“Look here, why not drive me into Marksfield for the London train?”
“But you decided—”
“You might want to use the car yourself, this afternoon or—”
“You’re very thoughtful all of a sudden, Ned.” She spoke without sarcasm, in a distrait manner. “No thanks, I shall put in a few hours on the piano.”
“Oh, good.”
Oh God, he thought. Oh God, oh God! Well, she’s had her chance. She’s had chances enough. I’ve turned myself inside out, all these years, trying to make a go of it, trying to help her. I can do no more. I’m broken up, nearly done for. I could not save her. I must save what’s left of myself.
Their parting was, under the circumstances, almost farcically an anticlimax. Helena, her faded golden head averted, put up a cheek for him to kiss. He could not bring himself to do this, but patted her cheek gently instead, then hurried out to the shed where the car was kept. As he drove past the white wicket gate, he saw her standing there, waving wildly to stop him and holding up in the other hand the bottle of indigestion powder which he had, after all, omitted to pack. He drove on, accelerating hard, to put her behind him, far behind him, out of sight. Out of her misery.
The drive to London was a jumble of sharp, disconnected impressions. Ned pushed the car along at top speed, as if he were being pursued, fighting it round the bends, fighting off the thought which clamored on the threshold of consciousness. Avoiding by a hairsbreadth a collision at one blind corner, he found himself quite unshaken: a strange, old-soldier’s fatalism, like oil on water, was spreading over his troubled mind. The situation, being out of his control now, seemed outside his responsibility too, as though Helena were in the last stages of some incurable disease which he might deplore but could not remedy.
A telephone booth at the London garage, where he put his car, reminded him that he could still ring Helena, still warn her; but the current of what he felt as destiny carried him past it without a struggle. In the train, a white-faced, dull-eyed man to his fellow travelers, Ned took out the thought which he had been suppressing and faced it squarely. I, Edwin Stowe, who have never done any great harm to anyone, am—shall be in fourteen hours or so—a murderer. A cowardly murderer, not even capable of striking the blow for himself. The accusation, he discovered, left him cold: his intelligence no longer squirmed to evade it: there was not the faintest cry from his conscience. On the contrary, the fact that he made a decision, appalling though the decision was, gave him a feeling of positive exhilaration. He had ended the stalemate, broken the vicious circle. No doubt he was damned; but he felt—only one word for it—reborn. The old Ned was as remote as Helena. What would Laura think of the new Ned? What would she say if she knew how he had come into being?
Stuart Hammer’s thoughts, as he drove southward that night, were of an entirely practical nature. He believed he had guarded against nearly all foreseeable contingencies. He had decided not to use the Bentley since, even with the false number plates he possessed—relics of an earlier lawless enterprise—a Bentley might call attention to itself and be remembered. To hire a car might conceivably land him in other complications. The problem had been solved by a brilliant piece of opportunism on his part. A week ago, drinking at the bar of the country club with a fellow resident, he had got into an argument on one of the few subjects which seemed to him worthy of controversy—women. He was soon boasting of his exploits in this field, whereupon his companion, becoming justifiably irked, remarked that anyone who owned a Bentley could pick up any girl he liked—in Norringham, at any rate—and if Stu-boy thought it was his alleged charm and potency that did the trick, he’d better think again. Stu-boy did some rapid thinking at this point, the upshot of which was that he offered to lend the bloke his Bentley for a couple of nights next week, and laid him £10 that, even with this aid, he would fail to make any impression on Peggy, the new blonde wench at the club. The bet had been taken, and the other man agreed to lend Stuart his own car in exchange, a nondescript-looking 12 h.p. sedan, during the nights in question.
“But don’t let on to anyone, old man,” Stuart said. “My uncle would foam at the mouth if this sort of thing got round to him.”
“O.K. But if I make the wench, which of course I shall, how shall I be able to prove it to you?”
“Prove it? I hope we’re gents, old man. I’d take your word for it. But you won’t get near her, believe you me.”
On the Sunday night, Stuart Hammer had insured that the girl Peggy should have no interests outside himself for a while: indeed, she was quite dazed with love for him and might soon prove an embarrassment.
However, he had no thoughts to spare for her now, as he drove the nondescript-looking sedan through the night. He wore gloves, an old blue suit, rubber-soled shoes, a dark overcoat, a cloth cap and night-driving glasses. In the overcoat pocket were an electric torch, a blackjack, and the key to the Stowes’ front door. Stuart went over the drill again in his mind. At Marksfield, take the Portsmouth road; three miles out of Marksfield, turn right at signpost for Crump End; go down this lane for about three-quarters of a mile, then turn left into woodland ride. Switch off lights, substitute false number plates, lock car doors, walk out of wood down lane another quarter mile. White wicket gate on right, brick path to front door …
Stuart Hammer’s plan was to kill the Stowe woman straight away. He would then open the bedroom window, if it were not already open, go downstairs and out by the front door, fetch the ladder from the shed at the back of the house, and climb in through the bedroom window: this would enable him to leave signs of burglarous entry. He would then knock over a chair or two, to suggest there had been a struggle (assuming, of course, that there had not in fact been one), and pocket any valuables he found lying about. Climbing down the ladder again, he would throw the valuables into a flower bed, so as to give the impression the burglar had lost his nerve after being surprised by Mrs. Stowe and killing her, and had discarded these evidences of his crime.
Climbing up and down the ladder seemed the most dangerous part. He would be visible from the lane, the moon being full. Ned had told him this lane carried little traffic, and at 1 A.M. there should be nobody stirring. It was a small risk, but a real one.
The contingency, Stuart reflected, which he could not provide for was his accomplice’s letting him down. The go-ahead message had appeared in The Times, certainly, but only at the last moment. Had there been some hitch in Ned’s arrangements? And, still more important, how accurate was the information he had given Stuart about his house and about Helena’s habits? Could it be relied on? Ned was a scatterbrained chap, and halfway round the bend—the sort who might easily be wrong about some quite crucial detail. Suppose, for instance, that the Stowe woman did in fact bolt her front door as well as lock it when her husband was away? Well, he’d just have to ring the bell, get her out of bed, tell her his wife had been taken ill in the car outside and ask if he could telephone a doctor. Once he had a foot in the house, it’d be all right. But the procedure might then be rather clumsy and messy.
However, thought Stuart, there was no use anticipating the worst; one should count one’s blessings: the night was fine and dry, the car running well, and with any luck he should be back at the country club before anyone was up. The 120-mile drive was nearly finished. Oxford and Reading were behind him. He passed through Marksfield at 12:40 A.M., well up to schedule, took the left fork by the Town Hall, and sped away on the Portsmouth road.
Rounding a bend a mile outside the town, his headlights picked up a car in the ditch just ahead, and a man in the road holding up his arms. Stuart accelerated, and the man reeled aside, cursing: he was evidently tight, and no doubt he would have been temporarily blinded by Stuart’s headlights. But there was just a chance he might have read the rear number plate. This little contretemps was enough to throw Stuart into the cold, brutal rage which obstacles in his path always generated. He had decided not to change the number plates till he reached his destination, in cas
e he should be involved in an accident or a police check en route, but it seemed a mistake now.
In three minutes, he was driving slowly down the winding lane to Crump End. The beam of his headlights jerked from tree trunk to tree trunk of the wood to his left. Presently the low bank between road and wood stopped short. Stuart did not immediately turn into the ride. He had worked out a drill and he was not altering it. Switching off the headlamps, he took a couple of petrol tins from the trunk and refilled the tank: that took care of the journey back. He then walked away up the drive, shining his electric torch before him.
Twenty paces into the wood he stopped, listening intently. A strongish wind had got up, and boughs were creaking together overhead like the grinding of teeth. Apart from this, and an occasional rustle in the undergrowth, there was no sound. Stuart sniffed the mush-roomy, decaying smell of the wood. Damp. He walked on another thirty paces, to find the drive descending quite sharply. If he brought his car this far, the slope would hide it from the lane; but unfortunately the grass surface of the drive became wetter and more slippery here, and he might get bogged down trying to start the car uphill when he left.
“Why the hell didn’t that fool tell me the place was a bloody bog?” he muttered to himself, with another spurt of anger.
Returning to the car, he substituted the false number plates which had been hidden under the rear seat, and backed slowly into the drive, stopping just before the point where it began to slope downward. He had taken off his gloves to alter the number plates; and now, getting out of the car, he stumbled in a deep rut, and throwing out a hand for support, found himself gripping a bramble while another bramble branch slashed viciously across his cheek, and his cap was torn off his head. He fumbled for a handkerchief, mopped at his bleeding hand and face; he was tight with rage now, compressed like a spring. Locking the car, he threw a rug over the hood, tapped his overcoat pockets, and set off down the drive. There was a flask of brandy in the dashboard recess, but Stuart felt no need for it now. Afterward, perhaps.
Standing in the lane, he could only just pick out the dark bulk of the car. The rug covered the chromium fittings on the hood which would have caught the moonlight. No one passing along the lane would notice the car, fifty paces away down the woodland drive, unless he stopped and looked hard for it.
After listening for a minute—though footsteps could hardly have been heard, if anyone else was abroad tonight, against the rush of wind through trees and hedges—Stuart Hammer began to walk rapidly, with his purposeful, rolling gait, down the lane toward Crump End. There were no more qualms in his mind than in the mind of a tiger approaching a drinking pool. Would the quarry be there?—that was his single thought.
He walked at the side of the road, where there was a deep ditch, stopping every fifty yards to listen and peer ahead. The wood on his left fell behind him; the moonlight glimmered over fields, like a heavy dew, and presently it revealed a long, low house, unlighted, ahead of him to his right. This must be it. Yes, a white wicket gate. THE OLD FARM.
Crouching behind the low hedge, one hand on the gate, Stuart Hammer looked up. That was the window. Something fluttered there. A curtain. The window was open. Fine. He pressed the latch and pushed the gate very slowly away from him. The hinges made no sound, which he took as a good omen—Ned had oiled them, good old Ned hadn’t forgotten. Silently he closed the gate behind him, glanced up again at the open window; and then, after this slow-motion business, covered the twenty yards between gate and front door with the soundless, darting celerity of a cat chasing a leaf.
He was in shadow now, beneath a shallow porch. A heady smell of tobacco plants came to his nostrils. He inserted the key in the lock; the solid oak door made no resistance, opening under the light pressure of his shoulder. He shone his torch beam into the black, gaping throat of the hall. Empty. He slipped in, closing the door behind him and releasing the catch of the lock. The faint click this made, as if it were the start of a chain reaction, merged into a hoarse, strangulated, rasping sound, which set his heart bumping. He swung round in the darkness to face whatever the thing was. And the next instant, a grandfather clock, which had been gathering its senile forces to strike, began chiming the hour.
Under cover of the sound, Stuart Hammer, his nerve perfectly restored, darted up the staircase, following his torch beam like a bulky shadow. Turn right on the landing, Ned had told him, then it’s the first door on the right. Breathing evenly, Stuart marked the position of the wooden latch and stowed the torch away in his overcoat pocket. It was dark as a cupboard now. He advanced both hands to the latch, and with immense caution very slowly depressed it.
The door, which he pushed open inch by inch, gave one loud creak and one only. There was a sound of breathing, arrested and then continuing; Stuart thought it must be his own, till he realized he had been holding his breath. Something trickled down his cheek—sweat, or blood from the bramble scratch. He felt unpleasantly hot in his heavy overcoat; he should have left it in the hall. There was a faint smell of human warmth and of sweat, carried by the draft from the open bedroom window.
There were two beds, he knew, the larger of which—Helena Stowe’s—would be opposite him half-left. His eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness now, and he could descry a paler darkness there—sheet or blanket—where the noise of breathing came from. The next moment the curtain blew in the wind, admitting a thin diffusion of moonlight, and Stuart Hammer was able to make out on the pillow a woman’s head, a body humping the bedclothes, naked shoulders showing above them. All present and correct, he said to himself—and then his teeth bared in a snarl, for, stepping soundlessly nearer the bed, he perceived that it was occupied by two people and the other was not Ned Stowe.
Stuart Hammer was the type to whom unexpected obstacles come as a personal affront, and in whom they arouse nevertheless a strong instinctual response swift as the reaction to stimulus of a chemical secretion. What he did now was not the product of thought, for this was a contingency he had never foreseen, but an instantaneous expression of his personality.
He took the blackjack from his overcoat pocket, hooked his left forearm under the man’s neck and bare shoulders, yanked him up from the pillow, and struck him a violent but controlled blow across the temple. Knocked cold before he had properly wakened, the man groaned. Stuart yanked down the sheet and blanket, rolled the body onto the floor, seized the pillow on which the man’s head had been resting, and thrust it over Helena’s face, as, muttering, she came awake.
Holding it there, he scrambled onto the bed. The woman’s meager limbs were beginning to thrash and flounder. He knelt on her thighs, pinning them brutally, and with all his weight and strength forced the pillow into her face. His nostrils flared pleasurably as he looked down at the body squirming like a thin silver fish in the moonlight; but he kept glancing, too, at the man on the floor by the bedside: he should be good for ten minutes at least, with the crack Stuart had given him; but one should take no risks. The blackjack was ready to his hand.
Helena’s arms were still flailing, her fingers scrabbling at Stuart’s coat or wrists, but more and more feebly; and her attempts to scream were suffocated to whimpers by the pillow that was killing her. One desperate convulsion nearly unseated her murderer, and in an access of fury he punched his gloved fist again and again into the defenseless body beneath him.
When he had made sure she was dead, he put the pillow back over her face and turned his attention to the unconscious man on the floor. A weedy type. Bloody silly that sort of beard looked, over a birthday suit. Stuart felt the man’s heart. It seemed to be ticking over quite satisfactorily. So he’d wake up presently and find his mistress dead—a damned awkward situation for the blighter, whoever he was. He’d tell the police he’d been knocked out by an assailant whom he’d not had time to see. But what evidence could the bloke offer to support such an unlikely story? A bruise on the head, which he might well have received during the struggle with his victim? Some missing valuables of her
s, which he could have taken away himself to substantiate the tale?
But of course, Stuart Hammer now decided, there need be no valuables missing, no signs of entry, no ladder left against the front wall. Why complicate matters for the overworked constabulary?
Breathing evenly again, he switched on his torch and took a good look around the room. He pocketed the blackjack which lay on the bed, and made sure that he had left no other traces of his presence here. The torch beam lighted upon a chair, a dressing table, a chest of drawers. He opened the top left-hand drawer of the latter and, as arranged, put the front-door key under a pile of Ned Stowe’s handkerchiefs. This gave him an idea, and his lip curled sardonically.
The bloke had left his clothes, neatly folded, on a chair by the dressing table. Stuart found a handkerchief in the trouser pocket. His torch beam discovered a laundry mark on it. He pushed the handkerchief under the pillow on which the dead woman’s head lay; then, his head cocked as if surveying a work of art, he pulled out the handkerchief again and thrust it beneath the tumbled sheet well down toward the bottom of the bed.
The bearded character on the floor was breathing rather stertorously and beginning to twitch. Stuart Hammer perceived it was high time to remove himself from the scene. He gave a last look round, put away his torch, descended the stairs and let himself out by the front door.
There was no one in the lane. He followed his shadow back to the wood where the car awaited him. The rug was still on the hood. The car seemed to have attracted no more attention than its temporary owner. Stuart steered it very slowly down the woodland ride, got out, peered up and down the lane, listened hard, then at last, settling himself behind the wheel again, took a swig of brandy, switched on the headlights, and drove into the lane and away toward Marksfield.
7 The Bereaved Lecturer
The next morning, Ned Stowe came awake with a start at eight o’clock, hearing a bell ringing. He had only slept for two hours. After the lecture the usual “a few friends who so much want to meet you” had been invited for drinks by his host, and had asked the usual questions. Ned answered them in a distrait manner at first, then found himself talking and talking, as if to drown some noise in his own head. He was a great success, drank too much and smoked too many cigarettes, his hands shaking as he lit one from another. It was a telephone bell which, quite irrationally, he was afraid to hear; and he had lain awake through the small hours, dreading its ring, unable now to drown it with conversation.
A Penknife in My Heart Page 8