by John Creasey
“David, let me go.”
The pressure at her neck increased. She believed that he meant it to increase, that he was trying to frighten her, and her anger flared up again.
“Let me go, David!”
“I’ll let you go when I have your promise never to allow Gerald Ward in my house again.”
She waited for perhaps ten seconds. Then she pulled herself free and pushed him away, snatched at the door and opened it, and ran through, slamming it behind her. Quite suddenly tears stung her eyes and she went almost blindly to her desk and dropped into her chair.
The door did not open, and she prayed that it would not, at least until she was more in control of herself, when she would be able to talk more calmly.
This small, book-lined room was in itself a place of calm. She had come to regard it as her own. One wall was filled from floor to ceiling with David’s reference books; Henrietta, who so loved books and words, had come to regard these as her own, too. Her desk, the same style as his, was smaller, and by its side was a typewriter table, with a streamlined machine on it.
His letters, placed by the typewriter and ready for signing, caught her eye. Unless she went to the main post office she would miss tonight’s post.
She sat staring at them, her vision blurred through tears – she had not realised that she had cried. She felt physically exhausted. David’s words echoed and re-echoed through her mind, but one thing slowly emerged as being most immediately important: the letters.
She ought to take them into him.
Yet if she waited, and if he behaved as he normally did, he would soon open the door and stride towards her, put out his hands for her to take, and draw her from her chair. He would hold her tightly, and for a moment she would yield. Then, slowly he would let her go and she would drop back into her chair, with an odd feeling of relief. This would be partly because his tension would have eased, partly because she never really liked that moment of physical closeness.
She sat for what seemed a very long time.
He wasn’t coming, of course; this mood was different, more intractable. She was over her own anger now, and wondered what had happened to upset him so much. The most likely thing was that he had had news of Yolande. She, Henrietta, ought to go and talk to him – or at least give him the chance to talk, and the letters were ample excuse. She put her hand on them – a long hand with large but well-shaped nails, a gold signet ring on the little finger of her right hand, a family ring.
There was still no sign from next door.
She stood up – and the buzzer at the telephone on her desk rang; he was calling her, but at the same time demonstrating his ‘no-nonsense-I’m-the-boss’ mood. She gave a little smile; it was really so absurd. Why did men so often behave like small boys, standing on their dignity when really they should laugh? She picked up the letters and went straight in to him.
He was sitting at his desk.
“I’ll sign those letters,” he said. “They can still catch the post at the main post office. Can you go home that way?”
“Yes, of course.”
She sat opposite him; he signed, she filled and sealed the envelopes in a curious atmosphere of restraint.
“Are you in a hurry tonight?” he asked, when at last they were finished.
She was over an hour late; her hair-washing, dress-pressing, newspaper-reading plans for the evening were already in jeopardy.
He looked ill, she thought.
“No hurry at all,” she said.
He nodded and sat looking at her; there must be something seriously wrong.
“David – please tell me what the matter is.”
“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”
“You could try,” she suggested.
“I’ll try,” he said. “I love you.”
She had only half expected that, and she did not quite understand the effect it had on her: a curious, sharp ping! of pain in her breast, followed by a feeling almost of alarm.
“Do you?” she asked, quietly. “You show it in a strange way.”
“It’s the truth,” he said. “I could kill any man who put his hands on you.”
He had fine, clear grey eyes, and now they seemed to burn. The lines round them and the shadows gave them an added brilliance, and she could not help the flash of thought which came into her mind: that that brilliance could be the glint of madness.
“I wish you wouldn’t talk like that.”
“But it’s the truth,” he insisted.
“You may feel like it now—”
“May!” he exploded. “I do feel like it, now and every waking minute of the day. Why do you pretend you don’t know? Why do you behave as if you haven’t an ounce of feeling in you? My God, you can freeze the very blood in me, just by the expression in your eyes.”
Heavily, wearily, she said, “I don’t intend to.”
“No, I’ll grant you that,” he said bitterly. “It’s the natural you, when you’re with me. I’ll bet he sees a different you.”
If Gerry Ward even attempted to be as familiar with her in the way that David had come to accept as his right, she would never see him again.
“I think I ought to go home,” she said.
“You said you were in no hurry.”
“I’m not in a hurry,” she confirmed. “I just don’t want to talk like this.”
He pushed his chair back, but did not get up, stared out of the window and then closed his eyes, as if he felt a heavy, wounding pain. She was never sure whether it was affectation when he did that, or whether he was simply trying to win her sympathy. She felt sympathy, whatever his intention, and studied his profile.
He was the most handsome man she knew.
He had the best brain of any man she knew, also – and, surprisingly, either he did not realise its range and power, or else was genuinely touched with humility.
He spoke without opening his eyes.
“He’s no good, you know.”
She didn’t answer.
“He’s not worth an hour of your time.”
She still didn’t answer.
“I can’t understand what you see in him,” he insisted, and now he opened his eyes and turned his chair to look at her. He closed his eyes again, momentarily, as if to shut out a vision. Of her? How was it that at certain times they could be so close, while at others they were such poles apart, wondered Henrietta.
“David,” she said. “I’m not going to talk about Gerald. I’ve already told you that you’ve no reason to be jealous of him or of anyone.” He had neither right nor reason, but she did not speak of ‘right.’ “There’s no one I like and respect and admire more than you,” she added. “I’m devoted to you. You must know that.”
“Yes,” he said. “It happens not to be enough.”
She took refuge in silence, the only refuge.
“Come and live here with me, Henrietta,” he said at last. “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t. You’ve no family ties, you’ve a poky little flat, you spend an hour and a half a day travelling – and you could have your own suite of rooms here, all the comfort I could give you – everything. Yolande won’t ever come back, no one would blame either of us. And you’d be happier than you’ve ever been in your life. Happier and more secure and free from all the silly little chores which take up your time. Why won’t you? What makes you so stubborn?”
It was not the first time he had suggested this, but he had never been so dispassionate, never subdued his emotion as he was doing now. She did not quite know how to answer, even whether to answer; she wished now that she hadn’t stayed.
“I know why you won’t,” he added harshly. “Your head’s filled with romantic notions of young love, white weddings, bridesmaids—”
The telephone bell cut a
cross his words.
He caught his breath, tightened his lips, then motioned to her.
“Say I’m out. I don’t want to talk to anybody.”
Relieved at the break in the tension, thinking that it might well enable her to change the mood of the talk, Henrietta picked up the receiver.
“Sir David Marshall’s home.”
“Are you going to stay there all night?” demanded Gerry Ward in a voice so loud and clear it echoed about the room.
In the kitchen of his home, Roger West put his arm lightly round his wife’s shoulders as she stood at the oven.
“How would you like a holiday this year?” he asked. “Starting next week?”
Janet West twisted round to see whether he was serious. She looked flushed and untidy and suddenly excited.
“Next week? You mean it?”
“Yes, unless something unexpected crops up,” said Roger. “I thought we’d—”
The telephone bell interrupted him.
“I’ll bet that’s something unexpected,” Janet said almost bitterly. “Sometimes I wonder whether we’ll ever get away on holiday together again.”
3
THE THIRD IN THE TRIO
In David Marshall’s lovely room there was silence.
The echoes of Gerry’s voice over the telephone still sounded. Henrietta stood with the pale-grey instrument in her hand, startled. David sat with his jaw set, staring out of the window.
“Are you there?” demanded Gerry Ward.
“I’m working late tonight,” Henrietta said, surprised by her own calmness. “I don’t know what time I’ll be free.”
“But, Henrietta! I may have to be away for—”
She put the receiver down, briskly, cutting off his voice. Now, the silence seemed absolute.
“You once told me,” said David in a brittle voice, “that you asked your friends not to telephone you while you were here.”
“I once told you,” said Henrietta, in an exasperated voice, “that I asked my friends not to telephone me when I should be working.”
She glanced at a star-shaped clock, centred on the mantelpiece; it was nearly seven o’clock.
“You knew he was waiting for you, didn’t you?”
Henrietta felt, once again, that this was a moment of crisis. If she told him what was in fact the truth, that she had not known Gerry was waiting, this might appear to David to be a concession to his right to interfere with her life outside this house. And above everything she prized her independence, rejecting the right of any human being to direct her affairs.
She had suffered much during the only period of her life when she had given a man that right, and she knew that remembrance of this suffering influenced many of her attitudes, most of all her attitude towards any thought of marriage.
“It doesn’t really matter whether I did or I didn’t,” she said at last. “I preferred to stay here and talk to you.”
“You mean I made it impossible for you not to stay.”
Henrietta bit her lip and turned her head away, a fresh flare of anger almost making her jump up again, and leave. But if she did, then there would be an awkward situation to face in the morning, and it could mean a long, uneasy, unhappy day. When she looked back his face seemed to have changed, she saw the pain in his eyes, no less because it was self-induced. Then she wondered yet again what had caused his present mood. There must be something he had not yet told her, and if she could only make him talk this might be of great help to him as well as to her.
“David,” she said gently, “I do wish you’d tell me what’s upset you.”
“I keep telling you what’s upset me,” he said savagely. “You have upset me. I am sick and tired of spending evening after evening here alone while you’re off with your newest admirer. Get that into your head. It’s you who’s upset me. When are you going to realise that though I can’t offer you the legal ceremony of marriage, I can offer you everything else, which is a hundred times more than you’d get from these moronic young fools you spend your evenings with. My God, you wouldn’t last six months with any one of them – they’d drive you mad with their addle-pated inanities. Stop fooling yourself – they’re too young for you, they’ve nothing to offer you but—” ‘
Something cracked in her.
She was already tired, she had been working too hard for too long, and the emotional stresses of the day had taken their toll. Now, her self-control cracked and she sprang up from her chair and stood by the desk, quivering with rage.
She would never know how beautiful anger made her, never know what the fire did to her blue eyes, or the quivering tension did to her lips, or the poise did to her figure. In that moment she felt she hated him; all that she wanted to do was hurt.
David Marshall sat, startled out of his bitter, savage mood, seeing Henrietta as he had never seen her before, so filled with anger that she lost the cool, imperturbable calm which so often maddened and at other times hurt him in ways he did not understand. Everything else faded from his mind – his jealousy of Gerald Ward, his own anger, the sense of near despair that he had felt all day. He placed his hands on the arm of his chair and began to get up, searching in his mind for something to say to console her, but could not find it.
“No wonder Yolande went mad.” Henrietta’s voice shook. “And you’re mad yourself or you wouldn’t behave like this. Well, you needn’t worry about Gerald coming here again. He certainly won’t, because I won’t.”
David stared at her, as if stunned by her words. There was no awareness of time in the seconds or minutes which followed. And there was no whisper of sound, until the drone of a car engine came into the street. This seemed to break the tension which had seized Henrietta, and she turned and walked swiftly out of David’s room and into her own.
She did not know what David did.
She knew that this was a climax, that their relationship would never be the same again. She had often envisaged such a moment, when she would have to face the fact that the emotional situation would blow up in her face and she would have to leave him, and this house, and this work which had become part of her life.
She began to collect her personal things. There were not many, practically everything but a dictionary, some pens and oddments were David’s – hers by usage over the years but nevertheless, David’s. She felt a strange and unfamiliar stinging pain at the back of her eyes. Then she squared her shoulders, consciously, and looked about her, like a bird, head turning in all directions. The books, so beloved, the desk, the pictures, all were there, each with its own particular significance for her.
Tight-lipped, tight-jawed, she went out of her room and into the passage. Her car was in the street, she could go to it through the front door, and pass David’s window, or through the back door and stand no risk of being seen. She did not hesitate, but turned right, towards the back door. Her footsteps sounded clearly on the highly polished wooden boards.
‘Will he try to stop me?’ she wondered, but the thought did not make her pause. Reaching the door she went through, closing it carefully behind her, and stepped into the paved yard, with a closed wooden gate which opened on to the road – Glebe Crescent, SW3.
He wasn’t coming.
He was letting her go.
She opened the gate, caught a nail on the latch, and winced; the wince turned into a sob.
Of course he was letting her go.
This was the end.
The car, a blue mini-Morris, was parked opposite the gate. Half a dozen other cars were parked close by, but there were plenty of gaps, Glebe Crescent was too far from the shops and too thinly populated ever to be crowded. She put down her bag and fumbled for her key. Where the devil was it? She couldn’t, she couldn’t have left it in her desk – if so, nothing would make her go back for it.
Suddenly she saw t
he blue tag to which it was fastened. Thank God! She took it out very carefully; whatever happened she mustn’t drop it, she mustn’t lose a second.
She pushed the key into the lock, and as she did so, saw a movement out of the corner of her eye, at the main gate of David’s house. She felt a curious sensation: her heart seemed to turn over. It wasn’t David, of course, it was someone from the house next door; the gates were very close together.
She opened the car door.
It was David.
She banged her knee on the door handle.
He was coming towards her.
She hadn’t taken the key out of the door, she had to half-close the door to get at it.
He was almost at her side.
She pulled out the key and started to get in.
He was speaking to her.
“Don’t go,” David said in a low-pitched voice. “Please don’t go.”
She didn’t look at him and didn’t speak.
“Henrietta,” he went on, pleadingly, “come and talk to me. Please don’t go.”
She scrambled into the driving seat and pulled the door to behind her. She was trembling and it crossed her mind that she was in no condition to drive, all strength seemed to have been drained out of her.
He pulled the door open.
“Henrietta,” he begged, “I’m sorry. I’m terribly sorry. Please don’t go away like this.”
His head and shoulders were inside the car and she could not close the door on him. He did not attempt to get in, just stood there, one hand outstretched but not moving.
If she weakened now, she realised, she would be forever at his mercy. If he could plead and win her after this, he could win whatever happened, and she must not give way. It would be madness – for him, for her. After what they had said they would never be the same again, it was useless even to try to patch this quarrel up.
She turned the key in the ignition.
“Please don’t stay there,” she managed to say. “It won’t make any difference.”