An Afternoon to Kill

by Shelley Smith

  ‘I caught her eyeing me slyly behind her handkerchief, expecting me to admire her performance no doubt.

  ‘I said sharply:

  ‘“I’m afraid that I am only interested in establishing my father’s innocence, Mrs Falk. A task which you have done your best to make impossible.”

  ‘“And all I’m interested in, Miss High-and-Mightiness, is providing a few comforts for me last days,” she countered with odious familiarity.

  ‘“Has the one anything to do with the other?” I said coldly.

  ‘She ignored me and went on, pulling at her lower lip thoughtfully:

  ‘“I have often wondered whether that kind-hearted young husband of yours couldn’t be persuaded to do something for me.”

  ‘“You’re wasting your time, Mrs Falk. Oliver hasn’t a penny, as you very well know,” I said firmly. I looked at the queer old thing, crazy, mumbling, repulsive, and I added clearly so that she should understand: “He couldn’t find a hundred pounds to save his life.”

  ‘“Well?” she said. “You’ve endowed him with all yer worldly goods, ain’t yer? Same thing!”

  ‘“It comes to this, then: you expect me to keep you. You may pretend it would be Oliver, but in fact it would be me. I think, Mrs Falk, we understand one another well enough for it not to be necessary to discuss this any further,” I said meaningly.

  ‘“Just as yer please, yer ladyship!” the fantastic old creature said with a chuckle.

  ‘I rose; I would not wait for tea, I said, and made my excuses. Having said what I had come to say there seemed to be no good reason for prolonging the interview. I was thankful to be out of the place and made off as briskly as I could. Well, I had done all that was possible, and that, I thought, was that.

  ‘I was the more surprised then to receive a letter the very next day from her, posted in London. She must have gone back as soon as I left! She wrote in a spidery Italian hand:

  ‘“DEAR MRS BRIDGEWATER,

  “If you are interested in Curious old papers,

  I have come across some among my late

  daughter’s Effects which are for sale.

  “Awaiting the favour of an early reply,

  “Yours etc.,

  “Amelia Falk.”

  ‘I hadn’t a notion what the crazy old thing was talking about or why she imagined that anything of Sophia’s, however “old” and “curious”, could have any interest for me; but in spite of myself I sent her a wire telling her to send them immediately.

  ‘If she was not playing some obscure game with me, I knew I could expect to receive this mysterious package of papers the following day. I thought I had locked the letter safely in my little escritoire, but by one of those kinks of the mind, I had dropped it where I sat, and late that evening Oliver found it crumpled among the cushions on the day-bed.

  ‘Oh, my goodness, what a fuss he made about it! I could not understand it. He wanted to know why she had written to me; he got out of me when I had seen her last, and then he had to know why I had seen her and what I had said to her, besides. He appeared to hold me to blame for her absurd letter; or perhaps it was only that in his fright he wanted someone to scold. For he was frightened under all these blustering questions, I could tell. So the circumstances did not seem propitious to tell him that I had already answered her letter. He declared that I must have promised her money.

  ‘“Why, Oliver, how could I?” I protested. For he knew perfectly well that I had nothing of my own apart from Mama’s jewellery, which had been left to me as the eldest girl. Oliver doled out my pin-money from whatever money it had been arranged at the time of my marriage that Papa should allow him.

  ‘But he grumpily maintained that I must have led her to believe something of the sort, or why did she offer these things for sale?

  ‘“How should I know? The old thing’s mad, I suppose.”

  ‘“My dear girl, can’t you understand?” he said impatiently. “She is trying to get her hooks into you. This is simply an attempt at blackmail.”

  ‘“But how absurd!” I cried. “What on earth does the old creature imagine she could blackmail me about? Silly old toad!”

  ‘“She must think she has got some information so prejudicial that we would be willing to pay her to suppress it.”

  ‘“You mean, something to do with Sophia’s death?” I said.

  ‘He shrugged.

  ‘“I don’t know,” he said.

  ‘“What ought we to do?” I asked.

  ‘“There is only one thing to do in a case of blackmail,” Oliver said slowly; “Inform the police.”

  ‘“Only, supposing it was something one would rather people didn’t know about?” I said doubtfully.

  ‘“In that case,” he said thoughtfully. “In that case, I rather think for all our sakes, before I commit the affair into the hands of the police, I had best find out what it is she thinks she knows.”

  ‘He had already left for London before the mysterious package arrived from Mrs Falk, and the “curious old papers” were found to be letters from Oliver written to Sophia before her marriage. From which it was evident, even to such a pitifully ignorant little dolt as myself, that as far back as that Sophia had been his mistress.

  ‘They made the whole story evident. Every past detail of the intrigue stood out with the astounding clarity of a banal view leaping to the eye in a stereoscope. The marriage with Papa had been an arranged affair. (Of course you must marry your old man, my dearest, if you can bring him up to scratch, Oliver had written.) I realised that for Sophia it had simply been a method of escaping from the grinding poverty which bore down on her so heavily. Papa’s side of the bargain was that he got her, that was sufficient, he must not also expect to claim her honesty, chastity, fidelity or love.

  ‘It seemed there had never been any question of a rupture between the lovers; the marriage was only undertaken to make the situation easier for them both, penniless as they were. (Tell him I’m your cousin, Oliver wrote; or make me your brother: why not? There must be good reason to visit you frequently; any hole-and-corner business would be decidedly too risky. Isn’t there an ugly daughter I can marry?) I should have been amused to see his face when she told him that there was, and that he might certainly marry me, for if he did not, nobody else would.

  ‘I am not trying to make out that the letters were deliberately cynical or cruel in those passages which did not chance to be amorous; they were simply intended to be a cool businesslike exposition of how the practical aspects of the plan would work out. People never recognise sin in themselves, do they? We are always innocent in our own eyes (except for the saints among us of course). I daresay Sophia and Oliver considered themselves hard done by, that life had treated them unfairly in making it “impossible” for them to marry one another when they were so passionately in love. People seem to think they have “the right” to love, whatever the circumstances; that the mere strength of their desire can lift it above morality, and absolve them from penalty.’ She shrugged her plump shoulders comfortably. ‘Well, they paid for their pleasure, both of them,’ she said, with a strain of puritanical satisfaction that sat oddly on the antique serenity of her broad brow.

  ‘You see, my conscience gave me no rest until I took those letters to Mr Pierce. I knew he ought to see them. I knew that once he had read them and I had added to it my own knowledge, he would have quite a different view of the case. I had held back before from a sense of duty to my husband. But how much loyalty did I owe to him really? He had shown none to me. And when it came to letting my innocent father suffer for my husband’s guilt, my whole soul rebelled. That was more than I could support.

  ‘I watched the policeman reading them, his blunt forefinger following the words like a peasant. When he had finished them he put them tidily together and looked across at me, gravely.

  ‘I said:

  ‘“I think it is time I told you what I know.�
��

  ‘“I take it, ma’am, you want to make a statement,” he said, and called in a constable to sit in a corner and take down my words in a notebook.

  ‘So I began.

  ‘Starting from the letters I traced the intrigue from its beginnings. I told him how Sophia had pretended she was going to have a baby in order to escape having to accompany my father on his travels, presumably because she could not face the prospect of being parted from Oliver for so long; and how, on the one hand, this gave her the chance of a season alone in London with her lover (an incident which Mrs Falk could corroborate) while she was supposed to be having a miscarriage; while, on the other hand, when she did later find herself genuinely with child the recent false pregnancy ruined for ever her chances of confusing the dates — as other illicitly pregnant women have done before.

  ‘I said awkwardly:

  ‘“The child Mrs Sheridan was bearing at the time of her death was my husband’s.”

  ‘He asked as delicately as possible what proof I had.

  ‘“That was why he killed her of course,” I said simply, and saw the policeman stiffen.

  ‘“I have been sure of it for a long time,” I told him, “certainly ever since the day we had news of Papa’s unexpectedly early return. I tell you, that sent them into a panic. I heard them talking that same night when they thought they were alone. It was terrifying. I had to cram my hands into my mouth to prevent myself from crying out.” I repeated to him the conversation I heard that night, part of which I have already told you. How in her weakness and despair she wanted to run away with him, and he said she must be mad to think even of wrecking all their plans and ruining his career for good, and so on. I think now that it was at that moment that the idea of killing her first occurred to him; I think from the way he spoke that he was beginning to be tired of her; I think he was afraid of her power over him and knew he would never be free while she was alive. For death was in his thoughts then, though it was Father’s death he spoke of.

  ‘“If he should die,” Oliver had said lightly; “that would be one way out of the dilemma.”

  ‘“Providing he died before he had a chance to alter his will,” Sophia answered bitterly.

  ‘“Exactly,” said my husband.

  ‘Something in his voice made her turn to look at his face. For a long moment they stared at one another in silence, there in the brightly gaslit room opening on to the dark garden where I stood, the solitary audience, watching and listening to this scene set like a play upon the stage. And it was of a play that the abrupt terrible phrases reminded me. It was like listening to that hideous meeting between the Thane of Glamis and Cawdor and Lady Macbeth.

  ‘“Why not?” Oliver answered her wordless question.

  ‘“We dare not!” she whispered back.

  ‘“Is there any other way?” he asked.

  ‘They did not move nearer to one another, although their speech was low. It was as if they were too frozen to move. They stared with glittering eyes at this vision of murder and questioned each other about it, as though it was there before them in the middle of the room.

  ‘“How would it be done?” the woman said in a quick small voice.

  ‘“I don’t know!” he exclaimed angrily. “I don’t know!”

  ‘He had time to turn up and down the room before she said:

  ‘“The boy keeps a deadly poison in his dark-room. It would only need a pinch.”

  ‘He said quickly, harshly:

  ‘“It is dangerous even to utter such thoughts aloud. It was a moment of dizziness that came over me. Put it out of your mind, Sophie!”

  ‘“Yes, Noll,” she said, as meek as a wife. And with that they separated for the night. Oliver lingered for yet a moment beneath the gaselier before he reached up and pulled the chain and the light expired with a faint blue hiss.

  ‘Mr Pierce rather peevishly asked why I had not immediately come to them with this information and so made it possible to prevent the crime. By not doing so I had made myself into an accessory before the fact, a serious offence.

  ‘I stammered out that I had not known I was doing wrong. I had not thought it conceivable to complain to the police about a crime that had not yet been committed. If such an idea had entered my head, I would only have supposed they would laugh at me. Besides, I did not really believe it myself. If I was horrified by their words it was not because I believed them capable of putting them into action, but because the words themselves revealed such baseness, such depths of unimagined hatred in their cruel minds. And was it a thing any nice-minded young woman could bring herself to mention to strangers? Was it a thing one could bear to tell about one’s own family, one’s own husband? It meant revealing too much, too much. Besides, what proof had I that this conversation had ever truly taken place?’

  The angular young person in the corner made a movement of protest, but Miss Hine did not permit an interruption at this point; she swept on:

  ‘Afterwards was a different matter. For one thing it had become a practical issue, a question of justice. For another, the proof of my assertion was that I now knew how the crime had been committed.

  ‘Oliver had substituted the poison for one of Sophia’s digestive-powders. (You remember she suffered from indigestion, and the paper that contained the last powder she took had been found by her body.) He had only to tip out the digestive-powder and tip in its place an equal quantity of poison, fold the paper over it in its original folds and then replace it among the others in the box. Since she took three or four powders a day, it was not impossible to calculate when she should take the fatal dose, and arrange for himself to be absent when it occurred. As he did.

  ‘I can see you are wondering how I came to know about it. You see, Oliver must have made the substitution in Harry’s dark-room, and he could hardly just throw the harmless powder on the floor or anywhere where it might attract someone’s notice later. So he tipped it into a corner of his handkerchief, intending, I suppose, to throw it away when he got outside. But he had first to get the poison back into the box in the drawer in Sophia’s room unobserved. And in the tension of this he simply forgot about the other. I found the handkerchief rolled up in his pocket when I was getting his things together to be washed. I put it on one side, meaning to ask him what it was; but then Sophia was killed and it drove all such trivialities out of my mind. I didn’t remember it again until the inquest. When I came home after that, I tasted it on the tip of my finger and realised that it was the same stuff as the powders Sophia took. And then I did begin to wonder, I admit.

  ‘I didn’t say anything to Oliver about it, after all. But I kept the powder carefully in the secret drawer of my jewel-case, until I handed it over to Mr Pierce when I had concluded my statement. And after that there was nothing more for me to do,’ said Miss Hine a trifle smugly.

  ‘And what did Mr Pierce say, I wonder?’ observed Mr Jones drily. ‘Was he pleased with the way you had tied up his case for him and fastened it with blue ribbons?’

  ‘Dear me, I don’t see that he had anything to complain about, had he? After all,’ she said archly, ‘he had said I ought to have been in the Force the first time he saw me. Besides, he had still to find out whether my statement was true, and more — he had to prove it. He had to find witnesses he could bring into Court, for as Oliver’s wife I could not give evidence against him in this matter. I had made my declared statement to the police and that was all I might do; it was up to them to find the necessary evidence to support it.’

  ‘And did he?’ asked Mr Jones.

  ‘Find the evidence for the Prosecution?’ said Miss Hine. ‘Oh, yes.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE END OF THE STORY

  Miss Hine rose at this point and looked out of the window to where the sun, a fiery ball flung out of the sky by a Great Magician, appeared to be magically arrested in its stupendous rush towards them and to hang poised for a timeless momen
t a foot above the horizon. She leaned out, cupping her mouth in her hands like a muezzin, and called below. A faint cry answered her.

  ‘What is it?’ asked the young man nervously.

  She turned to smile at him.

  ‘Come!’ she said. ‘It is nearly time for you to leave and you must have something to eat before you go.’

  ‘I couldn’t eat a thing,’ said Mr Jones positively. ‘I’d much rather hear the rest of your story.’

  Miss Hine as positively insisted that he must eat. She would continue her tale at the table. She warned him that in the East it was as unthinkable to refuse to accept hospitality as it was to refuse to give it. Was he afraid of being served with sheep’s eyes? Had she not promised him a simple repast with no esoteric delicacies to upset his soul or his digestion? Besides, he must learn to practise stoicism: what would he do if at Mahmoud Kahn’s he was expected to eat fried snake with mangoes for breakfast?

  Mr Jones, trying not to heave at the mere idea, replied, ‘Autre pays, autre moeurs’ and remembered the great thing was to remain cool and detached in all circumstances. A precept he attempted to put into practice as he followed the old woman into the courtyard.

  Mr Jones’s supper was spread on a marble table beneath the jasmine. The little fountain splashed its precise pattern unendingly into the air. On a dish of green leaves stood a round white mound of sheep’s cheese adorned with jetty fragments of pickled walnuts. There were bowls of curd, and candied citrons, and a salad of rose petals garnished with olives and green pimentos, and bread with poppy seeds on it.

  Miss Hine resumed her narrative.

  ‘All this while Papa was sunk into a melancholic lethargy from which it seemed nothing could rouse him. He sat all day with his head in his hands and would not trouble to answer when he was spoken to. Naturally I was worried about him; unhappy at his unhappiness. I hoped that when he learned about Oliver’s treachery he would turn to me again and I would win back his love.