Do Evil in Return

by Margaret Millar

  “I feel quite gay,” Gwen said, pouring Charlotte a cup of tea. “Unexpected company, and Lewis home again, it’s wonderful. You both know that Lewis has been very naughty. He stayed away for two whole days all because of a little quarrel we had. But now he’s home for good, aren’t you, darling?”

  Lewis spoke for the first time. “Yes, Gwen.”

  “Where on earth did you stay, darling?”

  “On Vern’s boat.”

  “Now isn’t that absurd, staying on a wobbly old boat when you had your own nice house to come back to!”

  “Absurd. Yes, I guess it was.”

  “And Lewis, dear, you must remember your manners. Perhaps Mr. Easter doesn’t want tea but something stronger.”

  “Nothing for me, thanks,” Easter said.

  “You make me feel like a very poor hostess. You won’t even sit down. I—well, it’s been a lovely summer so far, hasn’t it? I do hope it keeps up.”

  The wind pressed against the windows and the walls, until the whole house seemed to shake, ready to tear loose from its foundations and blow across the lawn like the silent bells of the foxgloves. A blast came down the chimney; the flames leaped and a log jumped nervously and fell against the side of the grate.

  Gwen jumped, too, at the noisy shower of sparks. “Oh. Oh, that scared me. The wind—I know it’s silly, but I hate the wind. Charlotte, I bet you’re sitting there thinking how neurotic I am.”

  Charlotte shook her head. “No, I’m not.”

  “I bet you are, really. I know Lewis thinks I’m neurotic. Every time I get an ache or a little spell of forgetfulness Lewis thinks it’s my mind, which is—which—which . . .” She paused, blinking. “This isn’t a very gay party, I must say. Back home in Louisville we used to have the gayest parties. Daddy was very strict, though; everyone had to leave at twelve like Cinderella. Lewis dear, you remember.”

  “I only went to one,” he answered.

  “Oh, you were awfully handsome in those days; you were handsome and I was pretty. Like a Dresden doll, people used to say. Like a—a Dresden doll. Oh, quite, quite different from you, Charlotte, quite different. I was very small and my bones were so delicate Daddy was always afraid of me falling and breaking one.” Her hands fussed with her hair. Charlotte saw that they had a spastic trembling, and the unpainted nails were bluish at the tips. “I never thought in those days that the world could be so cruel, so ugly and cruel and—it was a great shock to me when I found out, a great shock—a hell, a terrible hell—a . . .”

  “Gwen,” Lewis said.

  She turned and frowned at him. “You mustn’t interrupt me all the time. It’s not polite. One of the things Daddy taught me at home was never to interrupt. Oh, we used to have some sessions on manners, I can tell you! We’d go over and over things until I’d learned everything perfectly. Daddy would pretend that he was somebody like the Duke of Gloucester, say, and then he’d knock on the parlor door, rap, rap, rap, and say: ‘The Duke of Gloucester presents his compliments to Miss Gwendolyn Ann Marshall!’ . . . Lewis dear, isn’t that someone knocking at the front door?”

  “It’s only the wind,” Lewis said.

  “You’re quite mistaken. You’re always mistaken, Lewis. You don’t realize it but you’re always making . . .” She went to the front door and opened it and came back smiling, shaking her head. “Just as I said, it’s the wind. Lewis, you owe me an apology.”

  Lewis turned his face away. It was ghastly in the firelight, distorted, bloodless, like a wax mask found by a child and pinched and mauled beyond recognition.

  “Lewis, dear.”

  “Yes.”

  “You really should apologize. You’ve made another of your mistakes.”

  “I apologize.”

  “Well, you aren’t very gracious about it.”

  “I—for God’s sake, Gwen.”

  “And swearing at me in front of guests, that’s very vulgar.” She looked appealingly at Easter. “That man swore at me, too, that awful little man.”

  “Voss,” Easter said.

  “Voss, that’s it, that’s his name. I told him how vulgar it was to swear in front of a lady but he only laughed at me.”

  “Gwen,” Lewis said again. “Be quiet.”

  “I won’t be quiet.”

  “He’s a policeman.”

  “Well, I know he’s a policeman. I’m not stupid. I’m not afraid of him, anyway. I haven’t done anything wrong, except drive without my license.”

  “When did you drive without your license, Mrs. Ballard?” Easter asked, quietly.

  “Now, that’s childish, trying to trap me like that. I won’t tell you, so there.”

  The dog, Laddie, suddenly rose on his haunches. Without warning he pointed his nose in the air and began to howl, a terrifying, mournful sound that seemed to come, not from the dog’s throat but from the very origins of time. Twice he stopped to draw a new breath, and begin again; and when he had finished he slunk back into the hall as if in shame, his tail between his legs.

  The smile had vanished from Gwen’s face. “Someone has just died.” She sipped the cold, bitter syrup left in the bottom of her cup. “I’m glad it’s not me.”

  Charlotte glanced uneasily at Easter. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t even shifted his weight from one foot to another. He seemed satisfied to let Gwen continue talking while he picked out a fact here, a fact there, from her uneven flow of words.

  Charlotte went over to Easter and said in a hurried whisper, “She’s confused, irrational. Anything she says is . . .”

  “Let me handle this.”

  “I heard that, Charlotte,” Gwen cried. “I heard what you said.”

  “I was only . . .”

  “You said something about me. Well, I’ve got something to say about you, too.” She crossed the room towards Charlotte, with a slow graceful glide, as if she had suddenly remembered the times at home when she had walked with a book balanced on her head to im­prove her carriage.

  “You want to hear it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Trollop,” she said. “Trollop.”

  Lewis called her back. “Gwen. Please, Gwen.”

  “Please, Gwen. You keep out of this, lecher. A trollop and a lecher. A fine pair, aren’t they, Mr. Easter? And so clever at fooling poor old Gwen, so terribly clever that I’ve known all about the two of them for months and months. But I’ve had my revenges, little ones and big ones. Oh, when I think of the times Charlotte came here to attend me and I’d tell her how honest she was, how trustworthy, then I’d tell her all about Lewis. Her face—oh dear, it was really quite funny!”

  Charlotte had backed away quietly, leaving the two of them facing each other, Gwen, like a doll suddenly endowed with a voice and blurting out anything and everything that had been stored up in its stuffed head during the years of silence; and Easter, a giant by contrast, cunning, dispassionate.

  “And the big revenge?” he said.

  “Gwen,” Lewis said. “I warn you, anything you say now will be used . . .”

  “I . . .” She tossed her head contemptuously: “I don’t take advice from a lecher. The big revenge, well, don’t you think it was a big revenge, Mr. Easter?”

  “I’m not sure yet what it was or how you managed it.”

  “You can’t be very clever.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You could at least try to guess. You’ll never get ahead in your work if you don’t try.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Well, I should think so. Go on.”

  “My guess is that Violet came here last Monday afternoon to see your husband. She saw you instead.”

  “That’s right. You remember Violet, don’t you, Lewis?”

  Lewis didn’t look at her. “I—yes.”

  “Well, you should. She was carrying your baby, wasn�
��t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “Isn’t it funny, you gave her a baby but not me, not me, and I’m the one who wanted it!”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “There isn’t any baby now, is there, Lewis?”

  “No—no!”

  “And no Violet either. You and Charlotte killed her.”

  “No!”

  “Well, morally you did. I was only the instrument. You and Charlotte are the real murderers.”

  “Leave Charlotte out of it.”

  “Why should I? I put her in. I sent the girl to her. You hear that, Lewis? I sent her! I thought what a wonderful thing it would be to bring your two trollops together.”

  The room was cooling as the fire died.

  “Such a good idea, I thought. But it didn’t work out as I planned. I wanted Charlotte to find out what kind of man Lewis really was. And I wanted, too, for her to get rid of Violet’s baby, to spare me the disgrace and scandal of her bringing suit against Lewis, dragging my good name through the courts and the newspapers. But Charlotte refused. And that night after dinner Violet came back to me again. I was in the garden . . . Have you seen my garden, Mr. Easter?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “Very beautiful.” Flowers beaten to the ground, wind-stripped trees, broken cypress. “Was she alone when she came the second time?”

  “Two men drove her here in a car. The little one brought her across the lawn to where I was sitting on the swing. He said he was Violet’s uncle and he thought Violet and I should talk about terms while we were waiting for Lewis. That was the word he used—terms. He left her there with me. She began to cry. Tears don’t affect me anymore—I’ve cried too much myself—but I was kind to her. I was brought up to be kind to everyone, especially my inferiors.”

  “Did she mention money?”

  “No, I did. I asked her how much she’d take to leave town and never come back. She got hysterical then. She kept saying over and over again that Voss was trying to force her to take money but she didn’t want any money. All she wanted was to get rid of the baby, to be ‘ordinary’ again, she called it. She talked as if the baby was a terrible disease.”

  Charlotte remembered the scene Violet had made in her office, the way she’d struck her thighs with her fists and cried: “I’ll kill myself! . . . I don’t even want money. I only want to be the way I was before, with nothing growing inside me.”

  Gwen’s hands were fidgeting with the lace around her throat. “She asked to see Lewis, and when I said he wasn’t here she accused me of lying, of trying to protect him. I told her I wasn’t lying, that Lewis had gone on a fishing trip. She misunderstood what kind of fishing trip it was, and she threatened to go down to the wharf and wait for him. I said, ‘All right, I’ll go with you.’ ”

  “And you did,” Easter said.

  “I did? Yes, I must have. I don’t know how, though. Do you think we walked?”

  “It’s not far.”

  “Yes, I guess we walked. I’m not a very good driver. It was cold and foggy down there and there was a bad smell. ‘I can’t stand it,’ she kept saying, ‘I’ll kill myself.’ And she did. She did kill herself.”

  “No.”

  “She must have. I can’t remember.”

  “Try.”

  “I won’t try. I don’t want to remember. Lewis, Lewis, help me! Don’t let him make me remember! Lewis—Daddy!”

  “It’s all right.” Easter said. “You don’t have to remember if you don’t want to.”

  “I don’t?”

  “No. Forget Violet.”

  “Yes. Yes, I think I’ll forget all about her. She was an ignorant girl with no manners.”

  “You don’t mind remembering about Voss though, do you? You don’t like Voss. He swore at you.”

  “Yes, he did. He swore at me.”

  “You saw him again later that night?”

  “I think so. I think it was that night. He came to call for Violet, and I told him she was on her way home.” She rubbed her eyes. “I’m—I’m getting confused. I shouldn’t be telling you all this, should I? Lewis is looking at me funny. Stop, Lewis, stop looking at me like that.”

  “I—all right, Gwen,” Lewis said. “All right.”

  “You’re mad at me for borrowing your gun.”

  “No, I’m not, Gwen. You couldn’t help it.”

  “That’s right, I really couldn’t. There wasn’t any other gun and I had to have one to protect myself.”

  “Mrs. Ballard,” Easter said. “On Monday night when Voss came to get Violet, did he believe you when you told him she was on her way home?”

  “No. He said he’d been here earlier and when no one answered the door he drove around a little while, and then he—he saw me walking with Violet down towards the wharf. He said he waited and watched, and I came back alone. He accused me—he said bad things . . .”

  “That’s when you gave him money?”

  “I had to. All the money I had, the housekeeping money and the six hundred dollars I’d gotten on Saturday for the pair of blue merles I sold, and two rings and a necklace. He promised he’d keep quiet and go away and not come back.”

  “But he came back,” Easter said.

  “Yes, early this morning. Very early. It was still almost dark. Lewis hadn’t phoned or anything. I was worried and couldn’t sleep. I heard the car and looked out the window and saw them, Voss and the other man, walking across the driveway. I put on my shoes and coat, and then I went into Lewis’ study and got one of the guns and hid it in the pocket of my coat.

  “I went downstairs and opened the front door. I said, what do you want? And Voss said something new had come up, that he and Eddie needed more money so they could get out of the country for good. ‘We can’t talk here,’ I said, ‘Lewis is upstairs in bed, he’ll hear us.’ ”

  Charlotte looked across the room at Lewis, and she knew from the tragic regret in his eyes that his thoughts were like her own: he should have been upstairs in bed that early morning and he should have been at home when Violet first came. If he had been, all four of them would still be alive, still have a future, Eddie and Violet and Voss, and Gwen herself. For Gwen the road ahead was dark and twisted, with here and there a patch of light and an arrow pointing back, back, back to the gay parties, to Daddy and the teddy bear and the smiling French doll, back to the kinder years, further back, and further, until the end of the road was the beginning.

  “We went out to the car,” Gwen said. “Voss got in the front seat and the other one, Eddie, got in the back with me, and he drove out past the cemetery. Eddie laughed as we went past and said, ‘People are just dying to get in there.’ I laughed, too, and then I shot him, I shot him two or three times. Voss stopped the car. I told him I was going to shoot him, too. He asked me not to, but I did, anyway.”

  One of the dogs began to dream; tail twitched, paws moved in pursuit.

  “He was a little man, not much bigger than I am, but he was heavy. I put my hands under his armpits and pulled him over into the back on top of Eddie. Then I got behind the wheel and started the car. I thought of driving it over a cliff, but I didn’t want to kill myself because then who would look after the dogs? You understand?”

  Easter nodded. “Of course.”

  “Well, then I remembered that Charlotte was away, and I thought, what a clever idea to drive the car into her garage and leave it there. I thought how surprised she’d be when she came back. And you were surprised, weren’t you. Charlotte?”

  “Yes,” Charlotte said gravely. “Very surprised.”

  “I wish I’d been there to see your face. I’ve never liked your face anyway. Liar’s face. Trollop’s face. I’d like to split it open with a knife. I’d like to . . .”

  “Gwen,” Lewis said.

  She turned
to him. Her expression changed suddenly and completely. “Yes, Daddy?”

  “Remember your manners.”

  “I’ll try to, Daddy. Do forgive me for telling you the truth, Charlotte, trollop, please have another cup of tea, it’s quite fresh, refreshing and—I have a headache. I’m nervous. Lewis, I’m so nervous.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “People oughtn’t to make me nervous, ought they?”

  “No, Gwen.”

  “But they do. You must stop them.”

  “I will.” He went over to her and put his hands on her trembling shoulders.

  “You love me, Lewis?”

  “Yes.”

  “You always have?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you hate her, don’t you? You despise her. You hate her face. You’d like to split it open with a knife, wouldn’t you?”

  “Gwen—oh God.”

  “Say it.”

  “No.”

  “Say it.”

  “I—hate her.”

  “And her face, what would you like to do with it?”

  “Split—it open—with a knife.”

  “There. You see, Charlotte? Two against one. We just hate you, Lewis and I. Isn’t that right, Mr. Easter? Why, where’s Mr. Easter?”

  “He’s using the telephone,” Lewis said. “He had a call to make.”

  She held one of his hands against her cheek. “We don’t care, do we?”

  “No, Gwen.”

  “Why, it’s like old times. Carry me upstairs the way you used to.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Yes, now. I’m tired. I’ve danced all night.”

  He picked her up gently and carried her out into the hall. The tears that fell from his eyes lost themselves in her fading yellow curls. He went slowly up the stairs. She was tired—she had danced all night—and she fell asleep in his arms.

  The wind had vanished, as if a great hole had opened in the sky and all the winds in the world had been sucked up into the hole.

  Easter opened the wooden gate. The police had come and gone, the car had been driven away, and the glow of morning was in the East.

  “Goodbye, Charlotte.”

  “Goodbye.”