Eight Murders In the Suburbs (10 page)

All very reasonable—until he remembered that he himself had set up the postulate that an act of carelessness of that kind need never and ought never to occur. That was the essence of the system, thoughtfully based on the so-called freak accident to the corvette. Like a muddled child he had rushed to the widow, begging to be allowed to buy back that moment of self-betrayal in Hedgecutter Street.

He reached home an hour later than usual. Marion, in a dinner dress, was waiting in the hall.

“Peter, have you forgotten that we're taking Mother to the theatre tonight and that she's due at any minute?”

He had forgotten. He tried to break out of his pre-occupation.

“Sorry, dear! I'll hurry.”

“I have the tickets,” said Marion. “I will hand them to you at the theatre. You will remember that, won't you? And not keep feeling in all your pockets before we get there? Mother notices everything.”

Again her words awoke that queer kind of anger that was new to him. It was something apart from ill-temper, indefinable and alarming.

Marion kept back dinner until he was ready. Mrs. Lardner was excessively polite about it. Service sent up a new maid, who was very slow. They reached the theatre a full minute after the curtain had risen. There were two intervals, in each of which he had two double whiskies, which was a lot, for a man of his habits.

“Mother wasn't on her best behaviour,” remarked Marion, after Mrs. Lardner had gone. “We started off on the wrong foot.”

“My fault for being late.” He was pouring himself a stiff one. “I stayed to clear up some arrears and didn't notice the time.”

“Yes, Peter. I thought you might forget, so I rang you about four. Miss Aspland said you had left the office and would not return.”

She was making a point of his white lie. Doubtless, she was expecting further evasions. She darned well wouldn't get any.

“I was at Gormer's Green. I went to see the widow of the man who was killed in the Sebastopol House fire.”

“Really? Then, you knew her before? What an extraordinary coincidence!”

“I had never heard of her until the inquest. I sought her out because it is possible—I repeat, possible—that I was the indirect cause of her husband's death.”

He could see that she was startled to the point of confusion. Serve her right!

“I haven't got there yet, Peter. A man you've never heard of before falls from the top floor—”

“Stop guessing and listen!” He told her of his call on the lawyers, told her in detail of his lobbing the half-finished cigarette and his uncertainty whether it had gone into the coal vase. He paused to drain his glass—and remembered that he had taken several whiskies at the theatre. Instantly, he sprang on guard.

“Yes—well—what next?” she prompted.

Deep, intuitive fear of himself—fear that some words, spoken out loud, might unleash something—saved him from telling her what happened next. He resented his fear and wanted to defy it. Wanted to play with fire. Play with the Sebastopol House fire. Nothing in the fire, as such. Nothing in the half-finished cigarette, as such. Nothing in the widow.

“The fire broke out between the ground floor and the basement.” The formula for safety was to speak as if to a person other than Marion. “If my cigarette fell on the floor it is possible that I caused that fire.”

Marion was at a loss. The fire story, however true in itself, did not account for that tortoiseshell comb which she had found under his handkerchiefs, when she was distributing the laundry yesterday. She had examined it—found the Hoffmeister mark, which meant that it was as costly as it looked. This morning the comb was no longer there.

“I wish you had mentioned all this at the time—if it's the fire and nothing else that's worrying you. I can tell you positively that you did not cause that fire.”

“That, my dear, is an extremely silly remark. You cannot conceivably know anything about it.”

“Can't you see it, Peter? It's the corvette-and-braces story all over again. That's why you simply must consult a psychiatrist. After all, if you'd been wounded and the wound was giving you trouble now, you'd at least ask an ordinary doctor if he could do something about it.”

“So my anxiety for the widow and the child seems to you a mental disease which could be cured by an expert!”

Marion shrugged and left him. He chuckled with self-satisfaction. He had talked about the fire in such a way that nothing had happened except that she had gone off to bed in a huff, which she would have forgotten by morning. He had shown that he could trust himself. There would be no harm in a nightcap.

That night, after he had got into bed and turned out the light, he resisted the impulse to get up and take a last look round the flat. He must play fair with Marion. For as long as they lived under the same roof he would keep his word to her.

The next morning he found that the reading lamp in the sitting-room had been left burning. So Marion was wrong! It
did
happen, sometimes. He felt excitement creeping over him, giving the illusion that he could feel the blood moving in his veins.

With a glance in the direction of Marion's room, he shut himself in the sitting-room and locked the door. He stood with his back pressed against the door, contemplating the faint glow from the reading lamp. Net result, waste of a few pence. Net result, Sebastopol House gutted and a mild-eyed widow whose image could never be banished. Generically, the two events were identical.

He crossed the room on tip-toe and switched off the lamp. He walked back to the door and turned the handle, without result. He blinked, turned the handle a second time. Then his eye fell on the key. He turned it and opened the door.

“Now, why in heaven's name did I lock myself in this room?”

He could not remember why he had entered the room—could not remember what he had done after he locked the door. He had a slight headache. Too much whisky overnight—which, he decided, explained the whole thing.

He resumed his morning routine, as if nothing had happened.

At the end of a month he again journeyed to Gormer's Green and again drank tea with Mrs. Morprill. He made the acquaintance of her daughter, who was, he thought, too shy for her age. He succeeded in drawing her into an enthusiastic account of a fortunate neighbour's television set. The next day he sent the child a set. To her mother he wrote:
‘I respect your decision, though I regret it. A toy is not “help” in the sense of our conversation. I hope you will allow Maggie to keep the set. Children can love but they cannot mourn as we do.'

The month after that, he secured Mrs. Morprill's permission to provide Maggie with a bicycle. Through the child he was hoping to weaken the resistance of the mother. He would rake over their small talk for fragments with which to build up a picture of their life without Morprill.

His home life, seen in outline only, would have suggested that the curtain had fallen on the first Act of their marriage. In the interval, they were stretching a little, looking about and doing their best to entertain each other.

Marion was frankly competing with the shadowy rival whose existence she had inferred from the tortoiseshell comb. That expensive trifle, she decided, was not connected with the nonsense he had talked about the fire. Whoever the girl might be, she was not making much progress. Peter was spending nearly as much time in home activities as before.

For his part, Peter believed that he had fallen out of love with her for no reason that could be summoned to his consciousness. Something had taken the place of his feelings as a husband. Some strong but indefinable attachment made him hurry home in the evenings, as if he could not bear to be without her.

In a sense, he had turned her into a stranger—a woman of whom he knew little except that she had a repertory of pretty tricks. She would chatter breezily about their friends and the trifles of their very comfortable existence. She dressed brilliantly. With colour and line tempered to occasion she could draw his eye and renew his sense of discovery of her. He incited her to deploy her attractions. He was fascinated by his own sensitiveness to her charms—a fascination tinged with guilt, as if he had no right to be charmed by his wife.

The smoothness of this somewhat dangerous relationship was imperilled when he suddenly produced the tortoiseshell comb. It was an evening in July, the day before her birthday. The comb was in its sheath, unwrapped, exactly as she had seen it under his handkerchiefs. He dropped it into her lap.

So the shadowy rival had sent it back!

“What—what is it?” Her tone might have meant anything.

“A comb for your purse—it swivels out of that sheath.”

She gazed at the comb without touching it.

“It's not the birthday present proper—that's why you're getting it tonight.” Her restraint made him suspect that he had bungled somehow. “As a matter o' fact, I bought that for you some months ago. I actually brought it home—then took it back to the office, for some reason.” He frowned. “I can't think why.”

“
Peter
! Was it at the time you were so worried about that fire?”

“Yes, it was.” The fire and his own concern with it were crystal clear and always would be. He remembered coming home—taking the comb out of his note-case—

“Darling, it's exactly what I wanted!” The shadowy rival was proved to be but a shadow. She enlarged on the theme of the profound usefulness of a tortoiseshell purse-comb. Her sudden enthusiasm surprised without interesting him.

Why had he not given her the comb at the time? The fire was irrelevant. While she prattled, he tried hard to remember why he had put the comb in the office safe. He had lost the intuitive fear that, in certain circumstances, he might not be able to hold his own demons on the leash.

The leash was torn from his hand by the comparatively trivial accident of his car being stolen—more accurately ‘temporarily removed from the possession of its owner', as it was found abandoned and undamaged after a couple of hours.

The next morning brought perfect summer weather. It was traditional that he should make a holiday of her birthday—traditional also that they should bathe in the sea at Honsworth Wood. They set off in the car after breakfast, packing a picnic basket.

Shortly before midday he was running the car off the coastal road on to the strip of grass that gave on to the ‘wood'—a score or so of stunted trees at the cliff head, a landmark on a bleak coastline. The ‘ritual' of parking, of which she had so often complained, consisted of altering the leads from the distributor so that the engine could not fire a complete cycle. He was about to lift the bonnet, but abandoned his intention when he heard her laugh.

“I'm getting better, aren't I?” His good temper was genuine because he had forgotten that he had ever resented her objection to the system.

“You've practically cured yourself and I think you're marvellous.”

They undressed in the car, put on sand-shoes, passed through the trees. At the head of the cliff, which was not sheer, was a wooden bench which had probably never been sat on. A rough track led to the beach.

“I'm bound to get cold before you do, Peter.”

“No shirking. Button that cap up properly.”

It all seemed very natural and jolly. On their honeymoon he had insisted on her swimming instead of pottering. Tradition was observed, but in five minutes she was out of breath, and left the water. He saw her climbing the track, watched her disappear through the trees. Some five minutes later she was sitting on the bench, still in her swimming suit, combing her hair. By this time, he was getting cold himself.

When he reached the cliff-head, she patted the bench.

“Let's sit here for a bit!”

“Not without my beer. I've been doing some work.”

“Then bring the basket back with you and let's have lunch here, just as we are. I'm frightf'ly hungry.”

“Rightho!” he answered over his shoulder. Idly she watched him, admiring the youthfulness of his form—he moved like an athlete of twenty. Minutes passed. When he came back through the trees, the springiness had gone out of him. And he was empty handed.

“You've forgotten the lunch basket,” she shouted when he was some thirty feet away. He made no answer and did not quicken his pace.

“I thought we were going to have lunch here,” she said, as he reached the bench.

He stared down at her.

“The car has been stolen,” he said.

“What! It can't have been! I went to it when I left you, because I got my hair wet—there was no one about then.” When her imagination had grasped the fact, she wailed: “With our clothes and everything! What on earth are we going to do?”

She wondered why he did not answer. He was usually calm and helpful when anything went wrong. His eyes were still on hers, but they were not focusing her.

“You can't stand there mooning about it,” she grumbled. “You must do something.”

His eyes came into focus, looked at her as if with sudden recognition.

“Now, you know! It
does
happen—sometimes. What you don't know is that the lamp in the sitting-room
has
been left burning—sometimes.”

“Peter!” she screamed. “Snap out of it, Peter! Let go of me!”

“The corvette
was
sunk. The fire—”

The fire-gong sounded in his brain. He was conscious enough to know that he was in ecstasy and that he was killing Marion, whom he hated.

“Before we have it fair copied, Mr. Curwen, I'll run over the main points. When you last saw your wife alive, you were in the water and she was at the cliff head, proceeding in the direction of the car?”

“Correct!” Curwen was sitting at county headquarters, a police overcoat covering his swimming suit. “She had been in the water with me for about five minutes, when she said she had had enough.”