Bedelia

by Vera Caspary

  Coral and lavender faded in the western sky. Twilight hung in the air like mist.

  “Charlie!”

  Charlie shuddered.

  “I’ve come downstairs.”

  His mother’s white shawl over her shoulders, the green dress fading into the shadows, the white doorway framing the picture, she was like one of those dim portraits that hang in the old twilight galleries of Europe. As Charlie’s eyes became used to the dusk, he saw the oval of her face pierced by dark eyes, and her hands holding the shawl.

  “You shouldn’t have come downstairs.”

  “Charlie, I want to talk to you.”

  “All right.” He led the way toward the living-room, which seemed safer than the den because it was larger. Bedelia chose the wing chair. Charlie turned on all of the lights and touched a match to the crumpled paper under the logs in the fireplace.

  “The road’s clear, Charlie, we could get to town.”

  “Our drive hasn’t been cleared yet.”

  “You could clear it, couldn’t you?”

  “I intend to, first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “Two to three hours, I imagine.”

  “Oh,” said Bedelia; and after a pause, “then we could catch the ten-ten.”

  “What for?”

  “New York.”

  Charlie did not answer. Bedelia looked at the what-not. There was a bare space which had once belonged to the Dresden marquis and his love. So much had happened since she had dropped the ornament that Bedelia had not had a chance to rearrange her shelves. She went to the what-not, tried a Sèvres vase in the bare space, but shook her head at it because the vase definitely belonged on the upper shelf.

  “What do you want to go to New York for?” Charlie said at last.

  Bedelia replaced the vase and stepped back to study the shelves. “A holiday, dear. We could go to some Southern place in Europe. Italy, I’d like. The English always go to Italy for the winter.”

  “I don’t understand you.” That was a lie. Charlie knew precisely what she had chosen not to say.

  “We’ve both been ill, Charlie. You’ve had a bad attack of indigestion and my cold may hang on for months. A vacation would do us good.”

  She tried to make it sound as commonplace as it would sound to their friends if Charlie Horst and his wife should take a winter holiday.

  Charlie cleared his throat. “Is it because you want to avoid Barrett?”

  Bedelia turned to the what-not again. She tried a set of silver furniture, minute and exquisitely wrought, in the place of the Dresden group.

  “Have they any evidence against you?”

  Her voice came to Charlie as from a great distance. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “If Barrett should identify you, would it prove anything? Could they tell now, after all this time, whether Will Barrett was drugged before he fell into the water? And even if they should prove it, would they have any real evidence? Of course, your running off and changing your name doesn’t help.”

  Bedelia changed the positions of a carved ivory stork, a china dog, a carnelian elephant, and a pair of white jade cats. The motley menagerie pleased her. She stepped back and scrutinized it from a distance. “They’ve got nothing against me, except the suspicion in their dirty rotten minds.” Her voice was not defiant, but merely contemptuous as if she were talking reluctantly about something unpleasant that had nothing to do with herself.

  “Then why shouldn’t we stay and fight it out? Why run away?”

  “I’d rather go abroad.”

  “Suppose he should identify you as his sister-in-law; he still has nothing definite against you. And besides, it happened in another state. All these cases were in different states, weren’t they? Minnesota, Michigan, and Tennessee. There’d be the devil of a legal mess. And what proof have they of anything?” As he said this, Charlie saw triumph in the law courts, the judge leaning over to shake hands with the released prisoner while her loyal husband stood beside her, holding her other arm. “First of all, they’d have to identify you as the Barrett Woman, as Annabel McKelvey and Zoe Jacobs.”

  “Chloe,” she said.

  Charlie stepped back so suddenly that he narrowly missed the fire.

  Bedelia began to talk vivaciously of the trip to Europe. Winter seas might be rough, but the trip across would not take more than a week. Paris first, she thought, because she had longed all her life to see Paris and she’d like some new clothes. Afterward Italy, or, if Charlie preferred, the Riviera. She had read a lot about the Riviera, knew about the grand hotels, seaside promenades, gambling casinos.

  “We might even go to Monte Carlo,” Bedelia said. She was still unsatisfied with the arrangement of her shelves. On the palm of her right hand rested the three monkeys the Johnsons had given the Horsts for Christmas. To follow their advice, Charlie thought, to see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, was as weak as deliberately cultivating evil. The careful avoidance of all that was unpleasant and unsavory was not only Charlie’s greatest fault, but the fault of his people and his class. By turning their eyes and ears from evil, they nourished evil, gave it sunlight, fresh air, and the space in which to flourish. The civilized man was not the man who shut himself away from evil, but who saw it clearly, heard its faintest rustlings, exposed it, shouted about it from the housetops.

  A pinprick had destroyed his triumph. The trial that he had seen as an easy victory became a nightmare. He saw his wife on the witness stand, being interrogated, cross-examined, bullied; he saw the flashlights exploding, the newspaper headlines, the lurid photographs and stories in the Sunday supplements. Reporters would pry into the secrets of the murderess’s life with her last husband and nothing of their marriage would be too intimate for the sob sisters to search out and serve to the public in syrupy prose. They would pity her husband for having been taken in by this female Bluebeard and consider him lucky because he had escaped death at her hands.

  Bedelia turned from the what-not and came toward him. The green gown was loose, but it clung to her body and he saw that he need not have asked Doctor Meyers about her pregnancy. It was all too apparent. Charlie counted the months on his fingers. A chill crept along his spine. Telegraph wires would flash the news from coast to coast when Charlie Horst’s child was born; in the remotest villages the newspapers would print his name. And even if the courts should free Bedelia, the stigma would endure; she would be a marked woman, stared at and whispered about wherever she went, and her child would be marked, too, with the brand.

  She chattered on about Europe. One would think Venice and Rome were no farther off than Georgetown and Redding. She had read all that romantic fiction and to her mind there was no place like Lake Como for fugitive lovers. They might find a house on a hill . . . “a villa, you call it. They have terraced gardens with trellises and statues and olive trees and oranges and lemons. Lemon blossoms are sweeter than orange,” she told him gravely. “We’d have four or five in help, you always do in foreign countries; they don’t cost any more than one good servant here, especially with the wages they expect nowadays; they’re really happy to go to work for you cheaply, and you always have your morning coffee in bed.”

  “What do you mean?” Charlie asked, irritated by the completeness of her plans. “We can’t live abroad.”

  “Why not?”

  “My home’s here, my business.”

  “We could close the house. Bachman would run the business for you, or you could sell it. Judge Bennett would look after your affairs.”

  “So you’ve settled my life for me?”

  “Don’t be angry, dear. It would be so pleasant, living in a warm climate, basking in the sun, swimming in the middle of winter. Wouldn’t you like to swim in February, Charlie?” Deliberately avoiding the real motive for the journey, she made it sound as if she sought nothing but sunshine and lemon blossoms. Charlie looked at her face and saw that she was engrossed in this new reverie. He wondered if she had
hypnotized herself into believing this lie, too.

  “I intend to stay right here.”

  She pouted prettily, still the saucy darling mildly irritated because her obstinate husband would not indulge her whim.

  “My dear.” Charlie’s voice sounded like his mother’s in her most righteous moments. “We can’t afford to live anywhere but here. When I asked you to marry me, I told you frankly that I wasn’t a rich man. I’ve got no income except what I earn, and even my business means nothing without me. So it’s no use arguing, we can’t leave.”

  She smiled graciously. “I’ve got plenty of money.”

  “You?”

  Simultaneously he remembered that she had told him about an inheritance from Raoul Cochran’s grandmother and that there had never been any such person as Raoul Cochran.

  “I’ve got almost two hundred thousand dollars.”

  “You!”

  “Almost. Of course I’ve had to spend some of it.”

  “Where did . . .” he began, but became silent in the middle of the question because he knew well enough where she had got the money.

  “So it would be quite easy for us to live abroad. On the income, not the capital.”

  “You don’t think I’d live on that money!”

  “The interest at four per cent is eight thousand a year. If we were very careful and invested only in three per cent securities, we’d have six thousand. You can live like a prince on that in Europe.”

  “My God!” cried Charlie. “Oh, my God!”

  “Very well, if that’s the way you feel.” The painted lips drooped cruelly. She turned abruptly and her taffeta petticoats echoed the movement. Charlie heard the silk rustle as she mounted the stairs and the sound which always seemed so feminine and fair to him was the whisper of evil.

  The Danbury train whistled as it rounded the curve. Charlie took out his watch to see if it was on time. His habits had not been changed by shock and mental torment. He was still Charlie Horst, born and brought up in this fine house, a good architect and estimable citizen. His watch was always on time, his shoes were shined, his bills paid the first of the month. He looked around him at the pleasant room, at flames leaping in the fireplace, the love-seat in the bow window.

  “Dearest,” Bedelia called.

  “Where are you?”

  “In the kitchen.”

  “I thought you’d gone upstairs.”

  “I came down the back way.”

  She had taken off the white shawl and tied an apron over the green dress. Red-and-white checked gingham and her pose at the stove, with her head bent over the pot and a big spoon in her hand, comforted her husband.

  The illusion of peace did not last. A spring snapped, metal screeched, a mouse squeaked thin shrill notes of pain. Bedelia clasped her throat with both hands and cast an anguished glance in Charlie’s direction. He opened one of the lower cupboards and took out the trap that had been set there.

  Bedelia turned away.

  “Don’t let it bother you,” Charlie said. As he carried the trap to the shed, he passed Bedelia. He held the trap behind him, his body concealing it from her. In the shed he finished the job, using a small hammer and killing the mouse with a single blow.

  When he came back to the kitchen, he found Bedelia perched on the stool, her feet tucked under her, her arms wrapped around her body.

  “Don’t be frightened. It’s dead.”

  “I shouldn’t have minded if she had died right away, but I suffer when creatures struggle for life. She was such a tiny mouse.”

  “It might have been a male.”

  “All helpless things seem female to me.”

  She turned to her work. Charlie washed his hands and dried them on the roller towel. He was unsteady; his nerves twitched, his body was strung with live wires. For years he had been catching rats and mice in the house, had thought of them as pests and never been affected by their death. Bedelia’s distress had been communicated to him.

  The kitchen was silent except for the occasional tap of her high heels on the linoleum. Charlie could not endure the silence and he said, “My mother was the same. She could never bear to see anything die.”

  Bedelia turned from the stove to fetch some condiment from the spice shelf. He saw that her face was like the face of a deaf mute. Her eyes had a slight glaze and her mouth was a hard knot.

  Charlie saw that the trance-like state was deliberate, Bedelia’s method of wiping out an unpleasant scene. He became wildly angry. Cords thickened in his neck and his voice was harsh. “No use working yourself up over the death of a pest. A mouse seems an inoffensive little thing, really quite touching, but it’s destructive and dangerous, a menace. We’ve got to get rid of them for our own safety.”

  Bedelia carried the spice shaker back to the stove, sprinkled the spice from it into the pot. “I bet you can’t guess what we’re having for supper.”

  Her voice was even, the look on her face bland. She smiled, her dimples deepened, and she gave a deep sigh of contentment as she stirred the soup in the pot. She looked so small and sweet, so feminine, so delightfully absorbed in her domestic task. “There was practically nothing in the pantry, but I’ve managed to make a very good supper. You’ve no idea how ingenious I am.”

  She poured the soup into bowls and put them on a tray, which Charlie carried into the dining-room. She followed with another tray on which there was a covered dish.

  “Guess what’s in here,” she commanded as she set it on the table.

  “What?”

  “A surprise for you, dear. One of your very favorite dishes,” Bedelia said, and lifted the cover.

  The French toast was done to perfection, its golden surface liberally sprinkled with powdered sugar.

  7

  EARLY THE NEXT MORNING A WAGON, THE FIRST TO pass since the snowstorm, rattled down the road. A little while later Mary trudged the mile from the streetcar terminal. She pushed through the drifts that surrounded the house, let herself in the back way, took off her mittens, and with her stiff fingers managed to light the stove. After she had warmed herself and put the kettle on, she wondered how late the Horsts would sleep. She had news for Hannah, but she could not use the telephone while her bosses were still in bed.

  At half-past eight Mary went upstairs. Usually at this hour Mr. and Mrs. Horst had finished breakfast and Mary was almost through with her dishes. The house was deadly quiet. Mary tapped timidly at their bedroom door.

  “Come in,” Mrs. Horst called. She was standing at the window in the blue dressing-gown with the rose-colored ribbons. Her hair hung in braids over her shoulder.

  “I got back,” Mary announced.

  “I’m glad, Mary.”

  “I hope you’re not mad at me, Mrs. Horst. I got snowed in.” “So were we.”

  Mary looked around the room. She felt vaguely that something was missing, but could not say what it was.

  “I hope you got along all right without me.”

  “Poor Mr. Horst had to do all the work. I’ve been in bed with a bad cold.”

  Mary’s eyes rested on the bed. Only one side had been slept in. She knew then what was missing. “Where’s Mr. Horst?”

  “We were afraid that he’d catch my cold, so he’s been sleeping in the other room.”

  “Should I wake him up? I’ve got the coffee on and the oatmeal’s made, you could have breakfast in five minutes.”

  “No, let him sleep.”

  “Won’t he be late to work?”

  “He’ll have to clean the driveway. He can’t get the machine out until he’s got it cleared.”

  “He could walk to the streetcar.”

  “Never mind, Mary. Don’t disturb him.”

  “Will you have breakfast now?”

  “No. I’ll wait for him.”

  Mary waited there, rubbing the toe of one foot against the other ankle. She had news of her own. With a broken giggle she told Bedelia that she had got herself engaged to Hen Blackman.

  Bedel
ia beamed approval. “Perhaps the blizzard was a blessing in disguise, Mary. I told Mr. Horst the other day that if you were half the girl I thought you were, you’d take advantage of this opportunity.”

  Mary, flattered because Mrs. Horst had talked about her, could hardly get over her giggles. She told in full detail how Hen had popped the question. “You know about it before Hannah,” she said, conferring honor upon her boss.

  “As soon as Mr. Horst is up and you’ve given us breakfast, you can phone and tell her,” Bedelia said.

  Mary was still giggling as she started for the kitchen. Her laughter ceased suddenly and she screamed. She had seen some disembodied white thing floating toward her on the back stairs.

  “Did I frighten you, Mary? I’m sorry.” Charlie ascended out of the shadows. He had on dark trousers and a white shirt.

  “I thought you were a ghost,” she said.

  His felt carpet slippers slid across the floor soundlessly. Bedelia did not hear him as he entered the bedroom. At his “Good morning, dear,” she jerked around.

  “I seem to be scaring all the ladies this morning,” Charlie said.

  “Martin’s beer truck passed,” she told him.

  “Yes, I heard it. But I was too lazy to get up. I didn’t fall asleep until dawn.”

  Bedelia looked around the room, letting her eyes rest for a second on this or that piece of furniture and then examining the next, and going on until she had studied everything carefully. Was she thinking of other rooms she had left, comparing this with them, wishing she might stay here with the drapes she had made on her sewing machine, the colors she had chosen, and the bed in which she had slept with Charlie? Did she mourn the husbands along with all the other things she had left behind, the furs and pretty dresses, the copper pots, the casseroles, the ingenious egg-beaters, and can-openers?

  The black pearl meant more to her than Jacobs. She would want to keep it to show off at the Casino in Monte Carlo. Would she keep the garnet ring that Charlie had given her for Christmas?