A Man of Forty

by Gerald Bullet

  “Yes,” said Lydia.

  “But, look here——” began Spencer.

  “Permit me, Mr. Spencer,” said Trewin, raising a forefinger. “ There’s still one little point you haven’t touched on, Mrs. Brome. You’ve told us when you killed him. You’ve told us why you killed him. But you haven’t told us how you killed him.”

  Lydia sat silent, with averted face. She knew she could not bear much more of this questioning. She wished passionately that they would take her away and lock her up without further talk. She had confessed : what more did they want? She wondered, with anguish, where David was at this moment; and with bitter self-reproach she wished she had spent those two hours, her last of hours of freedom, in finding out when the boats left for France, instead of inviting disaster by telephoning to Dr. Grove. In her heart she had known he was dead, hadn’t she? But no, it had been impossible to know, impossible not to hope there was still a chance, impossible to let him lie there untended. And these three impossibles had brought her to where she was, and might, unless she were very careful and cunning, have con-sequences even more disastrous.

  “You haven’t yet told us how you killed him,” Dr. Trewin repeated.

  “You must know that without being told,” she answered sullenly.

  “Nevertheless,” said Spencer, “ we should like you to tell us.”

  “Oh, why must you go on tormenting me?” Lydia cried. “ I’m tired to death.”

  “Let me help you to answer the question accurately,” said Trewin. “ Look, Mrs. Brome; Have you ever seen this before?”

  In the hand he held out to her lay a very neat, very bright little pistol : small enough to be carried conveniently in a lady’s handbag.

  Lydia stared : first at the pistol, then at Trewin.

  “Well?” said Trewin. “ Do you recognize it?”

  Lydia nodded. Her heartbeats thumped in her ears.

  “It is yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “And this is what you killed Mr. Swinford with?”

  “Yes,” said Lydia.

  “Dear me, dear me!” said Trewin. “ And no sign of a bullet-wound.”

  “What did you say?”

  Spencer took command again. “ The deceased wasn’t killed with a gun at all. Now look, Mrs. Brome, you’ve done your best, or your worst, and we’re not blaming you. But it’ll save a lot of trouble all round if you help me find your husband. We shall find him sooner or later, with or without your help. But you don’t want to be charged with being an accessory, I suppose?”

  “I don’t know why you should suppose that, Spencer,” said Trewin, with a bland smile, “ seeing that she’s done her best to be charged with being the principal.”

  Stevenage suddenly said : “ If you’ll take my advice, ma’am, you’ll answer no more questions.”

  “What I said about being charged as an accessory,” said Spencer, “ goes for you too, Stevenage, if you obstruct the police.”

  “Wives and husbands,” Stevenage continued, “ can’t be forced to give evidence against each other. That’s the law, that is.”

  “You read too many detective tales, my friend,” said Spencer sourly.

  “One too many for you, sir, I daresay,” agreed Stevenage.

  Lydia rose to her feet, as if to go. “ There’s one thing I’ll tell you about my husband. If I knew where he was I’d tell you that, but I don’t. If he’s not at home I don’t know where he is.”

  “Well, madam?” said Trewin.

  “Yes, there’s one thing I can tell you, and that’s this. He hasn’t been himself lately. I’ve been very anxious. I’m afraid he’s a little… unbalanced. Mentally, I mean.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Trewin soothingly. “ That’ll doubtless be the ultimate line of defence. It’s a point, you may be sure, that will be very carefully looked into, when the time comes.”

  But the time delayed its coming. Five days were to pass before David Brome could be found, and meanwhile——

  § 4

  It would be no bad thing, I feel, to insert here another chapter about Mrs. Parzloe at Bell Green : again washing up, again hearing a knock at the front door, again thinking that perhaps this was the bit of good news she was always vaguely expecting. To repeat that pattern, with significant variations, would serve to bring out Mrs. Parzloe’s special quality. A spirit of pleased expectation keeps her nimble and eager from day to day, and since it relates to nothing in particular, and so cannot suffer disappointment, it survives any number of disasters, small and large. Survives and will survive : I must make that clear, or the tender-hearted reader, if there is such a person in these days, will find her story intolerable. Intolerable it is, to the onlooker ; and bad enough, God knows, for Mrs. Parzloe herself; but she will live through it and remain inwardly unsmutched. She will descend into hell; she will suffer bewilderment and desolation; but being herself a wellspring of charity and humour she will not, after the first shock, be over-surprised at the lack of these things in others. Fifty years of seeing the funny side of things won’t make it funny to be sent to prison for doing a simple kindness to Lily Elver ; but the fun, grim or gay, of being alive so long, the what-d’you-call-it of being Katie Parzloe and having or not having Arthur for a husband and pretty proud Bertha for a daughter, has somehow deprived her of the power, if ever she had it, of bearing malice. She is safe, therefore, from the worst disaster, the poison in the mind ; and, frightened and forlorn though she must be, she’s not likely to take an overdose of self-pity.

  The visits of these two men, who have a cab outside in which they invite her to go with them to “ the station,” follows logically enough upon that other visit, the first of several that Lily Elver paid her. Lily paid her not only visits, alas, but small sums of money as well : very small sums indeed they were, as the prosecution, which perhaps didn’t much like its job, was the first to point out. (That was at the police court.) Mrs. Parzloe had a struggle to make ends meet, having the house to keep going and, apart from odds and ends of charing, only an occasional ill-paying or non-paying lodger to keep it going with ; Lily, on the other hand, earned, as she insisted, good money for her age ; and there were expenses which had to be met, including the cost of something which Counsel for the Crown, before Mr. Justice Rump, referred to as “ an instrument,” modestly lowering his voice as he uttered the sinister syllables. Sorry he really was, because with a plea of Guilty before him he had no interest in piling it on, and it was notorious that the ancient Rump, a venerable figure and a brilliant lawyer, with a mind beautifully tempered to impartiality in judgment of evidence, was yet a raw savage, demon-haunted and vindictively self-righteous, in his attitude to sex. But there it was in the Crown’s brief : no dodging it. All that the Crown could do, and did, was to say that the prisoner, whose previous character seemed to have been excellent, had made little or no attempt to prevent the crime being brought home to her, and that the young woman Elver had made a rapid and complete recovery.

  I don’t think there’s any point in telling the whole affair in detail : the investigation, the arrest, the charge, the committal, and all the incidentals. It would be impossible to do so without approaching the neighbourhood of the not quite nice. Lily herself was a prude where print was concerned : she liked her fiction guaranteed free from any infection of reality. She was profoundly grateful, however, to Mrs. Parzloe. In fact, Lily’s gratitude was Mrs. Parzloe’s undoing. Afterwards, when she heard what had happened, she blamed herself bitterly for giving Edith that letter to post, though she couldn’t in reason have been expected to know that Edith Camshaw had a secret mission to extirpate sin from the earth. Sin, for poor Edith, meant always sex. She had, I suppose, her own reasons for equating the two ; but those reasons would be largely hidden from herself, and I should get no thanks for probing into them. In this matter she was at one with Mr. Justice Rump. He, better than most, and better far than the police, who at first showed little eagerness to act on her information, would have understood her moti
ve and applauded her punitive zeal. He believed, as she did, that only by continual hacking at the root of all evil could life be kept in a state of passable decency. What the Rumps and the Camshaws feel on this point follows logically, or pathologically, from what they are.

  Yes, it would be both dreary and painful to tell the story in detail. Nor could I bear to dwell on Mrs. Parzloe’s feelings : her childlike surprise, her fears, her foolish hopes, her idiotic confidence that since she hadn’t meant any harm, and in fact hadn’t done any, not to say harm, she would be let off with a good talking-to. Not that that wasn’t bad enough : a person couldn’t help feeling the disgrace of it and the loneliness, could they? But she could face that, since she’d got to. What she couldn’t at once bring herself to face were the alternatives or additions to a good talking-to. It never occurred to her that the magistrate wouldn’t dispose of the whole business, one way or the other : and when they told her she had got to stay in prison until the time came for her to go through it all in another court, and before a judge this time they said (trying, not unkindly, to make it sound like a treat), she did, there’s no denying it, cry a little. She stood hunched up in a corner of her cell and cried to herself, quietly for the most part, but with an occasional little half-stifled squeak such as you may hear from small children in a similar plight. However, it was soon over. “ Just look at me!” she said. There was no one to look at her just then. She was alone, and likely to be so for some time. Well never say die. Maybe things’ll come right in the end. If it wasn’t for the disgrace to Bertha… she’ll take it hard, Bertha will.

  She was grateful to everybody for not being unkind to her, and she was grateful beyond measure to the young man who undertook to defend her. Such a nice gentleman he was, not at all cross, though she wasn’t paying him a penny piece. Cautious though he was in what he promised her, it was his cheerfulness, you might almost call it breeziness, that fortified her silly, stubborn hope. With one like him to speak for her, it was as good as certain that the judge would understand, and let her off with a caution. And so it seemed, when the moment came. With a wardress each side of her she ascended the stairs that emerged suddenly, dramatically, into the middle of the court-room, into the wide dock. And there, opposite, was the judge in his scarlet. And there, below, facing the jury-box on her left, was a handsome, severe young man in wig and gown whom she recognized, but only just, as nice Mr. Robinson. And another, rather like him but older, sat on the same seat with him, side by side. She stood as straight as she could ; trapped now, and trembling ; very glad of the presence of those nice wardresses. A third bewigged personage, at a word from the judge, told her she might sit down ; and then one of the high-up ones, not Mr. Robinson, was on his feet and telling the judge all about her. Tears came into her eyes as she listened to him, so kind he was, never a harsh word.

  After him, came Mr. Robinson, to say how sincerely sorry she was, to repeat and emphasize what had already been said of her good character, to point out that the lamentable crime had been committed not for gain but from a mistaken idea of kindness, to stress the fact that Miss Elver was physically (he would not say morally) none the worse for her experience, and to submit, with great respect, that the prisoner having already suffered much in distress of mind, and spent some little time in custody, this was a case in which his lordship might consider it proper, and consistent with his duty, to decide that she had already been sufficiently punished for a crime which he, Counsel, it went without saying, did not for a moment attempt to excuse in itself but haying regard to the comparatively innocent intention, or rather, to put it another way, to the absence of any mercenary motive, he did venture to urge… and so on and so on.

  Perhaps he said too much. But whatever he had said or not said would have made no difference. “ In view of what learned counsel has urged on your behalf,” said Rump, “ I am going to be very lenient with you, very lenient indeed. You will go to prison for twelve months.” He said much more than that, though it hurt him to speak of a crime so abominable ; but that was the conclusion of the matter. Twelve months.

  This, you understand, is looking some way ahead. These things won’t happen till some weeks after the Brome-Swinford business is finished and packed up. But she haunts me, Mrs. Parzloe does, standing there in the dock, listening to that judicial exordium, and even now, silly woman, hardly believing what she hears. Yes, she has to stand up to hear her sentence; and for two seconds she remains standing, very stiff and still, with a puzzled look in her eyes, before being taken down below. No good arguing with the old turkey-cock : she knows that. She can’t help wishing Bertha could have come—to see her off like. Or Lily, for that matter. But you couldn’t hardly have expected it. Twelve months. It’s a longish time.

  “Come along, dear,” whispers the wardress, touching her elbow.

  § 5

  Neither threats nor promises, both equally empty, could persuade Lydia to make any further statement. She had good reason to suppose that she had been the first person to see Adam Swinford dead, and she was afraid that anything she admitted might somehow help to incriminate David. There was nothing for it, then, but to arrest her on a charge of complicity in a murder by a person at present unknown. But even this did not get the true story from her : how, arriving at Adam’s flat after watching her husband off the premises, she had got no response to her knocking and ringing, and had finally entered with the latchkey which Adam himself had given David, and forgotten about, a year ago. The sight of Adam lying apparently dead on the floor came so pat to its cue, seemed so plainly the fulfilment of a fear she had only half entertained, as to send her hurrying from the place with but one idea in her mind, that David must not be caught.

  How could she, who had known David so long, believe him capable of murder? She couldn’t and she didn’t. Of David as she knew him, the supposition was monstrous ; but the man she thought he had become, the demon that must have possessed him since Adam’s treachery, and Mary’s complaisance, of what was he not capable? She, who by now knew something of demons, had only to look into her own heart for the answer. But, going distractedly through the streets, she tried to persuade herself that perhaps even now it was not too late, that perhaps Adam was still alive, merely unconscious—drunk, drugged, or stunned. And once that hope had effected an entrance to her mind, she could not resist it, but must put it at once to the proof, without waiting to consider the rashness of her plan.…

  Lydia’s arrest, carefully advertised in the press, brought David back to London, and to a series of strenuous interviews with the police.

  Where had he been? He had been staying at a farmhouse on Exmoor. Why had he gone there instead of going home? To think things out.

  To think out the consequences of Adam Swinford’s death? No : he had been unaware of Adam Swinford’s death.

  What had been the nature of his interview with Swinford? A conversational nature.

  Had the conversation been satisfactory? No : it had been maddening.

  Had it ended with hard words? No.

  Could Mr. Brome briefly describe Swinford’s demeanour during the conversation? Yes : insolently sympathetic.

  When Mr. Brome had attacked Swinford, had Swinford offered resistance or had he been taken unawares? He had not attacked Swinford.

  Did he seriously expect them to believe that? He did not expect them to believe anything reasonable, because he supposed them (he said) to have been born stupid : otherwise they would not have accused his wife.

  Had his wife known that he had gone to stay at a farmhouse on Exmoor? He could not answer for what his wife knew.

  “Now, Mr. Brome, be good enough to cast your mind back…”

  And so on and so on. Let’s leave them to it.

  § 6

  Edith Camshaw, like Lily, lived on the top floor of a tall building ; and, again like Lily, she lived alone. There the resemblance ended, however : Miss Camshaw’s three rooms, separate entrance, and immunity from near and noisy neighbours, had made Lily’s
quarters-one room and a fifth share in a lavatory—seem meagre indeed. Edith, who had never seen Lily’s habitat, had a perhaps exaggerated idea of its meanness and squalor, and for that reason or another had longed to have the girl live here, with her. It had been a dearly cherished project which she had never, as things turned out, brought herself to the point of mentioning; and she recalled it now, this summer evening, recalled it with a curious bitterness as she stood by her bedroom window looking down into the street below. I could have made her happy here, she thought. But not now : that’s all over. Adam Swinford’s death had profoundly affected her ; had changed the direction of her life ; had created a problem of which she had been seeking the solution ever since. That solution was now, she believed, within her reach. She had been unable to resist following, so far as she could, the police investigation ; and, after interviewing Stevenage at Orkney House, had even gone to the length of getting in direct touch with officialdom, in the person of Spencer. It was seven o’clock on the evening after David Brome’s return to town, and David himself was among the three guests whose arrival she was how looking forward to, the other two being Stevenage and Spencer himself. From where she stood she could have seen, had she turned to glance through the half-open door, the glasses and the decanter of sherry set out on a table in the other room; but she remained looking fixedly down, staring at a distant street, until roused by the front-door bell. At the sound of that she turned quickly, and, before answering the door, tried a smile on, glancing at herself in the dressing-table mirror.

  She carried her smile to the door. “ Good evening! How kind of you to come!”

  They all trooped in, and stood about, hats in hand. There was a fourth man, David’s solicitor. Not one of the four had a very clear idea of what to expect from this odd woman ; and three of them were wondering by what magic she had persuaded Spencer to come dancing attendance on her like this. David Brome was momentarily puzzled by another question : had he, or had he not, seen her before? He paid small attention to it, however; for the present scene, though much might depend on it, was not yet quite real to him, so deeply absorbed was he still by the thought of Lydia and what Lydia had done. He saw, he had seen from the first, how like Lydia it was, both in its gallantry and in its slightly embarrassing excess of… of what? (He would not or could not name the quality.) It was like her to be willing to die for him, and it was like her (but he would not think so far as this) to act on a sudden heroic impulse and have her plan miscarry. It was like her to be willing to die yet unwilling to let him go freely to another woman. And not like her only : it was uncomfortably like himself and everybody else. That’s how were made, God help us ; and until we can in some sense die and be born again ... He was now sharply aware, more sharply than ever before, of being bound to Lydia in an indissoluble bond : not (he thought) by duty, and not by desire, but by something more inward than the one and more enduring than the other. Perhaps it was nothing more or less than habit fortified by conscience ; but whatever it was it made it intolerable to him that Lydia should have been persecuted (for what else can you call it? he demanded angrily) by these blundering policemen : persecuted, threatened, put in fear of her life. His heart ached with the thought of her terror and loneliness, that loneliness of spirit to which he more than any other had condemned her ; and the intolerable radiance of Mary became dim in his mind. Lydia, inconvenient but undeniable fact, was his wife : she was almost himself. Mary was nothing—an irrelevance.