Eight Murders In the Suburbs (7 page)

“But I have no complaint, Madge, except perhaps—”

“It started our marriage on the wrong foot. I'm ready to start again—I mean, from the beginning—if you are, Arthur. Are you?”

“My darling, how can you ask!”

No, she did not want to be kissed, just then. She was so clear on that point that he felt a little ruffled—it was so unlike her. Almost undutiful.

“We'll take each other on our merits,” she said and smiled. “I start at zero—you start one up. I mean—I want to tell you that I was—
stirred
—when you bought that book for poor Aunt Agnes. You'll say it was a trifle. But it pointed in the right direction, Arthur dear.”

She was talking, he thought, a little incoherently, letting her tongue run away with her. But she was overwrought, poor child, and he would let it pass without comment.

“I need a change after what's happened,” she went on. “We'll have a second honeymoon, Arthur! I want us to shut up the house for a month and stay in a nice hotel in London. You can go to the office, if you have to, but in the evenings we'll have fun.”

‘Fun' sounded a little ominous, but this was no time to damp her spirits.

“A second honeymoon!” he echoed. “Just what we both need! I know of a quiet little place, one of the old City inns—”

“But I don't want a quiet little place! I want the Savoy or the Waldorf. I know it will cost a huge amount but—listen! I saw the solicitor the other day. He says it will be about eighteen months before probate is granted, but in the meantime his firm is lending me five hundred pounds—in a proper business way, of course. I want you to take two hundred of that. More, if it isn't enough.”

He would not take her money because, in the morning, she would modify her plans and they would not go to the Savoy. But they did go to the Savoy and he did take her money, though he earmarked funds to give it back to her when her ‘mad mood' had passed.

Strangely, he caught something of the mad mood himself. They were both comparatively new to theatre going. And Madge discovered that, after the theatre, you could go to a cabaret. Indeed, there were remarkably few forms of entertainment in London which she failed to discover.

Most of the time he enjoyed himself, while in her company. She could be merry or quietly companionable—provocative sometimes, but never obedient. It was as if there had been some meaning in that high-falutin nonsense she had talked about herself—as if the death of Aunt Agnes had released a coiled spring in her nature. The ‘second honeymoon' joke was taking on a queer kind of reality. To him it was a revolutionary conception of the relationship of husband and wife. But the month, he reminded himself, would pass. And the coiled spring would have uncoiled itself.

When he was apart from her it seemed a very long month—and a not altogether respectable one, at that—she expected him to treat her as if he had never kissed her before. At the end of the office day, he missed his railway journey and found himself counting the days to be endured before he would slip back into the groove that had become second nature—his way of life, in the protection of which he had killed Mrs. Blagrove.

When the holiday was over they parted at the hotel, he for the office, she for their home. Sitting in the train that evening, he visualised Madge listening for his footstep on the gravel path, opening the door before he could reach it. It did not happen. He let himself in and stopped short in the hall—he smelt the new paint before his eye had taken it in.

The hall, the staircase, the dining-room, the drawing-room—new paint, new wallpaper! He wandered aghast from one room to another. The Landseers had gone from the walls of the dining-room! The Holman Hunt in the drawing-room had been replaced with a modern original! Some of the furniture had been re-upholstered, some banished, and there was a new carpet in the drawing-room.

When she came in twenty minutes later, he was still struggling with his anger.

“Well! D'you like it?” she asked eagerly. She was entreating his approval.

“My dear, I am too astonished to form any opinion. Did it not occur to you, Madge, to consult me before making sweeping alterations in my house?”

“Is it your house, Arthur—or
our
house? Of course I oughtn't to have done it on my own, but I had to take a risk! I had the feeling that everything in the house was practically as it had been when your parents married.”

“It was indeed! But what was wrong with it?”

“We have to give ourselves every chance, Arthur—or we shall be slipping back into the old ways.”

The last words rendered him speechless. Slipping back into the old ways was precisely what he desired. He could find no means of making her understand. They were in the dining-room. He strode to the sideboard. The tantalus was still there. He took out the whisky decanter—nearly dropped it when she spoke.

“Not whisky for me,” said Madge. “Gin and orange, please.”

That was another shock. Never before had she taken a drink in the home, except during a party, when she would make a glass of sherry last the whole time. He hesitated, then began to mix the gin. She had turned herself into a different kind of woman and intended to stay so. He was not angry now, only afraid.

“Let's drink to our future, Arthur.”

“To our future!” And what sort of future? She no longer interpreted his wishes as her duties—she was compelling him to accept some give-and-take principle of her own. She expected her tastes to be consulted equally with his, and she demanded that he should woo her afresh for every caress.

With a sense of discovery he remembered how he had sat alone in the drawing-room that night, wondering whether she had ‘run round to Dalehurst with that wretched book.' Until he had removed the doubt, there would be nothing for it but abject surrender.

“I'm afraid I've been a bit bearish over the decorations, darling. Sorry! Come and show me everything, and I'll tell you how much I like it all.”

She was sweetness itself whenever he made an effort to please her—but the effort had to be successful! Not that she required to be pleased all the time—she was as ready to give as to take. It emerged, however, that the month of madness at the Savoy, shorn of its expensive indulgence, was to be the blueprint for their married life. A kind of marriage which he had never contemplated and did not want.

Most evenings, in the train, he would decide to put his foot down. But when he got out of the train—you could just see the gables of Dalehurst from the arrival platform—other considerations would arise. So he would say nothing when he found a cocktail party in progress at home—nor when Madge was absent, at some one else's party—nor when she said she was sorry but she could never understand stories about business deals.

In June, five months after the Savoy holiday, he contrived to meet Gershaw as if by chance, when the latter was leaving his office for lunch, and enticed him to a drink.

“Madge seems to have got over her bereavement, but the fact is she has had a partial lapse of memory.” He brought in an anonymous psychiatrist. “Now, I do remember that she went out after dinner saying that she had a message for Mrs. Gershaw from the vicar and she must go in person, because your telephone was out of order. Can you possibly tell me, old man, how long she was with you?”

“
Phew
! That's a bit of a contract. My wife let her in—I was in the drawing-room, with the door open. I heard them chattering away in the hall and presently I butted in to ask your wife to have a drink, but she said she couldn't stay. I didn't notice the time. Call it three minutes—five, if you like. Best I can do! But I can tell you definitely she's wrong about our telephone. It was on the telephone that we heard that night about the—about Mrs. Blagrove.”

That was nearly all that Penfold wanted to know.

“Was Madge carrying anything, Gershaw?”

“Don't think so—oh yes, a book, loosely wrapped in newspaper. The rain had softened the paper and I offered her a satchel. But she found she could get it into the pocket of her mack—I remember pulling the flap over it for her.”

So she would have had time to go to Dalehurst and get away, with a margin of minutes, before Dr. Delmore came on the scene. Penfold felt a profound unease and wished he had not tackled Gershaw. After all, there was no proof that she had gone to Dalehurst. The book was not necessarily the Wilcox book. And she might have gone to someone else with another message from the vicar. He decided to let the whole matter drop and found that he could not. The riddle travelled home with him every evening and even intruded on the outward journey, so that his attention would wander from the morning paper.

As he could not shake it off, he tried to stare it out of countenance. Let it be granted that Madge did go to Dalehurst and did know that her aunt was dead before Dr. Delmore stopped her in the road and told her. What did it matter? Was it to be supposed that she went through the open french window and, in a very few minutes—never mind the shock!—saw something, not seen by the highly trained detectives, which told her that he had killed Aunt Agnes? Utterly absurd! Therefore he would put it out of mind.

He did put it out of mind for the better part of a fortnight's holiday in August, which they spent at Brighton. On the last day, the riddle raised its head and he promptly struck at it with a new argument. Would a woman of Madge's character—would anyone but a degraded gun-moll—live with a man whom she believed to have killed a woman who was virtually her mother? She would not! Therefore Madge had no secret weapon and he could be master in his own house.

The obsession was beginning to exist in its own right, as something separate from his desire to change Madge back into a docile and obedient wife. It had an integrity of its own, with no fear outside itself. He did not believe that, if she had proof, she would take it to the police. The terror lay in an imagined moment, in which she would say: ‘I know you killed Aunt Agnes.' Being an imaginative terror, it was more consuming than a reasonable fear.

If she had known before Dr. Delmore had told her, why had she not raised the alarm herself? He could find a dozen contradictory answers. Sometimes in his sleep, and sometimes in a waking dream in the train coming home, he would play the part of Madge entering the room by the french window. ‘Auntie, I've brought you
The Best of Wilcox
.' No, because she would have seen at once that her aunt was dead. In the shock of the discovery she would have forgotten all about the book, which was in the pocket of her mackintosh.

She would have brought the book home.

That night, when Madge had gone to bed, he began his search. In the house there were about a thousand books, some eight hundred of which had been bought by his parents. There were four sectional bookcases—an innovation of Madge's—dotted about the drawing-room. In the section devoted to poetry and novels there was no Wilcox anthology. It was not on the shelves in the morning-room. It had not fallen behind anything. He thought of Madge's mackintosh, which she very rarely wore, found it in the cupboard under the stairs, with the pockets empty.

He had to wait three days before he could be certain that Madge had an afternoon engagement. The strain of waiting preyed on his nerves. Then he came home by the earlier train and made a thorough search upstairs. Finally he was reduced to telling Madge that he had mislaid a technical book urgently needed and, with her able guidance, searched the whole house, without result.

Given that the book was not in his house, where was it? In a week, he was again reconstructing the scene in which Madge was deemed to have entered Dalehurst by the french window. As she walked up the gravelled path she took the book from her pocket. When she entered the room, she flung it from her. In which case it would have been stored with Mrs. Blagrove's furniture, pending probate.

He knew by experience that, for a fixed fee, the depository company would allow detailed examination of goods. On the following Monday, he went to the depository. He had equipped himself with a typewritten letter, purporting to have been signed by Margaret Penfold, which told of one or two rare editions among the comparatively valueless books forming part of the goods deposited. Would they please allow a prospective purchaser to examine? As prospective purchaser, Penfold necessarily adopted a name not his own.

The manager accepted the fee, assured him there would be no difficulty. But, unfortunately, as the goods were awaiting probate, he must obtain formal permission through the solicitor in the case. If it would be convenient to call at the same time on the following day—.

Penfold said that it would be quite convenient, and escaped, thankful that he had given a false name.

The solicitor, who was ready to swear that there were no rare editions among Mrs. Blagrove's books, rang Mrs. Penfold during the afternoon to make sure. When Madge said she had never heard of any, he said that evidently some other property was concerned, that he was sorry she had been bothered and that he hoped she was well. It seemed so trivial an incident that Madge did not mention it.

On Saturday morning, as the Penfolds were finishing breakfast, the housemaid brought a card:
Detective Inspector Rason, New Scotland Yard
.

The telephone conversation with Margaret Penfold made it obvious to the solicitor that the introductory letter to the depository company was a forgery. He reported the facts to Scotland Yard. The report was passed to the Department of Dead Ends, to which the Blagrove case had drifted.

The impostor had concerned himself with books, so Rason searched the Blagrove dossier for mention of books. With some difficulty he found an unpromising note at the end of a list of gruesome details concerning the settee
‘… under seat, misc. articles including newly purchased book: title, ‘The Best of Wilcox.' Checked local bookseller (Penting's). Two copies sold, morning, one to Mrs. Manfried, one to Mrs. Penfold (See Penfold, Margaret: movements of)
.