Malice Aforethought

by Francis Iles

  They had tea out on the lawn, under a big cedar. Dr. Bickleigh had other visits to pay, and barely time to get them all in before his surgery at six o’clock, but Madeleine seemed so anxious for him to stay that he had little choice. She admitted to him, with her grave, rather serious smile, that already she was finding life there a little lonely.

  At tea they talked about art. It was remarkable how they seemed to agree in condemning the moderns, tolerating the Georgians, and reverencing only the great men of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They agreed, too, that their attitude was not conventional, but based simply on an appreciation of real painting. It was difficult for Dr. Bickleigh to realise that Miss Cranmere really was so young; she seemed to possess the sense and matured judgment of a woman of thirty. From art they passed to other topics, and on each it appeared that their views were identical. It became quite interesting to try to find some point of difference, and most amusing when not a single one could be discovered.

  Dr. Bickleigh was delighted. For the first time in his life, apparently, he had come into contact with someone whose mind was in complete sympathy with his own. Expanding, he ventured to hint as much; and his delight grew when his companion confessed that for her too it was a rare joy to be able to exchange intelligent conversation with another person. Most girls of her own age, in Miss Cranmere’s opinion, seemed to have developed no further from what they had been at twelve years old, while the young men were even worse. Didn’t Dr. Bickleigh agree? Dr. Bickleigh, thinking of Gwynyfryd Rattery, opined that the girls were even worse than the young men. Yes, on the whole Miss Cranmere thought they were.

  What pleased Dr. Bickleigh most was the deference which she paid to his ideas. She seemed to hang on his words, nodding gravely her agreement, her big grey eyes alight with intelligent interest. He noticed that when she smiled, the corners of these wrinkled up in a way he found pleasant to watch. He began to try to make her smile more often, for she did not do so very much, and was gratified to find himself able to do so. Not that he was able to reverse his first impression and pronounce her pretty; definitely she was not that. But she was something more vital than merely pretty: her face was a most interesting one.

  Of course, it came out that Dr. Bickleigh tried to sketch. He admitted it, diffidently but not without pride. Miss Cranmere, it seemed, had been sure that he did something like that. He had given her the impression of being a practiser, not a mere preacher only. Dr. Bickleigh was amazed at her perspicacity.

  He came away from The Hall feeling, literally, ten years younger. Younger than that. Younger than when he had first met Julia. And most strangely heartened. It was as if Julia did not count for so much after all. There were things, he had been reminded, a good deal more important than Julia in life—even in his life.

  As the Jowett rumbled back to Wyvern’s Cross, he took stock of his feelings and this new exhilaration that possessed him. “No,” he decided, “I’m not in love with her. I never could be in love with her. She never could attract me in that way at all. And I must never try to flirt with her. That would spoil everything. Whatever happens, even if she gives me the opportunity (which of course she wouldn’t), I must never flirt with her.”

  He hummed a little song. Never had he been so deliciously flattered. Miss Cranmere had not only begged him to come up and make sketches of The Hall and its gardens whenever he liked, but had contrived to let him know that she would feel really honoured if he would do so.

  “Edmund,” Julia greeted him coldly, as he was putting the car away, “why did you not let me know that you weren’t going to be in to tea?”

  “Because I didn’t know, my dear,” he told her blithely.

  “And you’re exceedingly late for your surgery,” said Julia, still more disapprovingly, for when Dr. Bickleigh was out she sometimes had to deal with his patients herself, and she detested that. Julia could not pretend that her husband was not a doctor and working for the money that came to him, but she did her best to shut her eyes to the degrading fact by helping him as little in his profession as she possibly could.

  “Well,” said Dr. Bickleigh surprisingly, “if a man mayn’t be late for his own surgery, whose surgery may he be late for?” And with an unabashed smile he walked off to his waiting patients.

  Julia looked after him in astonishment.

  CHAPTER III

  1

  THERE WAS a note for him lying on the hall table when Dr. Bickleigh came in to lunch. The housemaid came in to sound the gong as he picked it up.

  “Miss Ridgeway left it, sir,” she remarked. “She said there was no answer.”

  “That’s right, Florence,” nodded the doctor. “It’s to remind me of a prescription I promised to write for her, I expect.” Dr. Bickleigh always went into unnecessary explanations with servants. It was a habit of which his wife had tried in vain to break him, pointing out that servants never respect an employer who treats them in that familiar way; a good servant does not even like it. Julia herself was exceedingly formal with her servants, and got out of them the very best that was in them; she was an exceedingly capable housewife in spite of her upbringing, and things at Fairlawn ran like clockwork. In consequence, the servants invariably detested her and, quite perversely, adored the doctor. They cannot have been good servants.

  “Oh, yes, sir,” beamed Florence, and beat a subdued tattoo on the gong so as not to distract her master’s reading of the note.

  “Yes, just what I expected,” he said with a little smile, and crammed the note in his pocket. “Lunch ready, Florence? I must just wash my hands.”

  With the lavatory door locked, he read the note again.

  “MY DARLING TEDDY,—What is the matter? Why haven’t you written or anything? I waited for you the last three Wednesdays, but you never came. I haven’t seen you for nearly three weeks, ever since that tennis-party at your house. And then you hardly spoke to me the whole afternoon. Are you cross with me about something? I must see you this afternoon. I shall be at the cave at 3 p.m. You must come, Teddy.

  “Your own

  “IVY.”

  “Damn! ” said Dr. Bickleigh mournfully, and went in to lunch.

  At ten minutes past three, after a quick glance up and down the road, he was steering the Jowett through the narrow entrance to the quarry.

  It was an ideal meeting-place for lovers. Ivy had discovered it, exploring one day on her bicycle—an old stone-quarry, disused these fifty years, its rock-hewn sides covered now with young trees that almost met overhead across its narrow breadth, its flat, rocky floor most accommodating to a car. One came on it quite unexpectedly, through an almost overgrown opening in the rocky wall that bordered one side of the road, and nobody seemed to know anything about it. About six miles from Wyvern’s Cross, far enough to be discreet but easily reached by the Jowett and Ivy’s bicycle, it had been hailed by both of them as the perfect trysting-place; and when Dr. Bickleigh, scrambling about the uneven sides to the accompaniment of Ivy’s terrified expostulations from below, had come across the hidden entrance to the cave, penetrated inside, and discovered an old working driven straight into the face of the rock, perfection had been surpassed.

  The cave was about twelve feet above the rock floor, easy enough to reach once a few bushes had been pulled out of the way and slabs of stone lodged here and there to form a rude staircase. Inside, it was about eight feet wide by perhaps fifteen deep, and just high enough for the two to be able to stand upright without knocking their heads. They were enraptured with it. The game of cave-dwellers was inaugurated on the spot, and both set to playing it like the children they felt. The cave was furnished, with a half-dressed block of stone for a table, a couple of others for chairs, and armfuls of sweet-smelling bracken for a divan at the farther end. Ivy even went so far as to grow her bobbed hair from that minute, for no cave-dwelling woman is correct without long hair. With the discovery of a hollow clump of undergrowth on the rocky floor below, where the car could be stowed invisibly, the place was
complete.

  That had been last summer, and the two had met there every afternoon till the winter, and again in the spring. But only for a short time in the spring. After that Dr. Bickleigh had unfortunately found himself so busy this year that he had been unable to come regularly every week. He had now, in fact, been unable to come once during the previous two months: ever since he had realised the possibilities of Gwynyfryd Rattery.

  Ivy was waiting for him. The first thing he saw was the white flutter of her dress through the bushes at the entrance to the cave. He drove into the clump, spinning the operation out as long as he could, and climbed up to the cave. It was inevitable that Ivy was going to cry again.

  “Oh, Teddy.” There was reproach, welcome, gratitude, and anxiety in Ivy’s tone.

  “Hullo, Ivy.” Dr. Bickleigh made his voice as cheerfully casual as he could, as he parted the bushes and followed her into the filtered green light inside the cave. She held up her face to be kissed, and he kissed her.

  She clung to him. “I’d begun to think you weren’t coming.”

  “Sorry I was late. Only a minute or two, wasn’t it? Awfully busy, just at present.”

  “Did you want to come? You didn’t.” Her eyes searched his anxiously.

  “Want to?” Dr. Bickleigh laughed, apparently much amused. “Of course I wanted to, dear.” He disengaged her arms gently and sat on the stone table, pulling out his cigarette-case. “But one can’t always do everything one wants, you know. At least, a poor, hard-working devil of a G.P. can’t.” He offered her his case, and, when she shook her head, lit a cigarette for himself.

  “If it had been Gwynyfryd Rattery, you’d have wanted to much more,” Ivy said slowly, twisting her handkerchief nervously in her hands. “Wouldn’t you?”

  “Gwynyfryd Rattery! My dear girl, what an extraordinary idea!”

  “Everybody’s talking about it.”

  “About me and Gwynyfryd? Why, but it’s absurd. I hardly know the girl.” Against his will he was being thrown on the defensive already.

  “You know her well enough to go away from the tennis-court with her alone for half an hour.”

  “Half an hour? Three minutes, to give her some cuttings she wanted. Don’t be so absurd, Ivy.”

  “I wasn’t the only one to notice it,” she persisted. “Quarnian Torr did too. And Denny Bourne. They were laughing about it. Even Julia. You saw how she spoke to you afterwards.”

  “It’s ridiculous. Just because a lot of gossiping girls . . . And that conceited young ass Denny. . . .” Dr. Bickleigh pulled himself up. It was no good getting hot and angry with the girl. But how irritating she was, and how silly. “You ought to know me better than that, Ivy,” he concluded, forcing a smile.

  Without warning, she suddenly began to storm. He had never heard Ivy storm before. He had not thought she could. “Then I’ll tell you what it is, shall I? It’s that Madeleine Cranmere. Oh, yes, I’ve heard all about it. Everybody’s talking, I can assure you. How you go up there every other day, pretending to sketch. Sketch! ”

  “Really, Ivy,” Dr. Bickleigh began coldly, “I must say that you—”

  “And you’re so busy, aren’t you? Much too busy to come here on our Wednesday afternoons. But not too busy to go up there and talk to her.”

  “I will not have Miss Cranmere’s name brought into this— this vulgar discussion, Ivy—do you hear me?” shouted Dr. Bickleigh, white with anger.

  For the first time in his knowledge she stood up to him, white too, and trembling from head to foot. “Yes, you will, because I’m going to bring it in. If you can’t see through her yourself, it’s time somebody told you. I hate her, with her great big eyes and that solemn face of hers. She’s deceitful, that’s what she is. I wouldn’t trust her an inch. She’s playing with you, that’s all. Just amusing herself, and laughing at you behind your back, I expect. She’s a—”

  “Stop!” Dr. Bickleigh’s face was so twisted with anger that Ivy did stop, nervously retreating before him till she was standing in the very entrance to the cave.

  A horrible thought swept into Dr. Bickleigh’s mind: “Push her over the edge! If you thrust high enough she’ll turn over in the air and land with her head on that boulder at the bottom. Nobody could ever know.” The longing just for one second was so intense that Dr. Bickleigh had actually to clench his hands by his sides to resist it. A red haze seemed to swim before his eyes. The next moment it had all gone, leaving him physically weak and with his anger completely evaporated.

  With a shaking hand he put his cigarette to his mouth, and dropped back on to the seat from which he had momentarily risen. “The whole thing’s absurd, Ivy,” he said quietly. “I’ve got no interest in Miss Cranmere beyond the ordinary friendly feeling for a patient. You know I do a bit of sketching now and then. Why her permission for me to sketch part of the grounds of The Hall should make you jealous, I really can’t see.”

  It had been an isolated outburst on Ivy’s part. She had not the temperament to keep that sort of thing up. Dr. Bickleigh’s one furious shout had been enough to make her collapse. Now she was looking at him with wistful eyes, frightened and yet not altogether reassured.

  “You really don’t like her—better than me?”

  “No, of course I don’t,” lied Dr. Bickleigh with irritation. He did not like lying, even in so good a cause as this.

  “Nor Gwynyfryd Rattery either?”

  “No, no.”

  “Teddy—do you still like me?” Her lips began to quiver.

  “Of course I do, Ivy.”

  “As much as ever?”

  “Yes.”

  She burst into tears. “Oh, I don’t believe you do. You don’t! You’d be kissing me, and . . .”

  He bent to kiss her, to reassure her, to try to blow on the dead embers of his old feelings for her. She clung to him again, sobbing against his shoulder. He felt supremely uncomfortable, and detested the whole thing; but it takes more moral courage than Dr. Bickleigh had got (and than most men have who are not brutes) to tell a weeping woman that one no longer loves her. As he stroked her soft, fluffy hair with mechanical fingers he wondered, not for the first time, why a woman considers herself insulted by a man if she ceases to attract him. He thought it must be some form of sex-conceit. Women as a sex are so intensely pleased with themselves simply for being women. Dr. Bickleigh, like so many men before him, could not understand it at all.

  He wished Ivy would not go on crying; he wished she had the wit to understand that he was tired of her and leave it at that, or, rather, that he had been mistaken in her from the first and that she was not, and never had been, the girl he thought her. Oh, God, what a fool he had been to seduce her! And yet she had been most ready to be seduced. Had he seduced her at all? There had been no intention. Somehow it had just happened, inevitably. Besides, in most cases of so-called seduction what initiative there is usually comes from the woman, not the man. In any event, he had been a fool to take what she offered him; and there was going to be hell and all to pay before he could get free. He shuddered at the thought of the tears, the complaints, and the entreaties to come. They were both almost on the edge of the rocky platform. If with one sudden jerk he thrust . . .

  He pulled himself up in horror. He must be getting overworked if he could contemplate thoughts like that not even in anger. Ivy did get on his nerves, it was true, and it would be marvellous to be clear for ever of this cloyingness; but still . . .

  He loosed her abruptly, walked to the other end of the cave, and lit another cigarette.

  Comforted, Ivy repaired the damage to her face so far as she could and began to prattle about the tea she had brought. Dr. Bickleigh watched her set it out on the stone slab, but the old cave-dwelling formalities and jokes no longer amused him, though he did his best to laugh at them; they seemed indescribably childish and pointless; had that sort of thing once really entertained him? Ivy seemed quite happy now, and he was pleased that she should be so; for, after all, when one came down to
it she was only a child. That she was in point of fact actually one year older than Madeleine Cranmere appeared to him almost incredible. What was it that Madeleine had said to him at their very first meeting? Oh, yes, that most girls of her own age did not seem to have developed at all from what they had been at twelve years old. That was it, exactly. Mentally Ivy was twelve years old.

  So he allowed her to sit on his knee at tea in the old way, though he would much rather she had sat on the opposite side of the table, and show off her hair afterwards. “No, I want you to take it down for me, darling. There! It has grown, hasn’t it? Lots, since we were here last. Do you like it now it’s getting longer?” Ivy was eternally wanting to know whether he liked this or that attribute of hers, invariably a physical one.

  He was able to stave off love-making by remonstrating with her over sending the note to his house. It was terribly rash. Julia might have opened it, one of the maids, anyone. Ivy agreed that it had been most foolish, but she simply had to get hold of him, and what else could she do? But why did she simply have to get hold of him? To make certain that he still loved her: and was he quite, quite sure he did? No, but really? Dr. Bickleigh hurriedly cast round for another less compromising topic.

  Perched on his knee, Ivy tried too to rouse his jealousy. Dr. Bickleigh felt it was rather pathetic, and did his best to give her what she wanted, but it was difficult to appear even interested.

  “I could have been somewhere quite different this afternoon if I’d wanted,” she told him, with an air of importance.

  “Oh? Where was that?”

  “Do you want to know? Awfully?”

  “I’m dying to know, Ivy.”

  “I don’t think I shall tell you.”

  “Very well, if you’d rather not.”

  “You’d be terribly cross,” said Ivy wistfully.

  “Oho! What’s all this about?”