The New Sonia Wayward (14 page)

They had probably not, it had to be conceded, ventured as far as they had done on the strength of mere suspicion. If they believed that their employer was in the embarrassing position of endeavouring to conceal that he had been deserted by his wife, if they saw Petticate’s position as merely awkward and humiliating, they might on the strength of this allow themselves a certain amount of liberty and insolence. But making off with the family silver, and then coolly advising against calling in the police, was another matter. It represented a confident wickedness for which there must be some solid ground. And Petticate couldn’t have much doubt about what that solid ground was. The Hennwifes really had in their possession that current passport without which Sonia couldn’t have left the British Isles.

That passport – and their story of how Petticate himself had shuffled about it – would entitle them to be heard by the law. The local police could scarcely fail to remember that Mrs Ffolliot Petticate had written to the magistrates’ clerk from Paris; and once they had put this simple two and two together they would be bound to acknowledge that there was a case for inquiry.

Petticate frowned. It was awkward, without a doubt. But at least he had got somewhere by confronting the awkwardness squarely. And now there was a tolerably simple equation to work out. Did the potential awkwardness to him, existing simply as a matter of pleasurable anticipation in the Hennwife’s minds, look like outweighing the potential awkwardness to
them
?

Suppose that, as a consequence of this evil couple’s going to the police, the whole truth eventually emerged. The Hennwifes might make a little money out of it. They might make – Petticate supposed – anything up to a thousand pounds by lending their names to some article in one of the vulgar newsprints.
How We Unmasked Petticate: Exclusive
… That sort of thing.

But the Hennwifes weren’t so ignorant as to imagine that a thousand pounds is riches. And they knew the conditions of their own calling. Once they had figured as cashing in on a scandal, they were finished so far as good employment went. Nor would their position be particularly healthy even if they refrained from snatching at easy money in that way. They had delayed taking action, and in this it would be anybody’s guess that their motive had been questionable. And nobody is likely to employ a married couple who have been suspected of even nursing a project of blackmail.

The conclusion of all this seemed clear to Petticate. If he stood up to the Hennwifes, if he pitched them out of the house here and now, they would probably cut their losses and vanish for good.

But suppose it didn’t work out that way? Suppose that, finding themselves denied any further profit as a result of the unexpected resoluteness of their employer, they did out of sheer malignity take the risk of informing against him? In that event, just where would he stand?

It would be all up, for a start, with the new Sonia Wayward – and with all the subsequent new Sonia Waywards which he was already beginning to plan. Once active suspicion was aroused, his deception wouldn’t last for a week. And that meant financial ruin or the next thing to it. But of course his peril didn’t end there. Even if he told the exact truth about Sonia’s end, and even if that exact truth was believed, he had no doubt committed some crime or other in the idiotic eyes of the law. Five years for that – he seemed to hear the voice of some disgusting old judge pronouncing – and a couple of years added on for the disgraceful fraud he had proposed to perpetrate upon Wedge and the reading public of the English-speaking world. But the exact truth
mightn’t
be believed. The police might persuade themselves that the course of deception upon which he had embarked had begun with murder.

Petticate, had of course, faced this possibility before in the course of his cogitations. Nevertheless it cast a fresh chill of horror over him now. Oddly enough, he felt something more than a chill. He felt a thrill as well. It was really very curious. It was almost as if, far from being a person of exceptional rationality, he was one of those abnormal beings who take satisfaction in achieving, whether in the dock at the Old Bailey or elsewhere, a notoriety quite beyond any that common mortals may hope to attain.

Petticate put down his cigar and stared at this sudden vision of himself, fascinated. He would be in the dock – and he would be impregnable. The time had long passed when anything identifiable as Sonia’s body would ever be washed up on any beach. So even if he
had
…

In sudden and horrible excitement, Petticate got up and paced the room. Yes, even if he had murdered Sonia, he would be absolutely safe now. Even if he told a series of lies, inventing a story of their having parted amicably, and of his having received a copy of
What Youth Desires
before Sonia’s final unaccountable failure to communicate or turn up again, he would still be safe from any really dire penalty. He would insist on giving evidence – and brilliantly outpoint the Crown counsel when under cross-examination. In the well of the court the Director of Public Prosecutions would be sitting glum and silent, bitterly reflecting on the folly of having tried to catch a man of Ffolliot Petticate’s outstanding intellectual ability. The jury would retire for ten minutes – or would it be better fun, Petticate wondered, if they retired for ten hours? – and return a verdict of Not Guilty. There would be a murmur of applause, quickly stilled at a stern word from the judge – who would then briefly congratulate Petticate on his bearing throughout the shocking indignity to which he had been so wantonly subjected. Outside, reporters would be waiting. He would certainly have a few words to say to the press…

Petticate came to himself with a jerk. He was not sure how long this strange fantasy had lasted. But he glanced at the clock and saw that the wicked and treacherous Hennwife might return at any time. So to what, exactly, did his reflections add up?

Subservience to the Hennwifes was now surely the first step towards his own utter destruction. Once they believed that they had cowed him, they would see the green light to bleeding him white. The prospect was as black as that. Petticate paused for a moment to admire this colourful way of seeing the matter – his late literary labours had much stimulated his linguistic sense – and then went on to consider what followed from this conviction.

The answer wasn’t difficult. It was the old one that the Hennwifes must be defied. The Hennwifes must go.

Petticate’s thought had arrived at just this point when the door opened and Hennwife entered the room once more. Mrs Hennwife followed him. Then they both just stood, looking at Petticate silently and impassively.

It was unnerving – which was no doubt what it was meant to be. This time, Petticate stood up.

‘Well,’ he said sternly, ‘have you anything to say, my man?’

Hennwife raised his eyebrows.

‘Dear me, no. It was you, if I understood rightly, sir, who wished to continue our conference.’

Petticate preserved silence for a moment in face of this further impertinence. He still felt that he was in command of the situation. He turned to Mrs Hennwife.

‘And you – have you understood the need of bringing your husband to his senses?’

Mrs Hennwife in her turn took a moment before answering. When she did so, it was with a dark obliqueness that was surprising.

‘There’s some,’ she said, ‘that won’t come to their senses again ever. Or that’s how it looks to me.’

‘I suppose you imagine yourself to be talking sense, Mrs Hennwife. But in fact you are talking nonsense – and nonsense of a kind which removes you and your husband from my employment at once. The silver which you have taken you will return forthwith. And you will then pack and go. I will make you no further payment whatever. If you feel aggrieved, I advise you to consult a lawyer. If you believe yourselves to be in possession of information which should be given to the police, you should go straight to the police station from this house. It will certainly not be to your advantage in your calling, but no doubt your duty as citizens must override that.’ Petticate allowed himself a tinge of irony at this point. Then he let his voice go brisk and hard again. ‘And now you may go.’

This performance, Petticate realized, hadn’t been without elements of confusion. Nevertheless he was fairly satisfied with it. He thought that it had done the trick: the simple trick, for which only a strong nerve had been required, of convincing these dastardly people that he wasn’t soft. He waited for them to crawl out. He was utterly unprepared for what actually happened. Hennwife didn’t retreat. Hennwife advanced. For a moment Petticate had an alarmed notion that the man actually proposed to commit a physical assault upon him. He noticed – what he had never noticed before – that this mere servile convenience (as he had always regarded him) packed a good deal of muscle beneath his dismal clothes. But Hennwife didn’t in fact attack him: he merely walked past him and sat down in a large chair beside the fireplace.

Colonel Petticate was left standing in the middle of the floor, gaping at the man.

‘I’ll have a brandy, if you don’t mind,’ the incredible Hennwife said. ‘Don’t think I don’t know where you keep it nowadays.’

The astounding insolence of this – Petticate was later to reflect – might have been less devastatingly effective than it was had not the words been ingeniously humiliating as well.

During his first period of alarm before his new situation, he had, it will be recalled, passed a self-denying ordinance against solitary drinking. Later, when his resolution had first weakened and then appeared unnecessary, he had acted in what he now realized was a thoroughly bizarre fashion. Although there could be no possible objection to the Hennwifes knowing that he had reverted to his normal habits in this matter, he had in fact resumed drinking in a way that was entirely furtive and clandestine – keeping brandy and a tumbler under lock and key, and having recourse to them only when he believed himself entirely safe from observation.

This freakish conduct, he supposed, was not without a psychological foundation: every occasion upon which he took a drink was now a symbolic re-enactment of that other secret deed by which his whole present course of life had been determined. As he unlocked the cupboard where the brandy was concealed he would look round his study with the same swift apprehensive gaze as he had directed out to sea just before sending Sonia overboard.

But all this didn’t make his conduct rational, and there was something peculiarly shattering in Hennwife’s having detected him in so miserable an antic. So disorganized was he, indeed, that he positively felt his trembling hand going to the bunch of keys in his pocket, as if he were constrained to accept Hennwife’s command like an automaton. For seconds his own will was so paralysed that he would have been forced to obey this dreadful couple even if they had ordered him to submit to some gross physical insult. But then he did hear his own voice speak – or rather he heard it desperately hiss.

‘Dismissed…dismissed! You hear what I say? You are dismissed.’

Hennwife sat back in the big chair – it came queerly into Petticate’s mind that he had never seen the fellow so much as perched on a stool before – and produced a low, easy laugh.

‘We weren’t engaged by you, you know, and we’re not going to be dismissed by you. Isn’t that right, Mrs H?’

‘Certainly it’s right.’ Mrs Hennwife had not moved from her position near the door, and Petticate was just collected enough to wonder whether she was inclined a little to hang back from her husband’s shock tactics. ‘Certainly it’s right,’ she repeated. ‘Everybody knows who has the say in this house – or had it until we won’t be saying what. Your wife has the money, Mister Colonel Petticate; your wife engaged us; and it’s your wife that will send us away again.’

Hennwife produced his laugh again at considerable length. He plainly judged this most amusing. Petticate, who found himself peculiarly outraged by a manner of address so insulting to the commission he held from the Queen, could only answer with an inarticulate gibber of rage.

‘When we get a sight of her, that is,’ Mrs Hennwife continued. ‘It’s when we see Mrs Petticate that it will be time enough to start packing our bags.’

Hennwife stood up. He had apparently forgotten his demand for brandy. The ugly grin was on his face again, and he walked over to Petticate’s locked bureau and tapped it.

‘But just in case she’s delayed,’ he said, ‘you’d better get busy on another of her rotten novels.’

Petticate was never to know whether, at this, he did in fact produce a scream of fury, or whether the impulse was something strangled in his throat.

‘Because, sir’ – it amused Hennwife to return suddenly to his professional manner – ‘I fear that the calls upon your purse are likely to become heavier than of late. If you will pardon the liberty of the observation, that is to say.’ He moved towards the door and opened it – again in his professional, forward-facing way. He gave a nod to his wife, who went silently out. ‘Is there anything more, sir?’

‘No!’ Petticate wasn’t clear what he wanted to say; he was only aware of himself as unable to produce more than this croaked-out monosyllable.

‘Thank you, sir.’

The door closed softly. Hennwife was gone.

Petticate’s mind was numb. It was minutes before he could even begin to get into focus just what had happened, or how the situation had changed. There had been one surprise: Hennwife knew what had been going on in relation to
What Youth Desires
. Plainly he had no difficulty in dealing with a locked desk or drawer; and in this case he had shown much more ability to understand what was revealed to him than Petticate would have supposed. The man must be a professional criminal!

The implications of this were extremely alarming. It meant that Hennwife had probably not stopped short at merely examining the new Sonia Wayward while it was in progress, but had taken photographs of those pieces of the first typescript in which Petticate’s manuscript corrections most clearly pointed to his being the inventor of the whole thing. This greatly strengthened Hennwife’s position as a blackmailer, his ability to be really awkward if it came to the pinch.