by Nina Bawden
“Henry, what was it they found in your room?”
“What?” he said. “Oh, yes. Funny about that box. I mean it’s funny because I saw it there a day or so ago. It was in my collar drawer, and I was looking for a stud in a devil of a hurry. I remember that I wondered how it got there. I thought it was aspirins—you get them in that kind of box—and I thought at the time it was a bit odd, because I never touch the things … when they brought the box out at the station I couldn’t think why I hadn’t looked inside it at the time. Silly, isn’t it? I should have known what the stuff was, because I use it in the lab. Arsenic. Harmless-looking stuff. You’d never think it would kill anyone …”
He sat down then with a kind of jerk, and looked at us both with a foolish, sleepy grin.
Brigid said, “But I don’t understand, dear. No one did have any arsenic. I mean, no one died from arsenic.”
I said, “Childe Roland did.” She looked at me with wondering eyes, and I told her what Venetia had said to Sebastian. She went scarlet, and cried out:
“But that isn’t true. How wicked of her. Of course I wouldn’t have killed the poor old dog. I didn’t like him sleeping on Sebastian’s bed because he was so old, and looked so dirty, but I wouldn’t have poisoned him. I shouldn’t say so now she’s dead, but it was a wicked thing to say to a little boy.”
“Someone killed the dog with arsenic,” I said. “Only they didn’t mean it for the dog, they meant it for Sebastian.”
She shuddered violently and said, “Don’t say things like that, Paul. I can’t bear it, I can’t.” I thought she was going to have hysterics; her face was working in an uncontrolled sort of way, but after a minute she quietened down, and said:
“But who would do it, Paul? Who would want Sebastian to die? He’s only a little boy.” She spoke quietly, wonderingly. I wondered if she still felt as if it were only a dream, and that she would wake up any moment.
I said, “Did they ask you about the chloral hydrate, Henry? Did they find any when they searched the house?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think they found anything,” he said. “But there should have been some. Venetia had it prescribed for her when we first came here. She was very nervy and hysterical just then. It hadn’t got chloral hydrate on the bottle, of course, but that’s what it was. It did the trick all right, and after a bit, she was fine. She only had to take a tiny dose, and there was quite a lot left in the bottle. I put it in the bathroom next to the guest-room; I had a feeling that it ought to be out of the way, and that bathroom wasn’t used except when we had people to stay. I thought I’d locked up the medicine cupboard in there, but I may not have done. It wasn’t there when the police looked for it, and I don’t think they could have found it anywhere else, because they asked me about it. I suppose Lewis told them she’d had it.”
I said, “If it was just used as a sedative, it couldn’t have been very strong … You’d need an awful lot to do any real harm.”
“It must have been pretty strong,” he said. “She’d had sedatives before, and they hadn’t worked. They said at the station that you wouldn’t need very much of this stuff to kill someone.”
“Sebastian didn’t have enough, anyway,” I said, and he sighed, and leant back in his chair.
Brigid looked at me, and I thought how odd it was that Brigid, who had never been anything but plain; who had been so nearly pretty that her plainness was something of a shock, should suddenly have become almost beautiful. Her face seemed thinner, and you could see that there were good lines in it. She had lost her robust colour, and her new pallor suited her. Her silly, gentle mouth wasn’t gentle any longer, but firm, and there was a determination in her face that I had never seen before. I don’t think she was beautiful, exactly; handsome is, perhaps, the word. She was handsome in the way that French women are when they are no longer young. She seemed suddenly to have become adult, to have acquired direction and purpose.
She said, “Paul, what are we to do? Do they think that Henry killed Venetia?”
I knew then, that she wasn’t living in a dream any longer. Fear and unhappiness had not crushed her. She would never look hurt or defenceless again; she had built up defences inside herself.
I said, “My dear, I don’t know. We’re all in it up to the neck. We shall have to wait. It’s all we can do now.”
Chapter Ten
The next day was heavy, with a low, depressing greyness. It was one of those days when you never wake up properly. The police had not come; during the last few days we had grown used to their presence about the house and the grounds, and now, without them, there was a curious stillness about the place.
The others felt it too. After breakfast no one showed any inclination to do anything. We stayed in the dark dining-room, huddling over the gas fire and reading the morning papers over and over again. There wasn’t anything in them about Venetia; there had never been any more than a brief, unexcited paragraph that had been included among the other catastrophes caused by the unusually cold weather. We had had a few reporters, but they had not been very persistent, and Dorry had dealt with them firmly.
Outside in the grounds, the ice on the baby lake was going; the room was very quiet, and we could hear the faint cracking as the ice broke up. The snow still lay on the hills, but the roads were clear again.
About ten o’clock the telephone rang, and Brigid went to answer it. She came back and said, “It’s Rella. Poor thing, her father hasn’t turned up. He hasn’t been home for two nights, she says, and the police had her down at the station this morning. I said she must come up here today. It must be dreadful for her, alone like that. And wondering about her father.”
“I’ll run down with the car,” said Henry.
I thought Brigid looked confused. She said, “She said she’d come up straight away, dear. You might miss her. And by the time you got the car out she’d be nearly here anyway.”
Henry looked obstinate. “It seems a bit hard,” he said. “I couldn’t possibly miss her, anyway. There’s only one road from the village.”
Slow scarlet crept up Brigid’s throat. “There’s a policeman at the gate,” she said. “And the superintendent rang up this morning while I was getting breakfast. He was very nice about it, and I could tell that he felt badly, but he said that he didn’t want any of us to leave the house unless we told him first where we were going. He put it awfully kindly, but I don’t think we should go.”
Henry’s face was grey. “It’s got that far, has it?” was all he said.
It wasn’t pleasant, feeling oneself a prisoner. I suppose if we had made a fuss about it one of us would have been allowed down to the village, but somehow it seemed better to ignore the whole thing. The farm, we presumed, was in bounds, and it was quite on the cards that we wouldn’t have wanted to leave the house anyway.
So we sat and waited for Rella. There was a slight feeling of constraint. At last Brigid said, “If Mr. Adlesburg has run away, do you think that Rella … after all he is her father. What I mean is, do you think that she thinks that he … he …” She stumbled into silence and gazed at us imploringly.
“Is a murderer,” I finished for her. “No, I don’t think she thinks that. Though things do look black for him, of course.” I wondered whether I ought to tell them the truth about Rella, and decided that it would be better. They were bound to know in the end, and it was perhaps more prudent to start square.
I said, “You know, he isn’t her father. They only said that to make it easier for them in England. She’s his mistress. She has been for a long time.”
Henry just nodded; it didn’t seem to touch him, and Brigid merely widened her brown eyes, and said:
“But, Paul, why didn’t they get married?”
“I suppose they’d lived as they were for so long that it had become a habit,” I said. “These things do.”
Brigid looked worried, and said, “But if she was his … mistress, Paul, then how must she have felt about Venetia? I mean, about V
enetia and Mr. Adlesburg?”
“Pretty bloody, I should think,” I said cheerfully. “I don’t think she felt very kindly towards Venetia.”
Brigid murmured, “I see,” and looked unhappy. At last she said, “Paul, you don’t think that she … that she …”
“I don’t know,” I said. “She could have killed Venetia, if that’s what you mean.” I remembered how wide awake she had been on the night that Venetia was killed, and I told them. Henry sat up in his chair with sudden wakefulness.
“Do the police know about this?” he said.
“They’re sure to, by now,” I said. “Unless she had a forged passport or something. And that’s not very likely. They only wanted to fool the neighbours, after all.”
I could see the idea sinking into Henry like water into a sponge, and he suddenly began to look more cheerful. It wasn’t conscious; he was the last person to enjoy the thought that someone else might be arrested instead of himself. Perhaps he was only thinking that there was safety in numbers. He said, “Should we tell the girl that we know all about her?”
I shook my head. “I shouldn’t say anything about it at all,” I said.
He nodded, and got up from his chair with a show of briskness. “We’d better give Dorry a hand with the breakfast things,” he said. We were very busy for a bit, clearing the table and washing up. Dorry was cleaning the kitchen; her eyes looked red and swollen as though she had been having a good cry. Brigid washed up and I dried the breakfast things, and Henry lit the wood fire in the drawing-room and made some coffee.
When the doorbell rang, I went to answer it. Rella stood on the doorstep. Her brown face seemed to have taken on a yellowish tint that was not at all attractive; her childishly thin body was huddled into a mackintosh.
“Hallo, Paul,” she said. “Can I come in, please?”
I realised that I was blocking the doorway. I apologised and took the suitcase that she held.
She explained it. “I’m hoping that I can stay the night,” she said. “I do not like the house when it is empty. I am afraid of the dark.”
I said, “I don’t suppose anyone will mind. Run along into the drawing-room like a good girl, and we shall all be with you in a moment.”
I opened the door for her, but she didn’t go in. She faced me instead, and put a little, brown claw on my arm. Her golden eyes were curiously blank, but her voice was despairing. She said, “Paul, do you love me?”
I didn’t know what she was getting at, unless she thought that Adlesburg had left her for good, and she was looking for another meal ticket. I might have been rude to her, then, except that she looked so little and tired. I said, quite gently, “Now, don’t be a silly girl. I like you very much, but I don’t love you any more than you love me.” I expected her to say something unpleasant, but instead, she dropped her hand from my arm and smiled politely. “It was wrong of me to ask you,” she said, and she went into the drawing-room. I followed her. She took off her coat and put it on a chair. She was wearing a dark skirt and a bright jersey. She wasn’t wearing stockings, and her legs looked cold and blue.
“Rella,” I said, but when she turned and looked at me I didn’t know what to say to her. She made it easier for me.
“I would like a cigarette, please,” she said.
I gave her one and lit it for her. She sat down and said, “I’m sorry I said that just now, Paul. I should not have done. But I have been so lonely without Tom.”
“I know,” I said, and suddenly felt very warm towards her. I wanted to kiss her, but I decided not to. I muttered an excuse and went out of the room to help with the coffee. We all had our coffee together. Brigid was very nice to Rella. She must have seen Rella’s suitcase in the hall, but she said that she must stay, of course she must stay, as though she had thought of it herself. I thought that Henry was a little embarrassed by her presence, but it was not easy to tell because he had grown in upon himself so much in the last few days. His voice had got more gentle, and the alarmed look in his eyes was more pronounced. He looked very vulnerable.
“I’m sorry about your father,” said Brigid, after the ice had thawed a little. “It must be very worrying for you.” She spoke as if he had a slight attack of influenza.
“It is dreadful,” said Rella, and her calm little face seemed to break up into pieces. “He has been gone so long. I am terribly afraid for him.”
“You mustn’t worry too much,” said Brigid with a slight tremble in her voice. “I expect he’ll come back. The … the police are sure to find him.”
“That is why I am afraid,” said Rella. “They are looking for him. They say they think he took a train. They will hunt him like a dog.”
Brigid was visibly distressed. “You mustn’t talk like that, dear,” she said. “Really you mustn’t. It’s sure to be all right. Your father …” Her voice faltered, and she looked more like the old Brigid, almost as though she might cry with confusion. I found myself feeling quite sorry for her. We had, after all, been talking about Adlesburg and Rella as though they were quite likely people to have killed Venetia.
Henry said, “You mustn’t upset yourself, Rella old girl. After all, the police in this country are a pretty honest lot. We’re rather proud of them, you know. They won’t do any harm to an innocent chap.”
“Do you believe that?” said Rella flatly. She was staring at Henry with an odd expression on her face. “I think that they will say, ‘This is a bad man. He was in love with another man’s wife. He was tired of her and wanted to leave her, but she wouldn’t let him. So he killed her.’ They know that he was going to see her that night. He did not go, I know that he did not go. But they will not believe me because Tom was against their country during the war, and because I have already told so many lies. Because I am not Tom’s daughter, and I live with him although we are not married. So they won’t believe me. They wouldn’t believe me this morning. I am sure that they did not believe me when I told them he did not go to Venetia that night.”
I said to her, “I told them about you.”
“I thought you would do that,” she said. “I am glad that you did.”
Henry cleared his throat. “This is all pretty unpleasant,” he said gruffly. “I’m sorry, Rella. You’ve had a rotten time of it. Are you sure that your … er … Tom did not go to see Venetia that night? I mean … someone saw him … out in the lane.”
I saw her hands clench on the arm of her chair. It was the only movement she made. She looked straight at Henry, and her golden eyes did not flicker.
“I told the police what I know,” she said. “Tom was with me that night. After I had gone to bed I could not sleep. So I went to his room. He had all his clothes on, and I knew he was going to her. While he loved her, I had said nothing about it, but I knew that now he didn’t love her any more. So I told him it was foolish, that he would only make it worse. He said that he had to go, that she was expecting him, and then I knew that he was afraid of her. I felt that if he could not go, just this once, perhaps he would not be so afraid. So I made him come back to my room with me. I said that I felt ill. He came, because he is fond of me, and I made him stay. It was not very difficult, because I love him very much. Then, afterwards, he said that he must go and find Venetia and tell her that he was finished with her. Then we heard the car in the garage. It wasn’t very loud, and I thought that was funny, because my bedroom overlooked the garage and the car should have sounded much louder than it did. So we looked out of the window but we couldn’t see anything because the garage was right underneath. Then we heard someone opening the doors of the garage and we shut the window and pulled the curtains because we did not want to be seen. Then we heard the car going down the drive, and Tom said that someone might have stolen the car, and that we should do something about it. I said that it was not possible, but he went downstairs and I waited for him. When he came back, he said that the car had gone out of the gate and along the road, not towards the village, but the other way. He could see the tracks in
the snow. He said that he thought it must be Venetia who had taken the car because he had not gone to meet her in the place above the garage. He said that she must have been angry, and taken the car out for a drive. He said he had looked in the room where they used to meet, and she was not there.
“I said I would go and make sure that she was not still in her room. It was better that I should go, because if I met anyone I could say that I was going to ask for something for a headache. When I got to her room the door was open. I could hear nothing, so I switched on the light and the room was empty. The bed was tidy. Then I heard someone moving, so I ran away, leaving the light on in the room, and I hid by the stairs. I was frightened. But it was only the little boy. He went up to the door of the room and looked in.
“I went back to my room and told Tom that he was right, and it must have been Venetia in the car. We smoked for a little while and listened for the car coming back. But it didn’t come back, so Tom went back to his room and I tried to go to sleep. But I couldn’t go to sleep, and then Paul came into my room and said that Venetia had gone. Perhaps I should have said that she had taken the car, but I was afraid. I should have to explain about Tom, and I didn’t know what I should say. Then, when I saw Tom later on, he said we must say nothing about it in case something had happened to her and everyone might think it was his fault.
“So I said nothing, even when the police asked me what I had been doing on the night that she died. I said I had been asleep and I hadn’t heard anything. They said that the garage was under my window, and that I must have heard when the car was driven out, but I said that I sleep so well that I would not hear a bomb if it dropped. I think they believed that.
“Then Tom got very frightened of what they would find out, and he thought he had better go and tell them that he was her lover, but he didn’t tell them about that night, and so I think that they thought he had killed her. When he came back from the police station he said that they would like him to be the murderer because of what he did in the war, and that they would never believe him. I said that I would go to them and tell them that he was with me that night, but he said they would not believe me because I told them a lie at first. Then he went away and he didn’t come back. At first I thought he had gone for a walk, and then I rang up Paul on the telephone and asked him to look for him. But he did not think that would be any good, so then I went to the police and told them what really happened that night. I don’t think that they believed me, and then I was frightened for myself as well as for Tom. So I rang you up because I was afraid. It is very kind of you to let me come, but perhaps you will not want me to stay now. I will go away if you want me to.”