Before the Fact (28 page)

One or two familiar names in the lists caught her eye, and she realized at what she was looking. It was Johnnie’s betting book.

There was no need for her to do any calculations. Johnnie had done them for her, on the opposite pages. At the time of Beaky’s death Johnnie had been nearly thirteen thousand pounds on the wrong side. He had been betting continuously, ever since he had first begun nearly eight years ago. There was no gap shown even after Lina had come back to him at the beginning of last summer.

In another drawer Lina found the rest of the story: demands from bookmakers, letters from moneylenders, threats of proceedings, and all the rest. Her mind had been so bludgeoned that it hardly felt the extra blow of learning that Johnnie had actually borrowed money on the strength of his expectations under her own will.

But the thing was plain enough. There were letters dated within the last month whose tone was unmistakable. Their writers meant business. If Johnnie did not pay, Johnnie would be jailed. Johnnie had been desperate.

And Johnnie had taken desperate steps.

There could be no glossing over the thing this time: no finding smooth words to veneer plain facts. This was murder. Lina knew that in whatever light she might have persuaded herself to regard her father’s death, she could not do the same thing now. This was murder.

With mechanical neatness she put the papers back in the drawer exactly as she had found them and went upstairs to lock herself in her bedroom.

She had been wrong. Johnnie had not touched bottom before. He had found yet another profundity to plumb.

But this time it did not even enter Lina’s head to run desperately away from him.

For a fortnight or more Lina lived in almost continuous panic.

Her terror was so great that it very nearly swamped every other emotion. Horror and despair were almost lost in fear.

Her panic was lest Johnnie should be caught.

At first it seemed to her impossible that Johnnie should not be traced. Every time there was a knock at the door, every time the telephone bell rang, she lived through Johnnie’s arrest and conviction for murder. In Bournemouth she found herself hurrying past policemen. Even the village policeman at home ceased to be a rather quick-witted rustic and became a figure of sinister significance.

Her nerves were worn into rags. She would look at Johnnie, sitting there so merry and unperturbed, and could hardly stop herself from screaming.

She felt herself and Johnnie cut off from the world: outcasts from humanity: marooned on a desert island of guilt. She and Johnnie, all alone.

For this time she was as guilty as Johnnie. Guiltier, because she was the responsible one of the two.

She had known – she had
known
that Beaky was going to be killed; and she had not uttered a word to prevent it. And Beaky had paid for her pusillanimity with his life.

Lina wept and wept for Beaky and her own cowardice till she could hardly use her eyes for anything but weeping. Johnnie was much surprised that she should show so much feeling for a man whom she had always professed to dislike.

Bitter, self-accusatory remorse was the only feeling which could struggle through the panic to the surface of her mind.

There was scarcely any repulsion against Johnnie. Lina knew exactly what had been the process of his twisted mentality. “
I
know that half-a-pint of brandy will kill a man. Beaky ought to know it. If Beaky, with the knowledge that he ought to and indeed may have, is such a condemned idiot as to swallow half-a-pint of brandy, then that’s Beaky’s funeral. Nothing to do with me at all.”

It had been Beaky’s funeral.

And Johnnie had merely profited by it, just as the distant cousin had profited by it. Murder? What an extraordinary idea!

If anything, Lina felt more protectively responsible for Johnnie than ever. Johnnie could not be held to account for what he did: Johnnie simply did not know. Lina’s protectiveness did not extend to the world in which Johnnie was loose.

But if there was not repulsion, there were moments of horror. There was horror when Lina, watching the progress of Johnnie’s betting book and Johnnie’s drawers now every day, came across a batch of receipts five days after Beaky’s death: receipts from moneylenders, totalling nearly fourteen thousand pounds. They underlined Beaky’s death so dreadfully. Johnnie had been desperate, and now Johnnie was square again. Beaky had fulfilled his purpose.

But there were no more entries in Johnnie’s betting book. Perhaps Johnnie too had known something about panic.

There was more horror when Lina remembered that evening in the drawing room, when Johnnie had seemed to be trying to make Beaky drunk, for no reason at all. Lina knew now that there had been a reason. She knew now that she had been present at a rehearsal of Beaky’s murder.

Gradually her panic subsided.

There were no further references at all in the newspaper to Beaky’s death. The French police had probably despaired of finding Beaky’s companion. Slowly Johnnie’s complete confidence had its influence on Lina. She became calmer; her nerves rehabilitated themselves; her trembling fits ceased; she could pass the policemen in Bournemouth without averting her head.

But she still had that curious cut-off feeling, as if she and Johnnie ought not to be mixing at all with decent, law-respecting people.

However, there were still no more entries in Johnnie’s betting book. Lina almost cried again, with relief, about that. She was ashamed to catch herself thinking quite seriously, that if only Beaky, so useless in life, had by his death cured Johnnie of that terrible fever, he had not died for nothing.

When she felt better, her conscience would not let her rest till she had tackled Johnnie on that point. To tackle him on that other, and so much greater point, had never once entered her mind. She could not have done it.

“Johnnie, look here, I want to speak seriously to you about something. I’ve got more than a good idea that you’ve been betting a lot lately. No, don’t say anything. I know you have. Well, darling, I just want to tell you this. I can’t
bear
that any more.”

“As how?” Johnnie grinned – the carefree grin of one who owes money to no man.

“What I want to tell you is that if you ever make a bet on a horse again, Johnnie, I shall leave you. I mean that. And I shall know.”

“You would, would you? How?”

“Never mind. I should. And you ought to know me well enough to be sure that when I tell you I should, I should. And if you do, I’m finished. That’s all.”

“Well, darling, I don’t see how the devil you can know, but it’s perfectly true: I have had a bet or two lately,” Johnnie said seriously. “But I’ll swear to you, if you like, that I never will again. Never! The game isn’t worth it. My God, no!”

“Oh, do please stick to that, Johnnie,” Lina cried.

She really believed that this time Johnnie would stick to it. There had been a look on his face as he said that the game wasn’t worth it. He meant that.

Lina had not the least doubt that Johnnie must have killed Beaky only with the greatest regret.

Lina wished sometimes that there were a few more people of her own age in Upcottery; they all seemed so much older or so much younger. Lina felt herself at least a generation more youthful than anyone at all older than herself, for in the country people age so quickly; and of the younger ones, like Marjorie and Joan Boldron, the very knowledgeable daughters of the vicar, she was almost afraid; they were so very much more sophisticated than she could ever be. Lina felt uncomfortable when people made sex abnormalities a subject of drawing-room conversation, even among their own sex.

Now that Martin Caddis was permanently away and Janet, fleeing, as Lina suspected, from Johnnie, had got work with a business firm in London, Lina found herself very much alone. Her mother, too, of whom she had always been very fond, had died the year before. But Lina was interested in her house and actually liked housekeeping, so that she was seldom really lonely. And she still read a great deal.

Nevertheless, she had been very glad to get a letter one day from Joyce, after she had been back with Johnnie about two years.

Lina had known that, of course. Anyone who ever read anything knew that Isobel Sedbusk wrote detective stories.

She did not, however, think that she had met her in London, and when she went over to Maybury to call she was sure of it. No one who had once met Isobel Sedbusk could ever have any doubts on the point afterwards. Miss Sedbusk impressed.

That had been at the beginning of the previous summer, and Lina, who had liked Miss Sedbusk at sight, had seen quite a lot of her. Johnnie was delighted with her, too. Miss Sedbusk, who boasted of weighing fifteen stone, and boomed in proportion, was a very easy person to get to know. She was inclined to talk a little too much about her own line of work, and liked showing her familiarity with the tools of her trade, such as blood and
rigor mortis;
but she was amusing and had plenty of other interests as well. In spite of the fact that she wore black sombreros and had a masculine cut about her clothes, she was an ardent feminist.

Within six weeks she was calling Johnnie “old man” and rating Lina for not trying to write detective stories.

“Anyone can,” affirmed Miss Sedbusk. “It’s just a matter of hard work, that’s all. Lucky for us that more people don’t know that, though. The market’s overcrowded enough as it is. My publisher tells me ...”

The next summer Miss Sedbusk took the same cottage again. Lina was surprised to find how pleased she was to hear it.

Within two days of her arrival Miss Sedbusk appeared in person, demanding tea. She had walked the four miles from Maybury, and quite intended to walk them back again.

The two women bumped cheeks.

“Well, how are you, Lina? Fit?”

“I am glad to see you, Isobel. I’ve missed you.”

“Have you? Good. I like people to miss me.”

“I’ll tell Ethel to bring tea at once. Shall we have it in the garden? It’s such a lovely day.”

“Anywhere you like,” acquiesced Miss Sedbusk. “What I want is the tea itself. Well, how’s Johnnie?”

“Johnnie’s very fit. He’s in the garden somewhere. He’s taking up roses this year in real earnest.”

“Well, I suppose we all come down to it one day,” pronounced Miss Sedbusk.

Lina took her guest into the garden, and they sat under the cedar by the tennis court. It came into Lina’s mind that it was on this spot that Lady Fortnum had lost her diamond pendant so many years ago. (How many was it? It must be nearly nine.) She no longer had any illusions about that loss. It was lucky that there had been no writer of detective stories present then.

“How’s the new book going, Isobel? I suppose you’re in the middle of one, as usual.”

“Not yet. I’ve been putting it off till I got down here. I’m held up for an idea.”

“Oh? You usually have so many ideas.”

“I want a new method of murder. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to think up new methods of murder. Everything’s been done.” It was a favourite complaint of Miss Sedbusk’s: the difficulty of finding new methods of murder.

Something prompted Lina to say:

“How about one man persuading another to drink a tumblerful of neat whisky, the first man knowing it will kill him and the second not knowing it?”

“Been done,” said Miss Sedbusk briefly.

“Oh!”

“Been done in real life too.”

Lina started. “Has it?”

“Palmer got rid of one of his victims that way. Abbey.”

Miss Sedbusk knew the names of all the historical murderers and their victims. She really was interested in murder, besides making it, vicariously, her profession.

“Really?” Lina tried to make her voice sound disinterested, but her heart had begun to beat rather quickly. “Was he – hanged?”

“Eventually.”

“Not for that?”

“Oh, no. He killed at least a dozen people after Abbey.”

“In the same way?”

“No; he went on to real poison afterwards.”

Lina produced quite a creditable laugh. “And I thought I’d found such an original idea. But after all,” she added, very nonchalantly, “I suppose that wouldn’t count as murder at all, would it? I mean, it isn’t
real
murder, like giving the man poison, or shooting him, or anything like that.”

It was a question Lina had wanted very much to put for more than two years now. Her own answer to it had quite crystallized by this time, but she had always wished to hear the opinion of someone else. All last summer she had tried to take the plunge and ask Isobel, but had never found the courage. Now it had just come out, quite naturally.

“That’s rather a nice point.” Miss Sedbusk’s voice had taken on its debating tone. It resounded heartily through the garden of Dellfield, till Lina wished that Isobel was fitted with a volume control, like the wireless.

“No, I’m inclined to doubt whether it would be murder, from the legal point of view. The legal definition of murder is ‘to kill with malice aforethought.’ Still, you’ve got the malice aforethought all right. And if he knowingly incited the man to commit an act which would result in his death ...

“Take a parallel. Supposing it was a footbridge over a torrent that he’d sawn through, and he incited the other man to cross it. That would certainly be murder, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Lina unwillingly.

“The distinction’s a very fine one. Wait, though!” commanded Miss Sedbusk. “That isn’t a true parallel. I see the flaw. The brandy turns on a question of
general
knowledge, whereas the footbridge is a piece of particular knowledge. The man has just as much chance of knowing that a tumblerful of neat brandy will kill him as the other has.”