I Married A Dead Man

I Married A Dead Man

by Cornell Woolrich

Copyright William Irish, 1948

First published in the
United States of America
by J. B. Lippincott Company 1948

Published in Penguin Books 1994

Copyright assigned to Sheldon Abend D/B /A Authors Research Company, 1982

All rights reserved

I MARRIED A DEAD MAN

               
The summer nights are so pleasant in Caulfield. They smell of heliotrope and jasmine, honeysuckle and clover. The stars are warm and friendly here, not cold and distant, as where I came from; they seem to hang lower over us, be closer to us. The breeze that stirs the curtains at the open windows is soft and gentle as a baby's kiss. And on it, if you listen, you can hear the rustling sound of the leafy trees turning over and going back to sleep again. The lamplight from within the houses falls upon the lawns outside and copperplates them in long swaths. There's the hush, the stillness of perfect peace and security. Oh, yes, the summer nights are pleasant in Caulfield.

               
But not for us.

               
The winter nights are too. The nights of fall, the nights of spring. Not for us, not for us.

               
The house we live in is so pleasant in Caulfield. The blue-green tint of its lawn, that always seems so freshly watered no matter what the time of day. The sparkling, aerated pinwheels of the sprinklers always turning, steadily turning; if you look at them closely enough they form rainbows before your eyes. The clean, sharp curve of the driveway. The dazzling whiteness of the porch-supports in the sun. Indoors, the curving white symmetry of the bannister, as gracious as the dark and glossy stair it accompanies down from above. The satin finish of the rich old floors, bearing a telltale scent of wax and of lemon-oil if you stop to sniff. The lushness of pile carpeting. In almost every room, some favorite chair waiting to greet you like an old friend when you come back to spend a little time with it. People who come and see it say, "What more can there be? This is a home, as a home should be." Yes, the house we live in is so pleasant in Caulfield.

               
But not for us.

               
Our little boy, our Hugh, his and mine, it's such a joy to watch him growing up in Caulfield. In the house that will some day be his, in the town that will some day be his. To watch him take the first tottering steps that mean--now he can walk. To catch and cherish each newly minted word that fumblingly issues from his lips--that means, now he's added another, now he can talk.

               
But even that is not for us, somehow. Even that seems thefted, stolen, in some vague way I cannot say. Something we're not entitled to, something that isn't rightfully ours.

               
I love him so. It's Bill I mean now, the man. And he loves me. I know I do, I know he does, I cannot doubt it. And yet I know just as surely that on some day to come, maybe this year, maybe next, suddenly he'll pack his things and go away and leave me. Though he won't want to. Though he'll love me still, as much as he does on the day that I say this.

               
Or if he doesn't, it will be I who will. I'll take up my valise and walk out through the door, never to come back. Though I won't want to. Though I'll love him still, as much as I do on the day that I say this. I'll leave my house behind. I'll leave my baby behind, in the house that will some day be his, and I'll leave my heart behind, with the man it belongs to (How could I take it with me?), but I'll go and I'll never come back.

               
We've fought this thing. How bitterly we've fought it, in every way that we know how. In every way there is. We've driven it away, a thousand times we've driven it away, and it comes back again in a look, a word, a thought, it's there.

               
No good for me to say to him, "You didn't do it. You've told me so once. Once was enough. No need to repeat it now again, this late. I know you didn't. Oh, my darling, my Bill, you don't lie. You don't lie, in money, or in honor, or in love--"

               
(But this isn't money, or honor, or love. This is a thing apart. This is murder.)

               
No good, when I don't believe him. At the moment that he speaks, I may. But a moment later, or an hour, or a day or week, again I don't. No good, for we don't live just within a single moment, we can't The other moments come, the hours, weeks, and, oh God, the years.

               
For each time, as he speaks, I know it wasn't I. That's all I know. So well, too well, I know. And that leaves only--

               
And each time, as I speak, perhaps he knows that it wasn't he (but I cannot know that, I cannot, there is no way for him to reach me). So well he knows, so well. And that leaves only--

               
No good, no good at all.

               
One night six months ago I dropped upon my knees before him, with the boy there between us. Upon my bended knees. I put my hand on the little boy's head, and I swore it to him then and there. Speaking low, so the child wouldn't understand.

               
"By my child. Bill, I swear to you on the head of my child, that I didn't. Oh Bill, I didn't do it--"

               
He raised me up, and held me in his arms, and pressed me to him.

               
"I know you didn't. I know. What more can I say? In what other way can I tell you? Here, lie against my heart, Patrice. Perhaps that can tell you better than I
 
Listen to it, can't you tell that it believes you?"

               
And for a moment it does, that one moment of our love. But then the other moment comes, that one that always comes after. And he has already thought, "But I know it wasn't I. I know so well it wasn't I. And that leaves only--"

               
And even while his arms go tighter than ever about me, and his lips kiss the wetness from my eyes, he already doesn't again. He already doesn't.

               
There's no way out. We're caught, we're trapped. The circle viciously completes itself each time, and we're on the inside, can't break through. For if he's innocent, then it has to be me. And if I am, it has to be he. But I know I'm innocent. (Yet he may know he is too.) There's no way out.

               
Or, tired with trying to drive it away, we've rushed toward it with desperate abandon, tried to embrace it, to be done with it once and for all in that way.

               
One time, unable to endure its long-drawn, unseen, ghostly vigil over our shoulders any longer he suddenly flung himself out of the chair he'd been in, though nothing had been said between us for an hour past. Flung the book he hadn't been reading, only pretending to, far from him like a brickbat. Flung himself up as wildly as though he were going to rush forward to grapple with something he saw there before him. And my heart flung itself wildly up with him.

               
He surged to the far end of the room and stopped there--at bay. And made a fist, and raised his arm, and swung it with a thundering crash against the door, so that only the panel's thickness kept it from shattering. Then turned in his helpless defiance and cried out:

               
"I don't care! It doesn't matter! Do you hear me? It doesn't matter! People have done it before. Lots of times. And lived out their happiness afterward. Why shouldn't we? He was no good. It was what he deserved. He wasn't worth a second thought. The whole world said so then, and they'd still say so now. He isn't worth a single minute of this hell we've gone through--"

               
And then he poured a drink for each of us, lavish, reckless, and came back toward me with them. And I, understanding, agreeing, one with him, rose and went to meet him halfway.

               
"Here, take this. Drink on it. Drown it. Drown it until it's gone. One of us did do it. It doesn't matter. It's done with. Now let's get on with living."

               
And striking himself on the chest, "All right, I did it. There. I was the one. Now it's settled. Now it's over at last--"

               
And then suddenly our eyes looked deep into one another's, our glasses faltered in mid-air, went down, and it was back again.

               
"But you don't believe that," I whispered, dismayed.

               
"And you do," he breathed, stricken.

               
Oh, it's everything, it's everywhere.

               
We've gone away, and it's where we go. It's in the blue depths of
Lake Louise
, and high up in the fleecy cloud formations above
Biscayne Bay
. It rolls restlessly in with the surf at
Santa Barbara
, and lurks amid the coral rocks of
Bermuda
, a darker flower than the rest.

               
We've come back, and it's where we've come back to.

               
It's between the printed lines on the pages of the books we read. But it peers forth dark, and they fade off to illegibility. "Is he thinking of it now, as I read? As I am? I will not look up at him, I will keep my eyes to this, but--is he thinking of it now?"

               
It's the hand that holds out its coffee-cup across the breakfast table in the mornings, to have the urn tipped over it. Bloody-red for a moment in fancy, then back again to pale as it should be. Or maybe, to the other, it's that other hand opposite one, that does the tipping of the urn; depending upon which side of the table the beholder it sitting.

               
I saw his eyes rest on my hand one day, and I knew what he was thinking at that instant. Because I had looked at his hand much the same way on a previous day, and I had been thinking then what he was thinking now.

               
I saw him close his eyes briefly, to efface the sickly illusion; and I closed mine to dispel the knowledge of it that his had conveyed to me. Then we both opened them, and smiled at one another, to tell one another nothing had happened just then.

               
It's in the pictures that we see on the theatre-screen. "Let's get out of here, I'm--tired of it, aren't you?" (Somebody is going to kill somebody, up there, soon, and he knows it's coming.) But even though we do get up and leave, it's already too late, because he knows why we're leaving, and I know too. And even if I didn't know until then, this--the very fact of our leaving--has told me. So the precaution is wasted after all. It's back in our minds again.

               
Still, it's wiser to go than to stay.

               
I remember one night it came too quickly, more suddenly than we could have foretold, there was less warning given. We were not able to get all the way out in time. We were still only making our way up the aisle, our backs to the screen, when suddenly a shot rang out, and then a voice groaned in accusation, "You've--you've killed me."

               
It seemed to me it was his voice, and that he was speaking to us, to one of us. It seemed to me, in that moment, that every head in the audience turned, to look our way, to stare at us, with that detached curiosity of a great crowd when someone has been pointed out to them.

               
My legs for a moment seemed to refuse to carry me any further. I floundered there for a minute as though I were going to fall down helpless upon the carpeted aisle. I turned to look at him and I saw, unmistakably, that his head had cringed for a moment, was down defensively between his shoulders. And he always carried it so straight and erect. A moment later it was straight again, but just for that instant it hadn't been, it had been hunched.

               
Then, as though sensing that I needed him just then, because, perhaps, he needed me, he put his arm around my waist, and helped me the rest of the way up the aisle that way, steadying me, promising me support rather than actually giving it to me.

               
In the lobby, both our faces were like chalk. We didn't look at one another, it was the mirrors on the side told us that.

               
We never drink. We know enough not to. I think we sense that, rather than close the door on awareness, that would only open it all the wider and let full horror in. But that particular night, I remember, as we came out, he said, "Do you want something?"