The very thing which Rosamund had so absolutely determined not to do, from the very moment that she knew she was ill. Strange that Lindy should have put her finger on exactly that.
‘What rubbish! I told you, I was getting ready to go out. And why on earth should I want Geoffrey to pity me? You don’t really imagine I’m jealous, do you? Of you?’
She tried to put into the last word all the belittling scorn which Lindy would have done, but was conscious of failure. Lindy gave a pitying little laugh, inaudible above the roar of the train, but unmistakeable.
‘Jealous? Of course you’re jealous—you’re half crazy with jealousy! It sticks out a mile, the way you’ve been acting tolerant all these months; encouraging Geoffrey to spend half his time with me; inviting me over to your place all the time; pretending I’m your best friend. Don’t you know it’s the oldest technique in the world? Practically all jealous wives do it—and they all think they’re the only ones in the world ever to have thought of it! Just as you thought you were….’
The truth in this was terrifying.
‘Rubbish!’ said Rosamund again, aware of how feeble it sounded. ‘I’m never jealous, ever. Ask Geoffrey——’
‘Oh, Geoffrey! Poor Geoffrey! The man is always the last to see through a trick like that, I grant you! It makes me wild—it makes me absolutely furious—to have to stand by and watch him taking it all at its face-value, and thinking what a tolerant wife you are, and how he ought to be grateful to you, and not do anything to hurt you! But I’m not going to stand by and watch it any longer! I’m going to find a way of showing him what you’re really like—jealous,—spiteful—possessive! Just like the other wives! I’m going to talk to him this very night…. Tell him …!’
‘And I’m going to tell him what you’re really like!’ cried Rosamund, fever and anger together blazing like fire in her body, giving her a sense of extraordinary abandon. ‘It makes me furious to watch him taking you at your face-value! I shall tell him that all this calm and gaiety that you lay on is just so much play-acting. I’ll show him—prove to him that underneath you’re nervy—hag-ridden—jealous. Yes, you’re the jealous one! That’s why you’re always flattering the husbands and criticising the wives—it’s because you know you can’t make a man happy yourself, and so you’re for ever trying to prove that nobody else can——’
The heat playing in her face was unbearable. With a quick movement Rosamund stood up, opened the window and leaned out, letting the blessed, cool, misty air stream across her face. Lindy’s words about the obviousness of her jealousy had struck too near the bone. In her fury, she only hoped that her own retaliatory words had struck Lindy with equally painful nearness.
They had.
At first, Rosamund was not aware of the hand reaching softly, lightly, from behind as she leaned out … and by the time she knew that it was on the handle of the carriage door, turning it, it was too late. She tried to push Lindy violently away, but already the latch had slipped, and the only effect of her pushing was to speed her own falling outwards as the door swung open. It seemed like the ineffectual pushing of a dream, with no force, no impact … and then, strangely, she seemed to be floating away from the train, with no sense of violence, or even of rapid movement. During that half second, which was all it could have taken, she did not feel as if she was falling at all, but rather as if she was hovering, in utter freedom, while the lights and sparks of the train whirled past like wheeling stars. And it was not fear that she was conscious of at all, in that strange, disembodied instant; rather it was triumph; an exultant, glorious sense of victory. ‘I’ve won! I’ve won!’ she seemed to cry aloud in her soul. ‘Now at last Geoffrey will know that she is wicked—evil! He will know that she is a murderer!’ And as she glimpsed Lindy’s white face, still leaning from the train as it streamed away from her, she felt that it was Lindy, not she, who was hurtling to her doom.
Less than a second, less than half a second, it must have been while she seemed to float thus like a triumphant, disembodied spirit; and then the ground, like some dark monster out of the fog, sprang up and flung itself upon her.
It must have been hours later when she recovered consciousness, and found herself lying among a tangle of bushes and tussocky grass by the railway line.
*
And now as Rosamund relived the memory, sitting once again in a train thundering through the misty night, the relief was so enormous that she could only close her eyes and lean back in a peace of mind and body that she had hardly expected ever to know again. Everything was explained now: her own blackout of memory; Lindy’s disappearance; everything. After such a deed, Lindy could not do otherwise than disappear, at least for a time. And Rosamund must have had concussion from her fall, hence the temporary loss of memory, and also the savage headaches which she might have guessed, had she thought about it, were far worse than one would have expected from a mild attack of ’flu.
And those sickening panics that had so mysteriously assailed her of late—they were not, after all, a symptom of subconscious guilt—they were quite simply her nerves and body remembering the shattering shock of being flung from the train. For it was the sound of a train that had set them off on each occasion—the sound, or the sight, or the smell of trains and railways. Hence her inexplicable terror the other night when she had come with Basil to the railway bridge, and she had fancied that it must be something about his words or presence that was making her feel faint with fear.
The muddy shoes and coat were explained, too; and Lindy’s battered handbag. Rosamund must have clutched at it in a last unnoticing effort to save herself; and Lindy, in the stress of the moment, or in fear of being pulled out herself, must have loosed her hold on it. Hence, perhaps, the frightened look on her face as it whirled away—even in that first second she must have realised that the handbag, found by Rosamund’s body, would incriminate her beyond hope of escape.
Yes, what would Lindy have been thinking, in that moment and later? There could be no doubt that she had meant to kill Rosamund; but how soon did she realise that she had failed? It had been the merest chance that Rosamund had landed among grass and bushes—almost anywhere else, she would undoubtedly have been killed.
So what would Lindy have done, when she finally got off the train? Rosamund put herself in Lindy’s place: she set her mind working as Lindy’s mind must have worked, noticing, as she did so, how easily it came to her.
Well, of course, first and foremost she would try to get the whole thing regarded as an accident—you didn’t need to have any particular sort of mind to decide on that. She couldn’t pretend that she hadn’t been on the train at all, because Norah had seen her; would it be best to pretend that she had witnessed the accident, or that she hadn’t? Hadn’t, of course; for if she had, then she should surely have pulled the communication cord at once. It would be easy enough to say that Rosamund had gone off down the corridor, and that it was some time before she, Lindy, began to wonder why she hadn’t come back.
So what then? Well, of course, when she got out at Ashdene, she really would have to go through the motions of wondering why Rosamund hadn’t got out too. She would have to show due concern about the disappearance.
Show who? There would be no point in all this pantomime of solicitude unless someone knew of it. Yet she certainly wouldn’t want to alert the station people, have them sending search parties along the line before she had been able to retrieve the incriminating handbag. So at this point it would be a good idea to phone Geoffrey, let him know that something had happened, and that she, Lindy, was duly anxious about it; but not to tell him exactly what had happened yet, because she still wouldn’t have a proper story worked out—later on she could explain the cryptic nature of her communication by claiming that she’d been so bewildered—couldn’t think what had happened—didn’t want to worry him without cause—that sort of thing.
A becoming degree of anxiety on her part thus established, she could now concentrate on retrieving the handbag. Ho
w long would this take? How far away from Ashdene had the ‘accident’ occurred? And would Lindy go on foot—perhaps for miles? Or on a slow, infrequent country bus? Or would she dare to take a taxi to somewhere in the vicinity, with the risk of the taximan remembering about her if it came to being questioned by the police?
Whichever it was, it must have taken quite a long time; and by the time she got there Rosamund must have recovered consciousness and gone, still clutching the bag mechanically…. Rosamund could vaguely remember now, wandering, staggering over rough ground …darkness … confusion … lights … a telephone box. A blurred, dreamlike attempt to phone Geoffrey, to summon his comfort and support. Rosamund felt strangely moved to know that it must have been from her, and from no one else, that he had received that sense of telepathic communion down the wires. And after that she must, somehow, have made the familiar journey home—so familiar after all these years that she could indeed have made it almost in her sleep.
So Lindy, after a long and anxious search along the railway bank must have found that her victim, and the tell-tale bag, had both vanished. She would have known, then, that Rosamund must be still alive—or else that her body had already been found. Whichever it was, all hope of benefitting from her crime must in that moment have left her.
No, not all hope. Everything would depend now on how much Rosamund, if still alive, remembered about the accident. Lindy would no doubt realise that she might have been so shocked and stunned as not to remember anything at all—as indeed was the case, for a few days at least. Or Lindy might calculate that Rosamund would remember the fact of falling from the train, but might have been too confused to have noticed or remembered that Lindy had deliberately caused it. In which case, it could all still pass as an accident.
But Lindy must know. How would she set about finding out? She would keep telephoning the house anonymously until she heard Rosamund’s voice answering … and then again she would telephone to find a time when no one was there so that she could slip in and retrieve her much-needed handbag. And all the time she would be trying to devise some way of finding out how much Rosamund remembered—how much she had divulged. Every day that there was nothing about it in the papers must have brought her a fraction more of reassurance. Sooner or later, as the risks of disclosure seemed to grow less, she might even venture to come back—watchful, cautious, armed with some clever and infinitely adaptable story to fit onto what ever turned out to be the known facts. Oh, she was clever enough; no doubt she would get away with it—especially with someone anxious to believe the best as Geoffrey would be.
And then everything would go on as before? Could it, with what Lindy knew … with what she must wonder, in the depths of the dark nights, whether Rosamund knew, too, even if nothing was ever said again? Always, on top of her hatred of Rosamund there would now be fear added as well. You don’t need actually to be a blackmailer to inspire this kind of fear … you only need to be in a position where you could be a blackmailer.
But of course, as things were, it was much simpler than this. Now that Rosamund really did remember the whole thing, she would go straight home and tell Geoffrey, and they could then decide together what to do—if anything. That seemed hardly to matter. The real death-blow to Lindy’s hopes was that Geoffrey should know. All she could do now was to stay invisible—go abroad—something like that. Perhaps she had already done so….
Some sound, some uneasy sense of movement, made Rosamund open her eyes. Someone was standing out there in the corridor … a face was pressed against the window of the compartment. Lindy’s face.
CHAPTER XXIV
For as much as half a minute after their eyes had met, Lindy still did not move. She’s trying to guess from my expression how much I know, how much I remember, Rosamund thought calmly, and without any sense of danger. The immensity of her relief at discovering that she was not the guilty one was still flooding her spirit, leaving no room for any other emotion. She even smiled at the white, watching face, in foolish gratitude that it, and not her own, must for ever carry the marks of murder.
Slowly, Lindy slid open the compartment door and came inside, closed it carefully and deliberately behind her; and now Rosamund saw that her face, far from carrying marks of guilt, had a look of wary triumph. It was not so pale, either, as it had looked at first, pressed so intently against the glass; it was the hard, yellow electric light and the shreds of yellow fog that had found their way in out of the night, that created an illusion of pallor. Rosamund’s own face must be looking the same….
‘So we meet again!’ Lindy spoke carefully, never taking her eyes off Rosamund’s face as she sat down opposite her. ‘How are you now?’
After being pushed out of the train? After my attack of ’flu? Lindy must be deliberately keeping it ambiguous, probing to find out how much Rosamund remembered. And I won’t tell her! resolved Rosamund—not because it had yet dawned on her that there was any danger in her situation, but simply from a childish satisfaction at finding herself for once in a position to make Lindy feel uncomfortable, instead of the other way round.
‘I’m very well, thank you,’ she replied distantly. ‘And how about you? Where’ve you been all this time?’
Lindy ignored the question.
‘You don’t look well,’ she insisted. ‘And Jessie doesn’t think you look well, either. You really should begin to take more care of yourself, Rosie, at your age….’
The nerve of it! All Rosamund’s resolution to keep Lindy in the dark were swamped by the familiar sense of baffled outrage.
‘Well, I like that! After you …!’
She stopped; but it was too late. The end of the sentence, unspoken, rang plain enough between them. Rosamund realised that she had given herself away completely. Lindy knew, now, that she knew; that she remembered. But what was all this about Jessie? Had Lindy been eavesdropping out there in the fog, outside the kitchen window? Of course she had—and outside the drawing room window, too; she would have been a fool not to have seized—indeed to have sought out—such an opportunity. She would have learned, from the mere fact of its non-inclusion in the conversation, that Mrs Fielding and Jessie had not heard of anything so dramatic as Rosamund’s having fallen out of a train, accidentally or otherwise. Would Lindy have deduced from this that Geoffrey hadn’t heard of it either? Well, let her wonder!
‘You’re a funny, secretive creature, Rosie,’ said Lindy, with an air of compassionate wonder. ‘Anyone else who’d had an accident like that would have rushed home and told everyone all about it. Certainly they’d have told their own husband! Geoffrey’s going to think it very odd, isn’t he, when he hears about it first from me, after all this time! Or perhaps he’s used to it? Perhaps you’re always like that? To me, it seems a very queer sort of relationship, for a husband and wife….’
‘Of course I’d have told Geoffrey at once—if I’d remembered it!’ cried Rosamund. ‘But when I first recovered consciousness I’d completely forgotten—it’s like that, after you’ve been stunned. It takes several days before you remember….’
And only now, as she watched the triumph glittering yellow in Lindy’s face under the bare electric bulb, did she realise how completely she had fallen into the trap, and how incautious were these revelations that Lindy had surprised out of her by playing on her childish pride.
For Lindy had now been told, almost in so many words, not only that Rosamund had so far not incriminated her at all, but that she was proposing to do so as soon as they reached their journeys end. Now at last Rosamund saw quite clearly how very important it was to Lindy that she, Rosamund, should never reach that end of the journey. Once already Lindy had attempted her murder; the second time, perhaps, was even easier….
Yet what could Lindy do? Certainly Rosamund wasn’t going to lean a second time out of the window into the fog and the darkness. There was no way, now, in which Lindy could take her by surprise. All she had to do was to sit here firmly, on her seat … not to be trapped into going near the window
, or even into standing up at all… and then nothing could happen. After all, the journey couldn’t go on for ever. In half an hour or so they would be in London. Just sit here then, immoveable, and let Lindy do her worst.
But Lindy just sat there, too. She had stopped speaking, and there was a tiny smile about her mouth. Rosamund watched it, uneasily, as if it was a small, bright weapon. What was Lindy thinking, planning?
‘You think I’m planning to kill you, don’t you?’ said Lindy suddenly, and with curious scorn in her voice. ‘But I’m not, you know. I don’t plan things. I act on impulse, always. You made me so furious….’
Was it true? Rosamund remembered several little incidents, from the days and hours before that fatal afternoon, that suggested to her, now, that Lindy might have been planning it all, or at least have been waiting and watching for just such an opportunity. Her odd, half-guilty cross-questioning of Rosamund at Norah’s coffee party: the carefully-chosen jibes which (perhaps predictably) stung Rosamund into travelling impetuously down to Ashdene in the fog … and with a temperature, too, which perhaps would make the ‘accident’ seem less extraordinary, more explicable, than it would otherwise have been.
Not that it mattered now. Why was Lindy trying so emphatically to refute the imputation of forethought in all this, when it could make no possible difference one way or the other? Whether the attempted murder had been planned or unplanned was now of no importance or relevance.
Except to Lindy’s pride. Even now, under the shadow of total disclosure, it was more important to Lindy to maintain her image of herself as a passionate, impulsive sort of person than it was to think of a way of getting herself out of the present impasse.
It would be to me, too, flashed through Rosamund’s mind; and this small stab of fellow-feeling put her a tiny bit off her guard.
The Jealous One Page 20