The Fallen Curtain (7 page)

Whoever it was in the bathroom had left it and gone back to the other one. But only for a moment. Again he heard the boards creak, again someone was moving about on that dark landing. Dark, yes, pitch dark, for they hadn’t switched the light on this time. And Duncan felt then the first thrill of real fear, which didn’t subside after the shiver had died but grew and gripped him in a terror the like of which he hadn’t known since he was a little boy and had been shut up in the nursery cupboard of his father’s manse. He mustn’t be afraid, he mustn’t. He must think of his heart. Why should they want vengeance? He’d explained. He’d told them the truth, taking the full burden of blame on himself.

The room was so dark that he didn’t see the door handle turn. He heard it. It creaked very softly. His heart began a slow, steady pounding and he contracted his body, forcing it
back against the wall. Whoever it was had come into the room. He could see the shape of him—or her—as a denser blackness in the dark.

“What…? Who…?” he said, quavering, his throat dry.

The shape grew fluid, glided away, and the door closed softly. They wanted to see if he was asleep. They would kill him when he was asleep. He sat up, switched on the light, and put his face in his hands. “O, never shall sun that morrow see!” He’d put all that furniture against the door, that chest of drawers, his bed, the chair. His throat was parched now and he reached for the water, taking a long draught. It was icy cold.

They weren’t whispering any more. They were waiting in silence. He got up and put his coat round him. In the bitter cold he began lugging the furniture away from the walls, lifting the iron bedstead that felt so small and narrow when he was in it but was so hideously weighty.

Straightening up from his second attempt, he felt it, the pain in his chest and down his left arm. It came like a clamp, like a clamp being screwed and at the same time slowly heated red-hot. It took his body in hot iron fingers and squeezed his ribs. And sweat began to pour from him as if the temperature in the room had suddenly risen tremendously. Oh, God, Oh, God, the water in the glass… ! They would have to get him a doctor, they would have to, they couldn’t be so pitiless. He was old and tired and his heart was bad.

He pulled the coat round the pain and staggered out into the black passage. Their door—where was their door? He found it by fumbling at the walls, scrabbling like an imprisoned animal, and when he found it he kicked it open and swayed on the threshold, holding the pain in both his hands.

They were sitting on their bed with their backs to him, not in bed but sitting there, the shapes of them silhouetted against the light of a small low-bulbed bedlamp.

“Oh, please,” he said, “please help me. Don’t kill me, I beg you not to kill me. I’ll go on my knees to you. I know I’ve done wrong, I did a terrible thing. I didn’t make an error of judgment.
I sacked Hugo because he wanted too much for the staff, he wanted more money for everyone and I couldn’t let them have it. I wanted my new car and my holidays. I had to have my villa—so beautiful, my villa, my gardens. Ah, God, I know I was greedy but I’ve borne the guilt of it for months, every day—on my conscience—the guilt of it….” They turned, two white faces, implacable, merciless. They rose and came towards him, scrambling across their bed. “Have pity on me,” he screamed. “Don’t kill me. I’ll give you everything I’ve got, I’ll give you a million …”

But they had seized him with their hands and it was too late. She had told him it was too late.

  “In our house!” she said.

“Don’t,” said Hugo. “That’s what Lady Macbeth said. What does it matter whether it was in our house or not?”

“I wish I’d never invited him.”

“Well, it was your idea. You said let’s have him here because he’s a widower and lonely. I didn’t want him. It was ghastly the way he insisted on talking about firing me when we wanted to keep off the subject at any price. I was utterly fed up when he had to stay the night.”

“What do we do now?” said Elizabeth.

“Get the police, I should think, or a doctor. It’s stopped raining. I’ll get dressed and go.”

“But you’re not well! You kept throwing up.”

“I’m O.K. now. I drank too much brandy. It was such a strain all of it, nobody knowing what to talk about. God, what a business! He was all right when you went into his room just now, wasn’t he?”

“Half asleep, I thought. I was going to apologise for all the racket you were making but he seemed nearly asleep. Did you get any of that he was trying to say when he came in here? I didn’t.”

“No, it was just gibberish. We couldn’t have done anything for him, darling. We did try to catch him before he fell.”

“I know.”

“He had a bad heart.”

“In more ways than one, poor old man,” said Elizabeth, and she laid a blanket gently over Duncan, though he was past feeling heat or cold or guilt or fear or anything any more.

Della Galway went out with a man for the first (and almost the last) time on her nineteenth birthday. He parked his car, and as they were going into the restaurant she asked him if he had locked all the doors and the boot. When he turned back and said, yes, he’d better do that, she asked him why he didn’t have a burglar-proof locking device on the steering wheel.

Her parents had brought her up to be cautious. When she left that happy home in that safe little provincial town, she took her parents’ notions with her to London. At first she could only afford the rent of a single room. It upset her that the other tenants often came in late at night and left the front door on the latch. Although her room was at the top of the house and she had nothing worth stealing, she lay in bed sweating with fear. At work it was just the same. Nobody bothered about security measures. Della was always the last to leave, and sometimes she went back two or three times to check that all the office doors and the outer door were shut.

The personnel officer suggested she see a psychiatrist.

Della was very ambitious. She had an economics degree and a business studies diploma, and had come out top at the end of her secretarial course. She knew a psychiatrist would find something wrong with her—they had to earn their money like everyone else—and long sessions of treatment would follow which wouldn’t help her towards her goal, that of becoming the company’s first woman director. They always held that sort of thing against you.

“That won’t be necessary,” she said in her brisk way. “It was the firm’s property I was worried about. If they like to risk losing their valuable equipment, that’s their look-out.”

She stopped going back to check the doors—it didn’t prey on her mind much as her own safety wasn’t involved—and three weeks later two men broke in, stole all the electric typewriters, and damaged the computer beyond repair. It proved her right, but she didn’t say so. The threat of the psychiatrist
had frightened her so much that she never again aired her burglar obsession at work.

When she got promotion and a salary rise, she decided to get a flat of her own. The landlady was a woman after her own heart. Mrs Swanson liked Della from the first and explained to her, as to a kindred spirit, the security arrangements.

“This is a very nice neighbourhood, Miss Galway, but the crime rate in London is rising all the time, and I always say you can’t be too careful.”

Della said she couldn’t agree more.

“So I always keep this side gate bolted on the inside. The back door into this little yard must also be kept locked and bolted. The bathroom window looks out into the garden, you see, so I like the garden door and the bathroom door to be locked at night too.”

“Very wise,” said Della, noting that the window in the bed-sitting room had screws fixed to its sashes which prevented its being opened more than six inches. “What did you say the rent was?”

“Twenty pounds a week.” Mrs Swanson was a landlady first, and a kindred spirit secondly, so when Della hesitated, she said, “It’s a garden flat, completely self-contained and you’ve got your own phone. I shan’t have any trouble in letting it. I’ve got someone else coming to view it at two.”

Della stopped hesitating. She moved in at the end of the week, having supplied Mrs Swanson with references and assured her she was quiet, prudent as to locks and bolts, and not inclined to have “unauthorised” people to stay overnight. By unauthorised people Mrs Swanson meant men. Since the episode over the car on her nineteenth birthday, Della had entered tentatively upon friendships with men, but no man had ever taken her out more than twice and none had ever got as far as to kiss her. She didn’t know why this was, as she had always been polite and pleasant, insisting on paying her share, careful to carry her own coat, handbag, and parcels so as to give her escort no trouble, ever watchful of his wallet and keys, offering to have the theatre tickets in her own safe-keeping,
and anxious not to keep him out too late. That one after another men dropped her worried her very little. No spark of sexual feeling had ever troubled her, and the idea of sharing her orderly, routine-driven life with a man—untidy, feckless, casual creatures as they all, with the exception of her father, seemed to be—was a daunting one. She meant to get to the top on her own. One day perhaps, when she was about thirty-five and with a high-powered lady executive’s salary, then if some like-minded, quiet, and prudent man came along…. In the meantime, Mrs Swanson had no need to worry.

Della was very happy with her flat. It was utterly quiet, a little sanctum tucked at the back of the house. She never heard a sound from her neighbours in the other parts of the house and they, of course, never heard a sound from her. She encountered them occasionally when crossing from her own front door to the front door of the house. They were mouselike people who scuttled off to their holes with no more than a nod and a “good evening.” This was as it should be. The flat, too, was entirely as it should be.

The bed-sitter looked just like a living room by day, for the bed was let down from a curtained recess in the wall only at night. Its window overlooked the yard, which Della never used. She never unbolted the side gate or the back door or, needless to say, attempted to undo the screws and open the window more than six inches.

Every evening, when she had washed the dishes and wiped down every surface in the immaculate, well-fitted kitchen, had her bath, made her bedtime drink, and let the bed down from the wall, she went on her security rounds just as her father did at home. First she unlocked and unbolted the back door and crossed the yard to check that the side gate was securely fastened. It always was, as no one ever touched it, but Della liked to make absolutely sure, and sometimes went back several times in case her eyes had deceived her. Then she bolted and locked the back door, the garden door, and the bathroom door. All these doors opened out of a small room, about ten feet square—Mrs Swanson called it the garden room—which in its
turn could be locked off by yet another door from the kitchen. Della locked it. She rather regretted she couldn’t lock the door that led from the kitchen into the bed-sitting room but, owing to some oversight on Mrs Swanson’s part, there was no lock on it. However, her own front door in the bed-sitter itself was locked, of course, on the Yale. Finally, before getting into bed, she bolted the front door.

Then she was safe. Though she sometimes got up once or twice more to make assurance trebly sure, she generally settled down at this point into blissful sleep, certain that even the most accomplished of burglars couldn’t break in.

There was only one drawback—the rent.

“The flat,” said Mrs Swanson, “is really intended for two people. A married couple had it before you, and before that two ladies shared it.”

“I couldn’t share my bed,” said Della with a shudder, “or, come to that, my room.”

“If you found a nice friend to share, I wouldn’t object to putting up a single bed in the garden room. Then your friend could come and go by the side gate, provided you were prepared to
promise
me it would always be bolted at night.”

Della wasn’t going to advertise for a flatmate. You couldn’t be too careful. Yet she had to find someone if she was going to afford any new winter clothes, not to mention heating the place. It would have to be the right person, someone to fill all her own exacting requirements as well as satisfy Mrs Swanson….

“Ooh, it’s lovely!” said Rosamund Vine.” It’s so quiet and clean. And you’ve got a garden! You should see the dump I’ve been living in. It was over-run with mice.”

“You don’t get mice,” said Della repressively, “unless you leave food about.”

“I won’t do that. I’ll be ever so careful. I’ll go halves with the rent and I’ll have the key to the back door, shall I? That way I won’t disturb you if I come in late at night.”

“I hope you won’t come in late at night,” said Della. “Mrs Swanson’s very particular about that sort of thing.”

“Don’t worry.” Rosamund sounded rather bitter. “I’ve nothing and no one to keep me out late. Anyway, the last bus passes the end of the road at a quarter of twelve.”

Della pushed aside her misgivings, and Mrs Swanson, interviewing Rosamund, appeared to have none. She made a point of explaining the safety precautions, to which Rosamund listened meekly and with earnest nods of her head. Della was glad this duty hadn’t fallen to her, as she didn’t want Rosamund to tell exaggerated tales about her at work. So much the better if she could put it all on Mrs Swanson.

Rosamund Vine had been chosen with the care Della devoted to every choice she made. It had taken three weeks of observation and keeping her ears open to select her. It wouldn’t do to find someone on too low a salary or, on the other hand, someone with too lofty a position in the company. She didn’t like the idea of a spectacularly good-looking girl, for such led hectic lives, or too clever a girl, for such might involve her in tiresome arguments. An elegant girl would fill the cupboards with clothes and the bathroom with cosmetics. A gifted girl would bring in musical instruments or looms or paints or trunks full of books. Only Rosamund, of all the candidates, qualified. She was small and quiet and prettyish, a secretary (though not Della’s secretary), the daughter of a clergyman who, by coincidence, had been at the same university at the same time as Della’s father. Della, who had much the same attitude as Victorian employers had to their maids’ “followers,” noted that she had never heard her speak of a boy friend or overheard any cloakroom gossip as to Rosamund’s love life.