The Lethal Sex

by Christianna Brand

  Jane Devin. She had already learned to loathe the name. Mrs. Devin had made a heaven of Walter’s home away from home. She was, to hear him tell it, the most perfect secretary man ever had. Now, in view of the implication of the lady’s own husband, Hazel began to wonder if Jane could even type.

  Enter Daniel. He never wore a hat, and that day the wiry curl had coiled tight upon his forehead, speckled with beads of snow like the stuff they spray on Christmas trees. He was big and blond, totally unlike her last three lovers, all of whom had been vaguely Latin.

  Instantly he told her the real reason for his visit. He had seen her picture in the newspaper the preceding Sunday, in a rotogravure section devoted to raising funds for the needy at Yuletide: Mrs. Walter Cranshaw, socialite, in tight black satin, dripping with diamonds, saying something silly such as, “I prefer Rumpleschmyer’s jewels because they are kindest to my skin.” She was to the rotogravure born, and Daniel had been unable to concentrate upon anything else since beholding her.

  His wife playing footsie with her husband? That was fantastic. Jane was a model of virtue on whom he had cast aspersions merely as a means of getting his own foot in the door. Jane was a dull girl, a mistake to have married. Hazel, on the other hand...

  She let him stay for lunch. Then, since Walter would not be back until the following evening, for dinner and breakfast. The maid who served them was let go the next morning, with a fat bonus and strict instructions to find a job no nearer than Fairfield County, Connecticut. Hazel lost more maids that way, but always furnished them with handsome references, saying the only reason she could bear the partings was their marked preference for country living.

  Daniel never again came to her apartment. They rented a room on the west side of town, in a neighborhood where no one would possibly recognize Hazel, in a house full of working people who were never around to see them come and go.

  She was going there now, to tell him he’d had it.

  For a man who had deliberately chosen a career of idleness, time hung on Daniel’s hands with surprising heaviness. Left to his own devices, he invariably fell asleep. Hazel found him dozing in the chair beside the window, where he had presumably been keeping watch for her.

  There was plenty of work in the room to which he could have applied himself. The bed was unmade, ashtrays unemptied, the washbowl filled with dirty glasses and crockery. Daniel had been camping there for days. Last Friday he had deserted Jane, without even discussing the matter with Hazel.

  She would have strongly advised him against it. Daniel-now-and-then had been divine; Daniel-always-available was a boresome thought. When he’d told her of the move, she’d felt as though a large, demanding baby had been deposited upon her doorstep. That was when she had made up her mind to dispense with him.

  She put two fingers in her mouth and whistled. It was a trick of which she was justly proud. It jolted Daniel awake.

  She gave him a minute to pull himself together, so that he would surely understand her. Then she said, “Daniel, I don’t love you any more.”

  “You don’t what?” He was on his feet. “What are you saying, you crazy kid?”

  “That I no longer love you. That’s how I am. I love someone madly, then all at once I don’t. You might as well go back to Jane.”

  “That’s a hell of a way to talk,” he said, “to a guy who tried to make you a rich widow today.”

  She forgot her lines completely.

  “You?” she improvised. “In the car? In the alley?”

  “Who else? I went down to see Jane. I’d remembered a couple of things of mine I’d left at our place. I’d also left my key, so I needed to borrow hers.”

  Hazel was still wearing her mink. She let him help her out of it, watched him toss it on a chair. She wanted to leave right away, but could not think of the words to tell him so.

  “She wouldn’t give me the key,” he continued. “She said I should come to the place some time when she was there, and we could have a talk. I could see she wanted to corner me and try to patch things up. I asked how about our talking then and there, but she said she was too busy, that the boss wanted her to take some dictation before he went out to lunch.

  “She went into his office, not quite shutting the door. I saw a Chesterfield and a gray homburg on a coat rack. All at once I remembered your telling me about that scary little alley he crosses every day on his way to lunch. I thought how peachy everything would be for us with him out of the way. I drove my car into position and waited for a homburg and a Chesterfield.”

  Hazel found her tongue. “You stupid fool,” she said contemptuously. “What a risk to take. Suppose someone had seen you driving out of the alley, had recognized you?”

  He got the whisky bottle, poured them each a drink. “Someone did see me,” he said at last. “I hope he didn’t recognize me, although he should have. He’d seen me just a while before, upstairs talking to Jane. He’s the office boy. He came running up the alley as I drove out. Your husband was yelling his head off. The kid saw who I was, unless he was too upset to notice.”

  The glass rattled against Hazel’s perfect teeth. “He noticed,” she said ruefully. “Walter says that boy’s as sharp as a tack. Walter’s the kind of husband who brings home newsy items about his co-workers to his adoring wife. I bet the police are looking for you and your car right now.”

  Daniel slipped an arm about her. “Seems to me,” he said, “that you’re mighty concerned about the welfare of a man you care nothing about.”

  “Idiot,” she snapped, breaking away from him. “It’s my own hide that worries me. What if the police find out about us? If there’s a public scandal, Walter would certainly divorce me.”

  “I wouldn’t bring your name into it, honey,” he protested.

  She regarded him speculatively. He might not do it intentionally, she guessed, giving him credit. He was, however, ill-equipped to cope with booby traps set by artful questioners. She had learned a lesson: never have an illicit affair with a stupid man. Cunning is required, the skill of a diplomat, the brain ever vigilant. Agility of mind was an essential, and Daniel couldn’t qualify.

  She was, herself, an expert. In her life was no trace of Daniel. But what price discretion if one’s partner is a blabbermouth, a fool?

  “I’ve got to go now,” she said abruptly. “I mustn’t keep my invalid husband waiting, my good provider. I think you’d better go back to your wife, Daniel. The police will ask fewer questions if you’re living with her.”

  “You really mean you don’t want to see me any more?”

  “Absolutely never.”

  He shrugged. Had she not had so much to think about, she might have been miffed by the speed with which he accepted defeat. Then she saw his lower lip jut forward and thought he was about to put up a fight.

  “I won’t go back to Jane,” he said stubbornly. “I’m sick and tired of her trying to make a man of me. That’s all she married me for, I sometimes think. I’m her project.”

  “Very well, then. But do try to keep out of sight. The rent’s paid up here until the end of the month.”

  “I don’t want to stay here. This place gives me the willies.”

  She had to agree with him. It was a small, sordid room whose walls always seemed to be marching in upon her, except when Daniel was taking her mind off them.

  “Do you know where I’d like to go?” he asked. “It’s where I thought we could go together if I’d been able to run over your husband. Florida. I like to sit in the sun.” He looked her dead in the eye, adding, “You’d sleep a lot easier, Hazel, if my license plate was in Florida instead of in some garage around here where the cops might find it. Trouble is, I’m temporarily embarrassed financially.”

  Blackmail. He had her over a barrel.

  “I guess Walter wouldn’t mind buying you a trip to Florida,” she said. “After all, you did him a favor. You smashed his foot and gave him a full week of bed rest. I’ll go to the bank first thing in the morning.”

>   “Thanks,” he said. “I’d appreciate it. I’ll be waiting for you.”

  She would give him a couple of hundred. His absence would be a bargain at half the price.

  By the phrase “first thing in the morning,” Hazel did not mean daybreak. She was having breakfast in the living room when Jane arrived shortly after eleven. Her pretty face was seamed with worry, the lids reddened as if by weeping.

  “Mr. Cranshaw is taking a nap,” Hazel told her. “I ordered my breakfast in here and promised to awaken him the moment you appeared. Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  “Yes, I would,” said Jane, and promptly began to cry. “I might as well tell you. I’d rather tell you myself, and Mr. Cranshaw too, than have you hear it from anyone else. That dreadful boy! The things he’s saying!”

  “What dreadful boy?”

  “Pete, who works at our office. I went there this morning to pick up the mail and found the place buzzing with the most scurrilous gossip. Mrs. Cranshaw, it was my husband who ran over Mr. Cranshaw’s foot. Pete was standing at the end of the alley and saw the whole thing. He said it looked to him as though it was done deliberately.”

  “Deliberately?” Hazel caught her breath. “Why ever should your husband want to injure mine deliberately?”

  “You won’t believe the filthy reason Pete has given everybody.” She colored. “At least I hope you won’t believe it. He says my husband was very jealous, suspecting more than a business relationship between me and Mr. Cranshaw.”

  “Oh?” said Hazel, relieved. She had not thought of that angle. It was an idea. If Daniel were ever caught he might, for a fee, plead this motive. Unwritten law, and all that sort of thing. But this was presupposing that his histrionic powers were equal to selling so implausible a story. Walter, or anyone in his right mind, preferring a wren like Jane to a flamingo like herself? Ridiculous.

  “Of course I don’t believe it,” she said sweetly.

  “Oh, thank you. Pete informed the police yesterday that my husband was the hit-and-run driver. They came to our apartment last night, looking for him. I say ‘our’ apartment, although Daniel moved out last week. I don’t know where he is. I had to tell them the license number of the car, so I suppose they’ll find him eventually. Perhaps it was disloyal of me, but I saw no way out of it.

  “They said nothing about Pete’s accusation. Maybe he didn’t even make it officially, knowing it wasn’t true. I would swear it was an accident, and it doesn’t surprise me that Daniel has had one, at last. He drives like a maniac. He’s done something to the motor of his car so that it starts fast, and he keeps going as fast as space will allow. I’ve always said he’d kill himself someday.”

  Hazel stood up. “Please excuse me,” she said. “I have an appointment. I’ll tell Mr. Cranshaw you’re here.”

  She did not soak in the tub, dressed as rapidly as she could; she was in a hurry to talk to Pete, the office boy. If he had not yet implied to the police that Walter’s mishap was actually attempted murder, it might be possible to buy him off.

  Outside, she called Walter’s office from a pay phone, asking to speak to the boy in a voice she hoped sounded like a teenager’s. His did, unmistakably.

  “Pete,” she said, “don’t repeat my name out loud. This is Mrs. Cranshaw. There’s something I want to discuss with you. Is there some place we can meet for a Coke?”

  He gave her the address of a drugstore. She wrote it down on the monogrammed pad she carried in her handbag for such purposes, then relayed it to a cab driver.

  She had told Pete she would be wearing a purple hat and he spotted her instantly, led her to a pair of stools at the far end of the counter. He had shifty eyes, she noted gratefully, set in an acquisitive face. He was for sale.

  “I want you to do me a favor,” she began. “I’ve heard you’ve been spreading rumors around the office about my husband and Mrs. Devin.”

  The eyes shifted away from her. “Gee,” he muttered. “It was only a guess.”

  “It was a good one.” She sighed. “It is tragically true. Both Mr. Devin and I have been aware of it for some time. He telephoned months ago to tell me about it. Since then we have consulted frequently. We think the wisest course is to say nothing, hoping the affair will burn itself out. We wished, at all costs, to avoid any unfavorable publicity, for the sake of my husband’s business, Mrs. Devins’s future employment. You, Pete, haven’t been much help.”

  “I’m sorry.” He gulped. “Me and my big mouth.”

  “But that’s not all. Mr. Devin is even more disturbed by something else you’ve said, something that definitely is not true. He didn’t run into my husband intentionally. It was an accident. His car sort of leaps ahead when it starts.”

  The boy’s jaw set. “He ought to know the tricks of his own car,” he said. “He was pointing it straight at Mr. Cranshaw. I was standing on the corner, watching the whole thing.”

  “Well,” she hesitated, “in a sense you may be right. I mean, maybe he subconsciously saw a chance to get back at his rival and did it on impulse. If so, he has regretted it. He’d give a lot,” she stressed the verb, “if you’d just forget what you saw, if you’d tell the office force that you made the whole thing up for a gag, and never even hint at it to the police. You haven’t told the police about it, have you?”

  “No,” he said, greed in his eyes. “Not yet.”

  “You’re an ambitious kid, aren’t you?” she asked. “You’d like to improve yourself, take a lot of night-school courses?”

  “You’re darned right.”

  “How much would the tuition come to, do you reckon?”

  “Ohhhh.” He scratched his chin with a thumb nail. “Say about a thousand?”

  She didn’t dicker. Walter had plenty of money. She said, “I’ll tell Mr. Devin. I’m sure he will be glad to give it to you, if you meet him somewhere tonight. Say about eight o’clock?”

  It would be dark then; Daniel would be stealing out of town under the cover of it, the door of that dreadful room closed forever behind him, no trace of her left in it. No sense giving that address to Pete. A bright boy like this might someday get curious, and there was always the chance that someone in that building might have caught a glimpse of her.

  Near the room, there was a Greek restaurant where she had never been. If anything went amiss, no one would ever be able to connect her with Daniel, who had been there often. They had kept its menu in a bureau drawer; whenever they got hungry she would order from it. The food was good, always piping hot when Daniel brought it back.

  It was called Galliopolis. She took the pad out of her handbag and wrote down the name and street number. She took two dollars out of her purse.

  Here’s cab fare,” she said. “Be sure you’re there on the dot of eight. Mr. Devin will be waiting for you outside.”

  She went to the bank and cashed a check for twelve hundred dollars. Daniel was asleep in the room when she got there; she whistled him awake again and gave him his orders.

  She had a pretty good night’s sleep herself. She was awakened by the ringing of the bedside telephone. She reached for it, beating Walter to the draw.

  The call was for him, from the switchboard operator at his office. She passed the phone to him. In a moment he was exclaiming into it, “How shocking!” He said a few more things and hung up, while Hazel tried to sink back into a dream which had just been becoming interesting.

  Walter wouldn’t let her. He said, “Poor Mrs. Devin. She’s such a wonderful person, and she does have the rottenest luck. That husband of hers! Day before yesterday he got her into a commotion by running over my foot. Last night he managed to get himself killed on a highway in New Jersey.”

  “He did?” Hazel sat up in bed. “He did?” Then she lay back upon her pillow and smiled into it. Daniel-dead could do her no harm.

  “It just shows the stuff that Devin woman is made of,” Walter marveled. “Other women would go to pieces, but she’s right on the job. She’s on her way here now. Sh
e asked the girl to call and tell me she would be a little late.”

  Hazel rang for the maid to bring her breakfast. By the time it arrived, so had Daniel’s widow.

  She stood tall and proud in the doorway. Hazel beckoned to her to come in. She walked to Walter’s bed and handed him the morning’s mail.

  “Mrs. Devin,” he said, taking her hand in both of his, “we are sorry about this. Is there anything we can do? Would you like an advance on your salary to take care of emergency expenses?”

  “No, thank you,” she said. “That won’t be necessary. Daniel was carrying a rather large sum of money, which was released to me. Twelve hundred dollars.”

  Hazel’s hand holding the coffee cup shook like a riveter’s. Daniel had skipped without paying Pete. Pete would be neither happy nor silent about it.

  “We’re so sorry,” Walter said again. Then, embarrassedly, “As my secretary, please order some flowers for him, whatever you’d like.”

  “I’m not having flowers at the services,” said Jane. “However, I think Pete’s mother would like some. You know about the frightful thing that happened to Pete, don’t you?’’

  Hazel had just screwed up her courage to lift the cup again. It tipped and flooded the saucer.

  “What about Pete?’’ Walter asked.

  “The poor boy was stabbed last night. They found him on a street corner on Tenth Avenue. I suppose you had read about it in the newspaper.”

  Hazel was furiously blotting up the spilled coffee. “You are not a very observant secretary,” she said acidly. “Don’t you know your boss reads the paper from back to front, financial news, sport, world affairs, in that order?”

  “No,” said Jane softly. “I didn’t. I would not have told him about Pete so bluntly.”

  “I think it would be better,” said Hazel pointedly, “if you didn’t talk about Pete at all. Haven’t you guessed who probably killed him?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Jane, looking so innocent and mealy-mouthed that Hazel could have thrown the coffeepot at her.