Mrs. Appleby felt a weak thrill of anger. Now, at eighty, anger wasn’t, as it used to be, a violent disruption of the nervous system. It was a kind of titillation—almost a pleasure. She knew she had told the story of the bear cub many times before. She knew she exasperated her nieces. But she didn’t care. She loved talking about the bear, thinking about it. Every month, somehow, it seemed to become more precious, more important. Since both her nieces, whose marriages had ended disastrously, were supported by her, they might at least listen about the bear.
The little flame of anger warmed her. Her mouth crumpled and she started to pick at the bedclothes with her fingers.
“Look at the state of this bed. The quilt. My pillows.”
Trudy began to work laboriously at the bedclothes. Mrs. Appleby watched the movements of her niece’s hands with distaste. How, she wondered, had her brother produced an offspring with such coarse wrists? She herself had had the most delicate hands in Poughkeepsie, and her brother’s wife—well, she had perhaps been not quite, quite, but she had been refined enough. She let Trudy lumber on for a few moments and then pushed her petulantly away.
“You’d never keep a job as a housemaid. Why don’t you go out and take a nice walk instead of mooning indoors this lovely weather?”
Anger heightened the purple of Trudy’s cheeks. “I wanted to go out earlier and you said you wanted me.”
“That was then. This is now. Run along and send Melanie to me. It’s four o’clock. I want my tea. Melanie at least knows how to make tea.”
As Trudy flounced to the door, Mrs. Appleby felt a heady excitement. Almost beridden she may have been, but her ears were still as sharp as ever. That morning she had overheard enough of Trudy’s furtive telephone conversation to catch its drift. That dreadful Mr. Jevons’ wife was going out, probably to a lunch party. The coast would have been clear between one and four—if Trudy could get away.
Well, Mrs. Appleby had seen that Trudy had not got away.
She told herself that what she felt was moral indignation. Really, her niece, her own brother’s daughter, carrying on with a married man, and such a dreadful one! But Mrs. Appleby was in fact too old to care about morality. The real joy was in having frustrated Trudy.
“Yes,” mused Mrs. Appleby, “that’s actually what it is. Spite.”
She had always, even as a girl, been able to stand outside of herself and see her motives. This faculty had not left her. When she was young, she had had a horror of old women. They had seemed to her selfish, envious, cruel. Now she was an old woman herself; the exquisite wild little Amelia had shrivelled into this carcass, wizened as old orange peel; her great love for the bear cub, her later, madly romantic passion for her husband had dwindled down to this bitter bickering with her nieces. She had been right about old women. They were monstrous.
Perhaps, she wondered, this might not have happened to her if dear Decius had lived. Or if they had had a child. Perhaps, it might even have passed her by if her nieces had been lovable. She had tried, God knew, to love them. It wasn’t her fault that they had turned out like this.
Trudy had always been grabbing, with no judgment. Who but Trudy would have married an unattractive stockbroker who could not even handle stocks properly and had ended up a penniless suicide? And Melanie had always in a way been worse; Melanie with her prettiness which had seemed faded at nineteen, with her slynesses and her pieties. It had been just like Melanie to marry a minister with an Adam’s apple, a direct wire to God from Wilkes-Barre and no money in the bank. When he died, Melanie had sobbed that he had returned to his Maker. To Mrs. Appleby it had seemed that he had never left Him.
Yes, thought Mrs. Appleby out loud to justify herself, if they had been lovable I would have loved them.
But five years of intimate living under the same roof without love can only breed irritation, spite, and finally hatred. In the first years after they had returned, widowed, to take care of her in her own widowhood, Amelia had become sufficiently exasperated by them into the thought of giving them both incomes to get rid of them. After all, dear Decius had left her a great deal of money. She could get a young, pleasant, paid companion. But, when it came to the point, she couldn’t bring herself to finance her nieces because she knew that was exactly what they wanted.
They had both always been hyenas; Trudy a frank, baying hyena; Melanie a smirring, pious hyena. They had come back smelling her money, sniffing around it as around a dying sheep. Why, when they gave her no warmth, should she give them what they wanted? Let them work for it, take over some of the servants’ duties, put up with her old whims, suffer for it—wait till she died.
For a moment the ghost of pretty little Amelia was appalled by the perversity which had take possession of her. Self-pity began to engulf her.
“Nobody loves me,” she said. She knew this was only an old woman’s querulity. But she was an old woman. What could she do about it? “Nobody loves me.”
Melanie slid into the room. She always went through a door humbly, a little sidewise as if she were carrying a tray. That pretty name! thought Mrs. Appleby. What a gamble parents take christening their children.
“Where’s my tea?” she demanded.
“The kettle’s almost boiling, Aunt. I’ll bring it directly.”
There was an unfamiliar, keyed-up quality to Melanie’s thin voice. Mrs. Appleby shifted against the pillows to study her elder niece’s face. Yes, it was suffused with the pink of purpose. The light grey eyes behind the rimless glasses glinted too. She was carrying a letter.
From one of those frightful evangelical people in Wilkes-Barre, I’ll be bound, thought Mrs. Appleby.
Automatically, because she was sure that Melanie was eager to discuss her own affairs, she began to tell her the story of the bear. As she went on, she forgot she was only telling it to annoy. She fell in love all over again with the delicious softness of the brown fur and the wonderful tickliness of the little wet muzzle.
Melanie stood very close to the bed, watching her, clutching the letter against her breast. She re-emerged in her aunt’s consciousness with a sudden sharp: “Aunt, I’ve got a letter today from Wilkes-Barre.”
“And nobody,” went on Mrs. Appleby firmly, “will know how much I cried when it got too big and had to be sent to the Albany zoo. What, Melanie?”
“I’ve got a letter from Wilkes-Barre.”
“Oh.”
“It’s a very special letter. The wife of the minister who took over when Edward died is very sick. There’s no one to help with all her duties, at least no one who they think will do. And they’ve written to ask if I’ll come back.”
Mrs. Appleby watched Melanie. She knew this unexpected news meant everything to her. The only happiness Melanie had known was the glory of being the holiest lady bullying the other lesser holy ladies in her little group. Now the position she had forfeited by her husband’s death was being miraculously offered to her again.
“I’ve got to answer right away,” blurted Melanie. “There’s some other woman they’ll have to invite if I don’t go. Oh, Aunt Amelia, you have Trudy, the servants, to take care of you. Let me go. Let me go.”
“What’s the emotion about?” snapped Mrs. Appleby. “Go. I’m not your keeper.”
“But they won’t be able to—to give me any salary. Or a place to live. I mean …” Melanie squirmed. “Aunt Amelia, it would only be a little income …”
Mrs. Appleby felt her old woman’s obscene pleasure crawling through her once more. She couldn’t have controlled it if she’d wanted to. “So I’m supposed to support you in Wilkes-Barre. Really, Melanie. You inherit half of everything when I die. Haven’t you even the decency to wait?”
A look of malice, so powerful that it almost frightened Mrs. Appleby, flashed behind the rimless glasses.
“But it’s now or never.”
“Then it’s never.” Mrs. Appleby fidgeted with her bed jacket. “Do get my tea, Melanie. It’s late.”
“But, Aunt …”
>
“My tea.”
For a moment Melanie hesitated at the bedside, her face splotched, her lips quivering with fury. Then, tossing her greying head, she started to run to the door.
“I’ll get your tea.”
Soon she came sidling in with the tea tray. In charged silence she arranged the tray on a side table. Mrs. Appleby never ate at teatime and took only one cup.
“Pour it,” she said as she always did. “And, for pity’s sake, don’t make it too strong.”
Vaguely she watched Melanie hovering around the old silver teapot which had recently arrived from Mrs. Appleby’s sister, who had married a Scottish baronet. Melanie brought the cup over, spilling a little of the tea into the saucer.
Mrs. Appleby clucked her disapproval, took the cup and snapped: “Run along, for heaven’s sake. Write a letter to your minister. Explain to him that you aren’t a millionairess. Run along.”
Melanie flitted out of the room. Her easy victory and the prospect of tea warmed Mrs. Appleby. She’d kept Trudy from Mr. Jevons. She’d nipped Melanie’s pretensions. She’d winged them both in one day. Good, good.
As Mrs. Appleby picked up the spoon to stir her tea, her sharp old eyes caught the gleam of something bright and hard in the saucer. It was very small, but somehow it was reflecting the silver of the spoon. She eased it out of the saucer on the end of her thumb and held it up for inspection. A grain of sugar. That was all. But it was a large grain. And extraordinarily hard. She placed it on the tip of her tongue. It had no sweetness. It did not dissolve. Suddenly quavery, Mrs. Appleby scooped in the full cup with the spoon. When she brought the spoon up, it had trapped five, six, seven—many hard little crystal flakes which were not sugar.
Very slowly she managed to put the cup down on the table at her side. She felt fear well up in her like a fainting fit. She knew, of course she knew. Even if she had not read detective stories, she would have known.
Ground glass.
The full picture rose in her mind like the plot of a novel she had read. This was how far Melanie had gone into hatred; this was how much she wanted to get back to her altar-decorating in Wilkes-Barre. She was trying to kill her with ground glass.
There was irony somewhere in the portrait of a woman prepared to commit murder so that she could assist a minister in his Christian endeavor. But the irony wouldn’t come straight to Mrs. Appleby. This was just like Melanie, she thought, to attempt murder in such a bungling, inefficient manner. But that didn’t work either. Nothing could keep the fear from winding through her like a snake.
An old woman’s fear of helplessness in the face of death.
She thought, in the first panic, of the police. She would call the police; and yet calling the police meant walking downstairs to the telephone. Her old legs, weakened by dread, would betray her. Then what? Summon Melanie? Confront her with the cup? A small thrill of power stirred. Yes, let Melanie know she knew; tell her that she would cut her out of her will. That way she would be prevented from trying again and punished by eternal poverty for her wicked deed.
That was it, of course. Crush Melanie. Come out at her boldly. But the part of Amelia Appleby which was an old woman was afraid. She realized that, because the very prospect of the battle of wills was too much for her. Melanie would come and Melanie would look at her and Melanie would be Death. Amelia Appleby, who had always despised her niece, was afraid of her now as if that thin grey little woman had become the Apocalyptic skeleton with the sickle.
She would need an ally, someone younger with a young person’s strength. Trudy. That was it. Call for Trudy; tell her what had happened; promise to leave her all the money if she would protect her.
Mrs. Appleby opened her mouth as if to call her younger niece, then let her lips go flabby again. How could she trust Trudy? What mightn’t Trudy do if the idea of murder were put in her head and she knew she would inherit all the money? With the canny clarity which had never quite deserted her, Mrs. Appleby realized that Mr. Jevons, who was poor, would never divorce his wife for a penniless Trudy. But a wealthy Trudy might carry him off easily. It had been the weak, ineffectual Melanie who had actually thought of murder. If Trudy thought of it, there would be no bungling. Trudy would carry it through. Trudy was much more dangerous an enemy than Melanie.
Paralyzing exhaustion had taken possession of Mrs. Appleby. She sat in bed staring at the teacup with the brown tea swimming innocently in the saucer. Time. If only she could have time to think, to gather her strength. Yes, it was time she needed.
And, blessed as a light to a night wanderer, an idea came. It was weak. She knew that. But she had to adapt herself to her own weakness. She would pretend she had discovered nothing; she would call Melanie and tell her that she hadn’t felt like drinking her tea; she would send the cup away. That way there would be no clash with Melanie; she would win time. Tomorrow, when she was stronger, she would call Mr. Thomas, the lawyer, explain everything to him, have him deal with Melanie.
The relief at being able to defer a decision was so great that she had the strength to call Melanie and even to look at her as she came running into the room. The fact that she came running—what had she expected to find?—was proof enough of her guilt. But guilt was scrawled, too, across her thin, flushed face, at first alight with anticipation, then dimmed by astonishment at seeing her aunt in her accustomed position against the pillows.
“I don’t feel like my tea today.” Mrs. Appleby was surprised by the plausibility of her assumed petulance. “Do take away that messy cup, Melanie.”
“But, Aunt …”
“Take it away.”
Once Melanie had left, reaction set in. Mrs. Appleby felt the shrivelled old body she hated so much trembling out of control. She had lost her moment. Through cowardice she had lost possession of the evidence, the cup with the ground glass in it, which could have been a weapon against Melanie. What was to stop Melanie trying again? Now fear would always be with her, fear lurking in a tepid cup of consommé, in a glass of milk, in the meat loaf left over from yesterday’s roast.
Oh, she had made a mess of it.
Trudy came in then, disgruntled, surly, stamping heavily across the carpet. Mrs. Appleby almost poured out to her all the horrors that were in her, but her niece’s massive bosom, sensual mouth, and unforgiving eyes checked her. Trudy hated her more, if possible, than Melanie did.
To make believe that she was still the head of the house, Mrs. Appleby bullied Trudy into reading out loud to her. She chose Middlemarch because it always bored Trudy so much.
But she couldn’t really listen because she knew she wasn’t head of the house. Death was head of the house now.
This was what pretty little Amelia had become in the end, an old woman waiting to be murdered.
That night she dreamed of the bear cub. It was in bed with her, snuggled under her arm. She was stroking its soft, springy fur. It looked up at her with an expression of infinite tenderness. She awakened refreshed, strong, with a feeling of much to be accomplished.
Rose, the housemaid, brought her breakfast on a tray. Mrs. Appleby, remembering everything of the day before, was astonished at her own calm. She did not even test the tea before drinking it. She was sure Melanie would never dare anything if there were a chance of Rose discovering it.
Mrs. Appleby knew that she was in mortal danger, that only her wits could save her. And yet that almost perverse mood of lightheartedness prevailed. It was almost as if the problem had already solved itself for her, mysteriously, somehow, during the night.
And, as her eyes moved idly to the fluted silver teapot which had just arrived from her sister in England, she realized suddenly that the problem had been solved. That glance at the teapot was enough. She knew exactly what she could do.
For a moment the enormity of the act appalled her. Was it possible that she, Amelia Appleby…?
The morning noises of the house had begun. She heard the telephone ring, then heard Trudy’s gruff voice answering it. In a few minut
es Trudy herself was in the room. Her face was pink as salmon meat. She tried to appear casual, but, although she was better than Melanie at concealing her moods, she was not good enough to deceive Mrs. Appleby.
Trudy strolled to the window and murmured: “Got a letter from an old school friend this morning. Wants me to spend a week with her at the shore. She’ll pay. Suppose you don’t mind if I go?”
Providence, thought Mrs. Appleby, works in a mysterious way. This would be The Test. She would know after this whether or not she could go through with her plan.
She said: “What’s your old school friend’s name, Trudy? Mr. Jevons?”
Trudy spun from the window, her face marred by guilt and rage.
“Aunt Amelia, how dare you…?”
Aunt Amelia laughed. “My dear, I’m not deaf and blind. I know all about your sordid little affair. I suppose Mrs. Jevons is going to visit her mother.”
“You …”
“And as for expecting me to condone a week with another woman’s husband!”
Trudy took a step towards the bed. “You won’t let me go?”
“I can hardly stop you. But I can telephone to Mrs. Jevons.” That was it, thought Mrs. Appleby with a shiver of excitement. Goad her. Go the limit. “I can also tell you that if you do go, you won’t get a penny out of me, alive or dead.”
Trudy’s heavy face was distorted with a hatred as violent as Melanie’s.
“You love this, don’t you? That’s all you do enjoy, making us miserable. I’ll be glad when you’re dead. I hope that makes you happy. I’ll sing and shout when you’re dead.”
She flung out of the room. Mrs. Appleby was quivering. She had proved it. Trudy hated her as much as Melanie did. There wasn’t a fig to choose between them.
The Way was the only way …
Soon Rose came for the tray. Melanie came with her. It was Melanie’s turn for the morning reading. This was the moment. Be careful. Choose the right words.
As Rose bent to remove the tray, Mrs. Appleby said to Melanie: “Do look at that teapot. It’s a disgrace. What’s the matter with them in the kitchen. Can’t they polish? Or are they using some inferior brand?”
The Ordeal of Mrs. Snow Page 24
