Better to Eat You

by Charlotte Armstrong

  “But Davey, you know you haven’t checked any of her story. Suppose she is in an unhealthy emotional state?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” David looked stubborn. Either way, that girl’s in a spot. If she’s imagining … or if there is some kind of plot going on around her.”

  “So?” said Consuelo with foreboding.

  “She’s hasn’t got anybody …”

  “Got her own people.”

  “Ah … has she?” David quoted softly. “‘I do not like thee, Dr.’… Perrott. Consuelo, be the good scout you always are. Lend me a car. And you’re going down there to your beach house soon. Invite me.”

  “Take the Ford. You’re invited.”

  “That’s my darlin’. Meantime, I am going to call on Foxey Grandpa.”

  “You won’t get in,” she said, rather alarmed.

  “I’ll get in,” said David. “I want to see those people. I want to know their version of Sarah’s story. And if they are fixing this jinx to work the way it seems to.”

  “But Davey, why would they?”

  “Don’t see why. What I do see is this. Sarah Shepherd doesn’t know anyone else. Who else could care? Believe me, Consuelo, if they are behind it and think they can cast me as a minor victim in their little series …”

  “It’s not pretty, what you’re thinking.”

  “It’s as vicious an idea as I ever had.” David sounded cheerful.

  But Consuelo said, “Davey, you are awful mad?”

  He nodded.

  Consuelo was silent. Finally she roused and said, “There’s a lot of money some place, and money, you know, is a gladsome thing. I know a lawyer …”

  “I knew you’d spark up on this,” said David gratefully.

  Consuelo said, “I never thought I was a vindictive woman, but he should have let me in.”

  Chapter 3

  As Consuelo had predicted, the guard at the Colony gates knew her smart red Ford and made no question when David drove through. Around the Colony Cove the houses were heaped, clinging and jutting from the slopes, each beautifully designed and stunningly executed. Life within the Colony and on its private crescent of sand must, he thought, be golden altogether. But he wound to his right, all through this to the other side of the cove, and ascended along a switchback road toward the shelf cut into the hill.

  Opposite a three-car garage there was a wide paved apron and he parked there. The shelf itself was above him still, by a few feet, and he could not see the house. An iron fence crossed between the corner of the large garage and the high bluff of the hill. The place was quite a fortress. David thought to himself of knights and dragons and imprisoned maidens and was somewhat amused. He strode to the gate, which was locked, saw the telephone in its box. A female voice answered, “Yes?”

  “I’m calling on Miss Shepherd,” said he crisply. “David Wakeley.”

  “A moment, sir.” The voice reacted to his assurance with respect.

  But it was a long moment. David stood by the gate and he could hear the surf on the rocks at the foot of the headland. He was not high, perhaps no more than fifty feet, but by turning his head over his left shoulder he received a stunning panorama of coast and ocean. Staring back entranced, he heard no one approaching until a woman said softly, “Mr. Wakeley?”

  Startled, he looked around. “I am Malvina Lupino. You came to see Sarah? Did she make the appointment?”

  “How do?” said David, cheerful and assured. “Surely Miss Shepherd is here?”

  “She’s on the beach. I’m sorry.”

  “Then how do I get to the beach?” David smiled at her.

  “But you can’t get to our beach,” the woman said. “I can’t really … If you would call on the telephone perhaps a little later …?”

  This woman, standing the other side of the patterned iron, was tall. David was a tall man but she made him assert his size. He fixed his feet and became immovable and persistent. “I teach at Lowell College,” he said rather bluntly as if he felt it high time she realized who he was. “As a matter of fact, I’d like very much to talk to Mr. Fox, or perhaps to you, about Miss Shepherd.”

  “Professor Wakeley. Of course,” Malvina said in her smooth purring voice. She began to do things to the gate. “Grandfather never sees anyone without prearrangement but of course … Sarah’s teacher … If there is anything I can do. You must understand,” she went on, unlocking the gate, “our reasons for this sort of thing. Grandfather is old and frail and we protect him from even the least surprise, lest we lose him entirely.”

  “I promise not to shout or throw things,” David said, a little shocked. “But I do want to talk to someone who is concerned about Sarah.”

  “We are all concerned about Sarah,” she said softly, letting him in.

  They walked together up some steps. David drew a sharp breath. The low house lay on the edge and its barrier, and certain walls, enclosed this garden paved, in part, like a Spanish courtyard, planted with flowers and small graceful trees, dreaming and drowsing between the house and the high bluff upon which blazed and hung curtains and cascades of blossoms. Over the garden’s hush the surf still sounded, far away. David felt it in all his muscles, as if he had come into a spot so beautiful and peaceful that it was relaxing to the point of nearly making him fall limply down.

  But Malvina led him to some garden chairs in a spot dappled with shade. She was polite, correct, even agreeable, yet by something furtive and stolen in the very tension of her smile, by the glance of her measuring eye toward the house wall, she now made him feel like a criminal intruder. It was as if she had smuggled him within the gate illegally and as if something dreadful would happen were he to be seen or heard.

  “You know who Grandfather is, Mr. Wakeley?” Her smile was as pretty as toothpaste and her eyes glistened cordially. But David stiffened. He had seen, before, a frank and open countenance, worn upon a manner that hints of perils and mysteries. He thought she had the candid stare of the pathological liar. He thought he had better be careful.

  “He is the Fox of Fox and Lupino, isn’t he?” David answered easily.

  “Yes. He is.” Malvina looked down at her large handsome hands. Although her well-fleshed body was not girlish, he thought she was probably only in her twenties. “He is a dear old man, a great darling. They were not so well known in America.” Her eyes came up, inquiring.

  “Frankly,” he admitted, “I never heard of them until I met Sarah.”

  “Weren’t you in England, then, during the war?” she asked. Her arm was graceful.

  “I was chair-borne in Washington during the war. I’ve never been to England.” He thought she sighed. “Surely you’re not homesick, Miss Lupino?”

  She looked around at Paradise. “Sometimes,” she said wistfully. David thought to himself, She’s suggestible. A strange person. There was something unreal about Malvina, as if she wore a heavy mask and whatever woman existed behind it was not to be easily discovered. “But what is it about Sarah, please?” Malvina purred. “How can I help you?”

  David said, “Perhaps you know that she’s got a very strange idea that she is a Jonah, a bad luck carrier.”

  “Oh yes,” said Malvina quickly. “Yes, we know.” David could not tell whether she was alarmed or meant to seem a little alarmed. “Such a strange idea,” she murmured.

  “I want her to work with me on a book this summer. A great boon to me. But this strange idea,” David went along with it, “seems to be in the way. I came to see whether her family knew about it.”

  “Oh yes, we do know.”

  “What do you think of it?”

  Malvina hesitated. She threw him a look which seemed to say, Forgive me, but I don’t know you. “We know about it,” she said firmly, “and we are trying to help her. I doubt if I could persuade her to take that job, Professor Wakeley. I doubt if she should. I think you must get someone else. Surely you can find a secretary who will not trouble you with …”

  “… an idea,” said David. He se
ttled back, looking his largest and most imperturbable. He was not going to tell Malvina about his car crashing and the tragedy. He was not going to tell Fox, either. He was not ever going to let Sarah Shepherd know about it, if he could help it. “It won’t trouble me,” he said.

  “But aren’t you afraid …” she began and stopped herself.

  “Of an idea?” said David. “No.”

  He watched her move her hand in a gesture of wonder and helplessness. If the family’s version of Sarah’s trouble was that it existed only as an idea, he was going to find that out. “Tell me,” he said bluntly, “have you thought of psychiatric help?”

  “Grandfather is very much opposed to that sort of thing,” said Malvina primly as her eyes wandered to a flower. “But I wonder …”

  David was feeling rather smug and proud of himself for having put her in a position where she would have to tell him the family version, when she suddenly gave him a rather roguish glance. “… whether you have a romantic interest in my little cousin?” she said.

  It was his turn to look at the flowers. Some instinct told him to be careful. He thought he wouldn’t say yes and he wouldn’t say no. He glanced at Malvina sidewise. “I am a man who’s got a book to write, Miss Lupino. Sarah is my student and I respect her intelligence. I feel sure she would do the work well and enjoy it. And I am not frightened. May I speak to your grandfather?”

  Malvina said, a little breathlessly, “I really don’t know what to say. I think I must …” She rose. David rose.

  Somebody clanged the iron gate and Dr. Perrott, coming up the steps, rose into the garden.

  “Oh,” he said.

  “Oh Edgar, there you are. You’ve met, I see. Will you be nice to Professor Wakeley?” said Malvina prettily. “I am going to see if possibly Grandfather will receive him. He’s come about Sarah.” The turn of her head, the flutter of her eye all hinted a warning, in spite of her surface grace and bland ease.

  Edgar Perrott nodded rather gloomily. He watched her go. He took her chair. “Where is Sarah?” he asked almost suspiciously.

  “On the beach, Miss Lupino tells me.”

  “Been here long?” The doctor’s eyes had lightning in them.

  “Not long,” said David, wondering.

  Malvina went through the glass door and into the great center room. She crossed its expanse of quiet carpeting toward the sea side. She knocked lightly on a door at the right and opened it and went through.

  This smallish room was a hexagon. It was half glass. The view was astonishing. From this lair, this lookout, this bubble on the cliff’s brow, a vast world of water and land lay visible and, through the glare-proof tinted glass, uncannily clear. The old man overlooked it all.

  The old man lay in an easy chair. Music was playing. He was sipping and nibbling. His face was craggy and sly and quite contented. “Who came in the red car, Malvina? Eh?” he said, licking his finger.

  “David Wakeley.” She spoke bluntly. “He wants to talk about Sarah. He’s very persistent, Grandfather.”

  “Dear me,” said the old man. “Edgar’s device, the accident then, had no effect at all?”

  “He makes nothing of that,” she said, her breast heaving. “He is not frightened.”

  “Do you mean he simply came here?”

  “I couldn’t refuse him at the gate. He would only have got round the rock at low tide and found Sarah on the beach. He wants to know if we have thought of a psychiatrist. Will you see him? What shall I say?” She walked up and down on the rug.

  The old man turned his lips in. “Now we knew it would happen one day, Malvina,” he soothed. “It merely means that something must be done to solve the problem of Sarah. You and Edgar have been hesitant and squeamish. I have always thought half-measures were weak measures. I am tired of them, Malvina.”

  “I’m tired, too,” she said. “Tired of Edgar’s mooning. Tired of watching Sarah all the time. Tired of worrying. I’d like to get away.”

  “It’s been long enough,” the old man said, “since the day she came to the gate, looking so ill and wretched that our silly old Mrs. Nepper, that we had then, let her in. Since that moment I walked toward her and thought I was reprieved.” The old hands plucked at his clothing.

  “What’s to be done?” Malvina cried.

  “Malvina,” cooed the old man, “it was clever of us to get away in all that wartime confusion, to remember about the property, to convince everyone … to get all this distance and now have here our inner keep, where no one can come upon me. But we have not been clever about Sarah, you know.”

  “You’ve been too clever,” she said sulkily.

  “I?”

  “She’d have gone far away, long ago, Grand-father, if you didn’t contradict everything we do. You are too gentle and kind. She thinks you love her.”

  “Ah,” said the old man, “she loves me, you mean. Yes, I believe so.”

  “I think we’ve been lucky,” she said gloomily, “so far.”

  “Lucky?” The old man did not respect the idea of luck. “Perhaps. Certainly on the day she came, that I was wearing a coat and a waistcoat. She did not distinguish Fox from Lupino after all these years. Few alive will ever come our way who could.” The old man pulled at his shirt. “But Sarah … Sarah, if anyone in this world … would have known the scar on Lupino’s breast …” his chin went down on his breastbone, “since she made it herself, that wicked child, with her bow and arrow.”

  “Something must be done, Grandfather,” said Malvina, impatient with the past. “Can’t you be cross with her?”

  “Weak measures,” the old man said. “Frighten her. Send her away. ‘Perhaps’ we have said to ourselves. ‘Perhaps’ she does not remember the incident at all. But ‘perhaps’ is a weak word, Malvina. And so we couldn’t risk a chum, a gossip, a lover or a psychiatrist, who might bring up among her confidences that old story. Too clever, you say? Then we were too clever before she ever came. And yet,” he brooded, “it was logical to take a fall and make a reason for Fox’s scar. Which the Neppers saw. And although they are gone, Moon saw it. Sarah must never see it. Sarah must not be put in mind of scars.”

  Malvina wrung her hands. “Be cross,” she said. “It would be easy.”

  The old man sent her a look of disdain and then he sighed. “Did you test this man?” he asked thoughtfully.

  “Never been to England,” Malvina said shortly. “Not interested in theatrical people.”

  “Well, then, I shall see him. I think … yes … we will have him here.”

  “Here!”

  “For a witness,” said the old man, whose true name was Arthur Lupino.

  “A witness, Grandfather?” said Malvina in her throat. Her face became smooth and serene as if she put the mask snugly on.

  “He persists, does he? This David Wakeley?” said the man known as Fox. “Why, don’t you see? That’s torn it.” He had a coquettish way of turning his head and there were deep dimples around his mouth. He rolled his dark eyes that were still roguish. “It’s only Sarah,” he said soothingly. “Only Sarah who would know the mark. Only Sarah who could claim the property. Without Sarah …” He spoke as if he wished her to agree to remodel the house. “Now, Malvina, you know you are tired of it.”

  “I know, Grandfather,” said Malvina.

  “Now, then,” said Fox and his eyes turned, the pupils sweeping over and down as if he glanced inward, “I will make a plan and you must do as I say.”

  Chapter 4

  Sarah sat on the sand. A more isolated spot could scarcely be imagined. Tide was in: there remained no more than a few square yards of beach. Therefore, close behind her rose the precipitous promontory at whose base, on her left, were tumbled rocks, no thoroughfare. To her right, a huge boulder made a barrier between her and the inward sweep of the coastline. The existence of this tiny cove was not apparent from the other side of the rock. No one, as far as Sarah knew, had ever scaled it or waded around it to intrude upon this most private and most lon
ely place.

  She had come down the zigzag path from the shelf to dip briefly and sun herself, but she must soon climb back again because the afternoon was getting chilly. The night would be cool. But she sat on, with her short terry-cloth beach robe drawn around her bare shoulders, staring out to sea. Birds came and went about their business. Against the sea’s crashing, the bird-cries or some sudden bustle of wings in a take-off were the only sounds.

  Sarah made no sound and she did not move except to shiver and she did not shiver altogether because of the cold.

  School was over and summer had come in. She would not see David Wakeley for a long time, if ever again. Nor would she, probably, have news of him. Right now, she didn’t even know that he was safe. For all she knew, something might have already happened to him … as it had happened to all the others.

  She was tormented by this ignorance and afraid to try to find out whether he was safe. His image haunted her. She knew him so well, having watched and listened to him three hours every week for an entire term. She knew his voice, his ways of speech. She knew his mind, its warmth and vivacity. She knew his gestures, that tuft of hair at his crown that wanted to stand up, the smooth passage of his left hand over it from time to time. She knew how the hand went down and remained upon the back of his neck, while his face wore that rueful look it had when he was puzzled. She knew the earnest pull of his brows when he was intent, and the sunrise effect of his smile. She knew it could electrify fifteen female hearts in that classroom.

  Whispers blew by her. She had seen the blush, or the pretty ankle well displayed. She had watched the swaying walks up to his desk after the lecture, the young faces yearning up … almost heard the hearts throbbing. To have a crush on Wakeley was as routine as vaccination. For a girl, it was almost a part of the course.