An Afternoon to Kill

by Shelley Smith

  ‘“Who is that?” she repeated sharply.

  ‘I said my name was Mrs Bridgewater. Whereupon the creature snapped, “Not at home!” and slammed the door in my face. I rang again and waited. I rang repeatedly. For it occurred to me that the servant might know Sophia’s address, and since it was my only hope I determined not to leave without discovering it. At last I heard the chain rattling on the door and it was opened once more.

  ‘“Whatyer want?” the creature asked surlily.

  ‘“I wondered if you could give me Mrs Sheridan’s present address?”

  ‘Sallow, squat as a toad, she eyed me with an opaque reptilian stare that I found extremely offensive. Despite myself, I stared back fascinated.

  ‘“Better come in,” she said, turning and waddling away, leaving me to follow. She shuffled along in heelless red slippers, and it was only then that I noticed that she was dressed in an absurd trailing wrap of shoddy pink tinsel edged with some ragged brown fur and I realised that she was not the servant, but Sophia’s mother.

  ‘She led me into a crowded stuffy parlour that smelt of dust, as though the windows had not been opened since time began. She humped herself into a buttoned armchair, her short legs dangling like a child’s, and placed a wrinkled yellow hand glittering with jewels on each thigh. Her scanty locks dyed a dark red were carefully varnished in curls across her bald skull. I decided that it was the way her head was folded into her shoulders that gave her her obscenely reptilian appearance. She was an object of pure horror. It was impossible to imagine that anyone had loved this creature and married her, and that from her womb had sprung the beautiful Sophia.

  ‘“Well?” she cried impatiently, thrusting out her square jaw. “Whatyer want now yer here?”

  ‘“I should like to see Sophia. I am anxious to know how she is; particularly so, as my father — ”

  ‘“What makes you think she’s here?” she interrupted me harshly.

  ‘“I don’t, of course,” I said politely. “Only I hoped you would be able to give me her address. She — it was all so sudden, she left without — and now I suppose is too ill to write. It is so sad,” I added conventionally, watching the wrinkled claws pridefully smoothing the soiled pink gauze over her thighs.

  ‘“Those flowers for her? You can leave ’em here. I’ll see she gets ’em.”

  ‘“Thank you. I’d rather give them to her myself. I’ve come to London specially. If you could give me her address I need not trouble you — ”

  ‘“No,” she said. “I can’t.”

  ‘“You mean you don’t know it either?” I asked in alarm.

  ‘“What I do know I know enough to keep to meself,” she observed sardonically.

  ‘I felt stupefied by this delphic manner. She had not asked me to sit down and now I asked if I might. I sat on a spindly Regency chair that creaked under me. I laid the carnations on the curio-table.

  ‘“Then you know but you won’t tell me,” I said incredulously. “It isn’t for myself I want to know, it’s for P-it’s for Mr Sheridan. He’s very worried ... so far away, you see.”

  ‘When she silently laughed like that all the brooches and ear-rings and ornaments with which she was bedizened flashed brilliantly alive in their dirty gold settings. It occurred to me that the old woman might be a little mad.

  ‘“She’ll be back. Tell yer Pappy she’ll be back. Sophie’s always been a sensible gal,” she assured me grotesquely with her wide toad’s mouth a-grin.

  ‘I felt stifled and afraid. I had never fainted in my life, but I had the absurd notion that I was going to faint now. I pressed my wrist to my brow and rose up shakily to beg a glass of water.

  ‘“I’ve no maid, my fine young lady,” she announced, feeling for the floor with her short legs, her paws rasping on the satin arms of the chair.

  ‘“Pray don’t trouble,” I muttered, fumbling my way past the little dark objects that seemed to have placed themselves between me and the door. “I’ll find my way.”

  ‘I stood in the dingy hall wondering which of the four doors facing me concealed the kitchen. Well, I should not find out by standing there! I opened the nearest door: a long narrow window dimly lit an unmade bed hung with stained green curtains, in the middle of whose tumbled sheets a dark object lay like a muff — a small stertorous dog; there was a tray of food by the bed; the dressing-table shone white with dust; clothes lay wrinkled on the floor; the night-commode stood ajar. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror opposite, startled, white-faced, and withdrew hurriedly.

  ‘The next room was as bright and neat as the other was foul, yet what I saw there made me bolt out again faster than I entered — as if I had inadvertently intruded on someone undressing. Indeed the shock was much the same. The vase of mauve carnations made me feel that Sophia was actually there, discovered in her nakedness, though the room was empty. But that startled glimpse had not been too brief for me to catch sight of Oliver’s red silk robe flung over the back of a chair by the bedside and underneath it, primly matched, the embroidered gondolier’s slippers I had bought him in Venice as a souvenir. My heart was beating so painfully that I was forced to cling to the door handle for support.

  ‘I was in terror that old Mrs Falk would come out and find me there. For I understood only too plainly now why she could not give me her daughter’s address. I do not say that I grasped the whole plot at once. At that moment I only knew that Sophia and Oliver were living in that room together. It was later than I understood the miscarriage was a fiction; there never had been a baby, it was simply a device to absent herself from Papa’s company and remain with Oliver while her husband was conveniently away. I remembered innumerable little details which before had seemed odd and incomprehensible, but were now suddenly plain.

  ‘I could have run away then, but I dared not leave without my flowers. So I returned to the airless parlour where old Mrs Falk sat with her toes stretched out before her, admiring her feet with a thoughtful grin.

  ‘I said, “I would rather you did not tell your daughter about my visit, Mrs Falk. She will doubtless write to me as soon as she is able; it would be better to leave it till then.”

  ‘“Changed yer mind, have yer? Second thoughts best, eh?” she chuckled. “I somehow fancied yer might. So now it’s to be a secret between you and me, eh? Something yer don’t even want yer hubby to know,” she leered with her loose-lipped grin.

  ‘“Like the toad, ugly and venomous,” I kept thinking, “ugly and venomous ... ” I could not remember the rest. I wondered if she knew what I had seen and the idea turned me cold inside; it put me so at her mercy, and I could hardly suppose she was to be trusted. Nor indeed was there any reason why she should be loyal to me. Her loyalty must be all for her daughter, whose treachery she approved.

  ‘She heaved herself round in her chair and got down. I tried to say good-bye and picked up my flowers casually, but she ignored me and waddled into the hall trailing her tattered gown and I followed after. There she cautiously unbarred the door, peered about her and then closed it again.

  ‘“Listen,” she said, bringing her evil old face uncomfortably close to mine. “A word of advice for those who can take it. Never try and get the better of Sophia. You won’t succeed. I should know. Yes, I should know,” she muttered. “I could tell you things,” she went on, her treacly black eyes fastened on mine. And then as abruptly she changed her mind and, much to my relief, let go my arm, to whine in her high harsh voice, “But no one wants to hear what a poor mad old woman has to tell. Bundle her under ground and stamp on her! Ugh, nasty old creature! Eh?”

  ‘But her eyes were not mad, they were sly and watchful and they frightened me. I said quickly, “Well, good-bye, Mrs Falk, and thank you awfully,” as cheerfully as I could, and made my escape.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON

  Alva Hine fell into an abstraction, which the young man respected for a while and
then with a certain subdued impatience enquired what she had done then.

  ‘Oh, I went home again, and waited for my husband and my stepmother to return in their own good time.’ She made a small hopeless gesture. ‘What else was there to do?’

  ‘Couldn’t you have divorced him?’ he asked with all the simplicity of ignorance.

  ‘Oh, my dear sir,’ she exclaimed, shocked. ‘You have no idea what you are saying! Divorce was unheard of in those days. Such a thing would never have occurred to me. Besides, mere adultery was not sufficient reason in law for a divorce; there had to be cruelty and desertion as well. They had at all costs,’ she said with carefully mild irony, ‘to preserve the sanctity of marriage.’

  ‘My God!’ ejaculated Mr Jones disgustedly. ‘Yet ... still ... surely,’ he hesitated. ‘You could have left him?’ he suggested.

  ‘Mr Jones! Mr Jones! You speak of what you do not understand. In theory I could have left him, yes. But, gone where? Lived on what money? How earned my bread? Oh, we were well trapped in those days; ignorant, untrained, frivolous, and hobbled with conventions. I had not even Sophia’s aptitude for dainty little water-colours. Oh, no, I could not escape, believe me, or I would have done! I did my best to escape with Oliver, to persuade him to find a small house somewhere where we could be alone together, as married people should, and far, far, from Sophia. But of course he would not. Indeed, to be just, he could not, since he was entirely dependent on Papa; and though I wrote to him begging him to allow us to move into a place of our own, he wrote back curtly that it was out of the question and pretended he could not afford it. Oh, I admit it, I was in despair all those weeks. And then to my dismay I found myself with child. A man can never know what it means to bear an unwanted child, within one’s own body, to be ever conscious with horror and dread of this growing burden inescapably lodged in one’s flesh. Yes, that is not pleasant,’ said Miss Hine more mildly, as if agreeing with herself.

  ‘I began to notice about this time that Harry was looking drawn and unhappy. He used to sit silent over dinner averting his eyes from Sophia and directly the meal was over would leave the room. And since I too could no longer endure to contribute to this artificial situation, I would soon make my excuses to retire. Thus, Sophia and my husband were left for long agreeable hours together. Let us compute quite baldly; they could enjoy their uninterrupted society from, say, eight-thirty p.m. till they parted for the night at about eleven. Because I hated and feared them both and saw no way out of my horrible predicament, I tried not to think about them, tried to escape from them in my mind because I might not escape physically, tried dully not to consider their doings.

  ‘Harry and I became nearer to one another again, as we were in childhood. He was kind to me and gentle. He demanded nothing from me and never spoke to me about his troubles. Simply I suppose the continuity of our affection comforted us a little. In this half-silent companionship we would walk across the flats, leaving a pattern of footprints in the brown sand, skirting the shallow pools filled with evening gold.

  ‘The days shortened. August was hot that year, hot and grey and broken with thunderstorms. Sophia seemed to find it exceptionally trying. She trailed about the house, heavy-eyed, the beautiful china-white bloom of her skin become waxen, or wandered into the unfrequented parts of the garden, lifting tendrils of green shade out of her path, fronds of bracken brushing her skirts. Beyond the kitchen garden was a small wilderness that she made her own. There tall grasses swept her knees and swags of Dorothy Perkins showered down from the heart of an ancient pear tree. She would sit dull-struck for hours on a stone bench there, with a book on her knee, staring at the iris blades rosetted with snails.

  ‘I wondered if she were falling out of love with Oliver? Or, more likely, if he had fallen out of love with her? That would best account for her look of weariness and hidden anxiety, would explain her vanished gaiety, her vanished prettiness that somehow — however much one hated her one could not deny — turned all to grace. She became careless in her dress, more matronly, less fastidious. I heard her once in a fit of sobbing inside her room, and I wondered if it was exultation or pity that made my heart beat so fiercely. And when she came down afterwards she looked bloated and obese, like some swollen drowned thing, and I had a sudden horrifying vision of her when she was old; immensely fat, white as turnips or candlewax, and coarse as only red-haired people can coarsen.

  ‘No more tea-parties now, no more village fetes; she seemed to shun being seen. When she went abroad now it was always in the carriage. She would drive to Ipswich or Colchester. Thomas said it was to make purchases at the chemist. But if so, she was very secretive about it. Sometimes she would descend from the carriage and walk down one or two turnings to the chemist she wanted, but whether that was in the attempt to deceive the coachman or the chemist it would be hard to say. Anyway, Thomas used to jig up his horse and follow at a distance. I think Thomas did not approve of ladies going on secret errands, or maybe he merely considered it his duty to protect her.

  ‘Sophia would come back with her bottles and pills, but if they were to brighten her complexion, they did not prove of much use, and a week later the carriage would be ordered again.

  ‘Yes, it is easy to see now that I was very naive, very gullible, but I truly had no suspicion of what was up. It was not in fact until I had Papa’s cable from Marseilles to say that he was on his way home unexpectedly early (he had been gone barely seven months), would be arriving on the following Tuesday, wanted it to be a surprise for Sophia, but thought he had better let me know. Of course it was not possible to keep it from her. She had to know. Oliver and Harry had already left for Town when I told her.

  ‘She listened to my news quite blankly with a preoccupied expression as if all her attention was taken up with something more inwardly important, except that her skin took on a curious sickly-green tinge and she threw up her hands as though to ward off the blackness which descended on her like a great cloak flung over her head. She lay tumbled on the floor. I found her smelling-salts and put them to her nose.

  ‘“It was the heat,” she said, looking up at me with eyes from which all the colour seemed to have fled. “What were you saying?”

  ‘“Before you fainted? Why, only that Papa would be back on Tuesday. But that surely could not have upset you.”

  ‘“Of course not,” she said. “It was the heat. I — help me up, Blanche, please.”

  ‘“I think you should lie still awhile.”

  ‘“I shall be all right now. Such good news will revive me wonderfully,” she said with a pale smile. “The prospect of seeing Edward again so soon is almost more than I can take in.”

  ‘“Papa means it for a surprise. You are not supposed to know anything about it,” I warned her. “You will have to simulate great astonishment; shall you know how to pretend to something you do not feel?” I asked disingenuously.

  ‘But when I ventured to glance at her from the corner of my eyes to see how she had swallowed that remark, I was shocked to see how haggard she looked.

  ‘“A surprise?” she muttered drily. “Why, what does he expect to find?” she said and put her hand to her heart.’

  ‘I said sharply, “I said you should lie still awhile. You’re ashen.” But she would not listen to me and presently I went away.

  ‘It was later that day, that evening to be precise, that I learnt more. I greeted Oliver punctiliously on his return as always (I suppose because women always try to hide the verities of their private life from their domestics), and on this occasion as I turned away I chanced to glance at myself in the big gilt mirror but my eye was taken instead by my stepmother in the doorway looking, as it were, beyond the mirror to where Oliver stood. She was only there an instant, but her look was agitated and intense and I distinctly saw her say: “I must see you alone,” before she vanished. I cannot think why this should have made me especially watchful. They constantly did see one another alone and I thought
nothing of it. But it was her low spirits and agitation that impressed me with the significance of this occasion. It was so obvious that something was wrong, and was I mistaken in connecting it with Papa’s return, or was it only that I wanted everything to be right this time when he came back?

  ‘At all events she did not get a moment alone with him before dinner. So that when I “remembered” to tell Oliver the news of Papa it came as much a surprise to him as it had to Sophia.

  ‘“Good God!” he exclaimed, shocked out of his habitual composure, and he could not prevent a hasty glance at Sophia’s bent enigmatic face.

  ‘I smiled. “Isn’t it splendid?” I said.

  “Splendid,” he concurred, and thereafter fell silent.

  ‘Harry as usual went up early but I sat grimly on with my sewing watching them. Oliver was hidden behind the paper but Sophia was miserably restless. At last she sat at the piano and began playing Liszt with a confusion of noise that betrayed a desperation that was half-insane it seemed to me. At last I yawned and said I should take a turn in the garden before bed.

  ‘I stood in the dark garden listening to their voices.

  ‘“What are we to do, Noll?” said Sophia in a low anguished voice. “What are we to do?”

  ‘“It was so unexpected; I’ve had no time to consider.”

  ‘“You must think of something!” she commanded in her old way.

  ‘“There’s still the midwife.”

  ‘“When only last month a girl died under her filthy ministrations? Yes, I suppose it would solve the problem quite neatly for you if I died,” she said bitterly.