‘Boy,’ she said, ‘could I use a shot!’
I poured the flask-cup full. Though her hand shook, she drained it without winking, coughed, and held it out for more.
‘No. That’ll do for the moment.’
‘Maybe you’re right. I don’t want it to make me cockeyed. Sorry to be such a softie. Has anybody got a cigarette?’
Craft produced a packet, and lit one for her. Her hand trembled so much that several times she missed her mouth altogether, but the brandy was taking hold. What disturbed me most was the glaze of fright in her eyes.
‘Look,’ she began. ‘What is this? What’s going on here?’
‘That’s what we hoped you could tell us,’ said Craft, ‘Miss … Mrs… .’
‘Sullivan. Belle Sullivan. Look. Are you really a cop? No kidding?’
Craft produced his warrant-card.
‘And who’s the other guy?’
‘That’s Dr Croxley, from Lyncombe.’
‘Oh. A doctor. That’s all right, then.’ The hand with the cigarette wavered. ‘I want to tell you just about the most horrible –’
‘If you’d rather not talk now, Mrs Sullivan,’ I said, ‘we’ve got a car outside to take you to some place more comfortable.’
Craft looked stern. ‘I think, sir, it might be better to tell it now.’
‘Yes. I think so too.’ She shuddered again. ‘Look. My husband is a fellow named Sullivan, Barry Sullivan. I don’t suppose you know him.’
‘I’ve heard of him, ma’am. I take it you’re from the States too?’
The girl hesitated.
‘Well – no. As a matter of fact, I was born in Birmingham. But the customers seem to like it, so I keep it up.’
‘Customers?’
‘I’m a dance-hostess at the Piccadilly Hotel. In London.’
‘Then why are you down here?’
This young lady was very direct, and did not suffer from reticence. Her voice went up a little.
‘Because I was so God-damned jealous,’ she answered. ‘I couldn’t see straight. I knew he had a floosie down here, because I found one of the envelopes postmarked Lyncombe. But I don’t even know who the floosie is. Look!’
Tears came into her eyes, and her shaky voice grew firm.
‘I didn’t come down here to make trouble. I wouldn’t have started trouble anyway. I just wanted to see this floosie, that’s all. I wanted to see what she had that I didn’t have.’ Belle Sullivan paused, and held out the flask-cup with her left hand. ‘Pour me another drink, will you? I promise I won’t pass out on you, or start getting gabby. Please, just pour me another drink.’
I poured it.
Craft, though he concealed it well, was a little shocked by this forthrightness. But I wasn’t. Though it may show a certain lack of principle, I liked it and I liked her. She drained the second cup.
‘Barry left on Friday night. By Saturday night I’d got myself into such a state I couldn’t sit still. So on Sunday morning I just up and got on the train. Even before I started, I said to myself, “Belle, this is the craziest idea you ever had.” I mean, you can’t just walk up to somebody in a town and say, “Excuse me; do you know any woman who’s sleeping with my husband?”’
‘No, ma’am; I suppose you can’t.’
‘Besides, I didn’t even want Barry to know I was there. But that’s the kind of ideas you get when you feel the way I did.
‘The trip down was awful. First I found I had to change at Exeter, and go on to Barnstaple. When the train got to Barnstaple, I found Lyncombe was still thirteen miles or so farther on. There’s no train; and the buses don’t run on Sunday. I had to take a taxi, though I hadn’t a whole hell of a lot of money.
‘The taxi-driver asked me where I wanted to go in Lyncombe. By that time I was wishing to the sweet Christ I hadn’t come. Excuse my language; I’ll t-try to talk like a lady in a minute; but that’s how I felt. I said to drop me at the biggest pub, and please, please go by the shortest way. He said he knew a short-cut. And so he brought me past here.’
Twilight was deepening in this curious room. The air was utterly still, and her shaky voice had a high carrying pitch. Every word must be audible to H.M. sitting in the car outside.
Belle Sullivan bit at her under-lip.
‘That was Sunday evening, you say, ma’am?’ Craft prompted.
‘Yes. It was about half-past eight, and still light. We came along this road. The driver was practically crawling along. We passed this studio place’ – her eyes roved round – ‘and … you know those huge double-doors downstairs, that open on the road?’
‘Yes. Well?’
‘The doors were wide,’ Belle told us. ‘And Barry’s car was inside. I recognized the back number-plate.’
Craft’s bushy eyebrows went up.
‘Mr Sullivan’s car?’ he echoed in his sepulchral voice. ‘Mr Sullivan’s never had a car when he’s been down here, to my knowledge.’
‘Of course not. Anyway, where would he get the money to run a car? He’s an automobile salesman. That was his demonstration-model. They don’t let him take it out of London to go joy-riding, especially in times like these when he’s going to lose his job anyway because there aren’t any more cars to sell. Seeing the car there was what scared me.
‘But I thought, “Wherever Barry’s car is, that’s where he’ll be pretty soon, and very likely with his floosie too.” So I told the taxi-driver to let me out right there.
‘The driver, of course, thought I was nuts. He said nobody’d lived in this place for years and years, and that some artist guy cut his throat here once. But I paid him off, and sent him away, and then started to prowl around. Of course I didn’t know about this part of the joint.’ Her nod indicated the room. ‘All I found was a locked door at the top of the steps. And a dirty studio room with a brick floor. And Barry’s car in the studio.
‘Swell place for assignations, isn’t it? I mean, even aside from this over-decorated cat-house up here. You can come out here in a car. You can run the car straight into the studio like as if it was a garage. Then you close the doors; and who’s to know anybody’s here?’
I had been thinking the same thing.
‘Then,’ said Belle, ‘it started to get dark.’
Involuntarily her large, grey, shining eyes moved towards the window. Outside, the tops of the trees were thin green. She shook her mop of disarranged brown curls, and uncrossed her knees. Her cigarette had gone out; she dropped it on the deep crimson carpet.
‘I don’t like the country,’ she said. ‘It gives me the jim-jams. I like some noise, and people near me who could come if I called out. Everything was dead quiet here. It got darker and darker. And I ran out of cigarettes.
‘Then I started thinking how far away I was from anything or anybody. Not knowing any roads; not knowing anywhere to go even if I wanted. Stuck and stranded. Next I got to thinking about that damned artist who cut his throat here. That’s when you begin to imagine things, and think there might be somebody just round the corner. I couldn’t even turn on the lights of the car, much less use it, because there wasn’t any key in the ignition. I sat on the running-board, and kept walking up and down. It must have been pretty late – anyway, it was nearly pitch dark – when I heard someone coming along the road.’
Craft and I had stiffened to such attention that she must have noticed it if she had not been so preoccupied.
‘I thought it was Barry, naturally.’ She hesitated, biting at her under-lip. ‘And maybe it was. Or at least …’
Craft cleared his throat.
‘Couldn’t have been Mr Sullivan,’ he said. ‘Not on Sunday night.’
‘Why not?’
‘Never you mind that, miss.’ Craft had a tendency to call her ‘miss’; perhaps because she looked like one. ‘Just take my word for it, that’s all.’
‘You mean he’s gone away?’ asked the girl, and her pretty face hardened.
‘Well – yes. Just go on.’
Bel
le started to say something, but changed her mind.
‘First,’ she went on, ‘I was sore as hell at him for getting me scared like that. But I’ve got some pride, and I didn’t want him to find me there. And yet at the same time I didn’t want to lose him and leave me stranded there. All that time I’d been walking up and down, you see, I never once thought what I’d actually do when Barry got back to his car.
‘There was only one thing I could do. Barry’s car is – I mean, was – a Packard roadster with a big rumble-seat. I climbed up, and opened the rumble-seat, and got down inside, and closed the top of the rumble-seat after me. I’m a little half-pint’ – she held out her arms, inviting inspection – ‘and it was easy. Besides, there’s two little ventilators in those rumble-seats, and you get plenty of air. Then he came into the studio. That,’ she added, and drew the back of her hand across her forehead, ‘was when I heard him crying.’
Neither Craft nor I moved.
‘Crying … I was going to say like a baby. But babies don’t cry that way. It was that horrible kind of shaky sobbing, like as if he was sick and couldn’t get his breath. It’s pretty awful, hearing a man cry like that. It goes right through you. Once or twice he’d hit his fist against the side of the car.’
(Lost soul, damned soul, whoever you were.)
‘And I was scared and wanted to cry too. But I thought, “Oh, you son of a so-and-so? You wouldn’t be crying like that about me,” and I hated him and kept quiet. Barry’s like a kid; he’s only twenty-five; I’m twenty-eight. There wasn’t time to think about much. I heard him pottering around, and going upstairs once, and a key in a lock. Then he got into the car, and started it up, and we backed out. I thought, “My God, we’re going to see the floosie; and here I am stuck in the rumble-seat.”’
Belle paused, trying to laugh a little. The brandy had taken hold and was keeping her fairly steady, but she was far from being well.
Craft said quietly:
‘Listen, miss. I want you to be careful about this. You’re sure it was a man you heard?’
Belle’s expression grew vaguely puzzled. ‘Sure thing. I thought it was Barry. Naturally.’ Again she paused. Her eyes widened. ‘Wait a minute! Look! Are you trying to tell me it might have been the floosie?’
‘I was only …’
Now she was even more thoroughly scared.
‘If I’m shooting my mouth off and not doing justice to Barry –’
‘Please, miss. It wasn’t the floosie, if that word means what I think it does. I just want to know this. You only heard somebody crying, and walking about. You didn’t hear anybody speak?’
‘No. But if it wasn’t Barry or the floosie, who else could it have been? Look. What’s going on here? Why are you two looking so funny?’
‘If you’ll just go on with your story, miss, the doctor’ll give you another drink of brandy.’
‘No, the doctor won’t,’ I said. ‘This young lady’s not well. She’s going back to Lyncombe, where we can get her some food and look after her.’
‘I’m all right,’ Belle insisted. She made an unsteady pout with her lips, smiled, and put down the flask-cup on the ottoman. ‘I want to tell it. Because I’m coming to the part I don’t understand and can’t understand.
‘The car backed out, as I said, and started off. The road was pretty bumpy, but I was all curled up on the rumble-seat and it didn’t jar me much. I was only thinking what a God-awful sight I’d be when I had to get up again, specially my hat.’
She touched her hand to her head, vaguely.
‘Then we got on a smooth road, and seemed to be going miles and miles. I think we were going uphill part of the time, but I’m not sure. There was a little ventilator on each side, down by the floor, but I couldn’t see anything except a little moonlight going past.
‘After that the road got bumpy again. It was much colder, too. I could feel the draught coming in and getting me round the ankles. We were going downhill a little; I was pretty sure of that from the way I had to brace myself. All of a sudden – just like that – we started to bump and jar so much that I banged my head against the side. My hat was awful; the veil had come all crooked; and my fur and handbag had slipped down on the floor.
‘I knew we weren’t on the road at all, because you could hear some sort of dry grass go whush against the wheels. There was a cold kind of mist, too; I could smell it. On we went, and I was trying to brace myself, and wanting to scream out at Barry, when …
‘Well, the car slowed down. Barry – or somebody – changed gears. The door of the car opened, and I wondered what the dumb cluck was doing: opening a door with the car moving. It closed again in a second, so I supposed he’d got things under control, when we started forward again like sixty. Whiz! Just like that, and on going as smooth as grease. This was only for a couple of seconds, because we stopped as though something kept trying to push us back.
‘It was like being on a feather-bed, only not quite so steady. I got the horriblest kind of idea that there wasn’t anything under us. Then I heard the sounds: little gulpy sounds like air-bubbles, all around us. They sound human, like live things eating at you, and I heard one noise exactly like a belch. There was a smell, too.
‘Then the car began to sink. It wasn’t much movement, but you could feel it inside you. I reached down on the floor to find my handbag – I don’t know why – and some sort of oozy stuff came through the little ventilator and touched my hand. Next the other little ventilator was stopped up, and I was in the dark. All of a sudden the whole car started to shake, and the front of it dropped about six inches, with the gulpy sounds getting louder all the time. So help me, that was the first time I caught on.’
Belle Sullivan stopped, held her shoulders stiff against trembling, and gripped the edges of the ottoman.
Superintendent Craft nodded.
‘I see, miss,’ he agreed grimly. ‘Quicksand.’
ELEVEN
BELLE nodded in reply, winking her eyes very rapidly. ‘I knew we were near Exmoor, naturally.’ She swallowed hard. ‘And I’d read Lorna Doone when I was a kid, or at least I’d heard about it. But I didn’t think there really were such things. Not really honest-to-God, I mean, and away from the movies.’
Craft snorted.
‘They’re real enough, all right,’ he assured her. ‘Unless you know most parts of that moor, stay off it. Oh, if you must go, follow the moor-ponies. They never make a mistake. Isn’t that so, Doctor?’
I agreed with some vehemence. I have had to learn a good deal about Exmoor in the course of my professional life, but I don’t like that windy, gloomy waste to this day.
‘The next part was the worst,’ said Belle, ‘though it didn’t last long. I can’t tell you how I got the top of that rumble-seat open. At first I thought Barry had turned the handle and locked me in. I was as horribly cramped as though I’d been doing marathon-dancing. And there must have been less air than I’d thought, inside there. When I got the lid up, and tried to stand on the leather seat, I was so dizzy I almost fell over the side into the bog.
‘I must have been a little bit cock-eyed. I screamed and screamed and screamed. But nobody answered me. And there was nobody in the front seat.
‘Don’t ask me where I was! There was a white mist with the moon behind it – you couldn’t see a dozen feet – and it was so cold I could feel the sweat on my skin. It’s funny what you think about at a time like that. I was furious because there wasn’t anybody in the front seat: the dope had just jumped out and let her rip, of course.
‘I remember the foggy stuff on the windshield. I remember what the upholstery looked like; and the clock and speedometer and petrol-gauge on the dashboard; and two little booklets like road-maps, one blue and the other green, stuck into the side pocket. But he’d gone. And there was the quicksand, sort of grey and brown and horrible, all spreading like oatmeal and pulling everything down in the dark. It moved, you see. It moved.’
‘Steady, miss! There’s nothing to be a
larmed about now!’
Belle put her hands over her face for a moment.
‘So I stood up on the edge of the car’ – she spoke through her hands – ‘and I jumped.’
Craft was looking rather white.
‘God Almighty, miss,’ he muttered, ‘you’ve got your nerve right with you. That took a bit of doing. And you landed on solid ground?’
‘Well’ – she lowered her hands – ‘I’m here. Aren’t I? Ain’t I? Whatever it is you say? I’m not out there dead under I don’t know how many feet of sand, with that stuff still moving on top of me.’
Her lower lip quivered when she smiled.
‘I’ll tell you something else, too. You know that old phonus-bolonus about your whole past life going in front of you when you’re just about to die? Well, it doesn’t. But I’ll tell you what does happen. I thought: “He can’t be far away. He must have heard me yelling. But he’s standing there letting me go down.”
‘And I thought: “He must have known I was in that rumble-seat.” My cigarette-stubs were scattered all over the floor in the studio. I was wearing perfume, too: one he always liked. “Well,” I thought, “this is as good a way of m-murdering a wife as any.”’
There was a long silence.
‘When I jumped out of that car, believe it or not, I saw Barry in every one of the ways I’ve seen him since we were married. He’s well-meaning: he’s childish; he’s an awful dope; he’s vain of his looks; he’s fond of dough. The next thing I knew, I’d landed. I didn’t feel sand grabbing me, like I expected. I felt ground. I crawled a little farther along, the way you do when you come out of water, and then I passed out. When I came to, I was locked in here.’
Belle lifted one shoulder. Her voice was almost casual when she added:
‘What burns me up now is that I left my handbag, with compact and lipstick and money and everything, back in that car. I left my fur and my hat too. But that’s all. Gimme another cigarette.’
She Died a Lady Page 10
