I expect you’re quite right, really.”

  Johnnie did not answer. He was still frowning. He was angry.

  Lina began to feel afraid.

  The road was a deserted one: not much more than a lane. The main road, which they had left, took a left-angled turn. It was only a small road that went straight on. She knew Johnnie should have kept on the main road, to the left. Why had he not done so?

  There was not a person in sight. Few cars came along this little road. If Johnnie wanted to ...

  Johnnie did want to.

  Lina was suddenly as convinced of that as if Johnnie himself had told her. Johnnie had brought her here, on this deserted road, expressly to ...

  A car accident.

  She turned white with terror. Little beads of sweat pricked her forehead, under her hat. She dragged off her gloves, and clutched at the sides of the bucket seat on which she sat, as if to hold herself on to life.

  She dared not glance again at Johnnie. She was too terrified of what she might see in his face.

  How could a person kill another person in a car and make it look like an accident? How could a driver kill his passenger without risk to himself?

  Oh, God, why had she not run away when she had the chance? Why had she gone on dallying and dithering, trying to persuade herself that she was safe for the time being, that there was no hurry? There had been hurry: frantic hurry. And she had refused to see it. Refused! And now it was too late. Johnnie was going to kill her on this deserted road, and not a soul to help her.

  She and Johnnie were cut off once more on a desert island of murder. But this time it was her murder.

  What could she do?

  What would Johnnie do?

  Supposing he leant across her, opened the door, and with all his strength threw her out of it, so that she fell on her head in the road ... and then he came back with the car, and drove over her ... and left her ...

  Frantically she tried to decide what she would do if Johnnie did that. There was a strap on the upright to which the door was hinged. She would cling to that. And to the handle. Cling like death.

  But supposing that was not Johnnie’s plan. Supposing he—

  “Don’t want your window up on such a lovely day, monkeyface, do you?” said Johnnie, and leaned across her.

  “No!” Lina shrieked. She grabbed at the strap and clung to it. “No! Don’t! Leave it!”
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br />   Johnnie could not answer for the moment. He was busy steering the car in a left turn on to the main road. When he was clear he said:

  “All right, all right. No need to scream about it. I only thought you’d like the window open.” He added: “There you are, you see. I was right. You’d forgotten that short cut. It saves about two miles.”

  Johnnie had been right. Lina had forgotten the short cut.

  She sat huddled on her seat like a sack of straw, utterly played out.

  10

  “Oh, God,” Lina babbled on her knees, “let him do it quickly. I can’t stand it any longer. I don’t want to live any more: I want to be dead. Do make him kill me and get it over. Only be quick! And please, please let it be painless.”

  And yet, when her hysteria was over, Lina would remember that she simply must not allow Johnnie to kill her. It would be a fatal thing for him to do. Johnnie could never help getting into the most dreadful trouble without her. Johnnie had been her job in life. She must go on with it.

  Lina was beginning to alternate between hysteria and a strange calmness which surprised herself more than the hysterics did.

  She hardly did anything with Johnnie now.

  It is all very well to decide, in moments of despair, that one would rather be out of life than in it; but when it comes to the point of offering another person opportunities for helping one out of it, the results are rather different.

  Lina hardly ever went in the car with Johnnie now. Only when she could not possibly avoid it, and then she sat beside him in a perfect ecstasy of terror until the destination was reached, when she would get out dazed and trembling. Lina still did not know quite how it could be done, but she was certain that there must be plenty of ways in which the driver of a car can kill his passenger if he has the mind to it.

  In the end she and Johnnie did not go away for a holiday at all, because whatever places or surroundings were suggested, Lina instantly saw possibilities of death in them. Lina’s imagination had never been so vivid before.

  Water was taboo; cliffs, rocks, and mountains were taboo; fits of such panic seized her at times that it almost came to food being taboo – certainly any food with which Johnnie might conceivably have tampered in advance. And with food, drink. Automatically now Lina first sniffed at, and then very cautiously tasted, any drink which Johnnie handed to her, even if the bottle was uncorked under her eyes, or she saw Johnnie help himself from the same jug.

  And still she could not make up her mind whether to run away from Johnnie or not.

  Gradually she sank into apathy over it all.

  Gradually it became not so much that she could not make up her mind, as that she ceased even to try to make up her mind. As the weeks went by, and the knowledge of Johnnie’s intention became slowly less of a recurrent shock and more a part of her life, Lina found herself more and more fascinated by fate. She saw herself drifting, swept on by forces stronger than herself. The power of decision was less taken from her than relinquished by her. She did not want to decide.

  Each morning she thought, dully: will he try to kill me to-day? Shall I be dead by to-night? She did not think she very much minded if she was.

  Death did not frighten her, now. Death, even if it was oblivion, would be better than life like this. In her bedroom or the garden she would sit for hours alone, thinking about Johnnie and death, trudging the same circle of thought over and over and over again.

  Only in Johnnie’s presence did she rouse herself. Johnnie must not suspect. Away from him, she gave her fatehynotized brooding full rein. If Johnnie had come to her during those moments with murder in his face, Lina really did not know whether she would struggle or submit.

  And yet she still took no step towards buying back her life from him.

  Lina knew she was weak. She knew she had been, in a way, weak all her life. Only for Johnnie had she been strong. And now, even as regarded Johnnie, her strength had gone.

  Should she let Johnnie kill her or not?

  11

  In the end Lina’s mind was made up for her.

  After all these years she awoke to the realization that she was going to have a baby.

  At all costs Johnnie must not be allowed to reproduce himself. Lina crushed ruthlessly down the new urge to live that her condition had induced. At all costs.

  An illegal operation hardly entered her mind; suicide was terrible; Johnnie’s way was the easiest of all.

  Lina felt much calmer when her decision had been made at last. So much of her married life had been spent in beating from one side of the cage to the other. It would be peaceful just to sit and wait.

  12

  Isobel pushed her chair a little back from the tea table, crossed her large legs, and lit a cigarette.

  “Now we can talk,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Lina.

  It was delightfully restful in Isobel’s cottage garden. A clump of Michaelmas daisies caught her eye, and she dreamily absorbed their colour. Lina concentrated now on anything that gave her pleasure, getting as near to the heart of it as she could, as if storing up memories against a prison-future. She would never see Michaelmas daisies again. It was important to extract as much from them now as they had to give.

  Isobel was looking at her curiously. “Something on your mind, isn’t there?”

  Lina gave herself a little shake. “No. Why?”

  “I’ve noticed you’ve seemed a little queer this summer. I’d begun to think you must be offended with me for some reason or other.”

  “Good gracious, no.” Lina, the least demonstrative of women, sketched a little gesture of reassurance and friendliness. “No, I was just admiring those daisies.”

  “Oh, I see. Yes, you’ve an eye for colour. Well, anyhow, how’s Johnnie? I don’t seem to have seen him for weeks.”

  “Johnnie’s quite well.” Lina paused. She had come to Isobel’s to talk about Johnnie, but she did not know quite how to introduce her subject.

  Fortunately Isobel helped her. “You’re a lucky woman, Lina. And you’ve got the sense to know it.”

  “How, lucky?”

  “Having a husband like Johnnie.”

  “Oh! Yes, Johnnie’s wonderful, isn’t he?”

  “He ought to have been Irish, with all that charm and blarney. Little did I think any man would ever get anything out of me against my will.”

  “Isobel! What do you mean?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing really. Just something I didn’t mean to tell him, and he got it out of me.”

  Lina drew a quick breath. “What?”

  “Nothing that would interest you, my dear woman,” Isobel retorted, with a touch of resentment. “It was connected with the subject I’m not allowed even to name, to you.”

  “Don’t be so silly, Isobel.” Lina’s heart had begun to beat faster. Isobel herself had offered her the very topic she had come to probe. “What did Johnnie get out of you?”

  “Oh, it wasn’t anything important, really. I don’t know why I mentioned it.” Miss Sedbusk flicked the ash from her cigarette onto the grass.

  Lina could have shaken her. “Tell me, Isobel. I want to know. Why on earth make such a mystery about it?”

  “My dear woman, I’m making no mystery. I’ll tell you, if you really want to know.”

  “I do want to know. I keep on saying so.”

  “All right; don’t get peeved. But it isn’t of the least importance. The important thing is that Johnnie got it out of me at all. There’s a certain alkali, a substance in daily use everywhere, one of the commonest things you could imagine, which happens to be an exceedingly powerful poison. But hardly anyone knows that it is. It’s far too common to be put on the poison list, you see. Besides, that would only be advertising the fact that it is poisonous. So those who do know, don’t say. It’s sort of hushed up.”

  “Ah,” Lina breathed.

  “Because the really dangerous thing is that this stuff is practically undetectable by analysis after death. Not like arsenic
, which can be identified years afterwards. So you can see that, if everyone knew about it, one half of the world would probably be busy all the time poisoning the other half – and getting away with it. There aren’t even any symptoms worth mentioning, you see. It acts on the heart; and the heart simply stops beating, and that’s all there is to it. So we who do know what the stuff is, keep very mum about it. We don’t tell even our closest friends. Of course, it wouldn’t matter, so far as they’re concerned. The point is that they might pass it on.”

  Lina’s mouth had gone very dry. She had to work her tongue in it before she could speak. “And Johnnie – got it out of you?”

  “He did,” said Isobel cheerfully. “Curse him!”

  Lina stared at her feet. Her whole energies were concentrated in clasping her hands so tightly in her lap that Isobel should not see them shaking.

  “Not,” added Isobel, with a laugh, “that there’s much danger of Johnnie passing it on, because he flatly refused to believe me.”

  Lina succeeded in looking inquiring.

  “I tell you, he flatly refused to believe me. Simply said I must have got my facts wrong. Anything as common as that couldn’t possibly be poisonous. I told him,” snorted Miss Sedbusk, “that my facts are never wrong.”

  Lina found her voice again. “What is this stuff?” she asked, a little faintly.

  “Oh, no,” retorted Isobel. “One in the family’s quite enough. I’m not going to tell you too. And if you’re a friend, you won’t ask Johnnie. It’s much better for people not to know a thing like that.”

  “Perhaps it is.” Lina could feel her skin moving oddly under her clothes. “Well, is – whatever it is, painful?”

  “Not in the least. In fact,” said Miss Sedbusk heartily, “I should think it must be a most pleasant death.”

  13

  Lina was worried.

  She was worried lest Johnnie might do something silly. A person in full health cannot just drop dead without a lot of fuss and bother afterwards. There would have to be an inquest and (she could not help shuddering) a postmortem. Johnnie was always so childishly confident that he might not choose his moment carefully enough. Lina did wish she could advise him about it openly.