A Deadly Marriage

by Roderic Jeffries

  The sense of disassociation vanished as quickly as it had come. In its place came a frightening association. The woman was going to shoot: the bullet was going to rip into her stomach: her stomach would be filled with piercing fire. All her life, she had been scared of pain: the thought of the pains of labour had always made her want to vomit. “No,” she gasped. “You can’t. Please, you can’t do it, you can’t kill me. The blessed Virgin Mary...”

  “Don’t blaspheme.”

  “I swear I didn’t do anything: it wasn’t me.”

  “You poisoned my husband.”

  “But...but I didn’t mean to. That’s God’s truth. You’ve got to believe me. Dios mio, why won’t you listen? Don’t kill me.”

  “I’m not going to: not now.”

  Catalina groaned. Her stomach was filled with churning water.

  “Instead, I’m going to make you pay.”

  “Pay?” she mumbled.

  “I’m going to make you pay for what you did. He used all my money. I thought he was wealthy. I gave him all my money that took me a lifetime to save and he spent it in a year. He lied to me over and over again, but I loved him. Then you killed him. You’re going to pay me for what you’ve done.”

  “I swear I haven’t any money.”

  “Give me that necklace.”

  Catalina put her hand up to her necklace. “No,” she said hoarsely.

  “Give it to me.”

  “You can’t take it. It’s fake. It’s costume jewellery. It’s worthless. I’ve...I’ve got a few pounds...”

  “That necklace is real and it’s valuable. You’re going to give it to me as the first payment for the death of my husband. You’ll go on paying. That’s going to hurt you more than anything else in the world because you love money more than anything else in the world, more even than your own ugly, bloated selfFor the first time, Mrs. Cabbot's voice expressed a little of her hate.

  In his office, David stared down at the sectional drawing of the cross-rimmed slurry auger, used to lift semi-liquid dung out of a slurry pit and put it in a space tanker, that had just been sent up from the drawing office. In theory, this auger would bring to slurry handling the same kind of revolution that the parlour-shed had brought to the milking of large herds.

  The estimated cost of producing six experimental augers and their tankers — whose design would allow much easier spreading of the slurry on the land — was just under ten thousand pounds: five of these would be loaned out to farmers who were receptive to new ideas and able to give reasoned reports on machinery, the other one would be used on Frogsfeet Farm. If the field tests were satisfactory, then it would probably cost another forty thousand pounds to set up even a small manufacturing line and a further five to ten thousand pounds to advertise the machine, and even the larger sum would mean only a very modest campaign. Perhaps too modest? If the auger proved as timesaving and labour-saving as it should do, were they justified in starting manufacture? The parlour-shed system of milking had appealed to the farmers because they could see the immediate benefits obtained from installing it: but slurry disposal was one of those things on which farmers hated to spend money because they regarded it as a job that offered no return. The new system might well offer tremendous advantages and savings and yet never become popular.

  He lit a cigarette and crossed to the window. He looked at the buildings. The factory was expanding and orders in the past week had come from two more countries. There was a very great temptation to sit back and keep to the one proven and profitable line, yet without expansion there could so easily be the beginning of decay.

  He looked at his watch. It was half past six and he returned to his desk and folded up the plans. The decision would have to be made soon on whether to construct the six prototypes. His job was to mull over the pros and cons, listen to all the shades of opinion and experience, and then come to the final decision and stick to it.

  He left the office and went out to his car. The Aston Martin fired at the first turn of the starter. He drove on to the road and accelerated and the car leapt forward. Walter Mitty like, he often became Nuvolari, Fangio, or Moss, racing at the Nurburgring or in the Targa Florio and winning. He grinned as he wondered whether other men dreamed like this or whether his was a case of delayed adolescence?

  Patricia was waiting at Frogsfeet Hall and she kissed him as he stepped into the hall. “You’re late,” she said.

  He looked at his watch. “Seven minutes, give or take ten seconds.”

  “Which have been seven very long minutes. I thought you might have run away with your faithful Miss Bryanstrom.”

  He laughed.

  “Well, you never know.”

  “If you don’t, you want smacking hard.”

  She kissed him again. “That makes me the happiest person in the world.” She became serious. “You mustn’t laugh too much at me, David, for worrying. Michael went off one day, just like you drove off this morning, and he never came back. There was just a knock at the door and a constable in uniform. He was such a nice man, with a slight lisp and blond hair. He hated having to tell me.”

  “God, you must have suffered!” he said.

  “I went through hell. But you’ve turned all that suffering into a past that can’t touch me any more. So let’s stop being serious.” She kissed him for the third time. “Mrs. Torrents called.”

  “And what did she want?”

  “To see whether I really was living here with you as the village gossips claimed.”

  “D’you tell her?”

  “I did. Her eyes absolutely bulged with eagerness to rush off and pass on the news. You’re now a man with a ruined reputation.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m the scarlet woman. It really is wonderful, living in sin. It makes every second of every day seem so specially precious.”

  “Make the most of it. You’ve only three months left.” She gripped him tight. “That’s an even more wonderful thought. I’m a bit drunk, David, on happiness, and like a drunk I’m talking an awful lot of nonsense. I’m aching to be married to you because then we can start a family. I want a boy and a girl. David, I’ve made you a special surprise for dinner.”

  “What kind of a surprise?”

  “If you know that, it won’t be a surprise any more, will it? Have you any champagne in the house?”

  “A couple of bottles.”

  “Then let’s open one and have a private orgy. I’ve always wanted a bath in champagne.”

  He laughed. “I love you all there is, Patricia, but that is one pleasure I intend to deny you. Champagne has to be treated with due reverence.”

  “Cleopatra had her bath of milk: asses’ milk, wasn’t it?”

  “Are you setting up as a second Cleopatra?”

  “Only if you’ll come in as Caesar and Antony.”

  “You’re asking a hell of a lot of me, aren’t you?”

  She laughed so much that tears ran down her cheeks.

  Cathart drove the 25 miles to county police H.Q. in East Flecton. The main building was set in front of a green on which was a tall flagstaff. At the back were playing fields, police houses, and the classrooms and workshops of the driving school.

  He parked his car and climbed out. A rain drop hit his nose and he looked up. The sky was overcast, with low, black bellied clouds coming in from the east. Soon, it was going to pour with rain. Jean had gone with a friend to visit the gardens at Tittington Castle and he hoped for her sake that the rain missed them. She didn't get much time away from home and had, for days, been looking forward to this outing.

  He went into the main building and up to the detective superintendent’s room, which Danby shared with one of the two detective chief inspectors.

  Danby was alone. After a brief greeting, he began to discuss the crime figures of V division for the past week, with particular reference to the crimes of violence. Satisfied he had a clear picture of the divisional C.I.D.’s work, he pushed the papers on his desk to one side an
d leaned back in his chair. “Mr. Smith will be here at any moment. Still nothing from America in the Cabbot case?”

  “Nothing that helps, sir. Boiled down, it’s really this: Cabbot married in Terre Haute, her family were dead against the marriage but she took no notice of them, once married they left that town and have never been back. All that the wife’s family can tell us is that Cabbot said he was a Cuban and claimed to have been a millionaire. For their money, though, he probably washed dishes in a third-rate restaurant.”

  “How did he get an American passport?”

  “That’s one of the many questions not yet answered. I’ve asked the American authorities to check whether it’s a forgery.”

  “You think it is?”

  “I’d say it’s likely.”

  “He remains a mystery, then?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And the wife still refuses to help?”

  “She won’t tell us anything and frankly she gives me the creeps. She’s like something out of the Munsters, without being funny. Whether she’s bottled up her emotions too tightly and they’re on the point of exploding...She reminds me of a phrase I once read — the consuming fury of righteousness.”

  “Sounds a bloody silly phrase.”

  Cathart did not reply. Danby was a first-class detective who lacked only one thing — a sufficiently developed imagination. It needed a lot of imagination to realise all the meaning there was in that phrase.

  There was a knock on the door and Smith entered. “Sorry I’m a bit late,” he said, as he walked over to the nearest chair. “Got held up in a traffic jam down in the centre of town. ’Afternoon, Cathart.”

  “Good afternoon, sir.”

  “You both wanted to know whether the divorce affects anything in the Cabbot case.” Smith sat down in front of the desk and balance his brief case on his knees. “I can answer that very briefly. It doesn’t. A divorced person remains unable to testify against his or her previous spouse in respect of anything that happened during the marriage. You still cannot get Mrs. Plesence into court to testify against her husband.”

  “Hell!” muttered Danby.

  Smith smiled briefly. “The laws weren’t made to help police officers.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “You’re obviously not getting help in any other direction?”

  “We’ve just been going over things. It seems to be a dead end whichever way we look.”

  Smith tapped with his fingers on the brief case. “It’s an interesting situation. Here’s a woman, eager to give evidence that will convict a man of murder, yet the law refuses to allow her testimony to be given. As a consequence, it looks as if the man will get away with a murder he never intended. A very interesting situation indeed.”

  Catalina walked into the High Street branch of the Westminster Bank and crossed to one of the small writing booths, opposite the counters. She opened her large crocodile skin handbag and brought out a cheque book, which she put down. She stared at the cheque book. In her account, paid in only yesterday by David’s lawyers, were two hundred and ten pounds. Now, she was going to have to draw out a hundred and fifty. Mrs. Cabbot was blackmailing her to financial death. The woman was utterly soulless and had only one object in life — to destroy. Somehow, she had realised how to destroy her, Catalina. Money was the only thing with real meaning. It separated the sheep from the goats: insulated the owner from the stench of life. She had had a good bit of jewellery which had been an investment — most of it had now been stolen from her. The courts had awarded her fifteen hundred pounds a year alimony, pending the fixing of maintenance — most of that was being stolen from her. The woman was bleeding her to death.

  She wrote the date on the cheque, then put down the pen. This cheque would leave the account with little in it. Only sixty pounds. Sixty pounds between her and starvation. And even that would be stolen from her in the end. Catalina’s hands began to tremble from fear and anger. Mrs. Cabbot had sworn to strip her of everything: in her flat, nasal voice she had promised to drive Catalina into the gutter.

  How long would she even be allowed to have the sixty pounds: how long before she was stripped of everything? Mrs. Cabbot had been in the court on the day of her divorce and had seen the jewellery she was wearing. Most of that jewellery was now gone. She, Catalina, had wanted the court to realise she was not just another plain Jane of a housewife — it had been a petty deceit that was costing her very dear.

  She wrote cash on the cheque and the sum of one hundred and fifty pounds. Then she put down the pen. She couldn’t allow herself to be blackmailed into penury. She feared many things in life, but poverty was something she feared more than all the other things lumped together. Over the past days, she had become so terrified that she had even begun to wonder whether she was attractive enough? Men liked their women either young and svelte or else pleasantly mature — but when did maturity become over-ripeness? Suppose she didn’t meet a man who wanted to look after her and she had to pay her own way through life: go on to suppose that Mrs. Cabbot was still there to blackmail her...Her mind panicked. She saw herself as in the past she had seen other women — unwanted bags, worn out by life.

  It was all because of David and Patricia. It choked her to think of them. The picture of their happiness was one to make her soul writhe. But for them, Mrs. Cabbot would never have come along...But Mrs. Cabbot had come along and unless something was done to stop her, would drag her, Catalina, down into the stinking poverty that had always been her own particular nightmare...

  She ripped the unsigned cheque from the book and was about to tear it up when some sort of reason returned to convince her that she must act more calmly if she were to act at all.

  The Southern Dairy and Agricultural Show was held just outside East Flecton on Friday and Saturday. Ever since he had started manufacturing dairy equipment, David had had a stand at the show and had personally taken charge of it.

  Catalina knew where he would be on those two days. Each year in the past he had tried to get her to go with him to help with the entertaining of visitors, but she had refused. How could anyone imagine she’d waste her time entertaining a lot of bucolic farmers?

  She dialled Necrington 252 on the Saturday. Had Patricia gone with David, to pour out gins for all the clodhoppers who thought the most beautiful thing in life was a cow? The dialling tone kept on. She held her breath and as she did so she could feel the thud of her heart. Pray God Patricia was at the show with David. Tension made her hand shake and the receiver joggled against her ear. They had to be out so that she could get into the house unseen. They hadn’t the sense to realise that she was clever, but very soon they’d learn. They’d discover she was very, very clever, but only when it was too late. Madre de Dios!, how she would laugh. They thought they could just trample on her and she’d not even complain, but they’d soon know differently. Her mind recalled how Patricia had stood on the landing above the winding staircase, in a dressing-gown under which she was so obviously wearing nothing and how she had been brazenly proud of being where she was. Catalina’s anger made her mouth dry and her throat hammer.

  The ringing continued. The house was empty. They’d gone away, careless of the fact she was not some little pale, anaemic English woman, ready to bow down before fate.

  She left the telephone kiosk and returned to the Ford she had hired a couple of days before. She drove to Frogsfeet Hall along the back route, through lanes that seldom saw much traffic except on market days. She parked in a natural lay-by and then climbed over a barbed-wire fence and crossed a field to the kitchen garden. From there, a path led straight to the back door.

  She still had the keys to the house. Even after she had let herself in that day and she’d found David and Patricia were living together, perhaps even using her bed, they had not bothered over the fact that she had this set of keys. They’d soon find out what a costly mistake that was.

  She rang the back-door bell as a further precaution and waited. A large blac
k bird, cawing, circled overhead. A vulture, she thought, with little regard to ornithological possibilities, come to watch over a house that was about to die. David loved this old house, set in the middle of nowhere, and when he lost it he’d be mortally hurt.

  Satisfied the place was empty, she went inside. On the kitchen table was an empty bottle of wine. Immediately, her imagination pictured the previous night — David and Patricia drinking together, laughing together, and then going together up to the bedroom. Patricia was selling herself in order to get hold of the little money David had: she was using her body as a whore would. But she’d very soon discover life wasn’t going to be that easy for her.

  Catalina went along the passage, into the hall, and climbed the elegant staircase. She was about to turn into the right-hand passage when she checked herself and wondered how she could have made so stupid a mistake. It was a long time since they had slept in the same bedroom and his was in the left-hand passage.

  She went into his bedroom. It had changed in appearance, but not form, from the time when she slept there. The dressing-table was clear of all the bottles and jars. The chairs were in the same position, only now they were not covered with her discarded clothing. The right-hand bedside table had on it only a light and one book, not a mixture of medicine bottles, nail cleaning equipment, and letters. The bed was made.

  She stared at the bed. It had been hers. Yet David had taken Patricia into it. Catalina’s hands clenched and unclenched. As David and Patricia made love in it, rolled around on it, did they jeer, laugh, and mock the woman who rightfully should have been there...?

  She hurried over to the nearer of the built-in cupboards and slid back one of the doors. Hanging inside were David’s clothes, as well as a couple of frocks. They were Patricia’s frocks. Catalina took hold of one and was about to try to rip it apart when she checked herself. She let go of the frock and took hold of the coat of a tweed suit and tried to pull a thread loose. A finger-nail tore. Cursing, she rolled back the sleeve and this time found a length of thread, at a point where the lining had come free, that she was able to detach.