Except For One Thing

by John Russell Fearn

  “Yes, of course. I want everybody to know that I am marrying Richard Harvey — but this Rixton Williams business seems queer in some way…I’ve been suspicious about it ever since I got the first letter. Yes, I remember now, it had the Twickenham postmark,” Valerie added with a vaguely startled glance.

  Richard’s forced grin somewhat reassured her. She subsided into silence, evidently deciding to wait and see what happened. She had not got to guess his real purpose until they were in the house, then…

  Richard sped along the dark country roads, now thoroughly familiar to him. He passed the lane, down at the end of which lay his Jaguar, and drove on swiftly, pulling up noisily outside his hideout.

  Valerie climbed out into the night. “Now what?”

  He alighted from the other side and waved a hand to the dark detached house standing in the gloom.

  “That’s it,” he said briefly. “Our little hide-away for when we come back from our honeymoon and elopement — ”

  “This? Not if I know it! I don’t want to be buried alive!” Valerie declared. “You’ve done all this to humiliate me, haven’t you?”

  “Honestly, Val, no!” he insisted, gripping her arm. “Come along in anyway and see for yourself.”

  She submitted to being escorted up the front pathway. He opened the door and switched on the hall globe. Valerie followed him into the now lighted drawing room with its sparse new furnishings. Richard hurried over to the curtains and drew them, then switched on the electric fire.

  He turned to find the girl looking at him peculiarly in his raincoat and cap. She moved uneasily, put her handbag on the table. She noticed that his face was peculiarly strained and deadly pale…

  He took off his woollen gloves, put them down near her handbag, and then came over to her.

  “Your manners are improving,” she commented cynically. “Is that beastly cap glued to your head, or what?”

  “No — nothing like that.” His voice had cold patience in it. “You see, my hair is pretty distinctive.”

  “But whom is there to see? We’re alone, aren’t we?”

  “At the moment,” Richard agreed. “But I have inquisitive neighbours.”

  Valerie turned away from him impatiently and appraised the small room.

  “Hang it all, Ricky, you don’t think this will ever suit me, do you?” she demanded.

  “It might for the moment,” he answered.

  Baffled, she gave up trying to argue. Instead she turned aside and pretended an interest in the square, modernistic clock on the mantelshelf.

  “I’ll get some drinks,” Richard said, and turned to the door. “Take a seat and I’ll explain everything while we have them. They are in one of the outhouses somewhere. I haven’t got the place straight yet…”

  Frowning, Valerie went to one of the easy chairs and settled in it, crossing her shapely legs. Richard smiled at her, glanced at the clock and saw it was ten minutes to eight.

  Leaving the house he hurried next door but one to Timothy Potter’s and hammered on the front door. Potter himself who opened it, in his usual alpaca jacket.

  “Oh, hello Mr. Williams!” he greeted. “Something I can do for you?”

  “I’d like you to come and meet my wife-to-be. You’ve been so decent to me since I got here, I feel you should. She’s just got here. Come and have a drink with us.”

  “Well, I…All right,” Potter agreed. Then he called back into the house: “Just going to give Mr. Williams a hand, Mother. Be back soon.”

  Together they walked the short distance past the next house and so entered the hall. Richard hurried through into the kitchen to sweep up a tray containing three glasses and a bottle of champagne, which he had bought in London and arranged specially for the occasion — then he motioned Potter into the front room.

  Valerie, still seated, gazed at the newcomer in silent astonishment.

  “This is Mr. Potter from the next house but one, dear,” Richard said, setting down the tray. “He’s been so kind to me I thought you ought to meet him, and we can all have a drink together.”

  Valerie listened to the change of voice in troubled wonder and then looked at Potter’s round and genial form, his pink face, and eyes like a child awakened in the middle of the night.

  “How are you,” she acknowledged briefly.

  “Glad to know you,” Potter said. “You and Mr. Williams here will make a grand couple. He’s told me about you, how you plan to marry and settle here…Just a minute.” Potter broke off in amazement. “I’ve seen you somewhere! You look just like — Valerie Hadfield, the musical comedy star.”

  “Considering I am Valerie Hadfield that isn’t surprising,” she answered curtly, getting to her feet. “Didn’t Ricky here tell you?”

  “Ricky? Oh — Mr. Williams! No, he didn’t give me your name.”

  “Well, you know it now, eh?” Richard asked, grinning, holding the tray forward with three filled glasses upon it. “Drink, Val — and you too, Mr. Potter. Just to celebrate!”

  Potter nodded and drank the champagne off quickly. Valerie did the same and then fell to musing, her brows knitted. Potter coughed uncomfortably.

  “Well, maybe I’d better be off,” he said, hesitating. “I’m glad to have met you, Miss Hadfield. I hope both of you will be happy.”

  “Thanks,” Valerie said laconically, her lips tight.

  Richard saw Potter to the door and closed it upon him. He locked it and then came back into the drawing room to find Valerie looking at him fixedly.

  “Suppose you get the surprise off your chest and let’s get out of here?” she suggested in impatience.

  Richard only gave a stony smile, which made her take a step back.

  “I’ve — been linking things up,” she went on hurriedly, as though she were afraid to stop talking. “The name of Rixton, for instance. Abbreviated, it would sound like Ricky, which is the name I have for you…”

  “I know,” Richard answered. “That’s why I invented the name of Rixton.”

  “I have the awful feeling that there’s something terribly wrong about all this — that I should never have come here!” Valerie tried and failed to sound at her ease. There was plain, naked fear on her sharply chiselled face. “Everything’s so timed — so arranged — even to that man Potter…I think you’re planning something more than an elopement.”

  “I am,” Richard agreed.

  “Why do you stare at me like that?” she demanded, clenching her fists. “Ricky, why did you bring me here? What is this surprise?”

  “I brought you here, Val, to kill you,” he answered quietly. “I’ve planned a perfect crime,” he went on. “And incidentally a perfect answer to your damned selfish decision to cling to me! I’ve tried every way to be rid of you and you wouldn’t let me go — so now I’m going to make you! I’ve arranged it so beautifully that nobody will ever know I did it or what has become of you. Potter is a witness to the fact that you and I were here at eight o’clock tonight. At home Baxter will be a witness to the fact that I am in my laboratory making experiments!”

  “You’re mad…” Valerie’s blue eyes dilated.

  “No — subtle,” he corrected. “Fortunately nobody in the city knows you and I are even acquainted — thanks to your love of isolation. Only that chauffeur, and maybe he’ll keep quiet.”

  “Ricky, you fool!” Val screamed suddenly, and her blind panic exploded. She hurled herself at him, fought to thrust him on one side and reach the door, but his powerful hands dragged her back, tore the fur coat from her shoulders and then flung her across the room on to the divan. She lay half across it, her costly gown shimmering.

  “Ricky! In God’s name…Ricky! Don’t! No…NO…”

  The words ceased tumbling from Valerie’s lips as Richard’s strong, knotty fingers clenched deep in her throat. Merciless, he watched colour flow into her ashen face, a glassy brightness steal over her starting eyes. Not a sound escaped her. Her limbs threshed madly, her hands tore at his arms and tried
to gouge his face. He forced her down hard, squeezing tighter and tighter, perspiration trickling from his forehead…

  At last she relaxed and lay staring at him blankly with those fixed blue eyes. Her tumbled hair streamed out in flowing waves across the upholstery at the divan end. Her tongue had forced itself between her teeth.

  He stood straight and drew his sleeve over his face. His heart slamming so violently he thought he would faint he went to the table, poured out some champagne with a shaking hand and drank it off. It was flat and tasteless, but it steadied him.

  Going back to the girl he held the pulse of the limply dangling left wrist. There was no beat: life had ceased. Deliberately he closed the lids over the staring eyes, closing the gaping mouth. The suffused colour of suffocation was changing slightly to a vaguely purplish hue. Deliberately he raised her limp form and draped the fur coat about her shoulders; then he propped her up against the back of the divan so that she seemed to be sitting there in a trance.

  Working methodically now he put his woollen gloves on again and then removed Val’s own letter from his wallet, pulled it out of its plain protective envelope and left it folded up on the mantelpiece. The envelope he returned to his wallet. Next he opened her handbag and searched through it until he found the bunch of keys he had seen her use so often. He smiled at them in his gloved palm, thrust them in his hip pocket, then stuffed the bag inside his coat out of view.

  He turned to the tray holding the bottle and three glasses and inspected them, then he raised each in turn in his gloved hand and polished them assiduously with his handkerchief, including the bottle. The tray itself he also rubbed over thoroughly and then carried the whole lot back into the kitchen and set the tray down on the table.

  Still holding the handkerchief he polished the knobs inside and outside the kitchen and drawing room doors, then moved over and wiped the woodwork of the divan carefully. As far as he knew he hadn’t touched it, but it was better to be sure. This done he heaved the girl’s body on his right shoulder, switched off the light, then walked under her weight to the front door. In the dark he rubbed the inside of the doorknob and bolt, then opened the door carefully, closing it by drawing the door to with his handkerchief tugging the knob. A final rub over the knob and then he began to move down the path with his burden.

  To his alarm a tubby figure was just approaching along the pavement. Instantly he lowered Valerie from him, put an arm round her waist and leaned her head on his shoulder. Thuswise he dragged her along with him as he advanced down the path.

  “Well, well, what’s this?” Timothy Potter exclaimed blankly, pausing in the gloom. “What happened to — her, Mr. Williams?”

  Richard forced a laugh. “That champagne,” he explained, and thanked God he had had prevision enough to supply champagne as an excuse for anybody seeing him removing the body. “She had a couple more drinks and they went right to her head. She’s dead out…”

  Potter stared at her, her hair faintly gleaming.

  “Can’t hold her liquor like a gentleman, eh? Well, I’d better go back home then. I was bringing along a bottle of port to drink your health from my point of view. Never mind though…”

  “Decent of you,” Richard said. “But you see how it is. I’ll run her into the country air; it’ll help her a bit. Y’know” — he dropped his voice to a whisper — “we’re eloping, but don’t you go telling everybody!”

  “As if I would!” Potter exclaimed. “All right, I’ll go. Unless I can help you?”

  “Not a bit,” Richard assured him, and he heaved the slipping body more tightly to him and again shuffled down the path.

  Potter did not go, however. He helped to lift the girl into the back seat of the car where Richard propped her up in the corner.

  “My word, she is out!” Potter declared. “Sure she isn’t ill?”

  “Not she,” Richard answered, going round to the driving seat. “I should have remembered she can’t stand much drink…”

  Potter stood in the starlight and Richard muttered things under his breath. Then he got the car going and drove off down the road with evergrowing swiftness, the dead girl swinging over on her side as at last he turned down the lane at the bottom of which his Jaguar should still be hidden.

  It was. The moment he saw it in the headlights of the saloon he put the lamps out and drew the car to a standstill. Going over to the Jaguar he unlocked it, then returned and dragged the body into his arms, carried it to the Jaguar, deposited it on the floor at the back and threw the motor rug over it. This done he went back to the saloon, took out the brown paper parcel of clothes and dropped them beside Valerie, then he came back yet again, climbed into the old car and started up the engine.

  Jerkily he drove into the uncultivated field bordering the lane, changed into second gear and then began to ease himself out on the running board, fixing the throttle-control so the speed was maintained. By dint of manoeuvring he closed the door, holding the steering wheel through the open window…Then suddenly he leapt clear and felt the underside of his forearm scrape viciously on the worn metal of the frame. Bumping and bounding, the old-fashioned car went chugging on into the night.

  He looked about him in the dim light. He had jumped away just in time, still on the coarse grass round the edge of the field. There would be no footprints. Returning to the lane he peered at his injury just above the underside of his wrist between shirt cuff and glove top. Faintly visible were smears of blood. Irritably he bound up the wound with his handkerchief and then returned to the Jaguar. Clambering into it he backed up to the end of the lane, stopped again, and then returned on foot down the lane until he came to the spot where the Jaguar had been standing.

  Masking the full glare of the torch he was carrying he searched for and found two lots of prints — one from the Jaguar’s tyres and the other from the saloon’s. With his foot, as he walked backwards, he scraped out the Jaguar prints, and particularly the deep indentations where it had been standing in the wood. His own footprints he also eliminated.

  So he came back to the roadway, but before he climbed into the Jaguar’s driving seat he put the handbag on top of the girl and then slipped his own trousers, overcoat, and scarf over the Williams outfit and took off the cap. Since he was usually hatless he now looked his normal self. Besides, in the Belsize Park neighbourhood plenty of people knew his Jaguar.

  With a sigh he settled at the steering wheel and drove swiftly into the night. The clock on the dashboard said eight-thirty-five. When it had reached ten-ten, after an almost uninterrupted journey — apart from traffic signals — he had gained the road where his own home stood. He drew the car up a few yards from the driveway gate. Now came the supreme risk, unless the Baxters had gone to bed.

  Glancing up and down he satisfied himself that nobody was in sight — as there rarely was in this select residential district — then he got out of the car, put the parcel of clothes and handbag firmly on top of Valerie, drew the rug well over her, then heaved her already stiffening body into his arms.

  Without a sound he relatched the car door and carried the dead girl up the driveway, past that drawn kitchen blind with the light chinks down the sides — the Baxters still hadn’t gone to bed — and past the still lighted laboratory windows.

  He opened the driveway door of the laboratory and stole silently inside. Immediately he went to the storage cupboard, unlocked it and propped the girl up inside it, closing and locking the door upon her.

  He picked up the parcel of clothes that lay in the fallen rug along with the handbag and for the moment pushed them away under a bench. Then he glanced down at his cut arm. It was only a flesh wound and the blood was drying, but it looked and felt messy. Going over to the antiseptic he poured some on a puff of cotton wool, wiped the wound clean and threw the small bloodstained swab into the bin under the bench.

  He frowned as he put an adhesive self-sealing plaster over the cut. Have to be very careful nobody saw it: it was no part of his plan…He had the plaster to
his liking finally and continued with his moves in the prearranged order. Pulling off scarf, overcoat, and suit coat, he donned his laboratory smock, which covered him high up in the throat, and his Williams’ collar and tie.

  With a critical glance about him he went to the door leading into the house, unlocked it, and stepped into the hall. Since the Baxters were still up he might as well make his alibi more solid than ever.

  “Oh, Mrs. Baxter!” he called, and after a moment she came out of the kitchen.

  “Yes, Mr. Richard? Something you want?”

  “You might fix me a sandwich, please,” he said. “I’m getting hungry.”

  “I’m sure you must be,” Mrs. Baxter sympathised. “My hubby was saying how you’ve been hard at it all evening. When he went out to get the coal and wood in…The lighted windows, you know.”

  “Oh, yes indeed!” Richard assented, smiling and inwardly congratulating himself. Then: “I’ll wait here for the sandwich. Too many fumes in the lab for you to risk going in.”

  He hung about the hall for a moment or two until the sandwich was forthcoming; then, satisfied that he had conveyed the impression of never having left the house during the evening, he returned into the laboratory and locked the house door again securely.

  He ate the sandwich, looking at the storage cupboard broodingly as he did so. Then he began to change his clothes, ridding himself entirely of the Williams outfit, transferring the articles in the pockets — particularly Valerie’s bunch of keys and his own wallet — to his own suit. The entire set of old clothes he stuffed away in a cupboard for the time being and then looked at his watch. It was ten-twenty-five and there was much yet to be done.

  Slipping a pair of rubber gloves in his overcoat pocket, he went outside and closed the driveway door after him, locking it. Without being seen he reached his Jaguar and drove off silently into the night.