Malice Aforethought

by Francis Iles

  “Your—what?”

  “Our engagement. I told you, I’m going to marry her. We got engaged this morning.”

  “Nonsense!” Dr. Bickleigh spoke perhaps rather sharply, but otherwise betrayed nothing of the turmoil that had suddenly invaded him.

  “Fact. I tried to break it as easily as I could. Afraid it’s a bit rotten for you.” Denny was no longer embarrassed; he was the proudly possessive male, only held back by good form from being flauntingly possessive. “Here—Madeleine asked me to give you this after I’d told you.”

  Dr. Bickleigh took the note and broke open the envelope. He had to read the contents through half a dozen times before their meaning was clear to him.

  “EDMUND DEAR,—I have asked Denny to tell you our news. I know you will be terribly upset, but it is the best way out for both of us. You know things could not go on, could they?

  “For the last time, Edmund, my love from

  “MADELEINE.”

  He crammed the note into his pocket at last and began to walk rapidly towards the house. “It’s no good,” Denny said, “if you want to see Madeleine, she’s out.”

  That, thought Dr. Bickleigh, is a lie, a damned lie, a filthy lie, another filthy lie. He walked on.

  Denny, who had started after him, stood for a moment in indecision, then shrugged his shoulders and dropped back into his chair. Perhaps better let them have it out and get it over.

  Dr. Bickleigh did not trouble to ring the bell. Madeleine would be upstairs, in her bedroom, waiting, hiding. He got there just as she was locking the door, and forced it open.

  “Edmund,” she said, looking at him with big, sorrowful eyes, “you shouldn’t have tried to see me.”

  “Look here, Madeleine—this is all nonsense, of course?” Dr. Bickleigh appeared perfectly normal. His face was rather white, and there was a curious spot of red on each of his cheek-bones, but he articulated quite distinctly; almost over-distinctly.

  Madeleine, who had looked a little frightened as well as sorrowful, seemed to be reassured. “No, Edmund, it isn’t nonsense. I’ve thought it all out. We couldn’t go on. This is the easiest way.”

  “You don’t love Denny?”

  Madeleine looked at him reproachfully. “Edmund, need you have asked me that?” She sat down on the edge of the bed.

  Dr. Bickleigh went up to her and took her by the shoulders.

  “I’ll tell you what you’re going to do, Madeleine.”

  “Edmund, you’re hurting me.”

  His fingers sunk deeper into her flesh. The spots of colour on his cheek-bones burned a little brighter. “You’re going downstairs this minute to break off this preposterous engagement. To-morrow I’m going to London, to buy a special licence. You’ll come with me. We’ll be married in three days from now.”

  “But, Edmund—Julia! Oh, please let me go. You’re hurting me terribly.”

  “Julia,” said Dr. Bickleigh, through his teeth, “is dead.”

  Madeleine looked up into the white face glaring down at hers and began to shriek. “Denny! Denny! Help—help! Denny— he’ll . . .” She tore herself free and ran, shrieking, to the window.

  But it was not Denny who got into the room first. It was the friendly parlourmaid. She looked from one to the other in anxious bewilderment.

  “Your mistress is hysterical,” said Dr. Bickleigh coldly. “Get me some cold water, please.”

  “Yes, sir, but—you’re wanted on the telephone, sir. Your housemaid. I—I’m afraid there’s bad news, sir.”

  With Madeleine’s hysterical screams ringing through his head, Dr. Bickleigh went downstairs to the telephone.

  PART II

  CHAPTER VIII

  1

  MISS PEAVY was giving a tea-party.

  The preparations had begun yesterday morning. The Crown Derby tea-service had been taken out of the ormolu cabinet in the tiny drawing-room and washed by Miss Peavy’s own hands (such an operation could not be entrusted, of course, to Ethel) with, miraculously, not a single resulting breakage. In the afternoon Miss Peavy, her head swathed in a check duster, her small body in a voluminous overall, and her hands encased in white cotton gloves two sizes too large for them, had superintended Ethel’s turning out of the drawing-room, with such help as experience and superior strength had to afford. Ethel was only fourteen and heavy of hand; she lived at the last cottage of the village proper, the nearest one to Miss Peavy’s, and described herself proudly as Miss Peavy’s help. She had been Miss Peavy’s help ever since she was twelve (nine to eleven of a morning, and afternoons when wanted special), and in some ways, Miss Peavy thought secretly, she was more of a hindrance; but between the two of them the job was done at last to Miss Peavy’s satisfaction.

  Then, on the morning of the party itself, there had been a great baking of cakes. Supervised by Ethel in the capacity of critic, admirer, and Hermes (“Now fetch me the baking-powder, Ethel. The small tin at the left-hand end of the middle shelf. No, the middle shelf, dear. The left-hand end. No, the small tin. Never mind, I’ll get it myself.” “Oo, it ain’t in that tin, miss, not now it ain’t. It was empty, an’ I put the cloves in it. I thought it’d come in handy for the cloves, like. So I put them in it, miss.” “Well, where is the baking-powder?” “There ain’t none, miss.” “Dear, dear, you ought to have told me that before. Really you ought, Ethel. Now you’ll have to run up to Mrs. Stinvell and get a tin. Sevenpence, and now my hands are all . . . Where is my purse, dear? I think I left it . . . no, I didn’t. Really, Ethel, you should have told me, you know.”), Miss Peavy had made a chocolate cake, iced with chocolate, an orange cake, iced with orange, and a great quantity of rock buns and Eccles cakes, not iced at all. And only the rock buns had been what you could really call burnt, and those not irrevocably. At least three-quarters, with judicious paring, were made presentable. A most successful morning.

  It was to be quite an important tea-party. Mrs. Torr and Quarnian were coming, Janet Wapsworthy of course, Gwynyfryd Rattery, with the Major if she could persuade him, Mr. Torr had promised faithfully to look in if he could find the time, and Ivy Chatford and her husband were actually coming over from Merchester specially. If only poor Mrs. Bickleigh were still alive. . . . Only Mrs. Hatton-Hampstead had definitely refused. And Madeleine Bourne, of course; but she refused all invitations nowadays, it seemed. Miss Peavy was secretly relieved that she was not coming.

  How lucky it was such a lovely day. Take it all round, Miss Peavy really did think that May was the loveliest month of all. Spring, gloriously fulfilled, budding into summer. . . . But no, they would not have tea in the garden. It would not be fair on the Crown Derby. And Ethel, with the tray. . . .

  Fortunately, there would be plenty to talk about. None of those awkward pauses in the conversation that Miss Peavy so dreaded. For never had there been such a year in the history of Wyvern’s Cross. Two marriages and one death. . . . And Mr. Davy’s new book, all about the neighbourhood. No, there would be no lack of conversational fodder. There would be gossip, too, of course. Bound to be, with Quarnian and her mother there. Miss Peavy hoped they would not get too libellous, but really, gossip had never seemed so rife in Wyvern’s Cross before; and the most scandalous things, with but the slenderest foundations—well, no foundations really at all. Miss Peavy would take no part in it herself, nor encourage it; that was her firm rule; but she would hardly be able to check it without being quite rude. And, anyhow, anything was better than those awkward pauses.

  The problem of Dr. Bickleigh had been exercising Miss Peavy terribly in this connection. Ought she to ask him, or not? If she did not, would it not look terribly pointed? On the other hand, if she did . . . Even though Madeleine Bourne was not coming. And what would Mr. Torr . . . ? Everybody was talking about Dr. Bickleigh not having been inside the church since his wife died so tragically. Poor Mrs. Bickleigh, who would ever have thought . . . ? In the end Miss Peavy did not ask him. After all, it was a feminine tea-party really, with such men as might come und
er specific feminine proprietorship. No, there was really no need to ask Dr. Bickleigh at all.

  At four o’clock punctually they began to arrive.

  Miss Wapsworthy was the first, very bright in a purple straw hat with pink roses and mauve silk.

  “Good afternoon, Janet. So nice of you . . . Isn’t it a perfect day? Really, we might almost have . . . But I’d made all the arrangements, you see, and it is so . . . Would you like to wash your hands?”

  “Thank you, Adela,” returned Miss Wapsworthy with some asperity. “I washed them before I came out.”

  There was more in this exchange than met the ignorant eye. Miss Peavy’s cottage was half a mile outside the village, and stood at the foot of the steep slope which began where the hamlet ended. Miss Wapsworthy’s cottage, at the other end of Wyvern’s Cross, stood on flat land. Miss Peavy, therefore, had a gravitational water-supply to her cottage from a spring half-way up the hill above her. In the village itself there was no pipe-water, and Miss Wapsworthy’s cottage shared this disability.

  Her water-supply was a great comfort to Miss Peavy. Her soul, heated by other and frictional causes, laved gratefully in its cooling stream. Miss Peavy’s cottage, alone among all the others, possessed a water-closet. (Why, even at The Hall they had to . . .)

  Miss Peavy never thought of her water-closet as such, but always as “indoor sanitation.”

  “I invariably,” added Miss Wapsworthy pointedly, “wash my hands before I go out to tea.” She glanced down at her grey cotton gloves as if to imply that she had come prepared further to keep the members in question free from all contamination while in this particular locality.

  “Yes, yes. Yes, of course. Well, then, shall we just stroll round the garden, till the others come? My gloxinias really are beginning to . . .” Miss Peavy temporarily tethered the ends of the tulle scarf.

  The two ladies walked in the garden.

  Half an hour later the affair was in full swing. So far the gathering was entirely feminine. Not even the dubious masculinity of Mr. Torr was there to leaven it. The Chatfords had not yet put in an appearance. Voices shrill and voices ladylike slashed the atmosphere in vivid ribbons. Characters came up, were seen through, and retired conquered. Reputations littered the ground like snow-flakes.

  “. . . scarcely to her knees,” Mrs. Torr was burbling, in shocked contentment. “Really, I think I know what my husband would say if I appeared in our church like that. And in a cathedral! Really, you’d think she’d see that as the wife of one of the Canons she has a position to keep up, wouldn’t you?”

  “And fifty, if she’s a day,” nodded Miss Wapsworthy. “Disgusting!”

  “Really, Mrs. Torr,” said a lady from Merchester, one of Miss Peavy’s childhood friends who had married socially beneath the cathedral set but considerably above its purses. “Really, you don’t mean to say you could actually see her—her—” Even among ladies (real ladies) the existence of such things must only be hinted.

  “When she knelt down,” replied Mrs. Torr with solemnity, “I could see them distinctly. Distinctly!”

  “I must look myself next Sunday,” said the lady from Merchester, with as much gusto as if that had not been her sex at all.

  “Edged with lace,” added Mrs. Torr, as though that were just about the last enormity. As if one could worship the Almighty properly when edged with lace! Even Miss Peavy wondered what the Almighty’s views could be on such a frivolous example of His creations.

  In a corner, Quarnian and Gwynyfryd were discussing Men.

  “Oo, noo, Quarnian,” Miss Rattery was saying, with the horrified avidity of the British virgin on matters of sex. “Ay carn’t believe thart—rarely Ay carn’t.”

  “He did though. Honour bright. Oh, our Sam’s a naughty lad.”

  “But whay did you let him?”

  “I wanted to see if he would.”

  “Well, it seems to me you’re as much to blame as he is then,” pronounced Miss Rattery fastidiously.

  “Who’s blaming anyone?” retorted Quarnian, with devastating impartiality.

  Having achieved her object, which was the simple one of shocking Gwynyfryd, she turned her attention to the group of her elders round the tea-table. They were now plucking the down of virtue from the perfectly respectable daughter of a Merchester schoolmaster, who had been seen at a local cinema with a Married Man. As Quarnian unfortunately did not know the young woman in question, the gathering heap of white plumage at the ladies’ feet did not interest her.

  She turned back to Gwynyfryd and yawned without concealment. “Lord, I wish Ivy’d come. This is too dull for words. Haven’t seen old Ivy for years. Hardly since she married. Have you?”

  “Yes, Ay saw her in Merchester about a fortnight agoo.”

  “Ask her how she liked being married?” Quarnian asked, with an obscene wink.

  “Noo, Ay did nert,” riposted Gwynyfryd, who invariably grew more affected in proportion as she was really shocked.

  “Got a nice house, haven’t they?” Quarnian said enviously. “Bill Chatford must be doing pretty well. Not half a bad little nest he’s been able to feather for his birdie. Course, he’s been saving like mad all the years he lived here. How does Ivy like living in Merchester?”

  “Oo, quait well, I think.” Gwynyfryd drank a little tea. The forefinger of her right hand was tucked so far under the others that no one could possibly have accused it of being crooked.

  Quarnian also drank a little tea, and crooked her own little finger outrageously. When she saw Gwynyfryd eyeing it with an expression of intense pain, she spluttered and had to put her cup down. Quarnian had a simple sense of humour.

  “Well, has Teddy proposed to you yet, Gwynyfryd?” she asked next. Baiting Miss Rattery was one of the few amusements that Wyvern’s Cross had to offer Miss Torr. And Gwynyfryd being twenty-four, while Miss Torr herself was only nineteen (well, practically twenty now), and Gwynyfryd, moreover, intensely disapproving of her twenty-four dignity being assailed by nineteen impudence and yet quite unable effectively to fight back, all added a not unpleasant spice to the entertainment.

  “Quarnian, you do say such things,” lamented Miss Rattery now; but she was ingenuous enough to be thoroughly confused by the question.

  Quarnian observed her companion’s blush with pleasure, and set about deepening it. “Well, has he kissed you again lately?”

  “What do you mean—‘again’?”

  “Since he did when he took you away to give you those cuttings at their tennis-party last summer. You remember.”

  “He didn’t!”

  “My dear Gwynyfryd, don’t try to put it on with me,” begged Miss Torr, enjoying herself mightily. Gwynyfryd’s blush was getting quite interesting now. “Never seen anything quite so obvious in my life. He carefully takes you out of sight instead of bringing the things to you, you’re away about an hour, and come back looking all worked up, both of you; and then you tell me— Oh, Lord, Gwynyfryd, I may be younger than you, but I wasn’t born yesterday. Of course he kissed you.”

  “That he did nert. I never gave him the chance. Horrid little man.”

  “Oho, so he tried, and you turned him down,” cried Miss Torr, in high delight. “Poor Teddy. I only wish it’d been me. I don’t think he’s a horrid little man at all.”

  “Well, he is,” said Gwynyfryd, quite vindictively.

  “Poor old Teddy,” gloated Quarnian. “Well, now, I do call that rough luck on him. When everyone knows he only killed his wife to be free to marry you, Gwynyfryd. Well, well, well.”

  “Quarnian!”

  “My dear Gwynyfryd, don’t pretend to be so shocked. Of course Teddy killed his wife. And I, for one,” said Miss Torr judicially, “don’t blame him. But if I’d been the coroner, I’d have asked Master Teddy quite a lot of questions.”

  “Quarnian, how can you say such things?”

  “What, you don’t mean you really think he didn’t?”

  “Ay think it’s simply horrible of you.
”

  “Then I’m not the only one that’s horrible. Mother’s horrible, father’s horrible, half Wyvern’s Cross is horrible.”

  “Ay don’t believe it for a minute.”

  Gwynyfryd was so indignant that Quarnian was driven almost to defend these preposterous mis-statements. She hastily found a grain of truth to inject into the foundations of her imaginative edifice. “Well, I can tell you this, then. Father does think there must have been something funny about Mrs. Bickleigh’s death because he says he just can’t swallow that story at the inquest of her being a drug-fiend (well, it is a bit tall, isn’t it? Teddy really ought to have invented something better), but he doesn’t want to make a fuss because he doesn’t want a scandal in the parish. So there.”

  “But Mrs. Bickleigh’s sister confirmed the evidence about that, and her brother too.”

  “Oh, he got round them somehow. I expect they’re all in it.”

  “Nonsense!” Gwynyfryd was really angry. “Ay—Ay think it’s beastly to go round saying things like that. Quarnian, you’re— you’re a little beast.”

  “All right, then.” It was Quarnian’s turn to become annoyed. “Call me a liar. I’ll jolly well show you. Mother!”

  “Noo, Quarnian!”

  “Mother!”

  “Quarnian, you’re not to. Be quiet!”

  “Mother!”

  Mrs. Torr turned in her chair. “What is it, dear?”

  “Gwynyfryd’s calling me a liar because I told her father wasn’t satisfied with the verdict on Mrs. Bickleigh last year. You remember what he said.”

  Dead silence cut off the chatter as if it had been sliced off with a knife. The women looked at each other almost furtively.

  “N-no, dear,” twittered Mrs. Torr, after a long pause. “I—don’t remember.”

  “Yes, you do. He said—”

  “That’ll do, dear.”

  But the plucking of the schoolmaster’s daughter was resumed only half-heartedly. A chicken, however young and tender, becomes poor fare when a whole banquet, rich, luscious, almost infinite, has been waved for a second beneath one’s nose. The last few poor feathers were ripped off mechanically, and four hungry faces confronted Mrs. Torr. In the corner, Gwynyfryd and Quarnian watched their elders, not deceived.