Dead or Alive

by Patricia Wentworth

  “Go on.”

  If Meg looked at him—But she didn’t. She looked down at her own clasped hands.

  “It got worse and worse. I was stupid—I minded—too much. I hadn’t anyone to talk to. Uncle Henry went off to his island. You went to South America. Then I told Robin I couldn’t go on. I said I would divorce him—” Her voice just left off.

  “When was that?” said Bill.

  “This time last year, just before—Bill, it was the day before—”

  “How did he take it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He laughed.

  She stopped, because Robin’s laughter rang in her ears. He had seemed amused, and then there had been a sudden flare of anger—“You’ll do nothing of the sort! Do you hear? When I want a divorce I’ll let you know!” And then he had laughed again, and tipped up her chin and kissed her with a sort of hard mockery. Then, just at the door, he had turned and flung her his farewell. “Perhaps you’ll be saved the trouble,” he had said, and was gone. And that was the last touch and the last word she had had from Robin O’Hara.

  She left the touch alone, but she told Bill about the words, her voice halting on the syllables and ceasing when she had said “trouble.” It was trouble he had brought her, and it was the last of all the words that he had had for her.

  After a time she said suddenly, “Letters kept coming for him. Then Colonel Garratt rang up. I said I didn’t know where he was, and he said they didn’t know either. I went to see him, and he asked me if Robin had told me what he was doing. I said no, he never talked about his work. Then Colonel Garratt said Robin’s job wasn’t a dangerous one, but he thought he’d been working a line of his own, and that it might have taken him up against very dangerous people. He said they would make inquiries. A week later they found his wallet in the river. It was quite empty. Colonel Garratt said I ought to be prepared—they thought something had happened to Robin. In December—there was a body—they thought—was his. I thought he was dead.”

  “Garratt wrote to me in December.”

  Grim details about an unrecognizable corpse had been Garratt’s idea of a Christmas letter.

  “I thought he was dead,” said Meg again.

  “And what made you think he wasn’t?”

  She lifted her hand to her cheek and leaned on it. The worst part was over.

  “Colonel Garratt said I ought to see a lawyer and get leave to presume death. There wasn’t any will. There was a little money in the bank, but there was a packet of some sort labelled ‘To be opened by my wife in case of my death.’”

  Bill exclaimed.

  “I think it’s only papers. They wouldn’t let me see it or anything. He had only brought it in the week before. The manager said he must have legal proof that Robin was dead before he could hand it over. I don’t suppose it’s anything that matters. It can’t be money, because he was always saying how hard up he was.”

  It sounded off to Bill. But then O’Hara was just the sort of fellow to do an odd thing like that. He said with a frown,

  “Did you see a lawyer?”

  Meg’s hand went down again. She said,

  “No.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because that’s when I began to think Robin wasn’t dead.”

  “Why?”

  “Things began to happen.”

  “What things?”

  “Little things—they frightened me. It’s so dreadful not to be sure. It’s so dreadful to think that there’s someone who wants to keep you like that—not sure—never knowing.”

  Her hands were twisting in her lap, fingers interlocked and knuckles white. Bill leaned forward and put his own hand over them, a big, warm hand.

  “Steady, Meg. Just go on telling me what happened.”

  She didn’t speak at once. A minute dragged by. He wondered what she was going to say. He took his hand away and leaned back, and as if that had been a signal, Meg said,

  “The first thing was a newspaper. Someone must have put it in the letter-box. I found it on the floor when I got up.”

  The bitter cold of that January morning came back as she spoke. Her feet were as cold as they had been bare on the linoleum and she had stopped to pick the paper up. It wasn’t a paper she had ever taken. She told Bill that, and was glad to have something that was easy to say.

  “It wasn’t a paper I’d ever had before. It hadn’t come through the post. I thought it had been left by mistake. It was folded inside out. I thought that was funny. Then I saw some of the letters were underlined. No, that’s wrong—they weren’t underlined—they had lines drawn round them. I couldn’t help putting the marked letters together. The first one was an I. After that an A and an M, and then ALIVE.”

  The giddiness that had come over her then just touched her now. She heard Bill say:

  “What paper was it?”

  “The Daily Sketch.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I went to Colonel Garratt. He said he thought it was a hoax. He said he was quite sure Robin was dead. He looked—odd. Afterwards I thought—Bill, it was rather0 horrid, but I thought he believed I’d done it myself.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. He said he’d go into it, but I believe that’s what he thought. I didn’t know what to think. I couldn’t believe anyone would do a thing like that—as a joke, but if it was really Robin there didn’t seem to be any point in it. I mean he could have written or telephoned. Someone must have put the paper in at my letter-box. The person who did that could have put in a note. Colonel Garratt said all those things, and they were true—” She stopped suddenly. Impossible to say what had been in her mind all through, but it might have been Robin, for Robin was cruel enough to play a trick like that. She didn’t know anyone else who would be so cruel. But she couldn’t say that to Bill.

  “Did you keep the paper?”

  She nodded.

  “Yes—but—” She looked at him suddenly with a steady mournful look. “That was the first thing that happened. I didn’t tell Colonel Garratt about the other things—I didn’t tell anyone—I couldn’t. I was afraid they would think I was mad.”

  “You had better tell me,” said Bill Coverdale.

  “In February I wrote to Uncle Henry. His secretary wrote back and said he wouldn’t be attending to any personal letters until he had finished his book.”

  “Has he got the same secretary? She was a Miss Wallace, wasn’t she?”

  “No—she got ill. It was before you went, I think. It’s a new woman—sandy hair and spectacles, and a sort of fussy white mouse manner. I shouldn’t have thought he’d have stood her for a month, but she seems to have dug herself in. I expect she’s efficient. Her name’s Cannock. Well, after that I knew Uncle Henry was a wash-out, so I thought I’d better go and see the lawyer. He was Uncle Henry’s lawyer, Mr Pincott. I rang up to make an appointment. I’d got a job then, so I was out all day. When I got home someone had been in the flat. Nothing was missing, and everything was quite tidy, but—Bill, you won’t think me mad, will you?—someone had taken my scissors and a sheet of writing-paper, and they’d cut the paper in strips and laid them out on the floor to make letters. They were all across the hearth-rug—A—L—I—V—E, in capital letters about two inches high.”

  “You ought to have told Garratt.”

  “I couldn’t—I was frightened. It frightened me in a queer sort of way, because how could anyone have got into the flat? It frightened me dreadfully. You see, Robin had a key and I had a key. Someone had put those letters out like that. If it wasn’t Robin, it was I.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense,” said Bill Coverdale.

  She looked down and said in a quick fluttering voice,

  “It mightn’t be—nonsense. People do things—like that—and forget. I might have done it.”

  “I’m quite sure you didn’t.”

  “Then it was Robin.”

  Bill shook his head.

  “That doesn’t follo
w. Someone might have pinched his key.”

  Meg looked up for a moment. He had a glimpse of her fear.

  “It wouldn’t matter to anyone except Robin whether I thought he was alive or not.”

  Bill shook his head again.

  “It might. You don’t know what’s behind all this. Until you do you can’t say what matters and what doesn’t. Well, that was in February. You said—other things. What else happened?”

  “There wasn’t anything else for a long time. Then I lost my job, and—I thought I had better go and see Mr Pincott after all.”

  “You hadn’t been?”

  “No.”

  “Not at all? You said you had an appointment.”

  She was very pale. She shook her head.

  “No—I didn’t go. I wrote and said my plans were changed.”

  “Why? You ought to have gone.”

  “I thought Robin was alive,” said Meg.

  “If he was alive, what was he living on?”

  “I don’t know. He had money. I don’t know where it came from.”

  Bill groaned.

  “Go on.”

  “I lost my job in July. I wrote to Uncle Henry again. Miss Cannock wrote back and said he sent me his love, and he was very busy and he hoped to finish the book within the year, and that then he would look forward to seeing me. I felt desperate, so I screwed myself up to go and see Mr Pincott. I didn’t make an appointment—I just thought I’d go. And then something happened. When I took the post in—the first morning delivery—there was an envelope without any address on it. It was in the letter-box with the other letters. There was a letter from you, and two bills, and this envelope. It was Hieratica Bond, like I use myself, and there wasn’t anything on it, but it was stuck down. I opened it, and at first I thought it was empty, and then I saw it wasn’t. There was a leaf inside, a maple leaf, and there was something pricked on it—little holes pricked right through in a pattern. I held it up to the light, and it wasn’t a pattern, it was letters—the same letters as before, A—L—I—V—E.”

  Bill sat forward with a jerk.

  “A leaf?”

  Meg struck her hands together sharply. A faint flush came into her face. Her eyes were afraid.

  “There—you don’t believe me! And you want to know why I didn’t go to Colonel Garratt!”

  “Meg, I didn’t say—”

  “No, you didn’t say I was making it up!” She was angry for a moment, but she couldn’t go on being angry. She had been unhappy too long.

  “Oh, Bill darling, I don’t blame you a bit. I couldn’t believe it myself if it hadn’t happened. I don’t always believe it now. It’s too like the horrid sort of thing that happens in a dream, and sometimes I think I must have dreamt it all.”

  Bill hesitated and then plunged.

  “Are you quite sure you didn’t?”

  She turned her head away.

  “I—don’t—know.” Then all at once she turned back again. “No, Bill, that’s not true. When it’s really me thinking, I do know. I know that these things happened. Someone put that marked paper in at the door, and someone came in here and put those letters on the hearth-rug, and someone slipped that blank envelope in among my letters. But when I’m tired, or I’ve been looking for a job all day, or when I wake up at about four in the morning, it’s like other people talking in my head, and then I’m not sure about anything.”

  Bill had been wanting to put his arms round her for ten years. At this moment the longing to comfort her became almost unendurable. Yet if he was to help Meg, he had got to endure it. If he failed her, she would have no one to help her at all.

  It was a pity that feelings of such a chivalrous nature should have made him look so cross. Instead of kissing Meg he frowned at her and said in a very abrupt voice,

  “Have you got the envelope?”

  It appeared that she hadn’t.

  “I didn’t keep it. There wasn’t anything to keep it for. It might have been one of my own envelopes—I use that sort. It might have been anybody’s envelope. It didn’t prove a thing.”

  “And the leaf?” said Bill.

  Meg threw out a hand.

  “It shrivelled right up. What was the good of keeping it?”

  “You didn’t?”

  “No.”

  It made it easier—to feel really exasperated with Meg. Bill felt genuinely exasperated. Ten thousand to one she’d got drawers full of hoarded rubbish. But she hadn’t kept the envelope with what might or might not have been a message from Robin O’Hara!

  He said in a patient voice, “I’d like to look at that Daily Sketch—the one with the first message, the marked letters.”

  Meg grew a shade paler.

  “You can’t. I was going to tell you—it’s gone.”

  “You said you kept it.”

  “Yes, I kept it. I put it in my writing-table drawer. It’s gone.”

  “Where did it go?”

  “The day I found the letters on the hearth-rug. I opened the drawer, and it was gone.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Quite sure.”

  “Do you mind if I have a look? Papers get caught up at the back of a drawer sometimes.”

  “This one didn’t. But look if you like.”

  Bill looked very thoroughly. He took the drawer out of the table and examined the grooves in which it ran, and then he took everything out of the drawer itself. The dozen letters he had written to Meg from Chile were there. She had kept them, even if she hadn’t answered them.

  There were a great many other things, like stray ends of string, old theatre programmes, bills, notes, and half sheets of paper. There were three fountain-pen fillers. There was about an inch of yellow pencil which looked as if it had been gnawed by a mouse. Meg always bit her pencils to the bone.

  Bill dropped the horrid little end into the waste-paper basket, from which she at once rescued it.

  “Bill, I’m not a millionaire—I can’t afford to throw away perfectly good pencils!”

  “I’ll give you another.” He produced one from his pocket as he spoke, brand new, with a shining tin protector and an india-rubber cap. “Chuck that beastly gnawed thing away! And what about these bills?”

  Meg smiled a little bitterly.

  “You might as well chuck them away too.”

  “They’re not paid?”

  “Darling Bill!”

  He put them in a neat pile. Most of the notes got torn up. He put everything in neat piles. Just before he pushed the drawer home he picked up one of the half sheets of paper.

  “Was this what was used for the letters?”

  Meg nodded.

  “Then whoever did it opened this drawer, and when it was open he saw the Daily Sketch and pinched it.”

  “Or he might have been looking for it. If it was Robin, he would know where to look.”

  Bill shut the drawer with a bang.

  “If it was Robin, what was he playing at?”

  Meg winced. She said,

  “I don’t know. Thanks for tidying my drawer. I just wait till it bulges, and then have an awful clearance, and generally find I’ve thrown away my stamps, or a letter that has simply got to be answered, or a postal order or something.”

  “Why should anyone take that paper?” said Bill.

  “Perhaps someone thought it was safer not to leave it here. Perhaps Robin thought so.”

  “It can’t be Robin!” said Bill violently.

  “It might be,” said Meg O’Hara.

  III

  Bill Coverdale stretched his long legs and laid his head back against the shabby back of a large and shapeless chair. A spring bulged under the splayed seat and the stuffing was coming through on the arms. There was a loose spiral of horsehair quite close to the large left hand which lay spread out, mahogany brown, on what had once been crimson leather. Bill had rather an out-size in hands, not a bad shape, but large and decidedly battered. He looked at the window and saw a narrow strip of blue sky—a
good colour English blue sky—and then all the rest of the pane a glare of new concrete patched with innumerable blank even windows, all very modern, light, and airy, and a great improvement on the low dingy houses which this great block of flats had replaced since last Bill Coverdale had stretched himself out in Colonel Garratt’s shabby chair and stared out of that window.

  Garratt jerked into the picture with an arm thrust between him and the concrete.

  “Admiring my view?” he said, and laughed his short barking laugh.

  “Very soothing,” said Mr William Coverdale. “You can put yourself to sleep counting windows instead of sheep.”

  Garratt walked to the window and stood looking out. His little steely eyes dwelt upon the block of flats with malignant dislike. His short grizzled hair stood up all over his head like a ten days’ beard. He wore, as usual, the sort of clothes that make you wonder why any tailor capable of perpetrating them should have escaped being lynched. No one knew the man’s name. He remained anonymous, and under the shelter of this anonymity he had for twenty-five years abetted Garratt in every kind of sartorial outrage. A mustard tweed and a pink-checked suiting are still remembered at the Foreign Office. This afternoon the crime was a purplish West of England tweed with a green line in it. The pockets bulged—Garratt’s pockets always bulged. The invariable red bandanna trailed a flaming four inches or so from the most crowded pocket of all, which had to accommodate, beside the handkerchief, matches and a pipe, a tobacco-pouch, and a bunch of keys. The colour scheme thus brightening the view was completed by a school or club tie of unknown origin combining a cheerful royal blue with orange zigzags and a device suggestive of squashed earwigs.

  Bill Coverdale looked, wondered, and averted his eyes.

  Garratt turned back to the room with a jerk.

  “First you pull everything down. Then you build it up. Then you pull it down again.” He grimaced. “Makes a bit of mess. Dangerous when the bricks begin to fall.”

  Bill did not say anything for about half a minute. What he said then might or might not have been irrelevant. He was twisting the spiral of horsehair between the finger with the white slashed scar across the knuckle and the thumb which still wore a strip of sticking-plaster. He said, looking at the black stubborn twist of the horsehair,