What Dread Hand?

by Christianna Brand

  ‘Because he told me—my brother told me. Now, look, Inspector,’ I said, trying to think it out as I went along, trying to ram it home to him, ‘you say she wasn’t having a baby? So why should I have thought she was? She wouldn’t have told me, if she hadn’t been: why should she? It was he who told me: it was my brother. But you say yourself, he knew it wasn’t true. So why should he have told me?’

  He looked at me, cold as ice. He said: ‘That’s easy. He wanted you to kill her for him.’

  He wanted me to kill her! I could have laughed. The thing was getting fantastic, getting out of hand; and yet at the same time I had the feeling that the fantasy was a hard, gripping, grim fantasy, that, once it had its hold on me, would never shake loose. I stammered out: “Why should he have wanted her killed?’

  ‘Because,’ he said, ‘she was threatening to tell that it was he who ran the child down, and left it to die.’ And he said, cold and bitter: ‘I have no wish to trap you. We know that it was your brother who killed the child: we have proof of it. And we know it was you who killed the girl. We have proof of that too: there’s her blood on your cuff.’

  On my cuff. Where he had put his hand that night: taking my wrist in his grasp, giving me a brotherly little shake ‘to steady me’. I remembered how I’d thought, even then, that it wasn’t like him to be so demonstrative.

  Putting his hand on my wrist—fresh from the blood-smeared plastic. Making such a point, later on, about there being no chance of our soiled shirts getting confused, one with the other’s…

  So there it is. I wonder if we’ll be doing our time in the same prison?—sharing the same cell, maybe?—we two blood brothers…

  Because he’ll be doing time all right, as well as me. While I’m doing my time for his killing of the girl—he’ll be doing his, for my killing of the child.

  Well—that’s all right with me. He’ll be first out, I dare say, (is it murder to leave a kid to die, in case, when he gets better, he tells? I suppose not: the actual knocking-down would be accidental, after all.) So Fred’ll be out, first: and Black Will will be there to meet him when he comes. By the time I get out, I dare say Will will be ‘in’ for what he done to Fred; may even have got over it all by then—it looks like being a very long time away.

  But can you beat it?—working it out so far ahead, leading up to it so patiently, so softly, so craftily? Planting the blood on my cuff: and then leading up to it so softly, so craftily… And all for revenge: revenge on his own twin brother!

  After all, what I did, was done in self-preservation: there was no venom in it, I wished him no harm. That night after the accident, I mean: when, clutching his arm, begging him to help me—just to be on the safe side, I rubbed his sleeve with the juice of a blackberry.

  5

  Dear Mr. Editor…

  DEAR MR. EDITOR,

  I’m so sorry but your letter asking me to write something for your proposed anthology, was delivered to the wrong address—as you’ll see from the enclosed; and I’ve only just found out about it, too late to send you a story, I’m afraid. I thought, however, that you personally might be interested in this document (though I hope you won’t blame yourself—you can see that the poor creature was quite mad.) It is only a copy, of course. The original, which the dead woman was clutching, is in handwriting, very illegible and blotchy and what the trick.cycs. call ‘disturbed’. The police have it now. This has been very much tidied up and made readable—as it stood it really was hardly sense.

  Don’t bother to return it.

  Yours sincerely,

  Enclosure:

  Dear Mr. Editor,

  I am writing this in the kitchen while I wait for the kettle to boil and also of course because of the gas in the sitting-room. And anyway, Helen’s in the sitting-room and making dreadful noises, sort of snoring. She’s lying all hunched up and queer and her face is scarlet. Last time she was as white as a fish but drowning’s different: not that she was drowned because they interfered and got her out. Now I’ve got to kill her all over again, this time with the gas, because of the story.

  This time it’s because of you, writing and asking me to do a short story for this anthology of yours. I found the letter on the table in the hall this morning, half out of the envelope—I don’t know what’s become of the envelope. There was another bit of paper there too, I didn’t notice what that was about, a small slip of green paper. Was it something to do with the story? The letter starts ‘Dear Girl’ so it couldn’t be for Helen, she’s nearly forty although she’s still quite pretty. (I see now that you say it’s a sort of joke, starting the story ‘Dear Girl’—all the people writing in the book are to be women; so perhaps it was for Helen, but it’s too late now.) Anyway, you say you want a nice creepy sort of story full of colour and horror and all the rest. I don’t know why you should ask me to write a story or Helen either, if it was meant for Helen; unless of course you know about that other time, about the drowning? Naturally I immediately thought of the drowning, because that was creepy and horrible enough, Helen and me alone out there in the mist on the edge of the canal; and Helen’s face when she saw the little gun in my hand. But on the other hand, I thought it might not do for the story because she was saved, so it wasn’t a proper murder.

  And then I thought suddenly: you can’t be punished twice for the same crime—can you?

  And I’ve already been punished once for killing Helen, I’ve done my sentence, I’ve been in prison, and I didn’t even actually kill her. So I thought I might as well kill her again, for the story.

  So after breakfast I got the little gun.

  Helen was terribly frightened when she saw the little gun. In fact I think she was frightened before she saw it, just when she saw my face. She cried out: ‘Oh, darling, oh, Minna, no, no! Oh God, not again, it hasn’t begun again!’ It was like a kind of prayer. It was after that that she saw the gun. Then the fear changed; at first I think it was more for me, in some strange way; now it was for me, but for herself as well. But she was angry too. She said, ‘Where did you get that gun?’

  I said, ‘I had it all the time.’

  She said, ‘You told me it had fallen into the canal. I didn’t tell them about it because you said it was in the canal.’

  ‘I hid it,’ I said.

  ‘You promised me,’ she said. ‘You swore to me. And all this time you’ve been deceiving me. I didn’t tell the police, in case it should make things even worse for you; and all this time—’

  ‘You might as well have,’ I said. ‘They punished me, they sent me to prison.’

  She went into the old spiel. ‘Oh, darling, it wasn’t punishment, it wasn’t prison, do try to believe, do try to understand! It was only to make you better. And it did make you better, didn’t it, darling?’

  It did make me better!—locked up in that place with all those criminals, that Mrs. Whosit who killed her baby, that woman who called herself Gloria Swanson, but I knew she wasn’t Gloria Swanson, what would Gloria Swanson be doing in a place like that?—that girl that was always dreaming and moaning for ‘one little shot’. Well, Helen was going to get one little shot now; but not the same kind of shot.

  I told her this joke.

  She started to be kind and sweet and try to wheedle me. She said she hadn’t made things ‘even worse’ for me that last time by telling about the gun. She’d trusted me. Now for me to trust her and give her the gun. ‘I’ll give you the gun all right,’ I said. I couldn’t help laughing. The jokes seemed to keep coming into my head. I went on and on laughing.

  She didn’t try to run away or anything. She just stood with her hands over her face. I think she was crying. She kept saying, ‘Oh, my poor Minna! My poor little Minna!’

  ‘What’s poor about me?’ I said. ‘They can’t punish me twice for killing you, can they? And they punished me last time and you hadn’t even died. So I’ll kill you now.’

  ‘If you kill me,’ she said, ‘who will you have left? Who will look after you?’ And she pl
eaded: ‘Darling, if you kill me, they’ll think you aren’t better after all and they’ll—they’ll take you back, they’ll have to, darling, do try to understand it—’

  ‘They can’t,’ I said. ‘Not twice.’

  ‘Oh, God!’ she said. ‘Oh, God, help her to understand, make her understand…!’ But she gave it up. She tried again, a different way. ‘Minna,’ she said, ‘if you kill me, who will look after you, darling?—who will there be to take care of you, to fight for you? There’ll be nobody, they’ll have to take you back to—to that place because there’ll be nothing else for you.’ I think she really meant it, I don’t think she was troubling about her own danger a bit: not then. It was all for me. She’s always looked after me as though I were a child, even before Father died—our mother was never there, she was away somewhere in some hospital, nobody ever seemed to talk about her. I think Helen knew, but she wouldn’t tell me. ‘Don’t worry, darling, I’ll look after you,’ she used to say. Why? Why should I need looking after? It used to make me angry, it still does when I think of it, it’s one of the things that makes me want to kill her sometimes. Once she got angry herself and blurted out that just to look after me she’d given up marrying Jimmy Hanson, she’d condemned herself for ever to… She broke off then and said she was sorry. I should think so! So did I give up marrying, one great love after another I gave up, I could have been rich and courted beyond the dreams of ordinary woman, the King of Roumania was at my feet in those days, and other men, other kings, wonderful, splendid men…

  I think I sort of dropped off to sleep for a moment then. When I woke up I went in and looked at her again. She’s still lying there. Her breathing’s quieter. She must be nearly dead.

  In the end of course, I didn’t shoot her. She kept pleading with me not to. I felt more kind to her. After all, it’s hard to die just so that someone can write a story; though I keep explaining to her that you’ve asked me to write one, you’ve sent me this letter—and I simply don’t know any other story; and it seems such a good plot, how if you’ve been punished for killing a person you can’t be punished again so you may as well kill them anyway. So I said, ‘Well, how would you rather die?’ because after all it didn’t matter to me, no clues to hide, nothing—I wouldn’t care who knew I’d done it. I said, ‘I could make you walk along the canal again and push you in like the last time.’ She said, ‘Yes—yes, you could do that,’ but too eagerly. I realised she knew that we’d meet hundreds of people, they’d see me with the gun pointed at her, forcing her to go there. (Last time of course she had no suspicions till we got there: we were just going for a walk.) ‘A knife?’ I said. ‘Or I could make you drink some poison?’

  This time she tried not to seem so eager. ‘Poison can be painful,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t want you to suffer,’ I said. ‘I don’t even want you to die. It’s only for my story.’

  She looked at me, very sadly. I suppose she was sad at having to die just for the story. She said, still not as though she were eager about it: ‘Couldn’t we make up a story together?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘It has to be my story. The man says so, he says he wants an original story…’

  She gave that one up. She went back to the poisons. She said, still not eagerly, more as though she were a bit doubtful: ‘Of course all poisons aren’t painful.’ Then she suddenly said: ‘There’s some rat poison in the kitchen. They say that that one doesn’t make the rats suffer.’

  ‘I don’t remember it,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t think you knew about it,’ she said. ‘It’s on the shelf. In a little tin, a white powder.’

  I made her pass in front of me, keeping apart from her so that she couldn’t jump at me and get the gun away (but I would have shot her if she had. She knew that.) She went to the shelf and sure enough there was a little tin. On the way back I picked up a glass of water. I made her empty the powder into the water, all of it. She stood there with the empty tin in her hand and I stood and faced her, holding the gun. I heard the church clock strike; it was half past eleven in the morning, three hours since I’d read your letter beginning ‘Dear Girl’. ‘This is your last moment, Helen,’ I said. I felt quite sad but I knew I had to do it. ‘Now drink the poison,’ I said.

  She took up the brimming glass with her left hand. She was trembling and the poison slopped over the side. ‘Use your right hand,’ I said. ‘You’re trying to spill it.’

  She had to do it. She had to put down the little tin. I saw then Bicarbonate of Soda on the label.

  It made me terribly angry. I do sometimes lose my temper. I don’t think I ever lost it worse than then. I don’t remember it very well, I went a sort of blank like I did just now when I was writing about the King of Roumania and all my lovers; but I know that I screamed and raged at her and afterwards I had to rub my hands to get the torn hair away from my fingers and there was some blood on my nails; and I remember that her face was absolutely white, as white as when they got her up out of the water that other time, and streaked with my nail marks; I remember her being backed up in a corner, one arm over her face, and she was sort of gibbering, shaking all over, and gibbering like a monkey, making frantic little dabs at me with the other arm, trying to fend me off. She kept praying, ‘Oh, God, no more, no more! Oh, God help me, God pity me, oh God don’t let me die like this, not like this…!’ All for herself now! Not for me any more, not a word about what will become of my poor little Minna and all the rest of it… When at last I left her, I was shaking too and I went and sat in a chair, only still pointing the gun, and she was still crouched in the corner with her white, streaked face and her eyes half closed, taking great sobbing, gasping breaths. We stayed like that for a long time, even when she had grown quiet. I have only twice seen Helen afraid—really afraid, for herself alone. Once was in the split moment between my pushing her and her falling into the water; and the other was now. I think she gave up then. I think she saw at last that the time had come and she really was going to die.

  At last I said: ‘I’m sorry. I think I lost my temper. You shouldn’t try to trick me. Now, Helen, this time you really have got to die. I have to write the story.’

  She said in a sick voice: ‘Minna, I’ve decided. Will you do it by gas?’

  ‘No more tricks,’ I said.

  She said wearily: ‘No. I can’t struggle any more.’ And she said it again, ‘I can’t struggle any more.’ She said, ‘I’ll lie down here and you can turn on the gas and I’ll put my face close to it. You can keep the gun pointed at me.’ And she said again in that weary, desolate, hopeless kind of voice, ‘I’m not fighting you, Minna. I give up. If I die—I’d rather die. God knows what will happen to you, but I couldn’t go through—that—again. I’m finished. And the gas will be merciful.’ She added: ‘To you as well as to me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said, sharply again.

  ‘Oh, I don’t mean that,’ she said. ‘You’ll be safe enough from the gas if you keep well away from it, in a room of this size. I only meant that if you shoot me—it could be so ghastly. For me; but for you too.’

  ‘You’d be dead,’ I said.

  ‘I might not be dead. You couldn’t come close because you’d be afraid of my getting the gun away; and supposing you missed killing me, suppose I was just wounded, horribly, dreadfully, in—in the face or something…’ She closed her eyes against the thought of it as though she felt sick. After all, she was talking about her own death and it was coming soon. I suppose she thought death by gas was a beautiful, peaceful affair. Well, it isn’t. That awful breathing, and that scarlet face…

  So she lay down and I told her to turn on the gas tap and she did; and she put her mouth close to the leak and just lay there, drinking it in. But after a moment she sat up. She shook her head as though she were already a little bit muzzy. She said: ‘Minna, I had better write a message.’

  ‘Another trick?’ I said.

  ‘It will hardly help me,’ she said bitterly. ‘It’s for your sak
e. Give me a piece of paper and a pencil and let me write a message.’

  ‘How do I know what you would write?’

  ‘I thought you’d say that,’ she said. ‘Well, write it yourself and then just give it to me and I’ll hold it in my hand. If you die holding a thing, you hold it tight. They’ll find the message there, when they find me dead.’

  So to please her I wrote the message on a scrap of paper and gave it to her to hold and she lay down again, quite quietly and I went back myself and sat near the window, leaving it open just a crack, and kept the gun pointed at her. I won’t describe it, I don’t like horrors, but anyway it didn’t take long. Soon she was unconscious. I went over to her and rolled back her eyelids—I didn’t want her fooling me, nudging off the gas or something, the moment my back was turned; and just to make sure I pulled back her sleeve and dragged my nails, down her arm. But she never moved, she just lay there heaving with those awful snoring breaths. She was out all right. She didn’t look pretty now. She looked horrible. And the smell of gas was getting very strong so I closed the window and the door and came into the kitchen. I don’t know how long they take to die.

  Before I left her, of course, I took away the bit of paper with the message. It wasn’t going to do any good, she simply couldn’t see that I don’t need ‘saving’, I can’t be punished a second time. But it was kind of her; and typical of her, poor Helen—she was always trying to ‘protect’ me.

  ‘I am taking my own life,’ she’d made me write. She was going to lie there with it in her hand.

  It’s here on the kitchen table in front of me: a scrap of green paper with the message written on it.

  I see now that it’s the bit of paper that was lying on the halt table when the letter came.

  It says on the other side…

  It’s nothing to do with your story after all. It says…

  It’s some sort of a ‘Warning Notice’. It says…

  It says that at noon today ‘for some hours’—our gas will be cut off at the main.