Before the Fact (31 page)

She tried hard not to be impatient, or snap at him, as she so often did when any suggestion, even of the most unimportant order, did not encounter her approval.

Isobel and Lina were talking about investments. Isobel had just sold the film rights of one of her books for a thousand pounds, and she was undecided what to do with the money.

“I’d like to spend it on going round the world, but I suppose I’d better not. I can save up for that out of income, and this ought to be treated as capital. The rest of my money’s in War Loan, but I think I’d like something more exciting. What’s yours in, Lina?”

“War Loan, too. A safe five per cent,” said Lina knowledgeably.

“H’m, yes! Till the Bolshies take the country over.” Miss Sedbusk was inclined to take a gloomy view of England’s future: perhaps not more gloomy than the governors of England’s present warranted. “You wait and see what income tax will be then.”

“Income tax is bad enough, but it’s the death duties I think are so monstrous. Do you know that when I die Johnnie will have to pay ten thousand pounds in death duties? Ten thousand!” said Lina with pain.

“Nonsense,” replied Miss Sedbusk robustly.

“Why nonsense?”

“Because it is nonsense. Twenty per cent?”

“Ten per cent.”

“Hullo, you’re a richer woman than I thought. I didn’t know you’d got five thousand a year.”

“I haven’t. Barely half that.”

“Then your arithmetic’s wrong, my dear girl. Ten per cent of fifty thousand is five thousand.”

“Is it?” said Lina. “
Is
it?”

By the time she got home she had thought it out. It must have been a genuine mistake, because Johnnie had not benefited, Lina had made the cheque out to the insurance company, not to Johnnie. Johnnie could not possibly have benefited. After the first horrid apprehension, that had been a tremendous relief.

But it was a nuisance, and extremely careless of Johnnie to have led her into paying just twice as much for her insurance as she need have done. Of course the policy would have to be cancelled.

“Johnnie,” she said crossly, “you really are an idiot. What’s ten per cent. of fifty?”

“Five, of course,” said Johnnie in surprise. “Why?”

“Because in that case ten per cent. of fifty thousand is five thousand, of course. How could you have been so careless? You made me waste a hundred and twenty-eight pounds too much on my insurance premium last October. We don’t want a policy for ten thousand at all. It ought to have been five. Really, you ought – what’s the matter?” Johnnie had become quite white and was staring at her in the utmost alarm. Lina thought she had spoken most mildly, considering how foolish Johnnie had been. “What’s the matter?” she repeated more sharply. It annoyed her that Johnnie should look at her, when she had to remonstrate with him, like a schoolboy awaiting a caning.

“Nothing’s the matter,” Johnnie said, rather gutturally.

“Oh, I’m not going to stop it out of your allowance, if that’s what you’re frightened about,” Lina snapped, “though you certainly deserve it. You’d better write to-day and get that policy cancelled and take one out for me for five. Do you understand, Johnnie?” she added impatiently.

“Yes, all right, I will,” Johnnie mumbled.

A week later Lina said to him:

“By the way, what about that insurance policy of mine? Have you written?”

“Not yet,” Johnnie said glibly. “No hurry. The premium’s not due till October.”

“But I asked you to write last week.”

“Much better to let it stand till it expires. Then there’s no question. You leave it to me, monkeyface. I’ll look after it all right.”

Lina left it to him.

Johnnie had acquired a passion for detective stories.

He had always read them, but only sporadically. Now he seemed to be always deep in one. Lina was kept quite busy ordering new ones for him from the library. However, she did so willingly enough. Any innocuous amusement of Johnnie’s was to be encouraged.

He was forever discussing them with Isobel too: getting her recommendations, listening to her criticisms on the work of her fellow authors, just as eager as she was to find flaws in detection or method.

“Hullo, Isobel,” he would greet her whenever she appeared at Dellfield, which was two or three times a week at least. “Hullo, begun the new book yet? Look here, I’ve thought up a new method of murder for you.”

“Have you? Good man. Let’s have it.”

And then they would plunge into discussion.

It seemed to Lina that whenever she found Johnnie and Isobel together now, they were talking about new methods of murder. She did not altogether like it.

Indeed, she did not like it at all. It seemed to Lina supremely ironical that Johnnie should be trying to find new methods of murder for Isobel. It seemed to her worse than ironical that he should listen so interestedly to Isobel’s own ingenious schemes. Of course it was absurd to wonder. Quite ridiculous. But still ...

Lina did not like it.

What she particularly did not like was that the method of murder, to meet Isobel’s requirements, had to be practically undetectable.

One afternoon, as they were sitting in the garden of Miss Sedbusk’s cottage, Lina’s nervous exasperation caused her to burst in on the discussion. She had been annoyed, because it was she who had been going over to tea with Isobel, and Johnnie, in his doglike way of this summer, had insisted on going with her.

“But you’ll only be bored. We shall talk about women’s things,” said Lina, who felt as if she had hardly seen Isobel alone for weeks and had been looking forward to doing so that afternoon.

“I think I’ll come along,” Johnnie had replied airily. “I’d be much more bored alone here, without you.”

“Really, Johnnie, can’t you bear to let me out of your sight for a couple of hours? I really can’t understand what’s the matter with you this year.”

“I like being with you, monkeyface,” Johnnie said pathetically. “You don’t
mind
if I come along, do you?”

“Oh, come if you must,” Lina snapped.

So Johnnie had come.

And of course the conversation very soon came round to the usual subject. Miss Sedbusk never minded talking her own particular shop, and she did so with gusto.

“Why must you be so complicated?” Lina burst in at last. “Live electric wires inside the springs of an easy chair, indeed! Why not use arsenic and have done with it?”

“Because, my good woman, arsenic of all poisons is the easiest to detect. Arsenic remains in the body—”

“Well, that’s what people do in real life. Why don’t you try to keep your books somewhere near real life, Isobel?”

“They are near real life,” snorted Miss Sedbusk, stung. “As near as the conventions of the detective story allow. What you don’t seem to realize, my dear girl, is that the kind of method I’m always looking for – perhaps the electric wires are a bit too complicated – is precisely what hundreds of people
do
use in real life: the people we never hear about, because they’re never caught out.”

“I – I don’t think murder’s as common as all that,” Lina said weakly. Why
must
Isobel be always talking about murder?

“Huh! Well, all I can say is, you don’t know much about it. Believe me,
hundreds
of people walking about to-day have put somebody out of the way in their time. Why, it’s as easy as falling into a bog. Just a nudge with the elbow as they’re walking along the edge of a cliff; just a—Hullo, what’s up?”

Lina was standing up. “I must be getting home.”

“But you’ve hardly finished your tea.”

“I know. But – I’ve got rather a head. You don’t mind if I go a little early, do you? Are you ready, Johnnie?”

“Me? Oh, well, I think I’ll sit on a bit here and smoke a pipe, monkeyface.”

“I’d rather you came with me,” Lina said palely. Seeing Isobel’s puzzled face, she added. “I do feel a little queer.”

“My dear woman, lie down for a bit here, on my bed.”

“No, I think I’ll get home. Are you ready, Johnnie?”

Lina bore Johnnie away.

This was really beginning to be too much of a good thing.

Once a year or so Lina glanced at her will.

She kept it in a sealed envelope, in a drawer in her bureau. Her solicitor had told her she ought to keep it at the bank, but Lina liked to have it under her hand.

Each year she took it out of its envelope, read it through, and put it back in a fresh one.

On the day following her visit to Isobel’s something prompted her to perform the annual rite for the present year.

She did not know why, but her heart beat rather oddly as she took the long envelope out of the drawer. For the first time, she scrutinized it with minute care before she tore it open. She pretended she did not know what she was looking for.

She found it.

Not at the flap end but at the other, whose fastening was less secure, she discovered the tiny wrinkles and the smudgy appearance of an envelope that has been steamed open.

She went straight into the morning room.

Johnnie was not in the house.

For some minutes she stood stock-still, looking at Johnnie’s desk.

Then she pulled open the little drawer at the side, and examined Johnnie’s betting book. The last entry was still the Attaboy of last October.

Lina drew a breath of relief.

But her relief was only for a moment. Almost instantly the thumping of her heart began again.

She stood uncertainly by the desk, her hands clenched at her sides.

“It
is
all right,” she whispered, half fiercely and half distractedly. “It
is
all right.”

With a little swoop she pulled open the drawer in which, three years ago, she had found the moneylenders’ letters.

It was full of papers. Lina pulled them out and, laying them on the desk, turned them rapidly through. They seemed harmless enough. Bills, letters from friends ...

Lina pressed her hand to her forehead. Her mind seemed numb. She could not understand. What acceptance? What did it mean? What was an “acceptance”?

With shaking fingers she searched further.

There were others too, but it was enough.

A sudden flaring illumination had at last seared its way into Lina’s mind.

Johnnie was going to kill her.

Huddled on her bed, Lina was trying to realize that. Johnnie was going to kill even her.

She could not realize it. It was more than incredible. It was a conception which her distraught mind could not yet grasp at all. Johnnie, her child – Johnnie, her whole life, was going to kill
her.

Never for a moment had it entered Lina’s wildest fears that she herself could ever be in danger from Johnnie. Johnnie, driven to desperation, might have planned the deaths of other people, if only they could be led into killing themselves: but not hers. Never
hers.
Johnnie loved her. Johnnie adored her. Johnnie could never get on without her. It was just inconceivable that Johnnie could possibly contemplate killing
her.

But it was true. Johnnie could contemplate even that.

Lina might not be able to realize it yet, but she knew it. Unable still to think clearly, her mind leapt from one to another in a series of distracted little pictures that carried their own conviction: Johnnie so attentive to her, just as he had been to Beaky before he killed him (and she, blind idiot, so pleased with Johnnie’s attentions, and latterly so bored with them!); Johnnie trying to get hints from Isobel on murder; the way she had caught Johnnie looking at her sometimes; oh, a hundred things. Yes, she knew it. For weeks now, perhaps for months (the insurance, as long ago as last October!), Johnnie had been planning to kill her.

Johnnie ...

Lina flung herself down among the pillows. Let him, then! Quickly! If Johnnie could do that, Lina no longer wanted to live.

She burst into a torrent of sobbing.

No, it was impossible. Johnnie could not be going to kill her. Not Johnnie.

But it was true.

As Lina bathed her eyes, a dull misery of certainty succeeded the chaos in her mind. The incomprehensible idea had become comprehensible. Without doubt Johnnie did intend to kill her.

And what was she going to do about it?

Curiously, there had been no panic. It was impossible to be
afraid
of Johnnie. Lina felt no terrified urge to get away from the danger: to flee helter-skelter to Joyce for safety. Not in the least.

Not of course that she was going to stay at Dellfield, for Johnnie to kill at his leisure. But she would go in her own good time. She was not in danger yet.

Or was she?

She began to tremble. Supposing at tea that very afternoon Johnnie put ... Supposing at dinner ...

Oh, God, she could not stand it. The panic which shock had so far held in check began to break loose. At any moment Johnnie might come in – break the door down and kill her in her own bedroom: throw her out of the window on to the flags below and say she had fallen – anything. At any moment Johnnie might come and kill her; and what was she going to do?

Lina tore a suitcase out of the cupboard and began feverishly to pack. She must get away; she must get away; she must get
away.

By tea-time the suitcase was back in the cupboard, her things again in their drawers. Lina was not going to run away. It was impossible to be afraid of Johnnie.