Deliverance

by L. A. G. Strong

  “No, it’s true. Really. I’m not dreaming. Grace. I’ve killed her. Before we came away. Oh God, Ruth! What shall I do?”

  She went stiff, sitting up straight, her nightdress falling off one shoulder, her collarbone sharp with its pit of shadow.

  “Georgie! You didn’t. You can’t have.”

  “Yes, Ruth, yes. I did.”

  He hid his face, holding on to her slim body in his anguish. Her voice came down to him, a resolute whisper.

  “No. You’ve dreamed it.”

  “I did it, I swear I did. Truly.”

  “But—how? What with?”

  “Oh, not that sort of way. Not with a hammer, or anything like that.”

  “How, then?”

  “I—I left something for her to take.”

  For a few seconds she said nothing. Then she whispered, “Poison.”

  She loosened his grip from round her waist, lifted his head from her breast, and held it between her hands. Slowly, wonderingly, she looked at him.

  “You gave her poison, Georgie? You?”

  “Yes. Yes. Oh Ruth, how could I? What can have possessed me?”

  Ruth made a small gesture of impatience. Her mind, strictly practical, was already reaching ahead for possible ways to protect him.

  “How did you give it to her?”

  “I poisoned one of her sleeping tablets.”

  She gripped his shoulder and shook him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “She—she takes one or two pretty well every night. I split one open with a razor blade, and hollowed it out, and put poison in, and stuck it up again, and put it in the bottle with the rest.”

  Hope leaped into her face.

  “You mean—she mayn’t have taken it yet?”

  “No. Maybe not. But she’s bound to soon.”

  Ruth’s lips disappeared. Her mouth was a tight furious line.

  “Oh, Georgie,—you—you ASS! Why didn’t you tell me at first?”

  Flinging the sheets aside, she jumped out of bed.

  “Ruth. What—where——? You getting up?”

  “Up! Of course I’m getting up. So are you. This instant.”

  “Why? Where are we going?”

  “Straight back to Summer Hill. We may still be in time.”

  “What, at this hour?”

  “Don’t waste time talking. Dress.”

  “But what will the landlady say?”

  Suddenly, viciously, she slapped his face.

  “Do you realize this is life and death? That, if she takes the pill, they’ll hang you?”

  “They—they won’t know.”

  “Dress. D’you think I’ll marry a murderer?”

  She was pulling on her clothes with feverish energy. Georgie, stumbling into his, kept up a troubled explanatory babble. He’d done it for her, it was the only way to get Grace’s money, his own money, that was to say. Grace had made no will, that was the purpose of it all, didn’t she see?

  “It all seemed so clear at the time. I think the devil must have entered into me.”

  She was not listening. As soon as he was ready, she took him by the hand, and led him down the stairs. The stairs creaked violently, and he thought he heard a stir in one of the rooms: but there was no time to worry about that. Like a child on a lead, he followed her through the empty streets with their forlorn lamps, and here and there a cat on the prowl, and, near a corner, the strolling figure of a policeman. Georgie had been vocal nearly all the way, keeping up an alternating babble of remonstrance and self-accusation. The sight of the policeman silenced him. With a cold shudder, he realized that the peaceful, reassuring figure might at any moment grow tense and leap into pursuit. All his ingrained fear of the police became gigantic, towering over him, suffocating him. He pressed against Ruth’s shoulder.

  “Hurry!” he whispered. “Get on, round the corner, quick.”

  Sorry for him though she was, Ruth was glad he had seen the policeman and been shocked into understanding her own urgency. Now he was as eager as she was to get back and avert disaster, to keep on the right side of the dark curtain.

  The hours that followed burned them both with an agony of mind that seemed to veer from one to the other, if only because neither was capable of bearing such sustained torment without an interval of numbness. It would be hard to say which suffered more. Because they were well balanced, and their situation was one situation, each could somehow uphold the other in the blackest moments: each could bear the worst of the load in turn.

  When they got to the station, they found there was no train till ten to five. That meant an hour and three-quarters to wait in a cold, bleak waiting room. Oddly enough, the wait told worse on Ruth. Georgie recovered some measure of coherence as her nerve began to fail. He suggested that there was little point in rushing back at that hour of the morning, since Grace took her pills on going to bed, and by now was either alive and well, or a corpse.

  Ruth was unshakable. A rage possessed her to get to the house without delay. When he persisted, she blazed at him in fury, her face so distorted he would not have known it.

  The journey was a waking nightmare. When at last they started, fog delayed them. In bitter cold they sat, while the gaunt old local train groped its way from signal to signal, or stopped, hooting dolorously, in the midst of spectral fields, listening for leave to resume its way.

  On this first stage of their journey Georgie reached his nadir of despair. He saw what he had done, and what he had become in order to do it. He had planned and aimed at the death of another human being. He had tried to strike down cruelly the woman whom a few years back he had sworn to protect and cherish. He was a murderer, doomed at the best to lifelong remorse, even if by some miracle his crime was not brought home to him. He had thrown away his happiness and Ruth’s for the sake of a little money; when, had he not been entered by the devil, he and she could have gone away to another part of the country, under another name, and in a couple of years or more made up the loss. He looked at Ruth, stricken, sunk into herself, yet inspired by some spirit of energy from within: caught her glance, stern, questioning, bewildered, and knew that, even if all went well, he might still lose her. She was looking at a murderer; a man who hit at the very entrails of the woman whose bed he had shared: a skulking, cowardly murderer.

  “I’ll never do it again, Ruth. I promise. I promise.”

  No good saying that, his mind replied to its own cry. You made another promise once. Suddenly he saw Grace writhing under the bedclothes, crying out, shaken with spasms of vomiting, her green face drenched with sweat: calling to him for help: calling to the brute who had caused her pain. His imagination seized him and dragged him further. He felt the heavy hand crushing his shoulder, and heard the deep voice claim him. Holding on to the edge of the dock, his breath harsh on his dry lips, he tried to speak to the judge who was asking if he had anything to say before sentence was pronounced. He saw sad faces gazing at him, the Sergeant, Mr Entiknapp, Aunt Butters; what he had done was horrible in every world. Even Uncle Eddie, dear Uncle Eddie, looked at him with unbelieving eyes, all meetings forfeit now, and slowly shook his head. And, on the last cold dread morning, standing rigid lest his craven bowels betray him, he felt the straps secure his arms and heard the half-choked chanting of the robed chaplain; finding time, even in that extremity, to marvel how it was that this could be happening to him, gentle mild-mannered Georgie, who would not have harmed a fly, yet was a murderer.

  How, how, how could it have happened What madness had held him? By what devilish declension could the Georgie of two years, a year ago, have turned into a vengeful unimaginative cowardly brute.

  He groaned aloud, and half rose from his seat. Ruth put out an arm and held him down.

  “Hush. That won’t do any good.”

  But there was a contrast between her hard words and her looks, and he took from it what small comfort he could.

  When at last the dawn came, and the sun chased away some of the fog, the train
rushed clattering into the junction, and they got down stiffly, only to hear that they were hopelessly late and had missed the connection. When was the next train? Eight two. No, there was no bus.

  Sharply and violently, Georgie’s mood was changed. From despair it rocketed to hope. They would get there after all. They would not be too late. Grace had not taken the tablet.

  At once, by a freak of the mind, this hope brought him worse torment. Illogically, forgetting all about his own earlier argument, that Grace took her pills at night and there was therefore no need to get to the house before evening, he was racked by a demented urgency to be there at once. The delay threw him into a frenzy. Conversely, Ruth’s urge to reach the house, once it had served its purpose and set them going, seemed to fade. She was perhaps saving her powers for what might have to be faced presently.

  For whatever reason, she took no more pains to pacify Georgie, but accepted the setback and the fresh delay in a way that appeared to him cynical. He could not understand the change in her. Soon his agitation grew too sharp for him to be concerned with what she felt or thought. He knew only his own anguish. The surly finality of the porter maddened him. He longed to beat with both fists in the man’s face, then stood rigid in horror, feeling a murderer’s impulse rise again, this time with violence. His head spinning, blood before his eyes, he turned aside, and all but fell on the seat where Ruth was sitting shrivelled and withdrawn.

  Then, not willing it, spontaneously, with the effect of a shaft of sunlight piercing a cloud, he found that he was praying. Not for years had he done more than super-stitiously mumble in his mind the prayers taught him as a small child at the Orphanage. He was half ashamed of doing even this much, and did it as a sort of faint insurance against disaster. Grace and the Reverend Sylvester Tuckett had made prayers seem remote and tawdry. Only in an occasional flash of meaning had he now and then recalled something of that original warm innocence in which as a child he had looked for love and for someone to be grateful to. Neither Aunt Butters nor Eddie had had any use for religion that he could see. But now, with a cool rush of light and certainty, he prayed. Let us get there in time, Lord. Let her be alive. I repent of my sin. I offer no bargain, Lord, I make no promise of good behaviour in exchange. I will not even say, don’t let me be a murderer: but, Lord, save Grace. Don’t let her die.

  For a short while this humility, this first honest thought, brought him relief. The wild impatience left him. His knitted muscles relaxed. His breathing became slower and easier. Yet, so deep was the confusion in his soul, no state of mind seemed able to last. He began to tell himself that it was pointless to pray: either Grace had swallowed the tablet and was dead, or it was still in the bottle, and she was well and waspish. Prayer could make no difference. It looked to the future, not the past.

  Shocked at this quick apostasy, bitterly blaming himself for his want of grace, he tried to drive himself back to repentance and prayer. It was no use. While this turmoil lasted, no reasonable or coherent conduct was possible for him. He had one power only, the power to suffer and be unhappy.

  Ruth, to whom prayer was habitual, at this crisis of her life did not pray at all. Her mind worked strangely in a labyrinth of principle and pride. Finding it always difficult to ask things for herself, looking on prayer as a means of communion rather than a means of getting things, she had always refused to appeal to God in situations which she felt to be her own fault. Bitterly she told herself that what had happened was well deserved. With her eyes open she had walked into wrongdoing, and could not in pride and honesty appeal to God to get her out of it.

  Had Georgie known, his worst danger lay here, that she should blame him for leading her into a place from which she could no longer speak to God. He did not know, and, even if he had, he was already bearing too much for any further thought to hurt him. Happily, this black, dead phase in Ruth did not last long. Once they got started, suspense grew too sharp. By the time they reached the main station, and hurried out, running to catch a tram that was on the point of leaving, her heart was beating so fast she could hardly see or hear what was going on around her.

  It was close on half-past nine when they turned the corner into Summer Hill, and stopped, facing disaster. A crowd was gathered outside Number 3. Two policemen stood by the door, one on each side, talking to the people, trying to move them on.

  Georgie had gone dead white. He swayed on his feet. His lips moved, but no sound came. He looked pitifully at Ruth, and turned in a feeble gesture of escape.

  Ruth nudged him hard, her mouth buttoned up in the characteristic tight line.

  “Go on. They’ve seen you.”

  Two or three of the onlookers, catching sight of Georgie, exclaimed excitedly and pointed. The nearer of the policemen looked round, and at once came towards them.

  Like an automaton, Georgie started to walk forward. His lips were still moving soundlessly.

  “It’s all right, officer. I give myself up.”

  That is what he meant to say, what he thought he was saying. Not a word was audible, and the policeman was too preoccupied to notice.

  “Mr Bagshawe? I’m sorry to be meeting you like this. Bad news, sir, I’m afraid.”

  Georgie looked at him dully. Very gently, the policeman took his arm, and steered him to the railings.

  “Mrs Bagshawe, sir. Your wife. She’s been murdered. Hold on to the railings, sir, till I bring you a chair.”

  Georgie did as he was told, but clutched the policeman with his other arm. The bit of his mind that was working wanted to get it over, to be taken away from all the staring faces: not to sit publicly in a chair.

  “No. No. I’m all right. I——”

  Ruth interrupted.

  “Murdered? How?”

  The policeman looked compassionately at Georgie, then decided to tell her.

  “Hit on the head, miss, I’m afraid. With a hammer.”

  For a single instant, Ruth stared, horrified, at Georgie. Had he … ? Was his story a lie? No: impossible!

  “How terrible! When did it happen?”

  “Late last night, or early this morning, miss. We don’t know for certain till we’ve had the surgeon’s report. She was alive at nine o’clock last evening; two or three neighbours saw her.”

  A blessed flood of relief swept through Ruth. All her bitterness, her sense of being cut off from heaven, was swept away. She could not be shocked, she could not feel for Grace. A brutal deed had given her back her faith and her trust. Thank God, thank God, cried every drop of blood; thank God for the safety of my darling. Yes. She could see and feel again. He was her darling now.

  Things were different with Georgie. He could not take this in. He was paralysed. All he knew was that for some reason the police were not arresting him. He stood, gaping, opening and shutting his mouth, staring at Ruth, then at the policeman, then at Ruth again.

  Ruth wormed herself between him and the railing, took his arm, and squeezed it. She looked appealingly at the constable.

  “Could we get him into the house, do you think, and let him sit down there?”

  “Ah. That’s the best way. Come along, sir. You could do with a drop of something, you could. Make way, there!”

  Georgie’s face and bearing, as the policeman steered him in at his own doorway, were all that any crowd could desire. A murmur of sympathy went up.

  “Poor chap.”

  “Knocked ‘im right over, you can see.”

  “Huh! More than she was worth.”

  “Ah! Now you’re talkin’.”

  They set a chair for Georgie in the passage. They would not let him go into the shop or the living room, which seemed full of busy men talking in low voices.

  “I’ll see to him,” Ruth said, and smiled at the policeman. No one seemed to question her right to be there, or her relation to Georgie. They might soon begin, but, by openly walking down the street with him, she had disarmed criticism for the moment.

  The policeman went out of the front door again, leaving t
hem alone. Passionately she hugged Georgie.

  “My darling! It’s all right. You didn’t do it. It’s all right.”

  Then she remembered.

  “The tablets! You’ll have to get them.”

  Georgie surprised her then. She thought him knocked out, incapable of reason.

  “No one’ll bother about tablets when she’s been hit on the head.”

  It was sound enough; but Ruth was in the grip of an obsession. For hours her mind had been fixed on that bottle of tablets, and the removal of one of them. It was her talisman of deliverance. She had made one swift adjustment to what had happened: she could not make another.

  “If you don’t go up and get them, I will.”

  “Don’t.” He caught her arm. “You couldn’t explain it. Give me a minute or two. Then ask if I can go up.”

  “You’ve only got to pop the bottle in your pocket It won’t take a second.”

  “No. They might know that she took them. Her doctor might tell them. I’ll just get the one.”

  So, in a few minutes’ time, Georgie asked if he might be allowed to fetch some necessaries from his bedroom. He got leave without any difficulty. His mind was beginning to work clearly again. He made sure that the door was shut and that no one was watching, tapped out Grace’s pills, found the prepared one—he had not needed to be too particular in joining the two halves: Grace was half blind without her glasses—replaced the rest, then hurried to the lavatory and flushed away the thing that had so nearly made him a murderer.

  He brought down a battered Gladstone bag with one or two things in it, for show. If the police should look in the bedroom, they would think he had packed the things which were still in their room at the seaside hotel.

  From this point onwards, Ruth regained control, both of herself and of Georgie. Violent though the reaction was, she realized, immediately the danger was over, that normal life was restored and the future lay in her hands. Not only did Georgie need looking after now: he would need it for weeks, for months. After that one mad disastrous initiative he would be incapable of any decision, or so distrustful of himself that to require one would be to torture and confuse him.