Malice Aforethought

by Francis Iles

  “Miss Peavy,” said Quarnian dulcetly, “you were telling me about your gloxinias the other day. May Gwynyfryd and I go out and look at them?”

  “Yes, do, dear. They’re . . . You’ll find them . . . Are you sure you’ve quite finished? Gwynyfryd, I don’t believe you’ve tried one of my . . . Fresh-baked this morning, I promise you. Quarnian, won’t you . . . ?”

  “No, thank you; we’ve quite finished, really. Come along, Gwynyfryd.”

  The two girls went out, amid the grateful looks of the others. Tact radiated from Quarnian’s lanky form as she slouched towards the door.

  Outside, she turned to Gwynyfryd. “Of course they wouldn’t say anything while we were in there. But if we went and admired the flowers in that bed there, just under that window, and kept out of sight of the Peavy and the Wop—well, don’t you think that was a pretty bright idea, Gwynyfryd?”

  “Quarnian, I think you’re horrible. I wouldn’t do anything so mean.”

  But she followed Quarnian’s stealthy progress towards the window nevertheless.

  Inside, Mrs. Torr was gracefully giving way before inexorable but practically silent pressure. “How naughty of Quarnian. Really, what a thing to say.”

  “Why wasn’t Mr. Torr satisfied?” asked Miss Wapsworthy, who favoured blunt methods.

  “Really,” said Miss Peavy anxiously, “do you think we should . . . ? Isn’t it rather . . . ? I mean . . .”

  “Well, what do you mean, Adela?” asked Miss Wapsworthy.

  “Well, the verdict was ‘Accidental Death,’ wasn’t it? And if anyone wasn’t satisfied . . . I mean,” said Miss Peavy bravely, “isn’t it hinting at something quite dreadful?”

  Miss Wapsworthy looked round the little circle of intent faces. “Well, and haven’t we all been hinting in our thoughts for the last year at something rather dreadful?” she said in her harsh, jerky voice. “Of course we have. And not one of us has had the courage to put it into words. Well, I will. I agree with Mr. Torr. I’m not satisfied either.” Her tone was a challenge. “It’s my opinion that Julia Bickleigh’s death was not an accident at all: that she deliberately killed herself because of—well, we all know what.”

  2

  IT WAS past five before Ivy and her husband arrived. Mr. Chatford explained precisely that he had been kept later than he expected by an important client, and had been unable to drive Ivy over earlier.

  Ivy, who had hardly been seen in Wyvern’s Cross since her marriage, had altered very little. Her fragile figure showed no signs of rounding, and she did not seem to have gained in confidence. Her blue eyes returned constantly to her husband after everything she said, as if seeking his approval for it, and the slight look of timidity in them had increased rather than diminished. She was obviously a little afraid of him. Only her clothes gave any outward indication of the change in her position. The Ridge-ways were not well off, and Ivy had always dressed very simply, in tweeds or woollens or home-made little summer frocks. Now she looked rather out-of-place for a cottage tea-party, in a black satin frock with long tight sleeves and a close-fitting black baku hat which, though small and apparently simple, contrived at the same time to be dashing, and sat with an air of incongruity above her rounded, childish face. The ensemble quite certainly did not reflect Ivy’s own taste, and one gathered that Mr. William Chatford not only considered that his wife’s clothes should stand for a sign of the position in life which he had reached, but had no small part himself in choosing them. Ivy looked more like Bond Street than Merchester.

  Miss Peavy, who had not seen her at all since the wedding, welcomed her warmly (Ivy had always been a favourite of hers), and kisses were exchanged. Ethel was summoned to bring fresh tea, and Mr. Chatford, as the only male man, ensconced in the chair of honour.

  “Do try one of those Eccles cakes while you’re waiting, dear,” beamed Miss Peavy. “I made them myself this morning.”

  “Thank you, Miss Peavy, I’d love to.” And, with half a dozen pairs of feminine eyes watching her enviously, Ivy pulled off her small hands the most expensive-looking pair of gloves ever seen in Wyvern’s Cross.

  “Ivy’s looking so well,” confided Mrs. Torr to Mr. Chatford, in tones of congratulation. “And so smart and pretty. Really, I hardly knew her.”

  “Another of mother’s bricks,” confided Quarnian to Gwynyfryd. The two girls had returned to the house on the Chatfords’ arrival.

  “This hat?” said Ivy, in answer to a question from the lady from Merchester. “Oh, haven’t you seen it before, Mrs. Dunsford? I got it in Paris, on our honeymoon. William gave it to me.” She glanced at her husband.

  “A model,” amplified Mr. Chatford, with obvious satisfaction. The word came oddly in his precise enunciation.

  “Charming,” pronounced the company dutifully.

  There was a pause. Nobody spoke. The pause grew awkward. Miss Peavy looked to Mrs. Torr in appeal. Mrs. Torr did not see her. The pause seemed to have lasted for years.

  Miss Peavy plunged. “So lucky you didn’t come five minutes earlier, Mr. Chatford,” she tittered with nervousness. “We were just . . . Probably quite libellous. . . . I expect you’d have had us all arrested.”

  “Really?” said Mr. Chatford politely. “Then I suppose it would be indiscreet to ask what you were discussing?”

  “Oh, very. That is . . .”

  “I know when ladies get together the conversation does tend to verge on slander,” Mr. Chatford observed humorously. “I trust I was not your subject?”

  “Oh, no. Good gracious, no. It was . . . Oh, quite different. Just silly village talk. Gossip, you know. I’m sure we were all terribly shocked as it was to learn that poor Mrs. Bickleigh had taken to . . . But that’s very different from suggesting that . . . Oh!” Miss Peavy broke off with a little squeak of dismay, conscious of six pairs of horrified eyes regarding her. What had she . . . ?

  Mr. Chatford, however, appeared quite unhorrified. He chose another Eccles cake with some care and took a modified bite of it. “Oh, yes?” he said, with interest nothing beyond the polite. “So you were talking about Mrs. Bickleigh? Very sad. Very sad indeed. Though rather past history now. Still, as you say, very curious too.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Torr,” Ivy said hurriedly, “I’ve been meaning to ask you and Quarnian over to tea. You must come soon. Of course, we’re only just straight, but . . . Now, what about next Wednesday?”

  It was arranged that Quarnian and Mrs. Torr should go to tea with Ivy next Wednesday.

  The conversation skated imperceptibly farther from Mrs. Bickleigh.

  Soon afterwards, Gwynyfryd rose to go. She had promised her father to get back for their usual set of tennis before changing for dinner. Would Quarnian like to come too, pick up Benjie at the Vicarage on the way, and make up a four? Quarnian would. The lady from Merchester went too, to catch the ’bus.

  Five minutes later Mr. Chatford gave, as it were, quite casual expression to the topic uppermost in the bosoms of those remaining. “It was strange that you should have mentioned Mrs. Bickleigh just now, Miss Peavy,” he remarked. “I had rather meditated raising the subject myself. Or, rather, the subject of Dr. Bickleigh.”

  “I agree,” said Miss Wapsworthy with tight lips. “It’s high time it was raised.”

  “Yes?” Mr. Chatford appeared faintly puzzled. “I haven’t seen him once since my marriage. I wanted to ask after him. No doubt you ladies will be able to tell me. How is he bearing the loss of his wife?”

  Miss Peavy and Miss Wapsworthy both looked towards Mrs. Torr.

  “Well,” said that lady carefully, “I think as well as one could have expected.”

  “Indeed? I’m glad. A very tragic affair. The coroner, I thought, handled it most tactfully.”

  “Very,” almost snapped Miss Wapsworthy.

  “I was particularly glad,” pursued Mr. Chatford, with the air of one merely making conversation, “that none of the—shall we say?—gossip, which I understand had been coupled with Dr. Bickleigh’s na
me previously, came up in court. No doubt it had never reached the coroner’s ears at all; but, if it had, I thought it quite right of him to disregard it.”

  “Gossip?” queried Mrs. Torr with interest. “Then?”

  “Hadn’t there been a certain amount of talk about Dr. Bickleigh’s perhaps rather indiscreet friendships in the neighbourhood?” replied Mr. Chatford smoothly. “Quite harmless friendships, no doubt; but, for a man in his position, at least indiscreet.”

  “Oh! Yes. Well, that is—yes, I believe there had.”

  “Names, even, had been mentioned?”

  “Names have frequently been mentioned in connection with Dr. Bickleigh,” remarked Miss Wapsworthy acidly.

  “Yes; yes, so I feared. No doubt you ladies know whose.”

  Mrs. Torr, who was not clever at hiding her feelings, looked uncomfortable. From her daughter she had at one time frequently heard Ivy’s name mentioned in this connection. She glanced at Ivy, and was shocked to see how white the child’s face had gone. So there had been something in it, then. Something rather serious, to account for such apprehension. What an unpleasant man Dr. Bickleigh did seem turning out to be, if only half the things people said about him were true. And she used to think him so nice.

  To save Ivy, she plunged for something definite. “I—I’ve certainly heard Mrs. Denny Bourne—Madeleine Cranmere as she was—I’ve certainly heard her name coupled with Dr. Bickleigh’s. Well, I mean”—Mrs. Torr tried to soften this slander—“they were close friends about then, I believe, though of course she didn’t see so much of him after she got engaged to Denny.”

  “Yes. Ah, yes. Wasn’t the engagement announced on the very day of Mrs. Bickleigh’s death? Yes. A most curious coincidence.”

  “Do have some of my orange cake, Mr. Chatford,” implored Miss Peavy. “I made it myself, so I can . . .”

  “Thank you, I will.”

  “And, Ivy, you’re eating nothing.”

  “I’ve finished, thank you, Miss Peavy.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re going in for this fashionable dieting too. I do think it’s so very . . . And really, Ivy, there’s no need for you to. . . .”

  “Oh, no, I’m not,” Ivy smiled wanly.

  Miss Peavy would have liked to keep the conversation on such an innocuous topic, but Mr. Chatford, it seemed, had not finished with the other. He brushed the thread dangled by Miss Peavy unobtrusively but firmly aside.

  “Yes, I’d heard that too. Miss Cranmere, as she was. But I understood that there was someone else, previous to her. Perhaps you’ve heard that, too?”

  Ivy’s eyes flickered in appeal over the three faces. It was not necessary. With the rigid sex loyalty of women, all three denied vigorously having heard of a friend of Dr. Bickleigh’s previous to Miss Cranmere; though all three knew perfectly well who that friend was reputed to have been. Even Miss Peavy, who never listened to gossip if she could help it, knew that. One does not have to listen to gossip in a place like Wyvern’s Cross. It inserts itself into the consciousness somehow, quite irrespective of the ears.

  “No,” said Miss Wapsworthy, frowning in an effort of memory. “No, I never heard of anyone else. Who was it, Mr. Chatford?”

  “Oh, I don’t know her name,” said Mr. Chatford smoothly, and if he realised that three female breaths were being drawn the more easily he did not show it. “Possibly she never existed. I just heard that there had been another woman. But you know what the gossip is in these small places.”

  All three ladies did know it, and looked accordingly deprecatory.

  “Curious,” said Mr. Chatford.

  Miss Peavy caught the look in Ivy’s blue eyes, and, like Mrs. Torr a moment ago, plunged for something definite. “Oh, I know it was Miss Cranmere. Why, I remember one day . . . Really, it was most extraordinary. I—I’ve never been so insulted in my life.” Without quite knowing how it had happened, Miss Peavy found herself embarked on the story of Dr. Bickleigh’s visit to her the previous spring. She had never quite forgiven his conduct then, though she had overlooked it on their subsequent meetings; but she had never told a single person about it. Now, as soon as she had got well started, she wished she had done nothing of the sort. But it was too late to recant.

  “Well, I never,” said Mrs. Torr, suitably impressed.

  “Dear me,” said Mr. Chatford. “Most injudicious.”

  “And you never said a word about it to me,” accused Miss Wapsworthy, and Miss Peavy looked her guilt.

  Ivy said nothing, but went on playing aimlessly with one of her expensive gloves, pulling it again and again through a loosely clenched fist. Mrs. Torr, in an overflow of maternal feeling, thought she looked just like a child dressed up. It was ridiculous to think of her as the wife of that dry stick, Mr. Chatford. Why, there must be over twenty years between them. Did she really love him?

  “Well, there’s no need to wonder who the ‘married man’ was, Adela,” observed Miss Wapsworthy. “You know perfectly well it was the scandal of the place last summer.”

  Mrs. Torr shook her head. “I’m afraid it was.”

  “I confess,” mused Mr. Chatford, “that I had not realised how close the ‘friendship’ must have been.” The slightest stress on the word in question enclosed it in inverted commas.

  There was a moment’s silence, while great issues hung in the balance.

  “Close enough,” said Miss Wapsworthy, slowly and deliberately, “to turn Julia Bickleigh into a drug-fiend.”

  Mr. Chatford looked at her searchingly. “I don’t quite follow.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing, Mr. Chatford,” said Miss Peavy, much distressed. “Just a silly idea of Janet’s. Really, Janet . . . I mean, that sort of thing—well, it isn’t very nice, is it? Saying that sort of thing.”

  “We’re not considering a nice sort of thing,” Miss Wapsworthy returned grimly. “I’ll put it another way, then, Mr. Chatford. I’d known Julia Bickleigh for nearly ten years, and I’d be prepared to say with my dying breath that she was the last person in the whole world to give way to any weakness of that sort. There!”

  “Then what,” said Mr. Chatford quietly, “are you suggesting, Miss Wapsworthy, in view of the evidence?”

  “I suggest nothing. I merely feel that I’ve done my duty in telling you that—and in adding that Mr. Torr, too, was not satisfied with the verdict at the inquest.”

  “Oh, really, Janet,” fluttered Mrs. Torr, “I don’t think you should . . . You really haven’t quite the right to—to . . .”

  “Right,” said Miss Wapsworthy enigmatically, “is right.”

  “What is it you want me to do, Miss Wapsworthy?” Mr. Chatford asked bluntly.

  “I don’t want you to do anything. You’re a solicitor. You know whether you should do anything or not; I’m sure I don’t. I simply feel that I have rid my shoulders of a responsibility which they are not competent to support by telling you those two things.” Who had laid the responsibility on the shoulders in question, Miss Wapsworthy did not add.

  “I see.” Mr. Chatford uncrossed his knees and leant forward. “Might I ask for another cup of this excellent tea, Miss Peavy?”

  The subject appeared to be closed.

  On their way back to Merchester some twenty minutes later, Mr. Chatford turned to his wife. “So your pretty story is all over Wyvern’s Cross, as I expected.”

  Ivy began to tremble. “Oh, William, I don’t think it is, really. They all said . . .”

  “They were lying. Do you think I can’t tell when a woman’s lying or not? You ought to know whether I can, my dear Ivy. Mrs. Torr gave it away with every muscle of her face.”

  Ivy said nothing.

  “No doubt they’re all talking about it now. Charming for me, isn’t it?” His voice held no tone of anger. Mr. Chatford was never angry. But his dry sarcasm could lacerate Ivy like a knout. “Laughing, no doubt, to think how I’ve been fobbed off with another man’s discarded mistress for a wife. Taken in like any schoolboy. Most amusing, isn’t it?
”

  “Oh, William, don’t—please.”

  “Well, they didn’t cut you, at any rate. I suppose we have that to be thankful for. Your clothes, no doubt. I always said it paid to be well dressed, didn’t I?”

  They drove on a mile or two in silence.

  “And now what’s all this about that late lover of yours, eh? Nasty innuendoes. What had they been saying before we arrived, I wonder? That Wapsworthy woman’s got something up her sleeve. Torr too, it seems. What do you know about it, Ivy, eh?” He shot the question at her suddenly.

  “N-nothing. I don’t understand.”

  “Oh, you don’t understand, don’t you, my dear? Just as you didn’t understand that if I’d known what you’d been before I asked you to marry me, I wouldn’t have looked at you again. Eh?”

  “Oh, William, please don’t bring that all up again.” The facile tears crowded into Ivy’s eyes. “You know how sorry I am for— for deceiving you.”

  “No doubt it was because you loved me so much?”

  “I do love you, William, I do. If you’d only let me.”

  “No, you don’t,” he replied, with unusual fierceness. “You still love Bickleigh.”

  “I don’t,” she sobbed. “Truly I don’t.”

  “My God, if I thought you did,” said her husband, quite quietly, staring ahead through the windscreen.

  There was another little interlude of silence, broken only by Ivy’s sniffs.

  “Ivy,” Mr. Chatford said, not unkindly, “tell me this. I’ve never asked you before, but it does make a difference. Were you quite innocent when Bickleigh seduced you?”

  Ivy caught desperately at the tone. “Yes, quite. I swear.”

  “Ignorant?”

  “Y-yes. Yes.”

  Mr. Chatford stared ahead.

  “William—that does make a difference, doesn’t it?”

  Her husband patted her knees. His dry skin scraped on the silk.