Bedelia

by Vera Caspary

  How was it possible for a small woman to have drowned a man who had been boating and swimming all his life? If Will Barrett had drunk too much beer, he might not have known it was she who pushed him off the pier, but he should have been restored to his senses by the shock of the cold water.

  Thinking of it, Charlie experienced all the sensations. He lost his balance, fell, shuddered as the water closed over him, floundered about, held his breath, struggled and tried to reach the surface. His arms flailed about in the effort to swim blindly toward the posts that held up the pier. Drunk or sober, he would not have allowed himself to drown, he thought. But if he had been drugged, if he were not wholly conscious, the water might not have revived him.

  “Great God, I’m getting morbid.”

  “Did you say something, dear?”

  “No.”

  “Why are you so cross with me?”

  “Am I cross? I’m sorry.”

  “Perhaps you’re bored being stuck in the house without any company but me. I know I’m not very intellectual, but I try not to be a bore.”

  “My dear, you’re not the slightest bit of a bore.”

  The telephone rang. Charlie was glad that he had an excuse to run down the stairs.

  Ellen was calling. “Hello, Charlie, are you all right?”

  “Hello, how are you? Dug out yet?”

  “Good gracious, yes. We were only snowed in a day down here, worse luck. I’ve had to go to work as usual. It’s pretty bad out there, isn’t it?”

  “We’re comfortable,” Charlie said.

  “It’s been terribly exciting in town, everybody dug and shoveled, not only the poor who were getting paid for it, but the Mayor and City Council and all the storekeepers and bankers. The poor were angry because other people were doing the work that’s rightfully theirs, taking away their chance to make a little money, but there was so much snow that there’ll be work for them for days to come. They’re coming out your way tomorrow.”

  “That’s good.”

  “You don’t sound enthusiastic. What’s the matter? Don’t you want to be dug out?’ Charlie did not answer, and after a little pause Ellen added with unconvincing gaiety, “I suppose when you’ve been married just a little while, you don’t mind being cut off from the world. How’s Bedelia taking it?”

  “She’s in bed with a cold.”

  “Oh, what a nuisance. Do give her my love,” Ellen said dutifully. Her voice revived as she exclaimed, “Charlie, I’ve got the most astonishing news for you! A letter from Abbie. What do you think?”

  “Bustles in style again.”

  “Now, Charlie, don’t tease. This is important. About someone quite close to you.”

  His heart missed a beat.

  “Your neighbor, Mr. Chaney.”

  “Oh!”

  “It’s quite shocking. Shall I read you what she says?” A paper rustled. “Before I read it, let me tell you one thing, Charlie. I never did trust him. You can ask Abbie. I thought he was sneaky right from the start.”

  “Go on, read it.”

  “I won’t read the whole letter, you know how Abbie goes on, just the part that’s apropos. Quote, ‘The most ironic joke has been played on us by Fate and your dear Charlie’”—a giggle traveled over the wire—“‘is the victim. Last night I went to a New Year’s reception at the Hattons’, who were good friends of ours when I was married to Walter. I joined a group of people I knew. They were listening to an elderly gentleman tell some fascinating stories about crime and graft in Kansas City, etc., and I thought he must be an editor or journalist like Norman Hapgood or Lincoln Steffens. Believe me, he was quite distinguished. I had not caught his name and later I went up the punchbowl and asked my hostess to identify him. Imagine my surprise when she told me he was a detective!!’”

  “Oh?”

  “Abbie has it underlined and two exclamation points.”

  “What else does she say?”

  “‘My hostess explained that he was not like a policeman, but is a private investigator with a very interesting history. He had taken a house next to their summer place in Mamaroneck and she had been shocked when she heard he was a detective, but found that he was quite decent and respectable, and his daughter, Beatrice Chaney, had gone to Mount Holyoke. After that I managed to have a heart-to-heart with the old gentleman. When I said that I had met a young man of that name, he interrupted and asked if I’d seen his son’s paintings. Evidently he doesn’t care any more for Benjy’s art than you do, pet. I told him I thought his son’s work clever, but somewhat fauve, and he remarked that most young ladies felt just as I do about the lad.

  ‘“They are evidently well-bred people, and if he can afford to give his son a machine and let him spend his life painting, they must have money. There is no reason why you should be such . . .’” Ellen stopped reading.

  After a silence, marked by the humming of the wires, Charlie said, “Go on. What else does she say?”

  “It’s nothing. Abbie said something silly.”

  “That you were a snob, or a prig?”

  Ellen laughed self-consciously.

  There was another silence, and then Ellen said, dryly, “She thinks any single man ought to fascinate an old maid.”

  Charlie laughed mechanically. “Why, you’re still a spring chicken, my dear. And Ben’s an attractive fellow. Abbie may not be so silly after all.”

  “I’m not interested.”

  Charlie was pleased. It was selfish of him, after he’d gone off and married another woman, to cherish Ellen’s affection, but he was human, and his admiration of Ben had been grudging. “I don’t think he’s your type, Nellie. He’s not good enough for you.”

  “Oh, Charlie!” Ellen’s laugher was freer and lighter.

  The banter had lightened Charlie’s spirits. As he hung the receiver back upon the hook and started up the stairs, it seemed that his life had been restored to its normal pattern. He saw himself as Ellen saw him, a man who had married impulsively but with good sense.

  “Ellen certainly talked a long time,” Bedelia said as he returned to the bedroom.

  Charlie was paralyzed. Had the door been open all the time? How much had his wife heard of Ellen’s talk about detectives?

  “She’ll never fall in love with him,” his wife continued.

  Charlie found that he could move again, and speak. He studied Bedelia’s face and observed nothing more than curiosity written upon it. It had been Ellen, he recalled, who had mentioned detectives; he had said nothing about Ben’s work.

  “It’s Abbie,” Bedelia said shrewdly. “She’s probably trying to push Ellen off on the first man who comes along so she won’t be an old maid.”

  This phrase, used humbly by Ellen and by Bedelia derisively, irritated Charlie. “Ellen’s not an old maid. She’s still young and a handsome girl.”

  “You needn’t worry about Ben. She’ll never fall for him. She’s still too much in love with you.”

  “That’s nonsense,” snapped Charlie, blushing.

  “She’ll never get you, though. I won’t let her. You’re mine.”

  Charlie shrugged as if he considered the conversation too trivial to be continued, and walked away from the bed.

  Bedelia’s voice pursued him. “Ellen wishes I’d die so she could marry you.” This was stated so calmly that it seemed no absurdity, but honest fact.

  Charlie wheeled around. “It’s not worth talking about. I wish you wouldn’t make such crazy statements.”

  “Do you wish it, too? Do you want me to die so you can marry Ellen?”

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Ellen’s a fine, good-hearted girl. Such a thought would never enter her mind.”

  “She’s against me, Charlie. She and Ben are working together.”

  He turned away again and found himself face to face with his image in the pier glass. He felt that he had changed and expected to find evidence of it in his appearance. The change was there, but not sufficiently developed
to show in his manner, his speech, nor the expression of his face. It was rather in his searching of Bedelia’s manner, speech, and facial expression that the change manifested itself.

  She went on quietly. “You aren’t very clever about people, dear. You trust them too easily. The ones you admire the most turn out to be the rottenest.”

  He turned around and stared at her, wondering if Bedelia had chosen this oblique way to tell him about herself. “I don’t quite understand you.”

  “You can’t tell what most people are thinking,” she went on, almost blithely. “Nor what their plans are nor how they feel about you. Those who look the most innocent are often the most deceitful.”

  Jacob’s family had been fond of Arthur’s new wife, Chloe. She had been a sweet, steady girl and the old-fashioned Jewish family had not minded her being a Gentile.

  “You’re so good, Charlie, that you don’t see the evil in others. Just because you’re so decent yourself, you think everyone else is decent, too. You have no idea how rotten people are.”

  Charlie returned to the fireplace. His body had become heavy and his mind rusty with fatigue. He knew that there was something grave beyond Bedelia’s words and he was afraid she would tell him more than he could bear to hear. He called himself a coward, but wished just the same that they could return to the smug safety of Christmas Day.

  Bedelia’s calm had fled. She watched Charlie, aware that he had not been moved by what she had said. She hurried to tell him again that, if he knew the world as she knew it, he would realize how vile people are, and how rare were his own virtues. “You’re unusual, Charlie, you’re sort of pure, you don’t know that people are always plotting things against each other. That’s why I love you so much, because you haven’t a suspicious bone in your body. You trust everyone, you think we’re all as good as you are.”

  “My dear,” he said, exercising such control that he managed to speak smoothly, “you’re letting yourself become hysterical.”

  “When you were so ill that night, I was almost out of my mind. I was afraid you’d die. If you had, I’d have killed myself. I was afraid you’d die and I’d be alone again. Do you believe me? I wanted to kill myself that night.”

  “Please, Biddy . . .” he said gently, “you mustn’t get so excited. We’ll stop talking about it. You’ll be feverish again.”

  “What would I have to live for without you?”

  “That’s a perfectly natural way to feel when you’re in love. You think your life has no reason except for that. But you do survive and after a while you probably find that there’s a lot of pleasure in living.”

  “I wouldn’t. Not without you.”

  Charlie drew a deep breath. “How about Cochran? You said you loved him, but afterward you managed to live quite well without him.”

  “Charlie, I have something to confess.”

  Charlie edged closer to the fire. A shiver ran through him. He rubbed his hands.

  “Women are sometimes deceitful. They’re afraid men don’t love them enough and they tell little lies to make a man jealous. When I first knew you, Charlie, and told you about myself, I tried to make you jealous by saying I loved Raoul and had been happy with him. That was a lie. I wasn’t happy. I’ve had a hard life and I was never happy till I married you. Before that, dear, believe me, I didn’t know what love was.” She whispered the last phrase as if the words were too sacred to be spoken aloud.

  Raoul Cochran had seemed real, almost alive, when Bedelia told Charlie her stories of life in the New Orleans studio. Charlie’s jealousy of the dead husband had been a lively emotion. Now the jealousy was dead. Ben’s facts had killed, and Charlie mourned his dead jealousy and wished he could feel its flush again.

  “The baby, our baby, I needn’t have had it, it’s only because I love you so much,” Bedelia murmured in a husky voice.

  It had not been his wife who suggested that he increase his life insurance. That was his own, not Bedelia’s doing. When she had told him that she was pregnant, he had seen fear in her eyes and known that she was remembering insecurity. “I’m going to increase my life insurance,” he had said, and her eyes had filled with grateful tears.

  Bedelia took up her crocheting. Her fingers jerked the wool as she talked. “One night, Charlie, in the bathroom . . . your old gray and red robe was hanging on the door . . . so plain and ugly . . . but it made me think of you, how plain and good you are, how little you care for yourself . . . and suddenly it came to me, why shouldn’t I have a baby? With you, Charlie . . .” Her hands were so unsteady that she had to put down her crocheting again, and she laughed out of key. “I had always been afraid and I knew that night . . . when I looked at the ugly bathrobe . . . that I didn’t have to be afraid any more. Do you understand?”

  Charlie was not certain of his voice, and he nodded swiftly.

  “Are you glad?”

  The nod was briefer this time.

  “I never thought I’d tell you. But you’re not like those others, Charlie, you’re a good man, a woman could tell you anything and you’d understand.”

  Her voice trembled and her eyes shone with sincerity. Barrett had rejoiced when his wife told him that she was pregnant, and McKelvey had probably passed around those excellent Cuban cigars. It was not known whether Chloe Jacobs had whispered any such secret, but Jacobs hadn’t needed the inspiration toward bigger life insurance.

  This time Charlie closed the door before he went downstairs. He telephoned Doctor Meyers.

  “Hello, Charlie. I’ve been thinking about you. Tried to call you yesterday, but you were disconnected. How are you?”

  “Fine.”

  “How’s the digestion?”

  “Pretty good.”

  “No more dizzy spells? Nausea?”

  “I’ve called you about my wife, Doctor.”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “I want to ask you a question.” Before he spoke again, Charlie arranged and rearranged the words in his mind. “Look here, she’s got a bad cold, la grippe, I think. I want to know . . . is it dangerous in her condition?”

  “Keep her in bed.”

  “Yes, I have. But I want to know about . . . well, you know she’s pregnant, of course.”

  “Naturally. I examined her the other day.”

  “You did!” Charlie’s heart began to race. “Then she really is . . . I mean, Doctor, is she all right?”

  “Didn’t she tell you? What’s the matter, Charlie? Why are you so nervous?”

  “I just wanted to be sure she was all right,” Charlie said.

  “I’ve heard of women getting crazy notions,” the doctor laughed, “but this is the first time I’ve found symptoms in the father. Don’t you worry about it, Charlie. Your wife’s a healthy woman and don’t let anyone tell you it’s dangerous after thirty. You ought to have two or three more . . .”

  Then Bedelia was pregnant. The lie she had told her other husbands was no longer a lie. And no wonder she was so sensitive about it. Ghosts of old falsehoods had come back to haunt her. She had lied so often that she was afraid of the truth. The fact that this was a real pregnancy, along with the analysis that proved that Charlie had not been given a dose of poison, showed that Bedelia was not planning her husband’s death. She was carrying their child, planning their future. What had seemed hysteria was the lifeline to which she clung with frail, desperate persistence. She loved him.

  “Good God!” Charlie exclaimed as he saw the irony of her situation.

  “Darling, why are you staying down there such a long time?” called his wife.

  “I’ll be right up,” he promised.

  He did not return immediately to the bedroom. He had to examine his thoughts and review the situation. For a moment he had admitted the possibility of his wife’s guilt. Suppose she were proven innocent; could he, like the old doctor, drop the belief as neatly as the knife is dropped after the operation is over? Your wife’s a healthy woman . . . you ought to have two or three more. Could you,
during Christmas week, suspect a woman of giving her husband poison, and in the first week of the new year offer your blessing to the virtuous wife and mother? Should Ben Chaney’s story be proven untrue next week, could Charlie shed suspicion with the same ease?

  Suppose Ben had made a mistake, followed the wrong clue, suspected an innocent woman? Suppose poor Bedelia was the victim of a monstrous practical joke? Ben might not be a detective at all; he might be a clever lunatic.

  For thirty seconds these happy hopes dwelt in Charlie’s heart. He breathed freely and started up the stairs to the room where his dear wife waited. In the shadows at the turn of the stairs, Will Barrett accosted him, a cynical smile curving his wet lips, a warning light in his drowned eyes.

  YEARS AGO CHARLIE had taught himself to clean his mind of worry just as he brushed his teeth before going to bed. He was proud of his ability to banish business cares at night and often boasted that he slept most soundly during critical situations. Tonight, as he undressed, cleansed his mouth with an antiseptic solution, and made his round of the house, turning off radiators and switching out the lights, he had resolved to dismiss Barrett, Jacobs, and McKelvey with the same steely firmness.

  Sleep was impossible. But Charlie would not admit that horror kept him awake nor allow the three ghosts to enter his bedroom. From somewhere inside the house came a clatter insidious because its rhythm was perfect three-four time. “The cellar door,” Charlie whispered to the darkness. “I forgot to fasten it. I remember that I forgot.” He was not at all certain of this, but his bed was warm, the halls drafty, and at the thought of a journey into the cellar, goose pimples came out on his arms and legs.

  He decided to turn on the light, to dispel the illusions that thrive in darkness, to forget the clatter by giving his attention to reality. He was sleeping in his old bedroom, and it seemed, as his eyes became accustomed to the light, that he had never deserted this single brass bed to sleep in the cherrywood four-poster with a wife. On the opposite wall hung an etching he had bought during his junior year at Yale. A flock of wild ducks flew eternally to the left. “It has movement,” Charlie had explained as his mother watched him hang it.