She Died a Lady Read online

  Then she became literary. The dangerous thing about this high-flown talk was that she meant every word of it.

  ‘His face is a kind of ghost that keeps coming between me and Barry all the time. I want him to be happy and yet neither of us can be happy.’

  ‘Tell me, Rita. Were you ever in love with Alec?’

  ‘Yes, I was. In a way. He was perfectly charming when I first knew him. He used to call me Dolores. After Swinburne’s Dolores, you know.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Well? He doesn’t beat me, or anything like that. But –’

  ‘How long has it been since you’ve had physical relations with Alec?’

  Her face grew tragic.

  ‘I keep telling you, Dr Luke, it isn’t like that at all! This affair with Barry is something entirely different. It’s a kind of spiritual re-birth. Now don’t rub your hand over your forehead, and sit there looking at me over your spectacles and down your nose!’

  ‘I was only …’

  ‘It’s something I can’t describe. I can help Barry in his art, and he can help me in mine. He’s going to be a great actor one day. He laughs at me when I say that; but it’s true, and I can help him. All the same, that doesn’t solve my particular problem. I’m nearly going crazy under it. I want your advice, of course, though I know what it’ll be beforehand. But what I want most of all is something that will make me sleep for just one night. Can’t you please give me something that will make me sleep?’

  Fifteen minutes later, Rita left. I stood and watched her go down the side path between the laurel hedges. Once, before reaching the gate, she looked into her handbag as though to make sure something was there. She had been on the edge of hysteria while telling her story. But hysteria was gone now. In the way she touched and smoothed her hair, in the very set of her shoulders, you could see a dreaminess as well as a defiance. She was eager to get back home to ‘Mon Repos’ and to Barry Sullivan.

  TWO

  ON the evening of Saturday, the thirtieth of June I went out to the Wainrights’ house to play cards.

  It was thick, thundery weather. Matters were straining towards a breaking-point in more respects than one. France had capitulated; the Führer was in Paris; a disorganized weaponless British army had crawled back, exhausted, to dry its wounds on the beaches where it might presently have to fight. But we were still reasonably cheerful, with myself as complacent as the rest. ‘We’re all together now,’ we said; ‘it’ll be better’ – God knows why.

  Even in our little world of Lyncombe there was impending tragedy as clearly to be heard as a knocking at a door. I learned more about the Wainright-Sullivan business when I talked to Tom on the day after Rita’s visit.

  ‘May cause scandal?’ echoed Tom, who was fastening his bag preparatory to the morning round of calls. ‘May cause scandal? It’s a flaming scandal already.’

  ‘You mean it’s being talked about in the village?’

  ‘It’s being talked about all over North Devon. If it weren’t for this war situation, you’d hear nothing else.’

  ‘Then why wasn’t I told about it?’

  ‘My dear governor,’ said Tom, in that irritatingly kindly way of his, ‘you can’t even see what’s under your own nose. And nobody ever tells you gossip anyway. You just wouldn’t be interested. Let me help you into a chair.’

  ‘Confound it, sir, I’m not as doddering as all that!’

  ‘No, but you’ve got to be careful of that heart,’ said my serious-minded son. ‘All the same,’ he added, whacking shut the catch of his medicine-case, ‘it beats me how people can carry on like that and think they’re not noticed. That woman has completely lost her head.’

  ‘What’s … being said?’

  ‘Oh, that Mrs Wainright is an evil woman leading on an innocent young man.’ Tom shook his head, drew himself up, and prepared to lecture. ‘That’s medically and biologically unsound, by the way. You see –’

  ‘I am sufficiently acquainted with the facts of life, young man. Your presence in this world testifies to that. So he gets all the sympathy, then?’

  ‘If you could call it sympathy, yes.’

  ‘What’s this Barry Sullivan like? Do you know?’

  ‘I haven’t met him, but they say he’s a decent sort. Free spender; typical Yank; that kind of thing. All the same, it wouldn’t surprise me if he and Mrs Wainright got together and murdered the old man.’

  Tom delivered this statement with a wise and portentous air. He didn’t believe it himself; it was just his way of airing knowledge, or fancied knowledge; but it struck so sharply and unpleasantly in line with my own thoughts that I reacted as fathers will.

  ‘Nonsense!’ I said.

  Tom teetered back on his heels.

  ‘You think so?’ he said grandly. ‘Look at Thompson and Bywaters. Look at Rattenbury and Stoner. Look at … well, there must be a lot of them. A married woman approaching middle age falls for a mere youngster.’

  ‘Who are you to be talking about mere youngsters? You’re only thirty-five yourself.’

  ‘And what do they do?’ inquired Tom. ‘They don’t do anything sensible, like getting a divorce. No. They go scatty and kill the husband. It happens in nine cases out of ten; but don’t ask me why it happens.’

  (Talk to one of them, my lad; see the nerves shake and the brain dither and the self-control dissolve; then perhaps you’ll understand.)

  ‘But I can’t stand here gassing,’ pursued Tom, stamping his feet on the floor, and picking up the medicine-case. He is large and broad and sandy-haired, as I was at his age. ‘Got an interesting case out Exmoor way.’

  ‘It must be something special, if you call it interesting.’

  Tom grinned.

  ‘It’s not the case. It’s the personality. Old boy named Merrivale, Sir Henry Merrivale. He’s staying with Paul Ferrars at Ridd Farm.’

  What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘He fractured his big toe. He was up to some shenanigans – can’t imagine what – and he fractured his big toe. It’s worth going out there just to hear his language. I’m going to keep him in a wheel-chair for six weeks. But if you are interested in Mrs Wainright’s latest escapade …’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Right. I’ll see if I can pump Paul Ferrars. Discreetly, of course. He must know her pretty well; he painted her picture a year or so ago.’

  But I forbade this as unethical, and preached Tom quite a lecture about it. So I waited for over a month, while the world continued to clatter round our ears and people talked of little but Adolf Hitler. Barry Sullivan, I learned, had gone back to London. I drove out once to see Rita and Alec, but the maid said they were at Minehead. Then, on that overcast Saturday morning, I met Alec.

  Anybody would have been shocked at the change in him. I met him on the cliff-road, between Lyncombe and ‘Mon Repos’. He was stumping along slowly and aimlessly, his hands clasped behind his back; even at a distance you could see him shaking his head from side to side. He wore no hat; the wind ruffled his sparse greyish hair and flapped back his old alpaca coat.

  Though shortish in figure, Alec Wainright used to have a thick breadth of shoulder. Now he seemed to have shrunk. His square, blunt-featured face, with the kindly expression and grey eyes under tufted eyebrows, had become blurred. It was not that the face had degenerated, or even changed in any definable way: it had merely lost its expression, heightened by a slight twitching of the eyelid.

  Alec was drunk, but he was in a dream. I had to call out to him.

  ‘Dr Croxley!’ he said, and cleared his throat. His eyes lighted up a little. To Alec I was not Dr Luke or even plain Luke; I had the formal title. ‘It’s good to see you,’ he continued, and kept on clearing his throat. ‘I’ve been wanting to see you. Intending to see you. But –’

  He made a vague gesture, as though he could not at the moment recall the reason.

  ‘Come over here,’ he urged. ‘This bench. Sit down.’

  There was a stiff breeze bl
owing, and I said I wished Alec had a hat. Vaguely fussed, he fished an old cloth cap out of his pocket and crammed it on. Then he sat down beside me on the bench. Still he kept shaking his head from side to side in a depressed way.

  ‘They don’t realize,’ he said in his gentle voice. ‘They don’t realize!’

  This made me turn round, until I saw what he meant.

  ‘He’s coming. He’ll be here any day now,’ said Alec. ‘He’s got the planes; he’s got troops; he’s got everything. But when I tell them at the pub, they say, “Oh, for God’s sake shut up! Haven’t we got enough to depress us without that?”’

  Alec sat back, folding his stumpy arms.

  ‘And, do you know, in a way they’re quite right. But they don’t realize. Look here!’ This time he fished a crumpled newspaper out of his pocket. ‘See this item?’

  ‘Which item?’

  ‘Never mind. The liner Washington is coming to Galway to pick up Americans who want to get back to the States. The American Embassy says it’s their last chance. What does that mean? Invasion. Don’t they realize that?’

  His fretful voice trailed away. But, at the words, no friend of Alec’s could fail to see a sudden hope.

  ‘Speaking of Americans …’ I began.

  ‘Yes. I knew there was something I wanted to tell you.’ Alec rubbed his forehead. ‘It’s about young Sullivan. Barry Sullivan, you know. Nice lad. I don’t know if you’ve met him?’

  ‘Is he going back by the Washington?’

  Alec blinked at me and made fussed gestures.

  ‘No, no, no! I never said that. Barry’s not going back to America. On the contrary, he’s come down to visit us again. Arrived last night.’

  This, I think, was where I became most conscious of the conviction that we were heading for disaster.

  ‘Here’s what I wondered,’ pursued Alec, with a meagre attempt at heartiness in his voice. ‘What about coming out to the house to-night for some cards. Like the old days. Eh?’

  ‘With the greatest of pleasure. But –’

  ‘I’d thought of inviting Molly Grange,’ said Alec. ‘You know: the solicitor’s little girl. Young Barry seems rather keen on her, and I’ve had her out there for him several times.’ Alec smiled a rumpled smile; he was really anxious to please. ‘I had even thought of inviting Paul Ferrars, that artist chap at Ridd Farm, and a guest he’s got, and perhaps Agnes Doyle. Then we could have two tables.’

  ‘Whatever you say.’

  ‘But Molly, it seems, isn’t coming home from Barnstaple this week-end. And, anyway, Rita thinks it would be more cosy and intimate if we just had the four of us. This is the maid’s night off, and a bigger crowd is awkward.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Alec looked out to sea, a wrinkle between his eyebrows. His determination to please, his evident concentration on it despite other matters that racked his mind, was dogged and somewhat pathetic.

  ‘We ought to entertain more, you know. Yes. We really ought to entertain more. Have young people about us. I realize it’s dull for Rita. And she says it’s bad for me. Thinks I’m getting morbid.’

  ‘You are. And, frankly, if you don’t stop this drinking –’

  ‘My dear fellow!’ breathed Alec, in a tone of hollow and injured astonishment. ‘Are you trying to tell me I’m drunk?’

  No. Not now. But you polish off a pint of whisky every night before you go to bed, and if you don’t stop it –’

  Once more Alec looked out to sea. Folding his hands, he smoothed the baggy skin across the backs of them. He kept clearing his throat. But his tone changed: he sounded less hazy and muddled.

  ‘It hasn’t been easy, you know,’ he said. ‘It hasn’t been easy.’

  ‘What hasn’t been easy?’

  ‘Things,’ answered Alec. He struggled with himself. ‘Financial things. Among others. I had a lot of French securities. Never mind. We can’t put the clock back to …’ Here Alec sat up, galvanized. ‘I almost forgot. Watch: I’ve left my watch back home. Do you happen to know what time it is?’

  ‘It can’t be much past twelve.’

  ‘Twelve! Good lord, I’ve got to get back! The news, you know. One o’clock news. Mustn’t miss the news.’

  His anxiety was so infectious that my own fingers shook when I took my watch out of my pocket.

  ‘But, man, it’s only five minutes past noon! You’ve got all the time in the world!’

  Alec shook his head.

  ‘Mustn’t risk missing the news,’ he insisted. ‘I’ve got my car, of course. Left it down the road a way when I came for a stroll. But I have to walk at a snail’s pace to get to the car. Stiff joints. Look here, you won’t forget about tonight?’ Getting up from the bench, he wrung my hand and looked at me earnestly out of the once-sharp grey eyes. ‘I’m not very entertaining company, I’m afraid. But I’ll try. Maybe we’ll do some puzzles. Both Rita and Barry are fond of puzzles. Tonight. Eight o’clock. Don’t forget.’

  I tried to hold him back.

  ‘Just a minute! Does Rita know about this financial trouble of yours?’

  ‘No, no, no!’ Alec was shocked. ‘I wouldn’t worry a woman about a thing like that. You mustn’t mention it to her. I haven’t told anybody but you. In fact, Dr Croxley, you’re just about the only friend I’ve got.’

  And he stumped away.

  I walked back to the village, feeling a little heavier weight of trouble on my shoulders. I wished the rain would fall and get it over with. The sky was lead-coloured; the water dark blue; the headlands, at bare patches in their green, like the colours of a child’s modelling-clay run together.

  In the High Street I noticed Molly Grange. Alec had said she wouldn’t be coming back from Barnstaple that weekend – Molly owns and manages a typewriting bureau there – but presumably Rita had been mistaken. Molly smiled at me over her shoulder as she turned in at her father’s gate.

  It wasn’t a pleasant day. Tom dashed in for a very late tea just after six. He was doing a post-mortem for the police at Lynton on a somewhat messy suicide; he gave me all the details as he wolfed down bread and butter and jam, and hardly heard what I had to tell him. It had gone eight o’clock, and the sky was darkening, when I drove out the four miles to ‘Mon Repos’.

  It would not be black-out time until past nine o’clock. Yet no lights showed in the house. That in itself inspired a feeling of disquiet.

  ‘Mon Repos’ had originally been a handsome bungalow, large and low-built, with a slanting tiled roof and leaded-paned windows against mellow red brick. Most trees won’t thrive in sea air, and the grass of the lawn was sparse. But a tall yew hedge screened it from the road. There were two sanded drives, one to the front door and one to the garage at the left. Beside the garage was a tennis court. A creeper-hung summer-house stood on the lawn at the right.

  Now, however, the whole place had gone faintly to seed. Nothing very noticeable, nothing greatly to remark. The hedge was just beginning to need trimming. Somebody had left bright-coloured beach-chairs out in the rain. One of the shutters had a loose hinge, which the handyman – if there was a handyman – had not bothered to repair. It was present less in tangible details than in an atmosphere of subtle decay.

  You became conscious of the place’s isolation, of its Godforsaken loneliness after dark. Anything could happen here; and who the wiser?

  The light had grown so bad that I was compelled to switch on my head-lamps when I drove in. The tyres of the car crunched on sand. Nothing else stirred. Hardly a breeze from the sea ruffled that muggy heat. Behind the bungalow, beyond a long stretch of damp reddish soil, you could dimly make out the line of the cliffs which fell seventy feet to rocks and water below.

  The light of the head-lamps, hooded, ran ahead dimly to the open doors of the garage. It was a double garage, with Rita’s Jaguar inside. As I slowed down, a figure appeared round the side of the house and wandered towards me.

  ‘Is that you, Doctor?’ Alec called.

  ‘Yes. I’d bet
ter run the car into the garage, in case it rains. Be with you in half a tick.’

  But Alec didn’t wait. He blundered over into the glow of the head-lamps, and I had to stop altogether. Putting his hand on the door of the car, he peered up and down the drive.

  ‘Look here,’ he said. ‘Who cut the telephone-wires?’

  THREE

  THE engine of the car had stalled, and I started it again. Alec was not even angry: he sounded merely puzzled and troubled. Though you could smell whisky about him, he was quite sober.

  ‘Cut the telephone-wires?’

  ‘It was that damned Johnson, I expect,’ Alec declared without rancour. ‘The gardener, you know. He wasn’t doing his work. Or at least Rita says he wasn’t. So I had to sack him. Or at least Rita sacked him. I hate trouble with people.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘He did it to spite me. He knows I always ring up Anderson at the Gazette office every evening to see if they’ve got any news that isn’t released to the BBC. The phone wouldn’t work. Then, when I lifted it higher, the wires came loose from the little box. They’d been cut and stuck back in again.’

  For a second, there, I thought Alec was going to cry.

  ‘It was a low trick, a damned unsportsmanlike trick,’ he added ‘Why won’t people let you alone?’

  ‘Where are Rita and Mr Sullivan?’

  Alec blinked.

  ‘Come to think of it, I don’t know. They must be somewhere about.’ He craned his neck round. ‘They’re not in the house. At least, I don’t think they are.’

  ‘Hadn’t I better go and round them up, if we’re going to play cards?’

  ‘Yes. Do that. I’ll go and get us something to drink. But we won’t play cards just yet, if you don’t mind. There’s a very fine radio programme going on at eight-thirty.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Romeo and Juliet, I think. Rita particularly wants to hear it. Excuse me.’