Kathy sat on the stairs and observed Emily through the window. Both she and Robert were completely silent. Still.
‘I always knew we should have trouble with the neighbours,’ she found herself thinking ridiculously. There was a biscuit crumb in her pocket and she rolled it over and over in her fingers. Kathy tried to draw into herself as she sat there. When she was a little girl at school and something unpleasant happened, and after all unpleasant things sometimes happened even to good, neat, quiet, clean, well-behaved little girls of seven, Kathy drew into herself and tried to pretend it wasn’t her that was sitting at the desk getting shouted at. It wasn’t easy at first but she got so skilful in the end that the look of innocent surprise was almost genuine. In the last twenty years or so Kathy hadn’t altogether given up the process, although one of the penalties of growing up was that it got harder and harder to disassociate yourself from unpleasant things. She tried to do it now. Kathy was not here, Kathy was away, Kathy was free. ‘Come on, up, Kathy, up,’ she muttered as if trying to mount an imaginary horse. But it was no use. Her spirits did not lift. Somehow the solid presence of Robert sitting there morosely prevented escape.
In silence she watched Emily circling the house, Emily looked dishevelled and awkward in a blue cotton overall and pink jersey. Another baby, thought Kathy, when it was clear she couldn’t manage this one. But in spite of the criticism her heart warmed as it always did to Emily’s earnest intent face. She was torn by opposing impulses. She wanted to be on good terms with Emily, to be Emily’s best friend, but she couldn’t face Emily’s diagnostic stare.
She saw her disappear, then appear again. She felt the vibrations when Emily tried the back door, and saw the handle move when she turned the front door handle.
It was only when Emily had gone that Kathy realised: if Emily couldn’t get in, then neither could she get out.
Emily had planted her son in his father’s surprised arms and had mounted her bicycle and was now pedalling grimly down towards the centre of Deerham Hills. Before leaving she had had a short conversation with her husband.
‘I knew the situation, I tell you. It’s a clear case. She’s the type that’s born to get done in. If she had a young man he’d be after her money, if she had a husband he’d murder her. I know what Kathy’s like, timid …’
Here her husband interrupted. ‘Kathy’s not timid. Take it from me, Kathy’s not timid.’
‘Oh, with men, I meant,’ said Emily irritably. ‘She’s hypnotised. Like a rabbit. Can’t save herself. He’ll kill her.’
‘I doubt,’ Jim said solidly, ‘I doubt it.’
And Emily shot off, ignoring her husband’s cry about his work.
Tab the cat had marched into the house as Emily left. He was pepperish and was stalking round the house, upstairs and downstairs, calling in his high unsteady voice. He did this when feeling hysterical. No one ever knew what angered him on these occasions.
His master sat down unhappily, his son on his knee. He was trying to write a novel in his spare time and had promised himself a happy morning on the typewriter. Now, there was little prospect of peace, let alone solitude, with Emily on the rampage and Tab climbing all over the house showing the flag.
Chapter Twelve
For the first time in the whole of this episode Kathy was really afraid for Kathy. She understood that what she had thought of as a nightmare, from which she could emerge into the world Kathy knew, was the reality: and what she had thought of as the reality no longer existed. It had been killed. Largely, she had to admit, by her own act.
She knew now that Robert was determined to destroy her. He was doing so on behalf of Mumsy and Janet. He was utterly on their side and he probably always had been.
But no, she knew there had been a moment earlier when she could have swung Robert to her side, but she had not done so.
There had been one episode when Robert had made his abortive overture to her. That it was abortive was her own fault. He met her at the station one winter afternoon, this winter, it was not so long ago. It was a chance meeting. They were both in odd moods; Kathy had had a triumph, a stupendous sale, a personal compliment from the buyer, and a glass of port: Robert had been to a business lunch and smelt of brandy and cigar smoke: one way and another they were both just a little bit uninhibited. They were such a closed-in couple that it was a surprise to them both. Robert suggested a stop at the Deerham Hills Penguin Club. Kathy went to the club at infrequent intervals. She was not a member, no one had ever suggested she join, and she hadn’t the nerve herself. Occasionally she had gone, carefully made-up, with her best fur wrap and her hair newly set and wearing a cocktail dress, with a group of the other business ‘girls,’ or with a youngish married couple, determinedly in, but not quite of the gathering. The Club then to Kathy spelt Life and Society and being a success and therefore was slightly frightening. It was probably the fact that she was wearing her Russian squirrel cape (although she had her blue raincoat rolled up under her arm) that enabled her to say ‘Yes.’ – More, to give a little chuckle, and say ‘I’m thirsty.’ If Robert felt surprised, he kept it to himself. But it must have given him courage because presently he put his arm round her waist. Kathy thought he was skipping a step or two, but she said nothing, only leaned back on it gently. Three champagne cocktails or so later they went out into the car. It was quite dark. Kathy’s physical education had been sadly neglected, almost omitted really, and although she was ready, even anxious that he should kiss her, she had no intention of going further without a declaration of policy. She let Robert’s hand slide deliciously down her back. He saw the blue raincoat. ‘See you brought your ground-sheet with you,’ he joked.
‘You think that’s why I brought it?’ Kathy could hardly get the words out. She was repelled. ‘What sort of person do you think I am? Why, I couldn’t go home to myself.’
‘It’s what we all have to come home to,’ said Robert, starting the car.
But Kathy had stepped out with dignity, gathering her squirrel round her shoulders and departed, leaving the blue raincoat curled up in the back.
Later on Robert, hurt and angry, because after all he had meant so much less than the inexperienced Kathy had guessed, met Harry Burton and they went for a drink at the Penguin Club and saw the raincoat and a lot of things started.
When they both met again, they both acted as if it hadn’t happened, although Kathy experienced a slight disappointment. It froze any real relationship between them although a little tenderness remained on Robert’s part and a good deal of fantasy on Kathy’s. She buried the one Robert who had shown disconcerting signs of a life of his own and conceived a new one who had carried on alive until this very day and whose only fault had been that he was trusting, but who was upright, go ahead, enterprising and only too good for Janet. Now she looked at the stocky young business man and knew she had a third Robert on her hands. A Robert made up of all the others, who was even more intractable, and who was the agent for Mumsy and Janet.
She could see the back of Robert’s head. She felt no anger with Robert. In a way she liked him more, was finally in love with him. She knew now that he was capable of decisive, even terrible action. It had dispelled her doubts that he was not a man.
Robert was slumped in his chair which he had drawn into the hall. It looked odd to see a great red overstuffed armchair dragged out into the little white hall and a man sitting there like a warder. Odd that is, if you didn’t know the circumstances of the house. But by now the whole home shrieked that something was very wrong there. Bad things had been planned and done.
At her desk she made a neat packet of all her loose money, her insurance policy, made out to Mumsy, her will, her father’s will, and the newspaper cutting about Mumsy and Charlie Fox. They represented what she called in her own mind evidence relating to Mumsy. There was nothing there about Janet, and yet in a way, she doubted if anything would have happened if it hadn’t been for Janet. Pretty little Janet, maddening little Janet, wicked little Jan
et who must have gay clothes and lots of fun and holidays. Nothing had ever galled Kathy more than Janet’s no doubt quite unconscious little air that she was the girl and Kathy the old maid: there was only seven years between them. If Janet could have held out the hand of friendship to Kathy they could have got on fine, gone to parties together, gossiped, washed their hair together and worn each other’s clothes, but no, Janet’s hair curled naturally and she was nothing of a giggler. Mumsy giggled all right, but who wanted to giggle about the colour of Mumsy’s hair-dye? Thirty isn’t old, thought Kathy, tears welling up in her eyes, thirty isn’t old. It didn’t look as though there would be thirty-one.
Her hands were mechanically sorting and ordering her desk: it had fallen into something of a muddle these last days. Nothing she had ever been able to do or say had been able to keep Mumsy and Janet entirely out of her desk (not that Janet wrote many letters), and she was irritably aware that Mumsy’s plump little fingers had been fidgeting with a letter here and there. Nothing could convince Mumsy that a desk was not a public piece of property like a newspaper or persuade Kathy that it wasn’t as personal as a toothbrush.
Underneath the big paperweight of a snow scene of a bedraggled little church which had belonged to the first Mrs Birley and suited her melancholy temperament, was a small fold of papers. Letters written on blue paper. Curious letters, not typed but carefully printed. Kathy stared down at them; she stared down at them, it had to be admitted, with pleasure. No one knew she had these letters, or, as they more accurately were, copies of letters. The letters themselves had gone off, declaring their message, made it, she hoped public property. It would be a mistake to believe that the writers of anonymous letters do not wish to own their authorship, as very often they would like to cry it to the skies. Kathy would have adored to do this, she was proud of them, but sent out by themselves these accusations of hers had a mysterious urgency: backed up in person by Kathy they would appear, paradoxically enough, sadly lacking in reality. Kathy knew that they were not true, you see, and this would come peeping through. She knew that Mumsy and Janet had not really poisoned her father. The poor old boy had died, as everyone had known he would, of drinking far too much. Once he had started on whisky it was always clear it would be the end of him. But if Mumsy had not poisoned Mr Birley with her own hand she had certainly started him on the slippery slope with a little drink at bedtime, then a nice one before dinner, then one after dinner, till it was all round the clock with little nips. To that extent she had poisoned him. And Janet laughing at him and telling him he was a dear old boy. She didn’t discuss her motives.
She was uncertain whether these letters represented a bargaining point or a weakness vis-à-vis the enemy of whom Robert must now be regarded as the leader.
She tucked the letters in with the other papers she was gathering together and secured them with an elastic band.
She looked at her face in the mirror above. It was white and peaky with a little flush of colour under the cheekbones. ‘You’ve been a fool, Kath,’ she told herself. ‘Rash and too trusting with Janet and Mumsy. But at least you’ve never fallen into the trap of liking them.’
She started to think of all the people who liked her: the people who would strengthen and support her if only she could get in touch with them. She thought of Mrs Baker out in the country, whose winter clothes she had helped with for ten years now and old Major Joy who had ordered his tweeds through her for the last seven years. Mrs Baker had had a heart attack not long ago and the Major was never in the best of health.
He had proposed once but as he didn’t speak very clearly these days Kathy had never been sure. Not sure enough to accept anyway, she thought, with the memory of a giggle. He would stick up for her, if anyone could understand what he said, and so would Miss Treat the school teacher who had said to Kathy she was a smart girl and she learnt quickly. She was in hospital.
All Kathy’s friends seemed dead or dying.
She put her head down on her hands. To her surprise she felt a hand touch her shoulder. Robert was looking down at her.
‘I’ll take that,’ she said, holding out his hand for the packet of papers.
‘Why?’ Kathy gripped it.
‘I want it.’
‘That’s never been a reason for having a thing,’ said Kathy with spirit.
‘It’s been all the reason in the world,’ answered Robert, ‘and in this house.’
It looked as though Robert had got past caring what he said.
‘You!’ Kathy handed them over, swearing at herself for thinking he hadn’t been noticing her. He had let her go to the desk precisely and entirely to see what she did.
He went back to his seat and sat there waiting again. There was a mirror above the desk where Kathy sat and in it she could observe the whole room and part of the garden. The mirror was old and flawed so that everything wavered and Mumsy had wanted to throw it out. Kathy remembered that.
She saw Robert go over to the cupboard and serve himself a glass of whisky. He dribbled a little from the bottle on the polished wood.
‘Why, he’s frightened too,’ thought Kathy, ‘scared stiff.’
Kathy knew all the ancestors of fear of that sort. The hesitation; the queries rising into doubts; the doubts swelling into fear.
For a moment she almost pitied him.
She stood up, and Robert moved his head alertly at once.
‘I’m going upstairs,’ said Kathy. ‘To the bathroom.’
She sat on the edge of the bath, there was still that faint, not quite washed-away stain there. It showed up more than ever in daylight. It was such a funny place for it to be.
In the bathroom cabinet was the bottle of sleeping tablets. Synadrome, a drug, which had been prescribed for old Mr Birley. They were simple to use, and very fast working.
Robert was very tired. He needed a sleep. Kathy would give him one. Why shouldn’t she try to give some rest to Robert? And as he slept, she could creep quietly out of the house and escape.
She heard Robert coming up the stairs. He seemed to be malting a noise deliberately so presumably he wanted her to hear him. She slipped the bottle of sleeping capsules into her pocket and opened the door. They met on the stairs. Robert did indeed look exhausted.
‘A sleep, Robert dear,’ she thought, ‘a long quiet sleep.’
‘I’ll make some coffee,’ she said. Robert looked relieved at this prosaic statement. However he followed her down and into the kitchen in a dogged way. ‘ You can watch,’ she said mildly. He seemed disconcerted at this chance and hovered awkwardly. ‘Put on the kettle,’ said Kathy; she looked with amusement while he fumbled for the switch. The strength was with her now all right. She got the coffee out and started to grind the beans, a thing she hardly ever did. As she half expected Robert was soothed by this domestic activity and retreated to his seat in the hall. He still kept an eye on her.
‘But an eye isn’t enough,’ thought Kathy, ‘ you’ll have to be sharper than that to get the better of me.’
The coffee didn’t take long to make, she made it strong and thick. There was cream in the refrigerator, Mumsy’s cream, she added this. Then with a hand suddenly grown nervous she emptied in the contents of several capsules into Robert’s big breakfast cup. She put a biscuit in the saucer. ‘A sop to Cerberus,’ she said inwardly. Cerberus looked round as she came through the door.
‘It’s very strong.’
‘So it is,’ said Kathy sipping. ‘We need strength, don’t we?’
‘It’s bitter.’
‘Mexican coffee,’ said Kathy.
‘You’ve put brandy in it too.’
Kathy nodded, ‘So I did. It makes a good mixture.’
Robert finished the cup without any more comment. He was watching outside the house now. The significance of this now came to Kathy. He was expecting somebody. So she had not very much time.… But Robert had even less.
Presently she leaned forward and took the cigarette from his relaxed fingers. Then she pu
t a pillow under his head and arranged him comfortably. He muttered a little and pushed against her, but there was no strength there.
She looked down at him before she went upstairs. ‘Even if you had asked me to marry you I never could,’ she thought. ‘You and I can never make a match of it now.’
With Robert dealt with, gone, she felt the strength and sinews had departed from the opposition to her. She would get in touch with her friends, with a lawyer, see everyone and soon she would be back, Miss Kathy Birley, respected resident of Deerham Hills.
It took some time upstairs to gather together what she wanted with her. And then she wanted to make a last survey of the house to check up.
As she went into the hall, the telephone rang. Robert did not stir, she had to step over Robert’s feet to get to the telephone. She picked it up quickly and listened without speaking.
There it was again, that husky vulgar voice. ‘Charlie speaking, have you fixed her, old boy?’ it said cautiously. Kathy said nothing, only breathed deeply. There was a moment’s silence the other end too, then the voice said, ‘I don’t like this, I‘m coming right over.’
Robert muttered in his sleep. She bent down to listen.
‘Kathy,’ he said. ‘Kathy.’
His voice had a strange effect on Kathy, all her hardness fell away, she remembered she had liked Robert, had had many kindnesses from him.
Perhaps he had not meant to hurt her at all. He was clumsy, he was trusting (to Janet), perhaps he was slow, but he was a good person.
She took his hand in hers and nursed its dead weight. Then she kissed him. She told him she was sorry and that they could start again. ‘I want you to like me again, Robert. Let’s turn it all back and start again.’
Come Home and Be Killed Page 12