The Lethal Sex

by Christianna Brand

  “No,” he said, “not absolute, just a fool. There are always traces if one looks for them, Iris.”

  He turned his attention to the letter. “And this copy in Blanche’s handwriting. Not good. And last but not least, the money.”

  He went to his desk and immediately found what he was looking for, a slip of paper. He studied it, then picked up several of the bills and put them down again. “It may have escaped your notice, my dear, but invariably when I draw a large sum of cash from the bank I request them to copy the serial numbers. Two copies. One they hold, and one I keep. In this case there was no earthly reason for me to do so, but it is a habit I have found very useful. If one should be robbed... These bills are part of the amount I gave Blanche recently. You see? The evidence is overwhelming against you.”

  As he spoke, he swept everything together and locked it in a drawer of his desk.

  “But,” she faltered, “we have it all. Not the police. So...”

  Oliver looked at her; his face was the face of justice, calm, cold, dignified.

  “Of course,” he said, “there will be a nasty scandal. I wanted to avoid that. Poor Blanche. I feel responsible... But I never thought you’d kill her. I soon saw she didn’t love me, and put the whole thing on a businesslike footing…”

  “The other girl,” Iris said. “When I thought you were still seeing Blanche, you were...”

  Oliver went on as if he had not heard her interruption. “But murder, Iris, murder! Not for passion, not for love, not for me, but for your own sterile appetite. If you had been any wife to me at all, I would protect you now, but… I’m sorry...I suggest that you go to the police yourself. I would prefer not to have to call them in and give them the evidence.”

  Iris stared at her husband. She struggled for words, and then remained silent. She knew it would do no good for her to plead. Oliver had no pity for her, no compassion—she had killed all that long ago.

  She drew herself up. “Very well,” she said. “But I want to lie down first. I’m very tired. Don’t let anyone disturb me.”

  He nodded. “You have great self-control, Iris. An admirable trait when not carried too far. I think I’d better tell Simmons not to wait, unless you want him?”

  She shook her head and went blindly into the bathroom. She took the sleeping pills one by one, mechanically, a pill and a swallow of water, a pill and a swallow of water.

  It was a shame to do it this way, just what Oliver wanted. No scandal. She supposed it would be considered suicide, while depressed or temporarily insane. But even to spite Oliver, she couldn’t face the long degradation and exposure of investigation and trial.

  She stretched out on the bed. So that was why Blanche had fallen for her story. She knew her time was up, and therefore wanted all she could get. Now Iris understood that bitter smile.

  She wondered again what the new Mrs. Teleton would look like. Blonde chorus girl, or mousy, clinging vine? She couldn’t guess, and it was too late to ask Oliver. How little she knew about Oliver.

  It was her last thought.

  You’ll Be the Death of Me

  ANTHONY GILBERT

  She found the button when she took his coat to press, that had become so draggled in last night’s rain. It made a big hump in the pocket and she carried it over to the window to examine it, bathed in the clear light from the wide fields beyond. It was striking both in color and design, a big button of a particularly bright blue, with a gilt device, a sea-horse or something, upon it.

  No man’s coat had ever boasted a button like that, thought Mary Arthur, and instantly she had a vision of the sort of woman who’d wear the coat this had come from. Someone the antithesis of herself, she knew. Glancing up, she caught sight of herself in a piece of looking-glass hanging against the wall, a little brown thrush of a girl, neat, shy and small.

  “I could pass you under my arm,” Dendy had said when they first met. That was when she was keeping house for her uncle, and it was almost true, for Dendy Arthur was a big, handsome man who’d take any girl’s heart at sight, as he had taken hers. Often she’d wondered what he’d seen in her, with no special looks or gifts, and only the two hundred pounds her auntie had left her for a dowry. But she’d never hesitated when he asked should he put up the banns, though she’d rebelled spiritedly about coming to this quiet house set in the middle of nowhere, all moors and fields and soughing trees by day, and a world of somber enchantment once dusk had fallen.

  She was a town girl, he teased her, meaning she had come from a friendly, lively village with neighbors on either side and not a face in the street you couldn’t put a name to.

  “I believe you’re afraid to be alone with me,” he challenged, one hand under her delicate chin.

  “It’s when you’re not here I’d be afraid,” she told him.

  But she’d come to the cottage after all, for what choice was there? Neither wanted to start married life in a couple of rooms in some other body’s house, and the Council flats that were going up near the factory where Dendy worked were for family men.

  Mary Arthur shrank from the thought of having a child in this lonesome place where you could die, she said, and none would know till your man came back in the evening. They weren’t even on the telephone; the nearest communications were Jones the Dairy in one direction and a retired couple called Jarvis in the other, and both of them a mile away.

  Standing there in the window, staring at the button as if it were a magnet and she no more than a pin irresistibly held by it, she recalled how Dendy had come in late last night, with his coat draggled with rain and the bright drops thick in his thick hair.

  “Doing a bit of overtime and both of us a bit of good,” he’d protested when she flew at him, catching his wet coat, incoherent with rage and fear. “Well, what’s wrong with that? You were saying you could do with a new stove, weren’t you?”

  “Not in this house. I wouldn’t spend a penny on this house,” she’d cried passionately, “and if you’re going to work late you should warn me beforehand.”

  He didn’t understand, of course. With nerves of brass he’d never know how a girl might feel when the wind came snuffling at the door, and invisible hands tapped on the windows, when ghostly feet came up and stopped and maybe a voice whispered. Oh, it was easy for him to say it was just the wind or a hedgehog rustling the leaves, but how could anyone be sure?

  In the end, it had blown up into quite a scene, and for the first time in their married life they had gone to bed unreconciled. And as luck would have it, this morning she’d overslept, only waking to hear the slam of the cottage door, and all day she’d been tormented by the thought that she’d seen him for the last time.

  It seemed hours before her heart stopped quaking; she was terribly in love, and still scarcely believed her good fortune in marrying a man who could have taken his pick in any company. She thought of him, the dark, handsome face, the brilliant eyes, the gay way of him.

  “...When I want a thing I take it,” he’d boasted. “And I want you.”

  She made the special hotpot he liked so much for dinner, and a chocolate cake, for he was a sweet-tooth all right, and she rubbed the brass and shined the windows, and then she remembered the draggled coat and thought she’d press that, because he was fussy about his clothes, and no wonder, with his looks and the way he wore them. And so she’d felt the lump in his pocket and put in her hand and pulled out the blue button.

  She was trembling again now, but not with fear. Now she was sure it was a lie about the overtime last night; he’d been out with a girl, having fun. She turned the button over; a scrap of material was caught in the shank. That button hadn’t fallen off, it had been pulled off, in horseplay, no doubt. She had a hideous vision of the owner, a big brassy girl, and Dendy, the handsomest man for five miles around, laughing together, being warm and loving and never giving her a thought.

  She turned and blundered into the kitchen, where Rags, the little nondescript brown terrier Dendy had bought her for compa
ny, came jumping up at her.

  “Oh, keep down,” she cried in agony, and put out a hand to thrust him away.

  He thought she wanted a game and jumped higher, and she pushed against the table to avoid him, and the milk can went over, and in an instant the floor was swimming in a creamy flood. She was so much taken aback she didn’t even try to save any; as for Rags, he hurled himself at the milk and begin to lap for dear life.

  “Look what you’ve done!” she cried hysterically to the little dog. “What’s your master going to say when he comes back and finds he can’t have so much as a cup of tea?”

  It did occur to her that he could go and have tea with that trollop who owned the blue coat, but then she’d want tea herself, and besides surely Dendy would come back; if she hurried she could get to Jones the Dairy and home again before Dendy returned from work. Besides, it would be something to do. She felt she couldn’t endure these four walls and the blank, uncaring countryside beyond.

  She took the can and, not stopping to wipe up the floor, for the dusk came down so quickly and she’d no mind to be caught out of doors once night had fallen, she took the steel chain for Rags and shook it at him. He stopped drinking at once and bounded after her. Before she left, she took the button and set it in the middle of the parlor table, with the curtains drawn back and the light on, so that every gleam should fall upon it. Then if he should be back first, to make up for last night, say, he’d know at once she’d found it, and could save himself the trouble of more lies.

  It was a perfect autumn evening, cool and already faintly silver. On the hedges the Old Man’s Beard lay like skeins of gray wool. Rags was in an ecstasy, tearing ahead, glancing over his shoulder, his impudent eyes bright as candles, and bounding on again. Indeed, he was in such spirits, since a walk at this hour was unprecedented, that she could scarcely control him. He espied a gray squirrel leaping across a field, and in a moment he was in pursuit. He never had a chance, of course; the squirrel ran nimbly up a tree, and though Rags stood up and begged enchantingly, the cad wouldn’t come down again.

  Mary laughed for a moment, then had the unpleasant thought that she was like Rags, begging Dendy not to leave her, and she called the little dog sharply. But in this tranquil landscape even unhappiness became blurred; the trees wore the last of their gold leaves, and there were red berries on the bushes by which she passed.

  Sooner than she expected she reached the farm.

  “It’s Mary Arthur,” said Mrs. Jones, surprised. “Did you come alone, my dear?”

  “I had Rags,” said Mary, smiling.

  “A bit of a creature like that wouldn’t be much protection against a killer,” said Mrs. Jones.

  “A killer!” Her voice was suddenly faint.

  “Why, love, hadn’t you heard?”

  “How should she have heard, Mother?” put in a new voice. This was the daughter-in-law, a town girl by country standards, who couldn’t conceal her scorn for country-dwellers, for all she’d married Will Jones and come to the farm to live. “It wasn’t known hereabouts till midday.”

  “I’ve seen no one since,” Mary agreed. “But what happened?”

  “That poor girl!” said Mrs. Jones, measuring milk into the can.

  “Not so much of a girl at that,” jeered the daughter-in-law. “Thirty if she was a day, and asking for trouble. People that get themselves killed mostly do. I’ll tell you one thing, there’s plenty of wives ’ull sleep sounder in their beds tonight, knowing Bette Rose is out of the way, all that know where their husbands were last night, that is.”

  An appalling faintness caught Mary by the throat. “Who’s Bette Rose?”

  The light of the Blackbird,” said the daughter-in-law before Mrs. Jones could reply. The Blackbird was the local inn where most of the fellows met for a pint and a game of darts. “Swaggering here and there and tantalizing the chaps in her bright blue coat with those silly buttons...”

  “Give over, Ruby,” ordered Mrs. Jones, senior. “Can’t you see you’re frightening Mary half to death? And even if Bette did ask for trouble, that doesn’t excuse the fellow that did it. And so far as we know, the police haven’t a smell of him yet.”

  “So now,” amplified the younger woman, “you see why Mother thought it so brave of you to come over the down alone, with a murderer lurking maybe...though in his shoes I’d be in the next county by now, and that’s likely where he is.”

  “If you was to think before you spoke, Ruby, my girl,” observed her mother-in-law in dry tones, “you’d know that’s just what he won’t do. You forget you’re not living in a town any more, where the fellows are like rabbits in a warren, one more or less and who’s to notice? Here you’d be remarked at once if you disappeared right away, unless it’s a stranger, that is, as we all hope, and even they don’t go unnoticed hereabouts.’’

  “A blue coat,” repeated Mary, her senses in a daze.

  “That’s right, with great big buttons with a goldfish or some such nonsense on them. In and out of the Blackbird she was, according to Will. Your Dendy ’ud know her, too. All the chaps know her, they couldn’t help it. With eyes like saucers and eyelashes that never grew there by nature…”

  Mary put out a blind hand for the milk. “I must be getting along,” she breathed. “Where’s the dog? Dendy doesn’t like it if he comes home and finds me not there...”

  The button, she was thinking, the button I put on the table. Any stranger passing could see through the window. I’ll get back first, throw it away. He’ll never mention it. She didn’t think of Dendy as a possible murderer, she only remembered she loved him and he was her man. And he was in danger, whether he knew it or no.

  “You’re never going back alone with the night coming on,” protested kind-hearted Mrs. Jones. “Wait a while and Bob ’ull see you home.”

  Mary shook her head. Bob was Mrs. Jones’s younger son, a fair giant of a man who couldn’t take his eyes off Mary. Sometimes she wondered if she wouldn’t have done better to take a quiet, slow-moving man like that instead of the mercurial Dendy.

  “I’ve got Rags,” she explained, drawing the chain from the pocket of her coat and stooping to snap it on his collar. The catch was an awkward one, and he danced about like a ballerina—Dendy was always saying he’d buy a new one...Dendy and his promises, she thought bitterly—but eventually she got it fixed. “Murderers are mostly cowards, they say. Maybe they’ll be feared of a dog.”

  She picked up the can, said farewell, and set off on the homeward journey. She had meant to make a good pace, since the road was mainly downhill, but Rags, indignant at being kept on a chain, alternately pulled and dragged back, threatened the safety of the milk for which she’d risked so much, and at last, in a flurry of impatience, she let him run loose. He was off like an arrow, and invisible almost at once; but she could hear him barking some distance ahead.

  The shadows that had been creeping up on her now seemed to fall like a curtain and she wasn’t halfway back to the cottage before her heart was thudding with fear. Every clump of bushes was a murderer waiting to pounce; more than once one of the copse of trees seemed to change its position, and she knew it was a man, waiting there for her to pass. She made wild detours, and when a tree, bent like an ancient witch, swayed in the breeze so, that the claw-like branches caught her shoulder, she let out a brief scream.

  Now she resolved to take the short cut through a patch of brambles; it would cut off a quarter of a mile and any minute now she might hope to see the light she’d left burning raying through the dark. Dendy was due, too, and at all costs she must be back first. She called to the dog, but she had to call again and again before, reluctant and panting, he came back to her. Then she plunged into the undergrowth, with Rags at her heels.

  The short cut was a mistake; within a very few minutes she’d lost the path, stepping aside to avoid a particularly savage tangle of bramble stems, and then, worst still, she lost Rags. She could hear him barking, and then the bark changed its timbre.

&
nbsp; “I’m lost,” it declared, “I’m lost. Come and find me.”

  She called imperatively, beseechingly, angrily, but all to no purpose. The barking changed to a heart-breaking, high-pitched wail. She knew what had happened; he’d got himself caught in a flurry of thorny creepers, might even be netted by the collar, or got his foot in a trap. They snared rabbits hereabouts, Dendy said. She was aware of an overpowering temptation to make her own way back, and make Dendy come and look for the dog, but she couldn’t, after all, close her ears to that cry. As easy to leave a child alone in the dark.

  She set down the can of milk and, the shades of night enveloping her (what had possessed her that she had forgotten to bring a torch?), she made her way cautiously through the undergrowth. She found him at last; he had crawled right under an immense bush and was butting vainly with his sharp brown head at an impenetrable thicket of low-growing branches. She had to lie down and push her arm among the thorns to grab at him, and he made matters worse by backing away. But she got him at last and once again forced the chain on to his collar. She had no idea where the milk was, and no intention of going back to look for it. If Dendy wanted it, let him go and seek it.

  One thing the dog had done for her, he’d set her feet back on the right path. Almost at once she saw the cottage lights, and stumbling, calling, half-pulled off her feet by the eager Rags, she made headlong for them.

  Dendy was standing at the gate. “Why, Mary, where have you been? I was scared to death, knowing you don’t like being out in the dark.”

  “I upset the milk. I went to the farm.” She pushed past him into the living room. The surface of the table was as bare as your hand.

  “The milk?” repeated Dendy, puzzled.

  “Yes. I lost it on the way back. It was Rags’s fault- no sense blaming him, though. He thought he was after a rabbit.”