by Vera Caspary
“Are you still thinking of Europe?” he asked.
She seemed not to have heard. Charlie wondered if he ought to repeat the question. He did not want to lose his temper, but he could not help resenting her indifference.
“It doesn’t matter whether you’re thinking about it or not. Because we’re not leaving. We’re going to stay here and fight it out.”
Bedelia smiled at her husband shyly. “Oh, Charlie, dear, you’re so good. I don’t believe there’s another man alive as good and sweet as you are.” She gave him her most enchanting smile.
“Did you hear what I said, Bedelia?” He tried to sound stern, but his voice was unsteady. “We’re going to stay here and fight it out.”
“I knew that.”
“How did you know?”
“You said so last night. You always mean what you say, don’t you?’ She offered this tranquilly, without bitterness. “Don’t worry, Charlie, dear. I’ll do whatever you want. I love you so much, anything you do seems right to me.”
Her serenity bewildered Charlie. She had everything to lose, her reputation, her freedom, possibly her life. The simple faith with which she gave herself into his keeping struck him as false. She went about her tasks calmly, opened drawers, chose clean underclothing, examined ribbons and embroidery.
“This is serious . . .” he began.
Bedelia’s cough interrupted. Her body shook and she staggered toward the bed, holding her hands over her mouth. Tears filled her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered in a husky voice.
“You’re not well yet,” Charlie said. “I should never have let you get up yesterday. Better stay in bed this morning.”
Weak, grateful for his solicitude, and as docile as a child, Bedelia crept into bed. The mood of humility continued. Mary brought her breakfast and, although Bedelia complained that she had no appetite, she obeyed Charlie and ate the good hot food.
“Are you going to clear the driveway now?” she asked, watching him over her cup of coffee as Charlie put on his hunting boots.
“Yes, but only to get it cleared. We’re not leaving.”
“You said that before, dear.”
“I don’t mean to be arbitrary, but we can’t go on treating this as trivial. You may not realize the importance of my decision, Bedelia, but the future depends . . .”
“Why don’t you call me Biddy any more?”
The triviality of the interruption angered him. He wondered whether she was purposely keeping him from talking about the future. A glance at her softened him. Sitting up against the cushions in that large, solid bed, Bedelia seemed far too frail, resigned, and patient to cause him the slightest anxiety. He wished that he, too, might thrust aside his fears and give his attention fully to toast and plum jam.
Bedelia was spreading her toast with jam carefully so that she should not soil her fingers. As Charlie watched her enjoy the jam, pour cream over her oatmeal, measure sugar into her coffee, she seemed so innocent, so sweet and sane that he was ready to discredit everything Ben had told him, and to forget the curious contradictions in her stories and behavior.
“You mustn’t worry about anything, Charlie. Leave it to me. There’s always a way.”
Charlie’s hand was stayed on its journey with the bootlace. Probably Annabel McKelvey had been as mild while she was planning to serve fish at dinner; Chloe had smiled gently upon Jacobs when she knew him to be against her; Maurine’s sweet ways had lured Will Barrett toward the pier.
He hurried out of the room. His excuse was a journey to the attic to find his sealskin cap. It was kept in a cedar chest with folded travel blankets, his mother’s Jaegers and her mink stole. The smell of mothballs brought back the past and, holding the stole in his hands, he could see it as his mother had worn it, thrown over a bony shoulder with her lean face between it and a velvet toque. “Duty,” his mother had always told him, “duty comes first, Charles.”
Laughter greeted his return to the bedroom. Mary had come upstairs for Bedelia’s tray and was talking again about her engagement. It all had to be repeated for Charlie.
“You needn’t worry about help in the house,” Mary said, “I’m not getting married till June, so you needn’t think about getting another girl for a while yet, and there’s my little sister Sarah, she’ll be looking for a place soon.”
“Before you do anything else, Mary, phone Montagnino. We’ve been cleaned out of everything. Bring me the pad and pencil, please.”
Charlie lingered in the bedroom. His spirit was soothed by the quality of Bedelia’s voice as she said, “I was thinking of pork roast, Mary. Mr. Horst is so fond of it and after the pot luck he’s been having for the last few days and the pap we gave him while he was ill, he deserves something good. And don’t forget apples . . .”
“We got plenty of apples in the cellar.”
“How often do I have to tell you, Mary, that I don’t make apple sauce with Macintoshes? Order greenings.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Mary was sullen.
Charlie stayed on to hear Bedelia and Mary argue about the order. What could be wrong in a house where such passion went into a controversy over apples, where carrots and cabbage and kohlrabi were so earnestly compared? Let Barrett come! What better assurance had Charlie of the man’s impotence than Bedelia’s prodigal grocery order? Ten pounds of sugar, Mary, two of butter, six cans of tomatoes, five pounds of spaghetti—the narrow, mind you, not that broad macaroni—five pounds store cheese to be dried and grated, a peck of onions, two dozen eggs. A good housewife would never order so lavishly unless she was sure of the day after tomorrow.
In the midst of it Bedelia coughed again. Fierce tremors shook her. She lay back upon the pillows, utterly exhausted.
“You’re not to get out of bed today,” Charlie said. “Promise me you’ll take care of that cough.”
“Yes, of course, Charlie, I’ll do whatever you say.”
The telephone rang. Mary ran for it. Charlie tried not to listen, but he could not help overhearing her tell the news of her engagement.
“How happy she is!” Bedelia exclaimed, smiling with the complacence that women always show over a marriage or engagement. “We must give her a nice present.”
“It was Hannah,” Mary said as she bounced back into the bedroom. “They got their phone connected at last. They’re almost out of food. They’d have starved if the Keeleys hadn’t sent over some bread and eggs and bacon. Their road’s blocked up, there’s no way of them getting their groceries, only Hannah’s thought of a way. Montagnino’s sending their order out with ours, and the Keeley boys are coming down with their sled to get it. Hannah wanted to know if you’d mind us taking their order and I said it’d be all right.”
“Of course,” Bedelia said.
“Montagnino’s sending the wagon out early, Hannah needs the stuff for lunch. They’re having company.”
Bedelia coughed.
“It’s that gentleman that didn’t come last week. He’s coming today.”
Charlie said, “That’s not possible, Mary. Their road’s blocked, no one can get there.”
“Mr. Chaney’s going on snowshoes to meet the gentleman up to the Wilton Station,” Mary explained. “He’s coming on the twelve-ten and going straight to Wilton. Mr. Chaney’s taking a pair of snowshoes for him. They fixed it up on the phone, this gentleman; he called Mr. Chaney from New York on the long distance, Hannah told me.”
Charlie let down the flaps of his sealskin cap and tied them under his chin. He looked at the wallpaper, the furniture, Bedelia’s silver toilet set, at everything except his wife.
Mary went on, panting with excitement. “That’s why Hannah’s so set on getting her groceries on time. It’s not a hard lunch to fix, but Mr. Chaney says it won’t take no more than fifteen minutes on snowshoes from the Wilton Station and he wants lunch right away when they get back. Montagnino’s sending up their order with ours and the Keeley boys are coming down . . .”
Given the chance Mary wo
uld repeat a fact five or six times. Bedelia cut her off. “You’d better hurry and get our order in, Mary.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Charlie hurried out of the bedroom. He did not want to be alone with Bedelia to talk about Ben Chaney’s guest. He took the shovel off its nail in the shed and went out to clear the driveway. The air was like a tonic. He felt the way a prisoner must feel after years in a cell. The sky was a hard blue arch, the sun warm, and the snow had a crisp crust that broke under his feet.
He was not such a fool that he believed his troubles were over because the sun was bright, but he felt new strength in his body, clarity in his mind, and his nerves became steadier. He tried to consider his problem objectively, as if someone had said to him, “See here, Charlie, a friend of mine’s in trouble. You see, he got married recently and he’s crazy about his wife, and now he doesn’t know what to do . . .”
“What kind of trouble?” he would naturally ask.
“He’s discovered his wife’s a . . . a criminal.”
The word was not shocking. Criminal might mean petty thief or a woman who made herself a nuisance to the neighbors.
“What crime has she committed?”
“Murder.”
Murder. That gave a different complexion to his friend’s troubles. But even murder had certain justifications. Self-defense, for instance.
“Who’d she murder?”
“Her husband.” But that was not the whole truth. “Several husbands, in fact. Four, perhaps five.”
Objectively it was unbelievable, the sort of thing that could never happen to a friend of a friend of Charlie Horst’s. He would have to ask why the wife had murdered four or five husbands.
“For money. For their life insurance.”
There it was, the whole truth, so evil that there could be but one solution to the problem. No use arguing, “But my friend loves his wife and she loves him. She doesn’t want her husband to die, she loves him, she’s bearing his child . . .”
He had to quit thinking. It was better to invest his energy in hard work. Each time he raised the shovel and straightened his body, he looked around and saw white hills, the charcoal black of trees and branches, their shadows purple on the snow, and his house, so sturdy and honest in its proportions, and so American and secure and right with its clapboards and its clean green shutters. With each shovel load he felt better and younger, almost as if he were tossing aside his problems with the snow. The events of the past few days seemed less real and his wife was as good and commonplace as any of the neighbors.
Montagnino’s polished black delivery wagon set high on smart yellow wheels stopped on the highway. The boy jumped out. From the back of the wagon he took three bushel baskets, which he carried, one after another, to the shed. He was a handsome Italian boy with cheeks that glowed carmine on his clear dark skin. Although she was now Hen Blackman’s fiancée, Mary did not mind stopping her work to chatter with him. He had plenty to tell her, of the customers who had been snowed in and unable to get groceries and of those who were still isolated. The snowstorm had made him important because some of the richest people in the neighborhood might have starved to death if he hadn’t come out to the country this morning in his yellow-wheeled wagon.
Charlie worked for another hour. The exercise warmed him and underneath his heavy mackinaw he felt the sweat rising on his body. When Mary opened a window on the second floor, he ordered her to close it before a draft crept through the halls to his wife’s bedroom. Suddenly he felt very weary. He stood like a lazy workman, leaning on his shovel and looking at the landscape. He had not done much physical work recently and his muscles had become soft. Enthusiasm was dying. But it was like his mother’s son to push on, and he began again and kept at it in spite of weariness until he had cleared another six feet. Then he gave up and decided to finish after lunch.
Snow was caked on his boots. The soles were dripping. Charlie was too thoughtful to ever walk on the good rugs with wet boots. He went around the back way. The shed was dark, but he did not bother to switch on the light. Sitting on a three-legged stool he unlaced his boots. In a corner near the door he noticed the three baskets that Montagnino’s boy had carried in. Two were empty and one was full. That would be Ben Chaney’s order.
He heard a muffled cough and looked through the glass doorpane into the kitchen. Bedelia stood beside the table, her hand stifling the cough. She was bent over the kitchen table, working at something with a sort of surreptitious tension. She opened a package. Her body screened that part of the table upon which she had set the contents, but Charlie saw that she set the wrapping paper carefully aside and folded the string upon it. She thrust her right hand into the neck of her robe.
Mary thumped down the front stairs with the carpet-sweeper. Bedelia straightened quickly. Her glance slid slyly in the direction of the dining-room door, which was closed. Immediately she thrust into the neck of her robe whatever she had taken from it, and with a casual saunter, went toward the dining-room door. She opened it and called to Mary, bidding the girl hurry back upstairs.
“I want you to clean my bedroom while I’m out of it, Mary.”
“Oh, I didn’t know you was downstairs, Mrs. Horst. Is there something I could do for you?” Mary called.
“Go upstairs and change my bed at once.”
Mary thumped up the stairs.
Before Bedelia returned to the table, Charlie had opportunity to see what she had taken from the wrapping paper. It was a wedge of Gorgonzola cheese, its surface green with mold. Bedelia reached into her robe again and Charlie saw that she had a small round box in her hand. It was the unlabeled pillbox he had found among her knickknacks the night she tried to escape. He had thought the powder in it was a polish for her fingernails.
Charlie was paralyzed. It was like a nightmare. He did not try to speak or move because he knew his voice was gone and his limbs were useless.
Bedelia had put the top back on the pillbox and returned it to her bosom. She wrapped the cheese in the paper and started to tie it up. But the string was knotted. She had to find the ball of twine that she kept in one of the drawers of her cabinet. It was not quite so thick as Montagnino’s string, and Charlie saw that she was making a mistake, the stupid and trivial mistake which destroys the perfection of a crime. Evidently she did not notice, for she cut off a length of twine and tied it around the cheese. Then, walking on tiptoes, she carried the old knotted string to the stove, lifted one of the iron plates and dropped the string into the flames. She was not hurrying, but going about her preparations for murder as efficiently as if she were cooking a meal. A cautious glance around the kitchen assured her that she had left no trace of her work. With the parcel in her hand she moved toward the shed.
Charlie backed into a corner.
Bedelia entered the shed and blinked. It was dark and her eyes had become accustomed to the bright electric light of the kitchen. She had not the slightest idea that Charlie was there and passed close to him. Bending over the filled bushel basket, she rearranged boxes and parcels and placed the package under a cloth bag filled with salt. As she straightened, she sniffed at her fingertips.
Out, damned spot! Out, I say.
Out, damned smell of cheese! Out, damned stink of murder!
Charlie had been stunned at first, had looked away because he had not wanted his eyes to behold this fresh evil. As Bedelia bent over, arranging the parcels so that hers should not be too prominently placed in the basket, he knew that he could no longer close his eyes, deafen his ears, remain mute, or comfort himself with miracles. Cunningly, as she lay in the bed in which his mother had slept, his wife had planned the murder of two men. Charlie saw now why she had been so amiable in accepting his decision to stay and fight it out. She meant to stay, but to avoid the fight.
Circumstances had provided her with weapons for getting rid of troublesome enemies. Ben’s fondness for cheese had served her like Herman Bender’s taste for mushrooms, McKelvey’s enjoyment of fish. The taste of
Gorgonzola is so strong, so rotten, that the most delicate palate might not perceive the flavor of poison. Bedelia’s enemies would not have died in her house after eating at her table. She would have no connection with their deaths, but would hear of the tragedy, like the rest of the town, through a telephone call or an item in the newspaper.
“Bedelia!”
She whirled around. Charlie came out of the corner. She saw him and stiffened.
“Oh, I didn’t know you were here. You startled me.” Small spaces marked by heavy breathing separated the words. Hastily she added, “That silly clerk of Montagnino’s has made a mistake again. Putting some of Ben’s groceries with ours. It’s lucky I came down to check our order.”
The ease of her falsehood sickened Charlie. He had swallowed other lies because he loved her, but now that he had seen her cruel and deliberate preparations for a new crime, he abhorred the memory of that love.
“I’m sorry I broke my promise, Charlie, but you mustn’t be angry. My cough is so much better it seemed silly to stay in bed.” A soft woman she was, yielding, gentle, shrinking before his male strength.
His fingers dug into her shoulders. He jerked her toward him. The neck of her robe was cut out like a V and above it her throat was like porcelain. His hand curled around it.
“Charlie—dear!”
That was all she could say. Charlie’s hand had tightened on her throat. When she saw that he was not to be cajoled out of his anger, her eyes darkened and hardened. She fought back desperately, writhed in his arms, kicked at his legs. A kind of ecstasy seized Charlie. His knuckles bulged, knots rose in his hands as they felt the warm throbbing of Bedelia’s throat. Her jetty restless eyes reminded Charlie of the mouse he had caught in the trap and he thought exultantly of the blow that had killed it.
Bedelia was the first to give up the struggle. She relaxed so suddenly that she fell back in Charlie’s arms. Her face wore the curves of gentleness again. Slyness was erased. Whether for death or love she had yielded.