What Dread Hand? (10 page)

The plan seemed to be born and developed all in that one moment in Mr. de Silva’s mind. He would take her out that evening and make her lean over the balcony to point out the rose; then a hoist and a shove, and… He could see in his mind’s eye a small and shapeless heap among the gay umbrellas and tables far below. He could hear himself, the distracted young widower, repeating over and over again, ‘She must have leaned over the balcony to look at the rose…’ Of course he would come into the money and therefore be open to suspicion; but they were not over-looked and from the street it would be impossible to say what had happened. He didn’t care what anybody thought as long as nobody knew.

Lulu was living in cheap lodgings in a back street of Cannes; the old girl was generous enough with her presents and readily paid his bills but she was a bit tight with the spending money and he had not been able to spare much for the lady of his heart. She was expecting him at eleven and he must heave himself up and make a lot of excuses about the barber and new shirts and a little shopping expedition which was to be a secret till that evening. Mrs. de Silva assured him that the morning was all his own; she was not even sure that she would be back to lunch, for she had promised to go to the Hotel d’Or immediately afterwards for her dancing lesson.

‘You and your dancing lessons!’ said de Silva, patting her roguishly. ‘I do believe you’re falling in love with that handsome gigolo, Pierre. You’re always dancing with him now.’

‘Well, it used to be you, dear, but you seem to have quite given up dancing since you became a married man.’

‘Do you remember that night at Juan when we danced to the Blue Danube together?’ She wouldn’t be with him much longer and he could afford to be sentimental.

‘That was the night you refused to take your little tip, because you said you couldn’t bear the thought of money to come between us. I gave you a little gold watch the next day to make up—do you remember?’

They sighed deliriously and went about their various businesses. De Silva sprawled in a chair and outlined the plan to his Lulu; Mrs. de Silva lumbered round in the arms of Pierre, nodding her auburn-rinsed head in time to the music and humming with maddening inaccuracy into his ear.

‘Naughty little girl,’ said Pierre, tightening his arm about her well-corseted waist. ‘Keep your mind on your steps and never mind the music. Think about your feet.’

‘How can you expect me to, Pierre, while I’m dancing with you? And how can you be so silly as to call me a little girl?’

‘Well, so you are,’ said Pierre. ‘A naughty little red-headed girl who won’t pay attention to her lessons. But come and sit down, and tell me you’re not offended because I wouldn’t accept your little
pourboire
last night. It was only because I do so hate the thought of money coming into our—friendship.’

Mrs. de Silva was not in the least offended. She had brought him a dear little platinum watch, to make up.

De Silva arrived home with a beautiful (second-hand) diamond clip for her to wear in her hair. It had gone a little against the grain to spend so much money but he could always give it to Lulu afterwards, and surely no one would suspect a man of murdering his wife, who had just bought her a diamond clip. She was delighted with the gift; all that was wanting now was the rose to tuck into it and then she would be ready to go down to dinner. Mr. de Silva began to think that murder was really the easiest thing in the world. They went out on to the balcony and leaned over.

A push, a heave—a terrible cry. Far, far below, little people detached themselves from beneath the midget umbrellas and ran towards the crumpled form.
Hélas, hélas! Quel horreur!
Fetch the ambulance, inform the police, throw over it the tablecloth of the hotel…

The police burst into the suite. There, sure enough was the distracted form upon the couch with clenched hands and disordered hair, in a storm of crocodile tears. Amid wild sobbing, they extracted the terrible story.

‘He must have leaned over the balcony to look at the rose,’ began Mrs. de Silva…

P.S. I include this story because it’s the first thing I ever wrote for publication.

C.B.

S
HE WAS SCREAMING… SCREAMING…
‘Don’t leave me, come back, come back!’ But they didn’t come back; they had rushed away, all three of them, sick, white, gibbering with the horror of it—leaving her here alone.

It seemed so long ago now, long, long ago, another world, another age since, easily chatting, they had gone up the splendid sweep of the staircase and into that other room. A lovely room—square, high ceilinged, furnished as far as possible in keeping with its eighteenth century air; there was even, though nowadays its curtains were of nylon, a four-poster bed. Her hostess had stirred up the fire to a blaze and kissed her goodnight—wished they hadn’t talked so much to her this evening about all the silly village gossip, hoped she was all right, was she, darling?—and smiled and gone away. In her dressing gown and nightie, the oil lamp glowing softly on the table by the bedside, she had sat down before the cheerfully crackling little fire to brush out her silky hair.

She loved brushing her hair, sitting by the fireside, dreaming. Her thoughts drifted off, a million miles from suicides and hauntings. A young girl had killed herself after sleeping in this room—but that had been fifty, sixty years ago; a woman more recently, but she had been newly widowed and still grieving. And an old woman had slept here and felt a silence, she had said, a chill, ‘a feeling of evil; I could smell it as a horse scents danger…’ but she too, doubtless, had been primed all evening with stories about the house. A young man had lived here, it seemed, two hundred years ago, who had deserted his beautiful wife and joined one of the Hell Fire Clubs, sold his soul to the devil, all the rest of it; had repented and come home and his wife refused to forgive him. And so he had killed himself or killed the wife, or the wife had killed him, nobody seemed to be sure; but anyway, of course he had haunted here ever since. Wherefore, girls and young widows committed suicide, old women felt a sense of nameless evil, a silence, a chill…

And certainly it was extraordinarily quiet—strangely still. Should there not be some sighing of night breezes, some faint brushing of leaf upon leaf at the window sill, some stirring of nocturnal creatures, bat and owl?—should there not be, at least, some flutter of flame from this small log fire that so lately had gaily crackled, but now was like a fire seen, brightly burning, through sound-resistant glass? Sound resistant and heat resistant also; for she held out her hand to its blaze and felt no warmth from it, no warmth at all…

No warmth at all. Fear pierced her, she thrust her hand forward to the very bars of the grate and knew with a shock of realisation that her hand remained still cold, as cold as ice—that all her body was taut with chill, that it was as though for a million years the sun had been gone and brought no warming rays to the ice-bound earth. And through the dank chill—the creeping-on of the sense of evil… ‘I could smell it as a horse scents danger…’ the old woman had said. And now, suddenly, it was all about her, strong, pungent, unmistakable as the stench of decay: the knowledge of the presence of evil, the knowledge of the presence of cruelty and pain…

At the heart of the evil—life. A voice whispered out of the evil: ‘I am here.’

And she saw him standing there, quietly. Aged thirty, perhaps; as fair as herself, of middle height and slender, dressed in the velvet and brocade of the late eighteenth century. And she looked at his pale face and suddenly all evil, all the cruelty were gone; for in all the world there never had been so much sadness, so much longing, so much—pleading—in the face of any man.

He did not move. He stood with one hand on the carved mahogany upright of the four-poster bed. He said: ‘Are you afraid?’

Of course she was afraid, crouching there, trembling, huddled at the edge of her chair. She tried to call out, to scream for help but no sound came. ‘Go away! Get away!’ She muttered and mumbled, small meaningless, ejaculatory prayers. ‘Don’t come near me, get away, get away…’ Beyond him, in the shadows by the head of the four-poster bed, the oil lamp glowed steadily and with a new and sickening stab of terror, she recognised that she saw this lamp though he stood between herself and it. ‘Who are you? What are you? You are not a man—’

‘I was a man,’ he sadly said.

‘You’re not a man now,’ she blurted out, whimpering. ‘You’re a ghost, you’re a dead thing, go away, get away, go back where you belong…’

‘I belong in hell,’ he said.

‘In—hell? Then if you belong in hell—’ she was gathering courage, finding some strength in the gentleness of his answers, the terrible, pleading sadness in his face—‘go back there to hell, go back where you belong.’

‘I belong here,’ he said. ‘This is my hell.’

‘Here—in this room?’

‘I made it my hell. I created it hell for myself; and for—another. She could have undone all the wrong; she could—here in this room, she could have held out her arms to me and made it all heaven again. But she would not. I had made it a hell for her too and so she would not, or could not; and there was no other way back…’ And the sadness was there and the terrible longing. ‘No other way back, but through a woman’s forgiveness: a woman who could love enough to forgive.’

So now she knew. No evil: that had been all repented in the long ago past. No cruelty—that had been in the bleak refusal of pardon to the sinner come home. And no fear: nothing to fear, only a sad ghost caught and caged in eternal atonement at the scene of his ultimate despair. She faltered: ‘What is it you want of me?’ but even as she asked, she knew.

‘If it could be found in the heart of a woman to forgive—to know it all and in spite of it all to love as
she
could not love, to love enough to forgive…’

‘Your sins were not sins against me,’ she said.

‘They were sins against womankind.’ He moved now, he came close to her, and she was not afraid. And he saw that she was not afraid and came closer and knelt at her feet, but not touching her; and now for the first time smiled at her, gently and whimsically. ‘It is like the child’s fairy story—isn’t it? The prince caught in the heart of the mountain of ice and one tear from the princess will melt the mountain away and set him free.’

‘That’s in the fairy stories.’

‘Yes, but… Fairy stories have deep roots, you know. Fairy stories come from old, ancient legends and legends from myths; and myths from the uttermost womb of religious time.’ And he held out his hand, the lace ruffle falling away like foam from the narrow wrist, and said, ‘Put your hand into mine, Princess, and who knows but that in time the tear may come that will wash all the mountain of my sins away.’

She thought: those other two—they refused him their hand; they refused him their tears. A woman, widowed, obsessed with sorrows of her own, a girl too young and uncaring to understand the passion of his need for this sacrifice—this one short step across the threshold of fear to render him succour who cried for it from out of the depths of death. But afterwards, they had remembered and understood…

Not for her should be that remorse, not for her that memory, not if at so small a cost to herself, she might set this damned soul free. A hand clasp across the gulf between the living and the dead… She stretched out her hand to him, her young and lovely hand, and would not let him see how she shivered at the chill of icy fingers closing over hers. Tell me what there is to forgive; and if I can forgive, in the name of “womankind” as you say—I will try to forgive.’

And he told her. The Hell Fire Club—the first light-hearted entering-in upon a world of darkness unimagined, unimaginable; the only half-understood surrendering up of free will; the realisation, too late, that the soul was netted in snares of evil unthought of in the mind of uncontaminated man… ‘It was like walking into a quicksands… A gay evening, laughter and nonsense, a good deal of wine; and then—an invitation whispered behind the back of a hand, a challenge, a wager…’ And the grass at the edge of the quicksands was bright and the first steps innocent and easy and then—‘Then there was no turning, no going back; and, soon no desire to go back. I…’ He shuddered like a man with an ague. ‘There was a woman that night, lying across an altar…’ He broke off. ‘You should not hear these things. And yet—if I don’t tell you, how can you forgive?’

Those others—they had not listened, could not forgive; and so at last in remorse had destroyed themselves. She said: ‘Tell me, then. Tell me.’

So again he told her: the total submission to the antithesis of Good—the sacrilege, the sadism, the revulsion from all things clean and kind; the corruption of the innocent, the young and the beautiful defiled, brought low—the craving for more and more, for worse and worse… He told her, until her own mind caught the infection and, sick with horror, yet cried out, ‘Tell me…’ And he put his cold arms about her to comfort her and only when at last he was done, released her and said: ‘So at last I came back to her; and this load of filth I laid at her feet as I now lay it at yours, and asked her to forgive me, to make me clean again by her tears…’

But she had had no courage to listen, could not forgive; and so through the centuries he had carried the burden of his sins and come again and laid them at the feet of another, and again, and again. And they too had repudiated him, had heard him part way, and the shock of it—at any rate had failed in compassion in the end. But she—? Should she too fail? She faltered out at last: ‘If I speak the words “I forgive you—”?’

She saw the look of doom fore-known, return to his eyes. ‘You know that meaningless words will not set me free.’

‘I could shed tears—’

‘For the victims: for the tortured, the shamed, the denied. But not for me?’ He got up from the place where he had knelt all this time at her feet, and stood before her. ‘You can’t forgive. Only love can forgive. I have failed once more.’ And she felt that the room grew cold again and hushed again and knew that he was leaving her. His sad voice said, ‘For ever… For ever…’