Very likely. I don't know what I'm going to do with Jocelyn. Marry her and put her into a cute little apartment in Brooklyn? She may have a lot of money. She said she had “enough,” but God knows what that means. If she has a lot of money, that will be a problem. And if she hasn't, that will be another problem. And it is my job to solve all problems, forever more. The great handicap is that I don't seem to have any brains.
“Did you have a nice trip?” asked Harriet, suddenly.
“Fine, thanks!” he said.
She waited a moment. “Do you live in New York?” she asked, with the same suddenness.
“Yes, I do,” he answered.
“Do you work in New York?” she asked.
She wants to know about me, he thought. Why not? “I'm a clerk,” he said.
“A clerk?” she repeated. “What's that?”
“I work in an office,” he said.
“Oh, that? 'Clerk's' a funny word to use.” She waited again for a moment. “Have you got any judges or generals and so on in your family?” she asked.
“I had an uncle who was killed by the Black and Tans in Ireland,” he said.
“Well,” she said in a pompous way. “That's very interesting.”
“I don't think so,” said Killian.
“Rebel, are you?” she said, looking at him sidelong.
“No,” he said. “I'm resigned.”
“My mother likes to get a line on people,” she said. “Mrs. Lamb has the right idea,” said Killian. “My mother is Mrs. Bell,” she said.
They were out of the city now, and Killian looked about him dispassionately, at a landscape like a nightmare, filling stations of crude, fantastic designs and bright colours, hot-dog stands, fields of broken-down old cars.
“This is how the world is going to look after the next war,” said Killian.
“Nope,” said Harriet. “This is nothing but a transition stage.”
“It could be a transition into something even worse.”
“No,” she said in her curt fashion. “We've got enough brains and enough good will to make it better.”
“Who's we?” asked Killian.
“If you're psychologically healthy,” said Harriet, “you'll always think We. Not Me—and the rest of the world.”
“What do you call it if you just think about Me, and not about the rest of the world at all?” he asked. “That's insanity,” said she.
Now they were driving through a town, old houses with wide lawns and fine trees delicately green.
“We had a letter from Jocelyn,” said Harriet. “She sent it air mail from Trinidad.”
“Oh, did she?” said Killian.
“It was a pretty queer letter,” Harriet said. “About her being murdered.”
“Well, well!” said Killian affably.
“She wrote that if anything happened—anything that looked like an accident—it would really be murder.” They drove on and on.
“Did she say who was going to murder her?” Killian asked.
“I didn't see all of the letter,” Harriet answered. “It was to Mr. Bell. But I think she did say.”
“Dramatic,” said Killian.
“Well,” said Harriet, “nothing did happen to her—no accident. So we needn't bother.”
With nonchalance, with style, Harriet turned the car into a driveway. This is an Estate, thought Killian. You couldn't see the house at all until you turned a curve in the road. This is a Mansion, he thought. A long facade of yellow brick, faced with white, a brick terrace with a blue and white striped awning over it.
I'm going to meet Mr. Bell, he thought. I'd like to know... But it's what you'd call a delicate subject. Oh, Mr. Bell, by the way, I wonder if you got a letter from a—er—mutual friend, mentioning me as a possible murderer? If you did, I assure you, my dear Mr. Bell, that the thing is very much exaggerated. In the first place, the party is still alive; and, in the second place, she's engaged to me. If that's what you call it.
A man-servant came running down the broad stone steps and opened the doors of the car; and they got out: the lean and sandy Harriet, chic little Elly, and Jocelyn, like a lost princess, pale and strange.
He went up the steps with her, and a man came out of the house. He had to be Mr. Bell, Killian thought, a big man with a big chest pushed out nobly, a square, handsome, noble face, and white hair. The Stuffed Shirt Supreme, he thought. You could never talk to him, and he avoided talk. He has records inside that head.
“Mr. Killian? I'm glad to welcome you to Christmas House... There's a little story connected with that name. Some years ago a nephew of mine came here, as a small boy. It had been snowing, and he was much impressed by the various evergreens we have here. 'Are those Christmas trees?' he asked his mother. 'Yes,' she answered. 'Yes.' Then,' cried the little fellow, 'this must be where Santa Claus lives!' ”
Killian laughed and laughed, and Bell was pleased. “Harriet,” he said, “we might foregather, don't you think?”
“They'll want to wash first,” she answered.
“Then shall we say in fifteen minutes?'' asked Bell.
“In half an hour,” said Harriet.
She herded the guests into the house. She gave Jocelyn to a housemaid; she gave Killian to the man-servant; and she herself took Elly. It was all done quietly and with an air of inexorable coolness.
“This is your room, sir,” said the butler, opening a door. A fine, large room furnished in chilly grey and blue; with the Chesterfield upholstered armchair, the thick carpet, the framed pictures, it looked wrong to see a stark little bed there. “This is the telephone, sir, connected with my quarters. If you wish anything... This is the bathroom, sir.” He opened a door, and there was the bathroom with a man in it, a huge fellow wearing no more than a pair of white trunks. He stared at them from under his knitted brows, his head lowered like a bull's, his big, brawny body easily balanced, his fingers curled. The white-tiled room glittered with light; he looked as if he were being exhibited in a box, or something too menacing to be let loose.
“Pardon me, sir!” said the butler, and shut him in again. The bathroom is also used by Doctor Ponievsky, sir,” he explained, and went out, closing the door behind him.
“Now I've got to think,” Killian said to himself. He lit a cigarette and began to smoke, standing in the middle of the room, where he could watch the door into the bathroom and the door into the hall. That was how he felt. Threatened.
“That's damned nonsense,” he told himself. But, just the same, that was how he felt. I've got to think. Suppose the worst has happened. The worst being that Jocelyn wrote about me to Bell. About me murdering her. But, my God, she's not dead! That ought to count for something in my favour. What they call extenuating circumstances. Every time she accuses me of murdering her, that's going to be my defense. But, Your Honor, she's not dead. That's a good point.
This is a nice room. This is a nice house. It's a nice day. See it? Blue sky, sun shining. But I am frightened. I don't know what I'm afraid of, but I'm frightened all right. It must be the devil. No use watching the doors. Dat ole Debbil, he come whar he want. It's not funny. It's like a fog. Like a damn cold sea fog. You can't see ahead. What's happened to my life? What's happened to me?
There was a knock at the door. He moistened his lips and said, “Come in!” very politely. It was the chauffeur with his three bags.
“Will you want your trunk up, sir?”
“No thanks. I'm leaving tomorrow,” he answered.
When the man had gone, he rapped on the bathroom door and, getting no answer, went in there and washed. He took his comb and stood before the mirror, and his face was like a mask. A mask of a man in torment, black hollows under his cheekbones; his deep-set eyes were hollow; his mouth looked stretched.
“What's the matter with me?” he cried in his heart.
It was the light over the mirror. It was nothing else. When he looked at himself in the bedroom mirror, he was all right. A neat, sober young man in a dark suit.
I don't know whether it's ten minutes or half an hour, or an hour and a half, he thought, but I'm going down now. To foregather. This must be where Santa Claus lives.
They were all out on the terrace, having drinks. As Killian appeared, a woman came toward him, a thin and long-waisted blonde, with a horse-like face, hollow cheeks, big, square teeth revealed by a dazzling smile. “Mr. Killian, I'm Sibyl Bell,” she said. “This is Doctor Ponievsky. Eric, Mr. Killian.”
“I think we have met before,” said the doctor, with a wonderfully foxy look. He burst into a great laugh, and held out his hand. “I did not know, in that moment, that I had a neighbour yet,” he said. “From now, we shall live very harmoniously, eh?”
“Help yourself, Mr. Killian,” said Sibyl, with a gesture of her hand toward a table; and he went there and poured himself a modest drink of whisky. “There's soda and ginger ale,” said Mrs. Bell.
“No, thanks,” said Killian. He drank the whisky straight; then he looked round with a smile. A genial smile. Hello, boys and girls. Harriet was sitting on the stone balustrade; and Ponievsky stood beside her, looking down at her with bland delight. And she looked up at him with a frown.
He turned his head to find Jocelyn. She was sitting in a wicker chair at the end of the terrace all alone, no one talking to her, no one standing near her. She was still wearing her hat with a veil, and that gave her a fugitive air; she didn't belong here, or anywhere else.
“Where do you live, anyhow?” he asked.
“I told you I had a family,” she said. “They've got a floor in a house.”
“Is that your home?”
“Sure,” she said, with a faint smile.
“You're too mysterious,” he said, curtly.
“It's a good line.”
“Only it's not a line,” he said.
“I'll tell you anything you want,” she said. “Just ask me.”
“All right! Why are we all here?”
“I come here a lot. And I wanted you with me, Jocko.”
“All right! But why the others?”
She looked affrighted, and almost humble. “It came into my head, Jocko...”
“All right! We'll let it go. But there's another thing?”
“Yes?” she said, with her sorrowful dark eyes fixed upon his face.
Maybe I won't go on, he thought. Maybe I'll keep clear of the murder motif. It gets on your nerves. He finished his drink and stared into the empty glass. No, let's be frank and manly. Square your shoulders and look the wench in the eye. Humph, humph. “You wrote to Mr. Bell,” he said. “Air mail from Trinidad. All about how you were going to get yourself murdered?”
“I didn't know then,” she said.
“Didn't know what?”
“I didn't know I was going to love you,” she said, faintly.
“I'm sorry,” he said, Taut I'm dumb. Brutish. No finesse. I'm afraid we've got to have an understanding.”
“We have an understanding,” she said. “We love each other.”
“Yes,” he said. “That's nice. That's cute. But still I want to know. Did you write Mr. Bell, air mail, that I was going to murder you?”
“I didn't mention any names.”
“But you thought I was going to?”
She still looked down, and not at him. “I knew how you felt,” she said in a low, unsteady voice. “But I didn't know how I felt. I didn't know that even that wouldn't kill my love.”
“Either you're crazy,” he said, “or you're a damned liar. Or both.”
She looked up then, straight into his eyes. They looked and looked at each other.
“I wasn't the one who brought this up,” she said. “If you'd let me alone, I'd never have spoken of it again. I don't care. If I'd died, I'd have gone on loving you until the end.”
Fury rose in his throat, choking him; his head pounded. “As long as you think that,” he said, “I quit.”
“Wait!” she said as he turned away.
“Nope! All is over.”
“It will be,” she said. “I'll kill myself.”
“That'll be a nice little change from murder,” he said.
He had turned his back on her. He could walk away now. This was the time to go; this was the only time, the last chance. If she had called him, he could have left her; but the blank silence was unbearable. He had to see what she was doing.
She was sitting there in her hat, with the veil over her eyes, completely alone, abandoned, and in despair. Yet it was not pity that made him stop, and it was not love. We belong together, he thought.
It was like that. Not pity and not love. When he had sat beside her, the day after she had been fished out of the sea, she had clung to him. She couldn't help it; she had nobody else. And he couldn't help it, either. They belonged together. He went back to her with a business-like smile. “Have a cigarette?” he said. “Pull yourself together. Don't be so morbid. It's boring.”
“I'm tired!” she cried, and her eyes filled with tears.
“All right! Go upstairs and go to sleep.”
“Come with me?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “Well meet at dinner.”
She got up; stood with her hand on the back of her chair, swaying a little. As if she were drunk, or as if she were faint, ill—very ill. Her eyes were wide and blank in her pale face. She was incredibly slight and frail. She turned and started to walk away.
“Whither now?” he asked.
“Just going to take a walk, Jocko.”
“I'll be seeing you,” he said, in a hearty way, and went back to the others.
Ponievsky was now sitting on the balustrade beside Harriet; his twinkling, smallish eyes were fixed upon her steadily; he looked amused, pleased, charmed. His very obvious interest didn't embarrass her; she was talking to him in her own fashion, composed, curt, with long pauses. When she had nothing to say, she was silent, making no effort.
He went over to Elly, who sat beside Sibyl; Luther Bell was standing before them, nobly benevolent. They all talked very nicely. The country at this time of the year... Lovely, but we do need rain. Now—er—in Buenos Aires, the climate? Nice climate. Is that so? Luther Bell had a fine voice, flexible and deeply sincere. Did he, or did he not, receive a letter containing a statement to the effect that the defendant did wantonly, and with malice aforethought, murder the said Jocelyn Frey?
If she did write that to him, thought Killian, he's the wonder of the world. Doesn't show any curiosity about me. Maybe she mentioned another murderer. She said there were five, didn't she? It's a mistake; it's a big mistake to have drinks at half-past three in the afternoon. You don't want to go on drinking until dinner time, but what else can you do?
Sibyl took charge of that. “Well have time to go and look at the sea wall and the pier,” she said. “The storm made a perfect holocaust of them.”
“Holocaust is a burnt sacrifice,” said Ponievsky. “It cannot be that a storm should make it.” He was not rude, he just knew everything, that was all.
“I'll take your word for it,” said Sibyl.
She herded them all into the car, with Killian beside her, and she drove them off along a road fined with estates, down to the shore. They got out, and walked on a wide, empty beach; they inspected a stone wall battered down by the sea, and a wooden pier broken in two. The sea was calm enough to-day, pallid, no colour at all beneath the sky that was filled with mother-of-pearl light from the westering sun.
“The sea is a great hypocrite,” said Ponievsky. “You see how she is purring now, when she has done all this bad work.” He was pleased with this. “She is purring, but she is not asleep. She will strike again.” He glanced at Harriet to see if she appreciated this. But her face was not to be read; she was looking out over the sea. She moved away and he went with her.
“Don't go there!” Sibyl screamed, suddenly.
Ponievsky and Harriet were on the pier; they were standing at the very edge of the break, both so tall, outlined against the pearly sky.
“They know what they're doing, my dear,” said Bell.
“Come back!” screamed Sibyl, in a voice as harsh as a seagull's; and they heard her, and they did come back.
It was growing chilly now. The tide was running out; the light was running out of the sky; a raw little salt wind blew up against their faces. They stood on the damp sand and waited until Sibyl gave the order to retreat; then two by two they went up the steps to the road and got into the car.
All very sad, thought Killian. But tranquil. Like the end of something. I got away from Jocelyn for two hours, and I didn't think about her. I forgot her. That shows character. I'm not the type to be dominated by a woman. Oh, no, indeed! Not me.
Sibyl turned the car into the drive, and stopped before the house. A little army of men hurried toward them, coming out from behind the trees, like an ambush. It was astonishing.
“What's this?” Sibyl demanded.
“We represent the press, madam,” said a bald little fellow with a cynical and tired face. “We'd like to get a couple of pictures.”
“Of what?” asked Sibyl.
“Of the victim,” said he.
Now it's starting again, thought Killian, with a sort of despair.
CHAPTER SIX
SIBYL HAD superb aplomb. She looked the invaders over with a hardy and calculating eye. “What victim?” she asked.
“We want a couple of pictures of the girl who went overboard,” another man said: “You Miss Frey?” That was addressed to Harriet.
“Miss Frey isn't here,” said Harriet.
A camera clicked, and another one. This will be a funny picture, thought Killian. A carload of us, sitting here like dummies. The victim—
“Miss Frey is resting,” said Sibyl. “Come back tomorrow.”
“Too late,” said the little bald man. “Give us something now, will you? How did she happen to fall overboard?”
“She's too tired to talk now,” said Sibyl.
“You her mother? Any relation?”
“I was on the ship when it happened,” said Elly. “I'll be glad to tell you what I can.” She got out of the car and faced the army, polite and smiling.
The Girl Who Had To Die Page 5