by Roy Vickers
Surbrook, of course, was wrong on the point of such a woman’s memories. Even at twenty-five, Hedda had begun to ‘remember’ more than one handsome young man who had deliberately contrived his own death in battle for lack of her kisses. Another group, equally handsome but inclined to wistfulness, had refrained from declaring their passion lest they be suspected of fortune hunting. Here was a touch of realism—for the practical Hedda had satisfied herself that her portion would eventually be about one hundred thousand pounds. And so the courtesy kiss, rather disappointing in itself, was shaped and fortified, until it became the keystone of her bridge to a reconstructed Valhalla.
There were no immediate repercussions. For some weeks Surbrook and Hedda chanced not to meet. Then he received an invitation to come to dinner and meet her father. As Mrs. Surbrook had frequently entertained Hedda, it was impossible to refuse.
Mr. Felbert turned out to be very much as Surbrook had expected—a social recluse forcing himself to be sociable. No one else had been invited. At dinner, the conversation took its tone from the furniture, which had been fashionable in the 1880’s. After dinner, Hedda, at a nod from her father, ‘left the gentlemen to their port’—a good port but wasted on Surbrook, whose suspicions had been aroused.
Mr. Felbert offered a summary of Hedda’s life, her mother’s premature death and his own attempt to take her place. This was welded into a brief account of the growth of his business. Mr. Felbert, in short, was on the brink of expressing himself delighted to welcome Surbrook as a son-in-law.
Surbrook was sufficiently adroit to escape without making a scene. Thinking about it the next day, he inaccurately concluded that it was Mr. Felbert who had forced the pace—even Hedda would surely have sense enough to tell him not to talk like that to the first man who had made a point of not avoiding her—for that, he assured himself was all his own part amounted to.
A few days later he met Myra, who drove from him the consciousness and almost the memory of Hedda. In a month, their engagement was announced in the local paper. Among the letters of congratulation was one from Hedda. It was conventional throughout. except for the last paragraph: ‘I quite understand! Believe that, in all sincerity. I wish you every happiness.’
Surbrook assumed that it was no more than a clumsily phrased attempt to show friendliness. He next saw her on his wedding day—over the heads of a small crowd of idlers, when he was coming out of church. She was standing alone on the opposite pathway. She had accepted an invitation but had not turned up.
On his first wedding anniversary he received a letter from her, which gave him his first twinge of unease. It was an inoffensive meander, but its atmosphere was intimate, as if the writer were a close companion. After passing it to Myra, he decided not to answer.
There had been one such letter for each of his five anniversaries. Some eighteen months ago she had written a personal letter of condolence when Myra and his mother were killed in an air crash.
Chapter Three
Before he could knock at the door of Cosy Nook, Hedda herself opened it. In seven years she had not even changed physically. There was the same unruly brown hair, the same suggestion of unnecessary lumpiness. Her face was unwrinkled, but, incredibly, she had taken to lipstick—possibly for the first time. The lipstick, too, tended to lumpiness.
She spoke as if they had parted, not seven years ago, but the previous day.
“You see—I was waiting for you! You did not have to knock.”
“Good lord!” He was disconcerted. “How did you know I was coming?”
She smiled.
“I knew.”
Of course she knew he was coming—to talk about that twenty thousand! But he had an uneasy feeling that this was not what she meant.
She had wafted him into the bungalow, chattering as she had always chattered.
“I built this very soon after father’s death. I always wanted a cosy little nook of my own—where I could wait, all by myself. I still go to the office, but you’ll find I’ve become ever so domesticated. I manage with a half-daily woman. Say it’s clever of me!”
While she prepared tea, he waited in the sitting-room. Not a sitting-room, he decided, but a drawing-room, more formal than comfortable. The furniture was modern and new as the house, but the room itself contrived to look old-fashioned. There was something indefinitely wrong with it—it exuded a spiritual lefthandedness.
On a doubtfully serviceable escritoire was a large silver-framed photograph—of himself. She must have bought it from the photographer. Beside it was a very small one, cut out of a group, also of himself. He could not escape the truth that she believed herself to be in love with him. He would make every effort to avoid wounding her.
When she came in with the tray he noticed her dress, a pleasing green, well cut in a low ‘v’. There was nothing wrong about the dress, though there seemed to be.
There followed the ritual of tea, which he had always disliked and now endured with foreboding. She had not changed, but she had indeed become ‘more so.’ The gaucherie remained, and the fatuous little mannerisms. But her personality had been intensified, so that their former roles were reversed and it was she who was taking charge of him.
Hedda, in fact, had acquired strength through her unshakeable belief in her own ideals. When Surbrook’s engagement was announced she had kept her sanity by adapting her dream-life to the new facts. She identified herself with the great women, of so many legends, who wait for their wayward lovers, the waywardness being a test of faith. In a short time she became convinced that Surbrook would ‘return’ to her. The air crash that removed Myra was therefore seen as the hand of fate.
Supporting the fantasy was a certain emotional shrewdness. She valued her man above her fortune, which was meaningless without him.
He let her prattle on about her cakes and her garden and her house until he reached breaking point.
“Hedda! That twenty thousand! Why did you do it?”
“Willie! What a question!”
She got up, turned on the light and drew the curtains. He waited until she stopped fidgeting.
“Look at the facts!” he exclaimed. “No sane business man would have lent me a thousand. I was due to be hammered. After that, I couldn’t have got a job. I would have been knocking at doors, asking housewives to buy stockings, or something—”
“I know. I happened to see a man doing just that—and I got panic.”
“But—why? I never gave you any reason—”
“I won’t be bullied by a big, strong man like you!” She pouted with inexorable archness. “And why do you go on asking that silly question? You haven’t any proof at all that the money came from me.” She paused and added: “And yet you know! Ask yourself how you know.”
She was not making it easy for him to be kind, he told himself—as a mouse might have grumbled that there was no opportunity to be kind to the cat.
“We have to discuss what can be done about it,” he said stubbornly. “It will take me a lifetime to repay—”
“Did you think I was looking for an investment?”
He got up, tried to pace the little room, but had to sit down again.
“Don’t you see, Hedda, that the most dishonourable thing I could do—the most damnable insult I could offer you—would be to make love to you in return for the twenty thousand?”
He had taken the gloves off and struck, but she only laughed at him.
“Oh, my poor Willie! How you men deceive yourselves with words! We women are much more realistic. I wrote you—at the time—that I understood. I still understand. Just think it over, while I get rid of the tea things.”
Surbrook did not understand—was, in fact, struggling to sustain himself in a state of non-understanding, an effort which failed when she returned.
“My father was purse-proud. He thought people esteemed him for his money. He thought the same must apply to his daughter. While he was talking to you after dinner that night, I—was crying! I knew that your self-re
spect would be affronted—that you would never seek me out again nor permit yourself to think of me. I understood!”
“But—my dear girl! I fell in love with someone else!”
“Of course you did!” Her smile made him feel that her ‘understanding’ would suffocate him. “I have learnt a little about human nature—I know how such things happen. They cannot affect one’s destiny.”
That gave him the clue to the existence of the fantasy—revealed that she believed he had been in love with her and had married Myra in the hope of forgetting. No reasoning could shake that kind of belief.
If he were to marry her, it would not be for her money—she had made neither promise nor threat. It would be from pity. And, of course, gratitude. Lots of reasonably happy marriages must have been founded on much less.
“Hedda, you have saved me from the gutter. So far, I haven’t uttered a single word of gratitude to you, because I—”
“Because you feel that you’re under a terrible obligation!” she interrupted. “Please, dear Willie, do let’s be sensible about the money. Listen!” She sat on a pouffe close to his chair, put her hand on his. “I never made father’s mistake. From the first—d’ you remember when you taught me to play clock golf?—I knew you were not drawn to me by the fact of my being an heiress—you did not even know I was, until father told you. The other day, I had to butt in with that money because, if you had been hammered, I would have suffered more than you—wondering whether you would do what Fauburg did.”
Again he felt that dangerous sense of superiority that permitted him to pity her.
“You have given me so much, Hedda, and I can give you so very little!”
“Don’t think about it like that! Give me only what you can’t help giving me. I demand nothing, Willie.”
She was telling him he was free—free to say thank-you for the twenty thousand, walk out of her house and dodge her in future.
He looked down at her. At close view, the lipstick wasn’t really lumpy—it was desperately pathetic. And she had saved him from the gutter. It wasn’t as though she were ugly, or physically defective. Surely, with a little imaginative effort on his part—
He lifted her from the pouffe.
While he was holding her, he faced the stark truth that this woman could never attract him, never elicit the faintest response from his nervous system. The muddled kindliness that had prompted him to kiss her—with histrionic emphasis—gave place to resentment.
“Hedda! That was a wrong-headed attempt to say thankyou for that money.”
She laughed happily. In her fantasy, the kiss always marked the end of cross-purpose.
“You understand! … Or you couldn’t have made that joke!” Her voice was ecstatic. “We have waited so long, Willie, and now we have our reward. We can be married just as soon as you like.”
Chapter Four
Presently she was sitting beside him on a settee. She had said that she demanded nothing. That was romantic jargon, even if she thought it was true. She would soon discover it was not true. Before the period of the honeymoon was over, the forlorn little butterfly would turn into a spider. Now and again, her prattle penetrated to his consciousness.
“There are some lovely houses in Surrey, almost in the country. Not really far out. You could be at your office almost within an hour.”
And when he got to the office he would know that he was operating by virtue of her money. As a sub-species of gigolo, lacking the gigolo’s adaptability, but taking the gigolo’s fee. And at five every day he would have to go home to the spider—even if the spider were only the symbol of his own self-contempt in the knowledge that he must perpetually fail her. The feeling of suffocation was coming back.
“I shall sell my interest in the business and give all my time to making our home as you like it.”
No!
He had made no sound, but had the illusion that he had shouted. The superiority had been stripped from him—the arrogance that had betrayed him into pitying this woman—leaving his egotism naked. He was as a frightened animal about to fight for his life.
“And the rooms must be large, Willie. It will be lovely entertaining your friends.”
Her chatter strengthened his will. His life would still be worth living, even with a secret he could share with neither man nor woman. He was cool-headed now—could see exactly how it must be done.
He would tell the police that he had proposed marriage.
“Darling,” he said, “I had no idea this would happen to us—so suddenly—I’ve come unprepared.” He drew from his hand the signet ring which had belonged to his grandfather. “Will you wear this until I can get you a proper engagement ring?” He took her left hand and placed the ring correctly. “I’m afraid it’s too big for comfort!”
“No, it isn’t! I shall love to wear it.”
Next, he must make sure that there was something in the bungalow that would tempt a thief.
“Hedda! Have you any jewellery?”
“How funny you should ask!” She seemed irrationally pleased. “I have a little. I bought it myself. For a reason!” As he did not inquire the reason she added: “Would you like to see it?”
“Very much!”
She left the room, returning with a decorated cardboard box: a faded ribbon panelled a coloured photograph of Miss Mary Pickford playing clock golf.
“D’you remember sending me chocolates, Willie?”
“And d’you remember when I drove you home, after the Walbrook dance?”
Inside the chocolate box were three pieces. A star pendant, in diamonds, on a thin gold chain; a bracelet in rubies and diamonds; and a brooch in diamonds. The brooch was a ponderous affair—a monogram, WH—her initial and his—intertwined.
The audacity of that monogram acted as a spur.
“This is a secret, isn’t it?” As she nodded: “No one knows that you have it.”
“No one but you!”
Then no crook could have marked it down. But there were a lot of men on the prowl nowadays. If she were wearing it when one of them came to the door—
“Let’s see it on you … I can fix the bracelet.”
“Oh, no, Willie! Please, no! It would spoil so much. I didn’t really want to tell you, but you can guess. Can’t you?” She lowered her eyes. “I look at it every night when I go to bed—just for a minute. I bought it for our wedding day.”
When it came to telling the police that she had been wearing the jewellery, he must not trip over detail.
“The pendant—that hangs on this little chain just below your throat, doesn’t it? If you were wearing the brooch—with that dress, for instance—where would it go?”
“Here!” She placed her finger at the base of the ‘v’ of her blouse.
She put the chocolate box on the pouffe and began to put the pieces back in the box. He moved near enough to the door to be able to reach the light switch when he wanted it.
“I’ll have to be going now.” He lowered his voice. “Come and say goodbye to me, Hedda.”
She obeyed, without waiting to put the lid on the box. He studied her mouth. Even though it was a large mouth, it was yet small enough to be completely covered by the palm of his hand. When she came close, infatuated, he playfully took her wrists, drew them down until her hands rested on her hips. He had remembered the danger of her fingernails marking his face. With swift concerted movements he switched off the light, slipped behind her and pinioned her arms. With the base of his left hand on her chin, he forced her mouth shut, her head pressing against his shoulder, his own back steadied against the wall.
His imagination had suggested that she was suffocating him, but it was he who, in all literality, suffocated her.
She had been dead for many minutes before he was aware of muscular strain. He had shifted his position and could not reach the switch. In the dark, he lifted the body, carried it to the settee. On the way, he nearly stumbled over the pouffe. He heard the jewellery fall to the floor. His right foot touc
hed one of the three pieces. That did not matter. He lowered his burden and sprawled it on the settee.
He stretched, pinched and massaged his left arm. As he turned on the light, he spoke aloud.
“The financial agent will tell the police about that twenty thousand as soon as he’s read his paper. The police will ask me for my alibi. Incidentally, my car has been parked outside all the time I’ve been here.” He laughed, to whip up his courage. “All right—no alibi! In case the nerve falters, we’ll remove temptation to pretend there is.”
He opened the flap of the escritoire. On the blotting pad he wrote in pencil the telephone number of his flat and added: ‘If out, try club: Embankment 7210.’ The technique of the crook would be worse than useless to him. Invert it. Give ’ em fingerprints galore. He picked up and fingered the large photograph of himself, touched the top of the escritoire.
“Steady, now!” He glanced at the clock—eight minutes to seven. “Get the narrative right. I proposed to her, asked her to wear my signet ring. I left before seven, but I’ll say I didn’t notice the time. She was alone—wearing the jewellery—when she answered the door to a prowler who forced her in here, smothered her and removed the jewellery.
“Footprints! The police can trace ’em even if there’s no mud on your shoes.”
He went to his car, put on the rubbers he carried for emergency, and re-entered the bungalow.
The jewellery was lying near the pouffe. The box itself was intact, the lid on the pouffe, the tray upside down on the floor. He left the box untouched. He picked up the pendant, the bracelet—lodged in the monogram of the brooch was his signet ring. Obviously, it had fallen off the finger while he was carrying the body to the settee.
He dislodged the ring, and examined it. The hoop was uninjured, but the matrix had been scratched and a small piece had been cut clean out. Evidently, his foot had forced it against one of the diamonds. Better dump it, when he dumped the jewellery.
There would then be nothing to support his statement that he had proposed marriage.
