Nell Alone

by Jennie Melville

  ‘I don’t think he knows where his allegiance lies.’ Nell was studying her victim’s face.

  ‘He’ll do what I tell him.’

  ‘I doubt that. But you can try.’

  ‘My God, I hate you both,’ said the man from his position between them.

  ‘Yes, I am afraid you do,’ said Nell sadly.

  ‘He’s not going to hate me and get away with it,’ interrupted Mrs Richier. ‘You’re just like your sister. Both of you ready to lie down and die.’

  ‘Only you thought it was love,’ went on Nell, ignoring Mrs Richier’s aggression, and continuing to face her brother-in-law, ‘ and perhaps, for you, they are the same thing.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ put in Mrs Richier.

  ‘I am going to give you the chance to show what you really are,’ said Nell, fixing her gaze on the man.

  ‘I can’t forget what you said you would do to me.’

  ‘I could do nothing to you if you were strong and good in your own right.’

  ‘Who is that strong and good?’ asked Mrs Richier.

  Nell still ignored her. She herself was purged of the fury and desire to punish which had consumed her.

  ‘I believe you are as much a victim as my sister. You are not a wicked man. I want to help you.’

  ‘Don’t listen to her,’ Mrs Richier shouted.

  Her son turned his head irresolutely from one to the other.

  ‘I need to help you,’ said Nell passionately.

  ‘She’s a savage,’ said his mother. ‘You know she is. I was just outside the door when she was telling you what she’d do to you. I heard.’

  Nell and her brother-in-law looked at each other.

  ‘What you must do now is to go to the police and tell them everything,’ she said. ‘ I will go with you.’

  ‘She means to get you one way, if she can’t another,’ pointed out Mrs Richier.

  Outside it was still raining and the temperature was dropping. Abel had stopped watching and gone home. Even he took some sleep. He would be back again. Within the room it had got very hot and this affected them all in different ways. The man started to sweat, Mrs Richier grew red in the face and breathed more rapidly, but Nell grew white, a wave of dizziness passed over her. She fought it off; in this nightmare she could not afford to weaken.

  ‘It is urgently necessary you get treatment,’ said Nell to the man.

  ‘If you go off now with your mother you will never be a whole man again.’

  ‘You can leave him to me,’ said Mrs Richier. ‘There are other doctors, other countries.’

  Nell shrugged and looked at her former patient. ‘ Well?’

  ‘She’s trying to divide us,’ said Mrs Richier.

  ‘You are already divided.’

  ‘I don’t know why I don’t just go to this window and scream for help,’ cried Mrs Richier.

  ‘I do,’ said Nell, with a little laugh. She took a quick look at Mrs Richier’s bandaged hands; they looked stiff and painful enough, there wouldn’t be much strength in them, but the rest of her frame was powerful. Her son would certainly not find it easy to keep erect but his hands and arms were immensely strong. His exercises lately had strengthened them. How could he keep himself from killing again if she once let herself get within his grasp?

  ‘You ought to ask yourself exactly who she is trying to protect,’ Nell suggested. ‘I am not so foolish as to think you disposed of my sister’s body without help. She helped you. And since then she has been getting rid of my sister’s possessions. Of her clothes and her bags. That was how you burnt your hands, wasn’t it?’ She gave Mrs Richier a direct look. ‘ The police are going to ask who had access to that warehouse. They can trace you through it.’

  ‘I took the lease on two rooms in that place years ago and under another name,’ said Mrs Richier. ‘Now I’ve even lost the key. Nothing will be traced to me that way.’ She sounded very sure, and Nell thought she was probably right.

  ‘Tell your mother to go back downstairs,’ said Nell to her former prisoner. ‘If you wish to do what is right tell your mother to go away, and leave the rest to me. Sit quite still,’ she commanded. ‘Sit still.’

  ‘Stand up,’ screamed his mother. ‘I’m telling you to stand up.’

  He sat there for what seemed a very long minute and Nell thought she was sure of victory. Then, very very slowly, he rose to his feet.

  With that movement Nell knew she had lost. He had been her prisoner, now she was theirs.

  Probably no victim ever believes that the minute for departure has come. In every heart, however doomed, a little flicker of hope may stay alight. The rope round the condemned man’s neck may break, the trap not fall, the bomb may fail to explode, the waves may calm. So Louise must have faced her last minute of life. When the hands were round her neck had she believed in it then? It was much more likely that she had died without knowing what had happened to her.

  Nell found she simply did not believe they could harm her. Her reason told her that it was highly likely she would soon go the way of her sister but she did not see it happening.

  ‘You hardly look pretty now, my dear,’ said Mrs Richier. ‘But you do look very like your sister. I never saw the resemblance so carefully before. I thought she might make him a good wife, and goodness knows he needed someone, but I never expected him to go away and marry her. I knew no more of it than you did. People are inclined to be secretive about marriages, I’ve noticed it before. I’ve been married three times myself and I was never too public about it any time. But I soon found them both.’

  ‘I remember now,’ said her son in a loud voice. ‘You were there the night Louise,’ his voice faltered, ‘ the night Louise …’ He closed his eyes and then opened them very wide and round. ‘I can see you there.’

  ‘I have to protect him,’ said Mrs Richier, she said it almost pleadingly to Nell. ‘You can see that, can’t you?’

  Nell found silence wisest.

  ‘Having gone so far I can hardly draw back,’ said Mrs Richier. ‘And in a way you have laid yourself open to retaliation, haven’t you?’

  ‘You’d better ask your son what he is remembering,’ said Nell. ‘I see he is remembering a lot.’

  ‘It’s sad really,’ continued Mrs Richier. ‘ One doesn’t really plan to hurt people or blunder into it like I’ve heard people say. It just suddenly becomes the next inevitable step. You can no more stop it than you can stop taking your next breath. Or only by stopping your next breath if I can put it like that.’

  ‘That would be one method,’ said Nell.

  ‘But not for me. I must go on living.’

  ‘Is that a threat?’

  ‘I’ve given a lot of thought to what I should do.’

  ‘What can you do?’ asked Nell in a tone of deliberate contempt. ‘You are old and lame.’

  ‘Everyone must follow their own trade,’ said Mrs Richier politely. ‘You did. You were a witch doctor. I am a magician. I shall make you disappear.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  It had been a long day for Jordan and it was a long day for the girls. They had been to the theatre, witnessed the rehearsal, and fallen deeply in love with the leading actor. Unfortunately, love had made them quarrelsome.

  ‘Of course, he’s revoltingly ugly,’ said Charlotte. ‘That scar down his chin!’ And she gave a delighted shudder.

  ‘Oh, that was just for the part,’ said Amabel in a know-all sort of way.

  ‘Certainly it’s real. He’s had a terribly bitter sort of life. Everybody knows that. It’s written all over him.’

  ‘Yes, he makes a cult of it, doesn’t he? All the same, he’s pretty successful now. I think he could forget it. But I suppose it has its uses.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ demanded Charlotte.

  ‘There’s no denying it attracts some women.’

  ‘I shan’t speak to you, Amabel, until you’re nicer.’ Charlotte dropped ten years of her age in her anger and reverted to the speech of their childhoo
d. The two of them had fought and struggled their way through kindergarten, bitter enemies, and it was only in the last two years they had recognised they were twin souls.

  ‘Oh you silly girl,’ said Amabel sourly. On the whole she was in the worse temper of the two. But then she was bearing the shame of her reaction to the actor, which had horrified her, whereas Charlotte was not ashamed at all and would have enjoyed a long gossipy conversation on the subject.

  Charlotte did not answer, but just pranced along, not speaking to her friend as she had said she would.

  Amabel was unhappy as well as cross, but nothing could make Charlotte unhappy for long. She could always change into another person and either enjoy her sorrow or forget it. However, she was naturally a talkative person and she certainly found her silence a strain.

  ‘Amabel,’ she began, as they turned into their own road.

  ‘Thought you weren’t talking.’

  ‘I’m not a sulky person,’ said Charlotte grandly.

  Amabel gave a hoot of laughter, but she too was anxious to make up, so she said hastily: ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Miss Hilton is attractive in the same sort of way, isn’t she? I suppose you could call it glamour. I wonder what it is?’

  ‘I think, in her face, there’s a kind of mystery about her,’ said Amabel thoughtfully. ‘There’s something one doesn’t quite understand. A secret.’

  ‘Will we ever know what it is? Do other people except us notice it?’

  Amabel shrugged. ‘ I don’t know. I wouldn’t dare discuss it with my parents. My father said that my intense interest in the lives of my neighbours gives him acute embarrassment and he’d rather not be aware of it.’ She quoted her parent with relish, making that mild man seem much sharper than he ever was.

  ‘We’ve never really found out very much, have we?’ said Charlotte regretfully. ‘ Not even very much about Mrs Richier. I mean, it was all fantasy, really, wasn’t it? She can’t be a criminal or an enemy spy, can she?’

  ‘She was worth watching.’

  ‘Yes, of course she was, and I don’t say it hasn’t been interesting. I believed in it too. For a while.’

  ‘You believed in it last night. And this morning.’

  ‘Well not exactly. I believe I was only playing.’

  They had reached the house where Nell Hilton lived and stood staring up at it. There was no sign of movement.

  ‘Are they both ill?’ questioned Charlotte.

  ‘The milk bottle is gone,’ said Amabel. ‘ So Mrs Richier is about anyway.’

  The house looked quite ordinary. True, all the windows were shut and on the upper floor all the curtains remained drawn but no particular notice would be taken of this in the quiet city street. Except for Amabel and Charlotte most people preferred to pretend their neighbours did not exist.

  The imaginative Charlotte continued to stare. ‘I’d hate to be shut up in there for ever and unable to get out.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be,’ said Amabel.

  ‘No. I don’t think you would. But someone might. Imagine walking round the house for ever, beating your hands against the walls, the windows, trying to attract attention and always failing.’

  ‘You’d be a ghost,’ said Amabel.

  ‘A kind of a ghost. You might not need to be dead.’

  ‘It couldn’t happen,’ cried Amabel, aghast.

  ‘I hope not,’ said Charlotte, wrenching her eyes from the window, ‘but imagine if it did.’

  They walked slowly on side by side, quarrels forgotten. The air was lighter and dryer, the rain had stopped about two hours ago and a light wind had got up.

  That night Charlotte had a nightmare in which she dreamt that she was walking endlessly up and downstairs in Miss Hilton’s house, wringing her hands and weeping. Awake, she would have remarked tartly that it was all very Gothic; asleep, she was terrified. Her parents had to come into her room and soothe her. They all wondered if she could have been disturbed by Amabel next door. But by the time she had the dream, Amabel was staring into the dark, living in her own nightmare.

  Abel and Jordan Neville had stayed together for some time, talking, discussing in a desultory manner many subjects. Perhaps, after all, in other circumstances they could have made a friendship of it. Then they too parted, Jordan to go to his flat and eat a solitary meal and Abel to go to his suburban home. He did in fact have a wife and a child and, as Jordan had suspected, he was very fond of them although he didn’t see much of them. Nor did he stay at home long now. He ate his supper without much talk, then kissed his wife good-bye and looked in at his child, who was asleep. Before leaving he spoke shortly to his wife.

  ‘Is that child all right?’

  ‘Certainly he is,’ She sounded indignant.

  ‘He sleeps so much.’

  ‘He’s only little.’

  ‘But I never see him awake.’

  ‘You’re never home,’ she retorted, helping him on with his raincoat. If you are going to go out and you’re not sure when you will come back it is always wisest to wear a raincoat. Anyway Abel did.

  ‘No.’ He adjusted his coat. ‘At his age I was bilingual.’

  ‘You could say mamma in French and English.’ She buttoned up his coat and kissed his cheek. ‘All right, you were a hard-working little boy. You’re still hard-working. So what?’

  ‘I’m going to see a man who I think can get me into a house I ought to get into.’

  ‘He has a key?’

  ‘I think he has a sort of key. But I think I will have to persuade him to let me use it.’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t understand. But why should I?’

  ‘We have a dead woman to identify. She was strangled. I believe I know who she is. She was carrying a letter. I think she was just carrying it around, it wasn’t addressed to her but she knew the person it was meant for. I don’t know exactly how she got hold of it – I don’t think it’s important. I did once, but now I think she just had it on her when she died. The letter is not important in itself.’

  ‘Did the person to whom the letter was addressed kill her?’

  ‘No. I thought so for a while. But now – no. The medical evidence is that the span of the hands that strangled the woman was wide. Only one hand killed her. Fantastic, isn’t it? So it was a man.’

  ‘The man you are going to see?’

  ‘That’s an idea, isn’t it? But again, no. I don’t think so. He’s in love with the girl I want to find. He’s in love with her. That’s my key, you see.’

  ‘Yes.’ His wife sounded doubtful. Abel frequently had this effect on her. She loved him but did not understand him. ‘Why do you want the girl?’

  ‘She had something on her mind. In a murder case that’s always worth investigating. But she’s not to be spoken to. She’s missing.’ He tasted the word to see if the flavour suited him and gave a little nod as if it did.

  ‘So you are going to her house?’

  ‘If a person is missing then it is always wise to search the house. She’s not missing in that sense, though, she’s been seen at a window.’

  Abel left his house on foot, walked to the end of the road and then caught a bus into the city. From a call-box he telephoned Jordan.

  ‘Abel speaking.’

  ‘I recognised you,’ Jordan sounded unwelcoming. Once was enough for one evening. ‘ Where are you?’

  ‘Across the road. If I had better eyesight I could see you replying.’

  ‘You’ve got splendid vision. But you couldn’t see me replying, the ’phone’s behind a door.’

  Abel laughed.

  ‘Come across and meet me, will you?’

  ‘I’m working.’

  ‘So am I.’

  ‘Have you got something to tell me? Hard news?’ asked Jordan, his anxiety biting into him like a knife.

  ‘Come across the road and meet me, will you? I’ll be waiting.’ Abel put down the telephone. He went and stood beneath a tree and waited.

  There was a dark figu
re wandering about in the bushes by the road when Amabel looked out.

  Unlike her friend Charlotte she had not gone early to bed to sleep and then to dream, she was still up and dressed and sitting by her window. She remained in a bad mood. Growing up goes by fits and starts, there’s nothing inevitable or regular about it; the one sure thing is that it seems to be irreversible. If you make it at all, you can’t go back on it. Amabel was now one stage of development ahead of her friend Charlotte, and Charlotte might never catch up. What had happened to her was that she had taken a sharp look into her own character and it had surprised her. There were things she had not suspected; it was like suddenly discovering you had a tail or a third eye. She also saw that she was not, as she had thought and as Charlotte still thought, somehow a little apart from the rest of the human race. Now she knew she was part of it and subject to the same laws and limitations. She had never previously believed this, and even now the truth came hard. A great hole had been blown in her conception of herself and a cold wind was blowing through her character. She had wanted to be an intensely secret person, all herself, and she now saw she just stood in a crowd.

  She heard Charlotte’s nightmare and remained unmoved by it. Somehow it was in Charlotte’s character that tonight she should have a nightmare and in hers that she should not.

  Amabel looked out of the window of her bedroom. She was alone in the house. Her parents were at the theatre; they trusted completely in the good sense of their Amabel. Perhaps they would never do so again.

  For a moment Amabel did not believe the shape she saw was real. It was an illusion, an effect of light and shade. Then it moved into a patch of shadow that was nearer the street lamp and she saw it was unmistakably human. Anyway it had legs and arms and a head. Yesterday Amabel would probably have given a prudent shrug and stayed where she was, but today’s Amabel, who probably had a little more love in her than the old one, thought it might be Nell and went running down to the garden to see.

  She ran a few yards down the road and then went into the garden of the house where Nell lived. The house was still dark and quiet. A tall figure came unsteadily towards her. She saw at once it was not Nell but a man. He walked as if his feet were sore.