Dorothy tottered feebly to a chair, sat down and rubbed her forehead with her hand. Then she asked weakly, ‘Why have you told me all this? Did you want to make me miserable?’
For a moment he didn’t reply. Then the colour suddenly came into his cheeks, and raising his voice for the first time since he had begun to speak to her, he said, ‘I’ve told you this because I want to hurt Magda. Not you. I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you. I wasn’t sure you cared for Mr Fawley. But Magda is really wicked. She said things about me to my mother to-day—nothing I’m ashamed of—but things that upset my mother very much. And she said she wished I’d fallen off the roof and died instead of Mr Bray. She’s a hypocrite. That’s what I hate about her. Listen——’
He opened the door a couple of inches, put his ear to the gap and whispered, ‘She’s given Miss Tredennick her tea. You can catch her as she comes down, and ask her if what I’ve told you is the truth. Come——’
As if hypnotised, Dorothy got up slowly and joined him by the door, which he opened to its full extent. Then, leaving Dorothy trembling in the doorway, he went out on to the landing and stood by the head of the lower flight of stairs.
Magda was so busy with her own thoughts that she reached the landing before she saw Dorothy. But when she did, she stood quite still against the wall, knowing at once that something serious had happened, and waiting warily for Dorothy to speak. Dorothy’s throat had gone so dry that she had to swallow several times, as if she were choking, before she could gasp out—‘Is it true—that you—that you and my husband—have—are——’
Her abject feebleness suddenly put Magda on her mettle. This was the moment she and Robert had been waiting for. Very well. She would make the most of it. Raising her eyes and looking at Dorothy with contempt, she said, almost brazenly, ‘Yes, Robert and I are lovers.’ Then, turning her head a little to the right, she caught sight of Hugo, who was barring her way down the stairs. Something about him,—complacency, or an expression of malicious triumph,—roused a devil within her. Losing all self-control, she shouted, ‘So it’s you,—you loathsome sneak!’, and ignoring Dorothy, who staggered back into the sitting-room, she darted at him with her hand raised to strike him in the face. But Hugo, who had seen the glint of murder in her eyes, was already on the half-landing, below, and before she could overtake him in the hall, he dived into Justin’s room and slammed the door, intending to lock it. But the key was missing, and though he gripped the handle, Magda’s wrists were stronger than his. He released his hold, and ran across to the grate to find a poker with which to defend himself. However, even before he realised that all the fire-irons had been packed away, Magda’s hands were on his shoulders. He shouted, ‘Mother! Help! Help! Mrs Fawley!’ But Dorothy, who was half fainting in a chair, heard nothing and Mrs Muller was at that very moment searching in the Men’s Department at Garrows, for a present which should make it clear to Hugo that she had forgiven him and would always forgive him.
There was no escape. Though he struck at Magda’s face and his nails drew blood, she forced him on to his knees and then flat on the floor. He screamed again and again, but disregarding his blows she took his head in both her hands and banged it hard against the green marble of the empty hearth. She thought she heard a click and he lay very still. She drew her hands away, and then, quite deliberately and without any trace of passion, took his head again and banged it down four times more, as if with each blow she were driving another nail into the coffin of her happiness.
Five minutes later, after a fit of sobbing so violent that she thought her heart was going to burst, she picked up the receiver of Justin’s telephone, which was still on the top of his desk, and dialled Dr Jamieson’s number. When he answered, she said, ‘This is Magda Muller speaking. Will you come at once? Hugo’s had an accident. He’s dead—or dying. He—his head hit the marble hearth in Mr Bray’s room. Please come at once. Please——’ She dropped the receiver, hurried over to Hugo and tried to feel his heart, though an obscure instinct prevented her from opening his shirt. She detected no sign of a heart-beat, but thought she noticed a slight rise and fall of his chest. Then she knelt down beside the body, till the front-door bell rang.
When she answered it, she let in not only Dr Jamieson, but her mother who had met him at the corner of the Crescent on her way home.
[4]
As to what happened during the next quarter of an hour, even Dr Jamieson wasn’t very clear. He admitted, when he was questioned afterwards, that he was confused and thrown off his balance. ‘A younger man might have coped with things more efficiently,—though after all . . .’ They couldn’t really blame him for anything, except perhaps for not ringing up the police as soon as Magda began to accuse herself of having murdered her brother. But she and her mother were both so clearly hysterical that he didn’t bother very much with them, as long as he had his patient to consider.
He found Hugo bleeding at the nostrils, and diagnosed a case of concussion and possible fracture. Magda’s first story was that Hugo had slipped and hit his head on the marble. It was true that her face was bleeding, and that there was blood on her hands and on her white apron, but he assumed, to begin with, that all the blood was Hugo’s.
Mrs Muller was much harder to manage. When he was ringing up for an ambulance to take Hugo to hospital, he had to break off and stop her by force from taking Hugo’s body in her arms and carrying it downstairs, so that she could put him to bed. He had to slap her on the face several times and warn her that if she interfered, Hugo would most unquestionably die. ‘As it is,’ he told her, ‘no one knows what will happen when he recovers consciousness. He may be deaf and dumb, or paralysed, or blind,—or an idiot. For God’s sake, do as I say!’
It was then that Magda began to scream, ‘I killed him. It’s all my fault. I knocked him down and banged his head on the marble. I wanted to kill him.’ And when the doctor had tried to calm her down, she rushed from the room, and before he knew what she intended to do, she was running down the street. He couldn’t leave his patient and chase after her, and Mrs Muller was in no condition to give him any help. As others could testify, she was almost uncontrollable at the hospital.
[5]
‘I simply haven’t the guts to leave Dorothy.’
While Robert sat in the Tube, he repeated the sentence to himself, time after time. It was only fair to Magda that he should bring it out almost as soon as he saw her. He knew it was bound to wound her grievously, but he hoped she had too much sense and self-command to make a scene in public. Scenes in private seemed, for the time being, quite outside the picture.
Unfortunately, he would have to say a good deal more to her than just that one key-sentence. Putting it crudely, he would have to give her the option of continuing to be his mistress, though with little hope of ever becoming his wife. ‘Don’t think for a moment, I love Dorothy, or that I don’t want you.’ Yes, he could say that with full sincerity. He did still want Magda—or rather he knew there’d be times when he would want her.
Meanwhile, however, he didn’t know what he wanted. Since the nightmare of Christmas Day, when Dorothy had given him in such full measure the opportunity for which he had been waiting, and which, when it came, he had been too feeble to seize, he had lost all confidence in the strength of his will. He felt only half alive,—as it were, emasculated,—incapable of either loving or making love to anyone.
‘I simply haven’t the guts to leave Dorothy.’ That summed up the whole position only too well. He hadn’t the guts, when Dorothy was behaving like a schoolmistress in a temper to say, ‘That’s enough. I’m quitting, here and now. Divorce me, sue me, do whatever you like, scream, go on your knees, or find a convenient gas-fire and turn it on,—you’ve lost me for good and all.’ One couldn’t say things like that in cold blood, of course, but his blood hadn’t been cold. It had been seething so feverishly, that he had nearly stormed out of his workshop into the drawing-room to deliver his ultimatum. But he hadn’t done so, and when Dorothy
came tapping at the workshop door, he had crumpled up completely in thirty seconds, simply because he couldn’t face a scene,—even the very scene that he had longed for.
The thought of scenes carried his mind forward once more to his meeting with Magda, now only ten minutes ahead. Suppose, after all, she did become hysterical. How would he deal with her? Simply walk away—or give her in charge for molesting him? What had happened to him that he could now think of her so callously? Had his whole passion died even more suddenly than it had come to life? His feelings, so far as they existed beneath his numbness, were in the melting-pot. A tilt of the crucible to this side or that would pour them into a permanent mould. If Magda made a scene of sufficient violence, he would give way to her no less abjectly than he had given way to Dorothy. If only Magda could have a show-down with Dorothy and spare him the unpleasantness,—insensitive though he was to verbal niceties, the pansy phrase made him smile for the first time that day—he was quite likely to take Magda to Twickenham and spend the night with her there, not now for the sake of a few more romantic hours, but so that she could burn his boats for him, and make his return to Dorothy impossible. But if she didn’t do the dirty work for him,—if she simply pouted and sulked and piped her eye——Oh Hell! Two women were tugging at his destiny. Let the one who tugged hardest, win. At the time he hardly cared.
Magda was standing by the door of the lift, when he got out, but he didn’t recognise her till she touched his arm. Her cheek still oozed a little blood, and she was still wearing the blood-stained apron. She looked like an old hag who had been having a rough-and-tumble in a slaughter-house.
He stared at her in horror and said, ‘Magda,—what on earth—what’s happened?’, and then shrank back as she drew so close to him that her body was almost rubbing against his. She gripped his arm fiercely in her strong fingers and whispered, ‘This is goodbye. Hugo has told your wife everything about us. They’re taking him to hospital in an ambulance. I tried to kill him. I think I have killed him. I’m going to give myself up. Somehow I——’ She broke off, looked at him wildly, shook her head and then pushed her way through the ring of spectators which had already begun to form round them, and ran out of the lift-hall into Pelham Street.
Robert had been so painfully aware of the odd looks which were coming his way, that his embarrassment quite outweighed the awfulness of what Magda was saying to him. He wished the earth would open and swallow him up. Any fate seemed preferable to standing by her in the middle of that inquisitive crowd. When she left him, he stood where he was for a few seconds and then, realising that people were still watching him suspiciously, he walked with as much bravado as he could into the station-arcade and out into Thurloe Street, where snow was now falling heavily.
He was too dazed to try to think out the implications of what must have happened. One thing alone was clear. Since Magda would henceforth play no part in his life, he might as well go straight home.
When he reached Ten Pollitt Place, he found the front door wide open and Dorothy on the threshold, gazing vacantly up and down the street. She was wearing her Persian lamb coat and a black felt hat, which he had always thought one of her silliest. It was shaped like the roof of a house, with a gable at either side and a gulley between them. He noticed that there was snow in the gulley and that some flakes were melting among the curls of her coat.
She was very pale. When she saw him, she said, as if she were talking to herself, ‘I can’t get a taxi—what am I to do?’ He asked, ‘Do you want one?’ and she said, ‘Yes, I—I did,’ and looked round at two suit-cases just inside the doorway. Robert said, ‘If you like, I’ll try to find one for you, though I don’t suppose there are many about in this weather.’ She didn’t reply, and at that moment they heard the imperious ringing of a bell in the basement. Robert said, ‘That must be Miss Tredennick. Do you know, I’ve an idea that she’s alone in the house. Don’t you think we ought to see what she wants and get her some dinner?’ Dorothy said, ‘Yes, I suppose we ought to.’ Robert shook the snow off his mackintosh, shut the door, picked up the two suit-cases and carried them upstairs, while Dorothy followed him.
[6]
At half-past ten Dr Jamieson knocked on the door of Miss Tredennick’s bedroom and walked straight in. The light was on, and she was sitting up in bed with a book. She looked worried but resolute. As soon as she saw him, she tossed the book aside and said, ‘Thank God you’ve come. What’s the news? Is he going to die?’
‘You mean Hugo?’
‘Of course.’
‘No, he’ll be all right. He began to come round as soon as we got him to the hospital. We had him X-rayed and there was no sign of a fracture. The blood was evidently a nose-bleed. That boy must have a very tough little skull.’
‘And there won’t be any after-effects?’
‘A few headaches perhaps, for the next week or two, but nothing more. No, he’ll get perfectly well and lead his mother—and others too, I dare say,—many a dance. I’m a good deal more concerned about his sister.’
Miss Tredennick gave a big sigh of relief and said, ‘At the moment, Doctor, I’m concerned about you. You look at the end of your tether. You’ll find all the usual drinks and some glasses in the corner-cupboard in my sitting-room. Please do help yourself and come and sit down, before you tell me the rest of the story.’
He obeyed, and when she saw him settled in the arm-chair near the window with a brandy and soda, she went on, ‘I’ve got a touch of cold—nothing much, no temperature—and have spent the whole day in bed—so I didn’t see the ambulance arrive. But I heard something of a commotion down below, and when Magda didn’t come up to clear away my tea, as she usually does at about quarter past five, I rang and rang, but nobody answered the bell. In the end,—it must have been well after six o’clock—both the Fawleys came up and told me Hugo had had an accident and had been taken with his mother to hospital. They were rather like two timid conspirators and I felt they were keeping something from me. But I was so distressed about poor little Hugo, that I didn’t press them. Besides, they were so kind. Mr Fawley made me a delicious omelette for dinner,—much better than Magda’s. Well—what’s happened to her? Mr Fawley said he’d seen her in a state of hysteria at South Kensington station.’
Dr Jamieson said wearily, ‘She went to a police-station and accused herself of having murdered her brother. Of course, they hardly believed her, but she mentioned my name and they got in touch with me and came round to question me, and I had to admit she’d told me the same thing. So she’s in custody, poor girl, and they’ll have to bring some sort of a charge against her. But if she gets a sentence of imprisonment, I don’t suppose it’ll be a very long one. The Superintendent told me she kept talking about expiating some dreadful sin on her conscience, but he gathered it had nothing to do with her attack on Hugo. Perhaps prison will get that trouble out of her system.’
Miss Tredennick said sharply, ‘Do you think she may have been having an affair with a married man?’
Dr Jamieson shook his head doubtfully, half shutting his eyes, and answered, ‘I really don’t know. It could be. In any case, I don’t suppose you’ll see her again, unless you send for her. Mrs Muller won’t have her living here,—which brings me to your problems. I’ve managed to get my housekeeper’s niece to come here for the night. She’ll sleep in Magda’s room and look after you to-morrow morning. But I hope by that time Mrs Muller will have pulled herself together. I think I set her mind at rest about Hugo, but I sent her to bed and gave her a sedative. I’m afraid she won’t find it too easy to get an efficient substitute for her daughter. What a good thing poor Bray isn’t here. He would only have been an extra complication. Oh dear——’
He yawned uncontrollably, covered his tired face with his hand and continued, ‘I do apologise. I really think I shall retire to-morrow. I’m too old now to be much use to anyone.’
Miss Tredennick made no comment, and at length, wondering if she had fallen asleep, he looked up and saw he
r gazing at the fire-place, deep in her thoughts. As he stood up and walked towards the bed, she turned her head to him and said, ‘I beg your pardon. I was trying to think something out. Tell me, did you have a word with the Fawleys on your way upstairs?’
‘Yes, I thought I’d better let them know what arrangements I’d made.’
‘How did they strike you?’
‘Well, I thought the husband was looking rather shaken.’
‘And his wife?’
‘She must be one of those women who thrive on excitement. I don’t remember seeing her look so happy.’
Miss Tredennick smiled and wished Dr Jamieson good night.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
C.H.B. (Clifford Henry Benn) Kitchin was born in Yorkshire in 1895. He attended Exeter College, Oxford, and published his first book, a collection of poems, in 1919. His first novel, Streamers Waving, appeared in 1925, and he scored his first success with the mystery novel Death of My Aunt (1929), which has been frequently reprinted and translated into a number of foreign languages.
Kitchin was a man of many interests and talents, being called to the bar in 1924 and later amassing a small fortune in the stock market. He was also, at various times, a farmer and a schoolmaster, and his many talents included playing the piano, chess, and bridge. He was also an avid collector of antiques and objets d’art.
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