Four Strange Women

by E. R. Punshon

  I spent all my time till the next invite wondering about her and trying to meet her and wondering how to behave if I did. She kept out of my way, though, and then the invite came, and when I got there I thought at first she hadn’t come. I was all on edge wondering if she would turn up. The time before the music had been ordinary sort of stuff—jazz, swing, the usual night club programme. This time it seemed all drums—drumming. There wasn’t any band, just one of those big gramophone things. Drumming. It seemed to beat you down and down. Some people couldn’t stand it and cleared. I felt like that at first. But if you listened long enough it got into your brain, it got into your blood, you felt yourself slipping...

  It made you think of dark places in woods, or nights on lonely hilltops, and altars to strange gods, and people dancing round them in and out of shadows, and cutting themselves with knives.

  You got to feel there was nothing else in all the world except that unending beat, beat, beat...

  Worked you up.

  You hadn’t any self-control any longer. I knew I ought to go before I lost mine, and I tried to, only then I saw one of the women looking at me and I saw it was her. She had a mask this time, but I knew her all right. Gave me a jolt somehow. I nearly ran for it. I knew very well, as well as I knew that I was standing there, that it was the only thing to do.

  But then she beckoned me and I went.

  After that, I didn’t care any more.

  Nothing mattered except her and what she gave me. The things she knew, the things she showed me, things that I had never dreamed of, though before I should have said I knew as much as most.

  No one could ever understand who hadn’t been the same way. Sometimes she would tell me things just to see how far I was under. I was under all right. She told me I wasn’t the first. There had been young Byatt, she said. She said it was on her account he had killed himself. If she had told the truth, and that he hadn’t killed himself but she had killed him, because she had grown tired of him when she had got from him all he had to give, and killing him was the only way to keep him quiet and prevent any risk of exposure, I shouldn’t have cared.

  I think I should have felt it quite natural she should kill when she had—finished.

  But I never thought that one day it would be like that with me, too, and with me also one day she would have —finished.

  I might have known. I am not sure that in reality I didn’t always know. Because it was so plain that nothing could ever satisfy for long her infinite desire.

  If there ever was that idea in my mind, I never let it come on top.

  Sometimes I would wonder a little how I had changed. Not that I wanted to admit that, even to myself, and when an old chap who had been with us for years, before I was born, page he had been and my father’s valet and mine, more like an old friend, when he started worrying I just cleared him out. I wonder what’s become of the old chap.

  One night lately a woman spoke to me, a woman I didn’t know. She said she had been sent with a message. There had been trouble at Mountain Street with the police. It surprised me, because it was always the idea to keep on the right side of the law and give no chance for them to interfere, but I took her up to my rooms because she said it was so important I should hear what she had been told to tell me.

  I wasn’t suspicious. I remember noticing some of the porter chaps looking, but it was no business of theirs. When we got in my flat I started to get her a drink. Really, I wanted one myself. I was always wanting a drink now to try to cool off on, and out of the tail of my eye I saw her swinging something up to land me one.

  I remember thinking quite clearly that Gwen must be through with me, that this was the Byatt finish for me, too.

  So, you see, I must have known all the time, or why should I have thought that?

  All the time, even when we were in each other’s arms, I must have known deep down what she really intended, only I suppose I didn’t care.

  Next thing I remember I was lying on my bed. She must have got me there somehow after I had passed out. She had me fast with dog chains by the wrists and ankles to the bed posts and she had stuffed a towel into my mouth, and she was bathing my forehead with eau de Cologne. Once she took the towel out to let me have a drink, but she stuffed it back again at once.

  She started to talk. She told me about her husband and meeting him and what it meant when you met a man you cared for, and who cared for you, and about their little house—he was a chauffeur getting good pay from the people he worked for—and how he always brought her every penny home, and used to tease her asking if he might have a little back for pocket money, and how he was just her man till another woman came and took him from her.

  Gwen, of course.

  He knew Gwen liked jewellery—swell jewellery—we all had to buy her some, mine was a diamond tiara I had to sell out all my holding in war loan to pay for—and as he hadn’t any money he stole stuff to give her. Diamond ear-rings, and a diamond pendant, I think, belonging to his employers. After that she had to kill him so as to keep him quiet, because if he had been arrested it might all have come out. She hid the body, so that it was never known what had happened to him. Every one thought he had got away abroad somewhere, but the woman talking to me said she knew where his body lay hidden. And she told me about Byatt—what a jolly, bright boy he had been, friendly with every one, till Gwen got hold of him, just as she got hold of me. And how she killed him when she grew tired of him, managing so that it seemed like suicide. She told me a lot more. About Andy White. About Baird. She knew it all, so long she had been watching and waiting.

  All through the night she sat there by the bed, talking, telling me. Telling me things I had known all right, even though I never let me know them. But I knew them for a truth, as all through the night this woman I had never seen before sat there by my bed where she had made me fast so that I had to listen, and told all the things I had known so long and never let my knowing matter.

  When she had finished she began again. All over again, only this time more about me. You see, she knew it all, watching, waiting. She had managed to get into the Mountain Street hall somehow and she had hidden close by when we thought we were alone, listening just as I listened while Gwen talked.

  Also she knew just what Gwen was going to do and how.

  She said Gwen was tired of me and growing frightened, too, because questions were being asked. A man named Owen. A policeman. Gwen always laughed at the police. I’ve heard her say they were too tied up with regulations and red tape to be much good. They often said themselves they knew criminals but couldn’t get proof. Gwen said if the police had any sense they would know it was the criminal they had to get, not the proof. She had heard about this Bobby Owen, though, and took me to see him once. She said afterwards she wasn’t impressed. Military type, she thought, and he ought to have gone into the army where being a gentleman and having relatives in the House of Lords is a real help. All the same the woman said Gwen was getting uneasy about him now because of the way he was plodding on. The woman said she had seen Bobby Owen, too, and she thought Gwen was right to be uneasy, because he did give you the idea that he would never stop plodding on—not till he got there.

  She said she was just as frightened of him as Gwen was, only for a different reason. She said she was afraid he might be first. I don’t know what she meant.

  She said Gwen had made up her mind to go to America and start fresh there. Only first she was going to kill me so I couldn’t make trouble.

  She told me just how Gwen was going to do it.

  When she had finished she went away and made herself some tea. Then she came back and started all over again from the very beginning, just as if she had never said a word before. She sat and drank her tea, and said it all over again every word.

  I had to listen because the way I was gagged with that towel and fastened up. I couldn’t move or speak.

  I had to listen.

  It’s strange to have to lie still and listen while one woman tel
ls you how another means to kill you as she killed those others, too.

  Always when she had finished she made herself more tea and then began again—right from the beginning.

  You see, I couldn’t speak or move.

  It was like that all through the night.

  You see, I couldn’t speak or move.

  I had to listen.

  When it was day she washed the cup and saucer she had been using and put away the tea pot, and then she went away herself.

  She said she would send someone to let me loose.

  She came back and said very likely I didn’t believe her, and if I didn’t, she didn’t care. I had to be told so as to have a chance to save myself and I could believe her if I liked, or I could disbelieve her and die—like the others, like her husband.

  All one to her, she said.

  She said her job wasn’t me, it was something else.

  She went away again then and I lay and thought and thought till Bobby Owen came, the police johnny. She had sent him. He wanted to know all about it. I told him it was a practical joke. He didn’t believe me. I didn’t care. All I wanted was time to think. God, how I wanted to think.

  Only I couldn’t.

  You see, I knew it was all true, every word, only it didn’t seem real. It seemed a truth about other people, another world. Like watching a play of marionettes that had nothing to do with real happenings.

  I had arranged to meet Gwen at the Savoy for dinner. I felt rather jolly and high spirited. She noticed that. She said something about my being fey, but I hadn’t had anything to drink. I told her so, and she said if I wasn’t fey, then I ought to be.

  It’s strange to sit at dinner and watch across the plates and flowers the woman you know has made her plans to kill you.

  It all happened as she had said—the other woman, I mean.

  Gwen was never more—I don’t know any word to describe it. She pulled you right out of you—if you see what I mean. The other woman said: ‘She is a vampire, she feeds on men.’ That was true. Unless she was sucking the life out of a man, she couldn’t exist. That night I could almost feel her feeding upon me, and it was as though she fed till there was nothing left of me.

  That’s what I had been told all the night long.

  All the night long I had been told, and it was so.

  She took me to her own place in Camden Town I had never known about before—one of a terrace of empty houses that are to be pulled down when the lease runs out. Most of them are empty, but she had rooms in one of them. She only took you there when it was the end, when she didn’t mind letting you know because you were never to know anything else.

  I let her do what she liked. It didn’t matter. I went the whole way with her. Why shouldn’t I? You see, I knew how it was meant to end—what she meant and what I meant, now I had been told, told all through a long night, over and over and over again.

  Next night we started off again, in my big car. I drove. She told me we were going where last night would seem nothing, nothing, nothing compared with what was waiting for us.

  She told me where to drive and when we had gone a long way she told me to stop.

  There was a hamper in the car with food and wine, a bottle of wine. Only not the bottle she thought because I had changed it.

  Not difficult, because she never even thought of suspecting anything.

  I was watching though, and I saw her pour away her own glass of wine but I drank mine.

  She watched me while I drank, and she smiled a little only, you see, what I drank, it wasn’t from the bottle she had prepared.

  It is strange to drink the wine a woman has poured out that she thinks will kill you, while all the time she sits and smiles, and sometimes whispers a word or two about what presently you are to share together; other whispers too, whispers about love—of one side of love, I mean, the only side she knew.

  When she thought my senses were gone and the drugged wine had acted, she started the car. Then she slipped out of one side and I slipped out of the other, and I lay quiet in the bushes while the car went over the edge of the pit opposite where we had stopped, where she had told me to stop.

  It was late and very dark. I lay there quite still, under the bushes in the dark, and she came to the edge of the pit, very carefully, for fear of falling, and when she was right at the edge she stood there and laughed.

  I don’t know how long it was she stood there, laughing to herself.

  It seemed a long time but perhaps it wasn’t.

  I lay very still. The bushes hid me and the night and I never moved. I might have been dead—like those others. I think sometimes I thought I was. I think I saw her dancing. I am not sure. I could see her against the skyline and it is in my mind that I saw her dancing as she laughed.

  But I am not sure. It was like watching a marionette show. It didn’t seem real. It didn’t seem real that I was dead, though I thought perhaps I was.

  It is very strange to lie and watch a woman laugh and dance, because she thinks that you are dead and she has killed you.

  She had a bicycle hidden somewhere near. She rode away on it, very silently and swiftly, and I came home again.

  There was a letter on my table. Gwen’s engagement ring I had given her was lying near. The letter was in my writing and had my name to it. But I had neither written it nor signed it. It said that now Gwen had found out I was deceiving her with another woman and had sent back her ring, I had nothing left to live for and so I was going to commit suicide.

  It was a good letter. The writing was just like mine, I could almost have sworn the signature was mine if I hadn’t known it wasn’t. No one would have had any doubts. They would have looked for me a long time; and when they found me under my wrecked car at the bottom of that old chalk pit, everything would have seemed perfectly simple and plain.

  And Gwen would have been provided with a good reason, after such a tragedy, for leaving England for a rest and a change of scene and to get away from talk. Every one would have felt sorry for her, and in America she would have been able to start fresh.

  That’s all.

  Except that there wasn’t only the letter waiting for me. Becky Glynne was there, too. She had been rung up, just as she had been once before. The other time was in case Bobby Owen didn’t come. This time she was told she was to, make sure I was all right.

  It’s Becky who has made me write all this. I didn’t want to, but she said I must and so I did.

  HENRY DARMOOR.

  CHAPTER XXV

  CLIMAX

  The first thing Bobby did when he had finished reading this long document was to ring up the Yard to say that he was bringing it to them for their information and action. Then he rang up Lord Henry’s flat, but got no reply, and when he tried the manager’s office he was merely told that Lord Henry Darmoor was away and had not said when he would return. An attempt to get in touch with Becky Glynne was equally unsuccessful.

  Annoying, for though Bobby did not doubt a word of Lord Henry’s statement, which indeed told him no more than he had long suspected, he knew the Yard would want personal confirmation. To the Yard it had to be shown at once, however, and there after it had been examined it was considered to provide sufficient ground for action. Inquiries were sent out for Lord Henry and for Becky, as well as for Gwen Barton. Every place that could be thought of was visited, every person believed to be likely to know anything about any one of them was questioned.

  Without result. All three of them had vanished utterly without trace. A phone call put through to Cardiff brought presently the reply that Mrs. Reynolds was selling sweets and cigarettes as usual in her sister’s shop. It was understood she had been in bed two or three days with a touch of influenza, and certainly she looked ill enough, pale and drawn.

  “I wonder if she saw a doctor,” Bobby mused, but did not think the point sufficiently pressing to be worth at the moment any further inquiry.

  Cardiff was asked, nevertheless, to keep an eye on her, and if she sho
wed any symptoms of departing, to arrest her on any charge they could think of, assault, theft—she had helped herself to Lord Henry’s tea, for instance—unlawful entry, anything so long as she wasn’t allowed to slip away.

  It all took time, and mostly, it appeared, wasted time. One paragraph, however, in Lord Henry’s statement had mentioned that Gwen used occasionally rooms in the Camden Town district, in a row of otherwise unoccupied houses destined shortly to be pulled down when certain leases expired.

  An urgent message to the Camden Town police brought the information that there were in the district two or three such blocks of houses waiting for demolition, but that houses in Mop Brow Terrace seemed likely to be those required, since one of them was known to be in occasional use by a lady who lived in the country but sometimes spent a day or two there when visiting town. Nothing was known about her, there had been no reason for inquiry, talk in the neighbourhood was merely to the effect that a woman had been seen entering one of the houses, and that local tradesmen occasionally delivered supplies. It was known, too, that the water and electricity charges and so on were paid—paid by money order in the name of George Burton.

  To Mop Brow Terrace set out therefore two police cars; the first containing the chief constable himself, for even that dignitary was growing interested, a superintendent to take the responsibility, an inspector to do the work, and Bobby, trying to remember that he, too, was now an inspector, if only of a provincial force, and therefore entitled to feel quite at home, even in such exalted company. The second car contained technical experts, the finger-print and photograph men, and two uniform men who might be required, since a common or garden policeman in uniform often makes more impression than even a chief constable in mufti. Mr. Findlay, of the Public Prosecutor’s Department, was asked over the phone if he would care to accompany the party, but cautiously declined on the ground that the Public Prosecutor’s Office was not an office of investigation. Their work only began when all possible facts had been collected, then their job was to consider them and to prepare the case for presentation in court.