Unsuspected

by Charlotte Armstrong

  “That’s all right,” she said weakly. “Oliver, don’t keep beating yourself. She couldn’t have been enough involved with Francis to kill herself. Anyhow, Althea wouldn’t have killed herself for any such kind of thing. Do you know what I mean?”

  Oliver nodded. He seemed to relax a little. “I know,” he said. “She was … flirtatious, I guess you’d say. She liked to get men interested. That was what interested her. And it would have gone on all our lives.”

  “I expect it would,” said Tyl sadly. It was true. Althea would never want what she had, but would always have watched with her silver eyes for her chance to step in and take what somebody else wanted. It was the act of taking away, the use of her power, that she had savored. Poor, restless, envious, uneasy Althea. Could she have seen herself and, with sudden clarity, known she must never grow old?

  “Such a mess,” groaned Oliver. “Everything gone wrong. From the minute we married. You got lost. Rosaleen did that … thing. Then Francis came, and she— He’s very attractive.”

  “Yes,” said Tyl.

  “Now, this. I’m talking too much. I’m taking my troubles out on you. Tyl, you’re swell. Sometimes I think I played a pretty dirty trick on you too. If I did, I hope you’ve forgiven me.”

  “Yes,” she said with a shrinking feeling. “Don’t talk about it.”

  “You know, Tyl, your money’s a bad thing.”

  “I know,” she whispered.

  “I mean”—his eyes begged her to understand—“it works out a way you probably don’t realize. Althea was so beautiful, and there was your money, and I kept thinking, ‘Am I fooling myself? Is it the money I care for?’”

  “I suppose you would,” she said painfully.

  “It’s easy to fool yourself. I’ve been fooling myself all my life. I don’t know how to stop, either.”

  “Oliver, don’t.”

  “So when Grandy said Althea would never have anything but love to make her happy—”

  “Grandy?”

  “You see, I didn’t notice what was going on. I guess I just couldn’t believe that Althea would—well, get interested in me that way. And of course, I didn’t know the way you felt, either.”

  “The way I felt? What way, Oliver?”

  “Oh, I mean the way it was. I’m the old-timer around here. You could be sure of me. I mean, you had to be so careful some ordinary fortune hunter didn’t try to play up to you. Grandy told me you had a dread of that.”

  Mathilda hung on to the edge of the table. The cloud was coming down. It was going to get her. She felt sick with fear.

  “He cleared that up,” Oliver said. “He explained how your love for me was a gentle, friendly feeling, because you felt sure of me on that score. Not real love.”

  She thought she’d faint. She fought against it.

  “Tyl—”

  She managed to murmur something. “Everything’s been awful this morning. I didn’t sleep well.” But I did, she thought. I slept too hard and too long.

  “It’s been awful. I know.” Oliver brooded. “Dear old Grandy, of course, wanted us all to be happy. He was right, wasn’t he, about you? I asked you right out that day—you made a wisecrack. I thought—I mean—”

  “Don’t stammer,” she said sharply. “Grandy’s always right He knows me better than I know myself, almost.”

  She thought, But I mustn’t ever tell Grandy how wrong he was or what he did to me. It would break his heart if he knew. Besides, it’s all over now, and it doesn’t matter. He must have known it wouldn’t last. Oh, Grandy must have known. And if I hadn’t been so proud and wanted to run away and hide everything, he’d have drawn out the sting long ago. I was a fool. I should have trusted him. She beat back her depression. She beat back fear.

  Then she remembered the strange talk last night with Francis, about the will. The taste of fear rose in her throat. She thought, What’s the matter with me?

  She left Oliver and went toward the living room.

  “Don’t look like that!” Tyl cried. “Don’t!” Jane was in there, crouching against the wall by the study door, like an animal stiff with fear. Tyl’s hands went up to her eyes. She thought, No, I can’t stand it.

  “I’m awfully sorry,” Jane said, straightening. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”

  “I’m sorry too,” said Mathilda. “I don’t know why I … screamed at you. I guess it’s just nerves.” She smiled faintly.

  “I guess it’s just nerves,” Jane agreed. She smiled faintly back.

  Tyl thought, watching Jane walk away, I need another girl to talk to. It didn’t strike her that this was the first time Grandy hadn’t seemed better than another girl to talk to.

  23

  There was the funeral to face that afternoon. They made themselves sandwiches for lunch and snatched them in the kitchen. It was a queer, unsettled kind of meal, as if they were all just marking time, waiting time out until it should go by and bury Althea and release them to normal processes of grief and adjustment.

  Francis wasn’t there. The odd thing was that no one mentioned him. Grandy said nothing. Oliver was bound up in his inner struggle and seemed not to notice. It was not Jane’s place, perhaps, to say anything about a missing guest. But Mathilda kept expecting him or at least expecting someone to say a word that would explain where he was, where he had gone, for how long. She did not ask any questions herself.

  When they set out in the chauffeured car lent by a friend, there were the four of them—Grandy, Oliver, Jane and Mathilda. The four of them got in and settled themselves as if no one were missing. Francis wasn’t there.

  Mathilda thought perhaps he would meet them at the chapel. He would be among the others and he would come back with them when it was all over. Nobody asked any questions. It was a little strange that Grandy seemed not to have noticed at all. Mathilda’s so-called husband was not where he ought to have been, even if he were only pretending. Not there, not by her side. Not there, as he had been yesterday. People would wonder.

  Jane was quiet as a mouse. Jane didn’t ask. Oliver didn’t ask. Mathilda, herself, although the question was beginning to beat hard in her mind, didn’t venture to ask. It would have been queer if she were the one to ask. She thought if she waited surely his absence would be explained. If she just waited.

  The little chapel downtown in the small city was thronged with friends, the whole picturesque lot of them. Tyl sat beside Grandy and modeled herself after him in frozen calm. Be a lady. Never betray an emotion.

  The ceremony was only an ordeal. She thought, if only Francis had come. If only he were on her other side, where he ought to be. But that wasn’t true. He had no place—no real place and no real obligation. He only pretended. Oh, but why wasn’t he there, pretending, now? She counted the scallops in the frieze. This was not the time to feel what you really felt about Althea, or remember her as she was, or try to understand her life and her death. Don’t cry. Count the folds in the curtains. One, two, three, four.

  When it was over, some few friends came back with them and there was tea. Francis wasn’t there.

  When people had thinned out, drifted off, finally gone, Oliver at last asked the question, “Say, where is Francis? Where’s he been? He wasn’t there at the chapel, was he?” Oliver’s face turned to Mathilda for the answer.

  Like throwing a ball, Mathilda thought. Don’t they know!

  “When he left us this morning, I believe be said he was going downtown.” Grandy was mildly speculative. “Didn’t he, Jane?”

  Jane said, “Yes,” faintly. “Yes, he did, Mr. Grandison.”

  “That is strange.… Tyl, do you know where Francis is?”

  The ball had come back to her. “I don’t know where he is,” she said stiffly. “I don’t know a thing about him. I never did. It’s about time all of you knew he isn’t my husband.”

  Jane knew already that Francis was a fraud. That could be seen in the steadiness of her eyes and heard in the murmur she made, which was on
ly polite.

  But Oliver was shocked right out of his chair. Mathilda had to tell him the details, and he wanted to hash them over and exclaim and wonder and go around and around over the puzzle of Francis. At the same time, she thought she could see a kind of inner gleam, a repressed sparkle in his eyes when he looked at her. Tyl felt herself getting angry. She answered him in a series of grudging short phrases. She didn’t want Oliver’s gossipy rehash. She didn’t want to hear Oliver’s ideas of why people behaved as they did. She didn’t want to hear Oliver wondering what made Francis tick. She felt he wouldn’t know.

  She was sick and ashamed of the emotional background to Francis’ story. She couldn’t tell them that, of course. How she’d been in such a weeping, wailing, brokenhearted, upset state over Oliver. But without that part the whole story sounded trivial and cold. Here was a man who claimed she had married him. Why had she? Presumably because she had wanted to. And then she forgot. No background of emotional distress to explain how it all might have happened. Her upset and her silly baby thoughts of revenge. Ridiculously, she found herself defending Francis. Of course, it was a lie, but it had been a good lie.

  “You don’t understand,” she cried.

  “My God, do you?” cried Oliver, and she was too angry to answer.

  Jane said perhaps he’d run away. She said it looking at Grandy as if they two had secrets about Francis.

  Mathilda said in anger, “I’m going to bed.” How had she got herself into such a temper?

  Halfway up the stairs, a ring at the front door stopped her and sent her heart leaping. It was only someone to see Grandy. Might as well go up. But that voice? She stopped and looked down again. All she could see was the top of the man’s red head. Francis had dark hair, not quite black. Francis hadn’t come back at all; hadn’t been seen all day.

  24

  The cellar was dry. That, at least, was a blessing. He was alive and uninjured. More blessings to count. How long he would be able to count these or to count at all was very doubtful. Francis expected the worst. He expected that an attempt would be made to kill him. He expected it to succeed. He did not know how he could counter such an attempt, bound and tied as he was with strong harsh ropes, gagged as he was with old rags, trussed up like a chicken for the roasting, ridiculously helpless.

  It was fantastic to be so helpless. Francis thought of the movies he had seen, of the many, many scenes in which a hero had been marched at the point of a hidden gun out of the cheerful streets to some lonely lair and been tied up. He thought that if he escaped to see another such movie, he would understand, he would sympathize, he would be more anxious. He would not wonder why the fellow went so quietly, nor would he be quite so confident that somehow, with his teeth, or his clever fingers, or by rolling about, the hero would get loose in time.

  Francis couldn’t see any way to get loose. The ropes were tight and firm. He could barely move his hands. His working fingers grasped at nothing but air or, if he rolled slightly, the bare cement floor of the cellar. The gag was tight too. No use rubbing his cheek against the rough cement It only scratched and tore his skin. The gag wouldn’t move. It was anchored tight. It was all he could do not to choke.

  His ankles were bound together. He could not get up, would have had no balance, anyway. And there was nowhere to roll, no advantage to it This part of the cellar was perfectly empty. The floor, the rough whitewashed walls, a little window high up, one naked light bulb, the wooden door to another room. Nothing else at all.

  He had lost track of time. It was night. The little window admitted no daylight any more, although, for a while after he had been brought here, there had been some light, blocked by green bushes, coming dimly through the leaves and the dirt on the glass. Now there was only a black oblong, although some light must come from somewhere—enough to distinguish the white walls from the black window. Just enough for that.

  Night would pass. Sooner or later, there would be that dim daylight. It was all he could look forward to, unless the woman should come down with food again. He didn’t like to think of that woman. Mrs. Press, he supposed she was. Tall, very thin, emaciated, no more shape than a stick, and no more color. She was a caricature of a woman. A long-jawed face and hair tight back in a bun, all drab, pale gray tones. She looked like a slave, a drudge, one who had been kicked and beaten. She appeared to be perfectly obedient But what he feared was that she was not obedient, because the eyes in that long, ugly face were neither sad nor dulled. The eyes were full of enthusiasm. He suspected that Mrs. Press would be, if not obedient, rather terrible. He hoped Mr. Press or somebody would be able to keep her in line.

  Hope? Well, it sprang eternal, thought Francis. The ache in his arm, where the old wound was, beat with his heart. He began to wonder why he was still alive. He thought he could guess.

  At midnight, although Francis didn’t know it was only that, he heard them coming down the cellar stairs. Somewhere beyond the wooden door the stairs came down and there was a furnace and such other cellar furniture. Out there he heard their feet and heard their voices. Heard Press say, in his dull voice, “No trouble.”

  And he heard the rich warm voice of Luther Grandison, the famous voice, so full of sentiment, so beloved on the radio, heard it saying, “Good work, my dear fellow. You were very prompt, and I do appreciate it. Now, let us see.”

  The wooden door was unbarred from outside. It was opened. Someone turned on the light, and the unshaded bulb blinded him for a moment.

  Francis thought, He’ll have to kill me now. He intends to kill me. Or he wouldn’t let me see him. He wouldn’t come openly.

  Grandy took off his pince-nez delicately. “Ah, yes,” he said. “Can you remove that—er—impediment to his speech? I want to talk. You can control him, can’t you?”

  “Guess so,” said Press. He moved indifferently to the business of ungagging his prisoner. He was a strong man, as Francis had discovered before—physically strong. He seemed to have no feeling about what had happened or might happen. Obviously, he carried out orders.

  But there was a lean gray shadow behind him, a shadow with gleaming eyes. That woman. Francis knew himself to be afraid.

  Press was loosening the gag. As it came off, Francis did choke. He coughed, retched, got control of his breath at last. He said nothing. What was the use, unless he shouted for help, and what was the use of shouting?

  Grandy squatted down rather stiffly. After all, he was not young. His fingers fumbled about Francis’ body. He was searching for something. He found it and stood again. He had the will in his hands—the will that was supposed to have been written out by Mathilda.

  “I think we will just dispose of this,” he said distastefully, and lit a match and burned it, holding the paper until the last possible moment, with perfectly steady fingers. Then he dropped the charred ash and stamped on it. The smell of burned paper seemed to fill the place.

  Francis thought what a fool he had been. We are so vulnerable to plain, unadorned violence. We tend to think our enemies will play by the rules. We can’t conceive of the rules being wiped out. We don’t really, except on the battlefield, believe in the existence of ruthless, violent people. We believe them when we see them. He ought to have known better.

  He said aloud, “There is a copy.”

  But Grandy smiled. It was said too late. A copy of a holograph will? Absurd, anyway.

  Grandy said, “Now, please. I’ll have the name of the person who heard Althea’s evidence.”

  Francis made his mouth say pleasantly, “You will?”

  “Oh, yes, I think so,” said Grandy, in high spirits. The thin shadow that was Mrs. Press came a little closer. She had something long and sharp in her hand. It was metal. It caught light. Not a knife. An ice pick. Francis began to laugh painfully. It was nearly a giggle. Everything that was happening to him seemed so absurd. Such old stuff. And so effective. It was comical how effective it was, the threat of torture.

  Press was leaning indifferently against the wall.
Mrs. Press said, “Shall I?”

  Grandy was watching Francis with cold speculation. “We’ll see,” he said.

  “It won’t be necessary,” said Francis. “I’m no hero.”

  “Very sensible. Go on.”

  “There was no one,” said Francis with perfect truth. “She told me about it down in the guest house that night We were alone there.”

  “No second person?” said Grandy softly.

  “No one at all.”

  Grandy lifted an eyebrow. “Mrs. Press,” he said.

  “No!” cried Francis, outraged. “Don’t! I’m telling you the truth! There really isn’t— I can’t give you a name when there isn’t any name.”

  “Just let us see,” said Grandy, nodding. “Life follows bad literature so often, you know. Perhaps he is being a hero. I dare say he wishes to protect that witness.”

  “There wasn’t any witness.”

  The woman got down on her knees. She put the point of the thing under his thumbnail.

  “Who was it?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Nobody. I was bluffing.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Francis Howard.”

  “Not in the mood for the truth yet, Mrs. Press. Continue.”

  Francis ground his teeth. He mustn’t tell his name, because of Jane. Because his name was Jane’s name, too, and Grandy must not know. Jane would have the sense to leave his house now. Get out of that house. Jane was so much smarter than she looked. But Mathilda? What could he do for Mathilda? The pain was wicked.

  “Sorry!” he gasped. “This is pretty futile! There wasn’t anyone! Shall I invent a person?”

  Grandy said, “Just one moment, Mrs. Press.… Now listen to me. I know your name is not Howard. I understand, now, the trick you played with that marriage license. I realize that you scoured the city and all suburban communities for a bona-fide license issued that day with the name Frazier on it. Finding one for a Mary Frazier was a great stroke of luck. Although you searched for it. You earned it. Of course, it follows that you simply assumed the other name on the license. You had to. I thin your first name actually is Francis, all right. Not John. And your surname is not Howard.