Automatically she called Johnny in from the swing in the grounds and took him upstairs for his nap. As she undressed him the feel of his small wriggling body on her knee brought tears to her eyes. He saw that and reached for her face.
“You crying, Mummy?”
“No, darling. It’s all right.”
He was satisfied. She put him in his bed and drew the sheet over him.
“When I grow up I’m going to be a soldier,” he said, already drowsy.
“That’s fine. Be a good soldier, Johnny.”
“Is Daddy a soldier?”
“He was, a long time ago.”
She left him and going into her own room closed and locked the door. A soldier, she thought. Terry had been one too in the last war, only it had done something to his mind. She hadn’t known that until she married him. He had fooled everybody, including herself. But he was not bad until the time he tried to kill them both with his old service automatic. He had even written a double suicide note.
“Here’s something I want you to sign, Sally.”
“What is it, Terry?”
“Never mind about that. Just sign it.”
She had read it, however, and almost fainted. Then she refused, until he held the gun to her head. She signed, because she had to, but she knew he meant it. So she had got the gun from him, and as he came at her to take it she shot him instead. Only Isabel had lived in the apartment across the hall, and the door was not locked. Sally was standing in the living room, still holding the gun, when she walked in.
“What goes on?” she said. Then she saw Terry on the floor. She did not gasp or even change color. She bent over the body and then stood up. “I suppose you had your reasons,” she said coolly. “Only—isn’t this rather extreme?”
Sally heard her own voice. She had not known she had breath to speak.
“He was going to kill us both. He made me sign that note.”
Isabel walked over to the desk by the window and picked up the note. Apparently nobody had heard the shot, for the building was quiet. Sally was still holding the gun, but she did not look at Terry, lying there on the floor. Isabel read the note slowly.
“Crazy,” she said. “Crazy as a June-bug. We’d better get the police.”
“The police? But he was going to shoot me. I had to.”
She remembered sitting down then, but still not looking at Terry. Everywhere else, but not at Terry.
“I imagine you have a pretty good defense,” said Isabel drily. “Anyhow no jury would send you to the chair.”
Sally let the gun slide to the floor. Shocked as she was this was the first time she had realized what she had done. It was not that she had loved Terry. She had known from the first days of her marriage that she never had. And that he was strange at times. But she was still very young, only nineteen, and she had done her best to look after him.
She would try to soothe him.
“Go to sleep, Terry dear. I’m here. I’ll hold you.”
“Keep your hands off me. Let me alone.”
It had been like that, and now she had killed him.
Everything had happened so quickly that she was still dazed. She had been in the kitchenette, getting dinner. She heard Terry come in, and when he did not call to her she knew he was in one of his black moods. Things were pretty bad with them just then, that summer of 1932, but she was trying to manage. She went into the living room to put out the gate-legged table, and he was writing at the desk by a window. She hadn’t seen the gun. He must have had it in front of him.
“I’ll have dinner ready in a minute,” she said. “What are you writing?”
That was when he got up and ordered her to sign.
She hadn’t meant to kill him. Isabel knew that. She had got the gun and because he was coming at her with murder in his face she fired it. She had had to stop him somehow. That was all she had thought. She had had to stop him.
She didn’t know whether Isabel believed her or not that day. She didn’t say anything. She stooped down and picked up the gun, and stood looking at it. Then quite deliberately she wiped it with her handkerchief.
“No man’s worth dying for,” she said. “Or even going to the pen. He killed himself. He’s threatened to, hasn’t he?”
Sally nodded mutely, and Isabel stooped swiftly and pressed Terry’s still warm fingers on the weapon. After that she let it drop on the floor beside him and when she straightened she looked at Sally.
“How loud can you scream?” she inquired.
It had been as simple as that. When people came hurrying to the apartment they found Sally in her bedroom crying hysterically, and Terry apparently a suicide on the floor. Isabel managed everything, even to the scream. Only this was queer. When the police came there was no suicide note, not even the one she had signed. The coroner spoke of it at the inquest.
“It is usual for individuals about to take their lives to leave some written indication of their purpose. However, this is not invariable. People differ, and in this case the deceased was known to be mentally unstable and at times depressed.”
The verdict had been suicide, and Scott Fielding had taken Sally home that day. He had known Terry.
“I want to say something,” he told her in the taxi, “but I find it rather hard. Terry was shell-shocked during the war. I don’t think he ever got over it. What he did was a part of that. Don’t ever blame yourself.”
She had wanted to tell then, only the taxi had stopped and she had had to get out. She had gone up to the apartment, where someone had washed the carpet, and the superintendent’s wife had packed Terry’s clothes in his trunk. But that reference of the coroner’s to a suicide note had frightened her. If two people sign such a statement and only one dies, wasn’t that suspicious? She didn’t know. She felt caught in a maze of lies and deception. And she couldn’t find the note anywhere.
She was crying heartbrokenly when Isabel came in that night. Isabel had a good secretarial job. Perhaps it had made her practical. She eyed her with disapproval.
“Now look,” she said. “What’s done is done. You won’t help it by crying your eyes out. Have you had anything to eat today?”
Sally shook her head.
“I’ll make some coffee, and a poached egg won’t hurt you. Now go in and wash your face in cold water, and stop this nonsense.”
She was sick for a long time after that. During the day the superintendent’s wife looked after her, and Isabel took over at night. She had to get well, of course. There was almost no money. Then one evening Scott Fielding heard she had been ill and came to see her. She was sitting up in a chair by that time, and he looked worried when he saw how thin she was.
“I don’t know,” he said, “or I’d have been here before this. Why didn’t someone let me know?”
After that he came often. He practiced law, it developed, in a town fifty miles from the city, and it was surprising how frequently business brought him to town. When she found herself falling in love with him she determined to tell him the whole story. She said so to Isabel, only Isabel said she was a little idiot.
“He may believe you, but he’ll see blood on your hands just the same,” she said.
That was probably why, the next time he came, Isabel wandered in to give him a highly detailed story of Terry’s death, of how she had heard the shot and Sally screaming, and had run in to find Terry dead on the floor with the gun beside him.
Scott however had resented it.
“How often does she do that sort of thing?” he demanded after she had gone.
“She’s never done it before.”
“Well, it’s pretty rotten,” he said. “I don’t think you ought to be exposed to it.”
Which was probably why, that same night, he had asked her to marry him.
“I know it’s too soon,” he said. “I know how much you cared for Terry. But if it’s any excuse I’m very deeply in love with you, my dear. Perhaps some day you can care for me.”
And she had throw
n caution to the winds. What else could she do, after Isabel?
“I care now,” she said, her voice shaken. “I care terribly, Scott.”
She had had about twelve years. Happy, blissful years. If anything, the relationship between them had grown closer. He was tender and kind, and for all the gray over his ears he had a boyishness she adored. Terry became a dim memory. There were weeks, months—except in church during the confession—when she forgot her tragedy entirely. She had even forgotten the scene with Isabel and Scott until the day a year later when she married him. Before she left for the church Isabel told her why she had done it.
“I guess I fixed him that night,” she said complacently. “You’re safe. You have nothing to worry about from now on.”
Sally was ready to go. She was wearing a soft gray dress and a bunch of orchids, and she had gone to early church to ask forgiveness and that she might make Scott a good wife. But something in Isabel’s face stopped her.
“Look, Isabel,” she said. “What did you do with the note Terry left? I never found it.”
“Burned it,” Isabel said promptly. “That thing meant trouble, and don’t think it didn’t!”
So she married Scott. She felt safe. She had been safe. Only now here was Isabel again. She knew quite well where she stood. To tell Scott now was to tell him she had lived a lie for twelve years. He might believe her. He would probably try to understand. But the old close relationship would be gone. When he was tired, or when he was alone, he would see her shooting Terry and Isabel wiping her fingerprints off the gun. He would be sorry for her. But he would ask why she had not told him. To kill in self-defense was not a crime. No jury she knew now would have convicted her. Yet he had had a right to know, and she had deceived him.
Nevertheless she meant to fight for him, Isabel or no Isabel, so she dressed carefully that night, even using mascara and more than a touch of rouge. Somehow she felt that she must hold him now as she had never tried before. She looked almost like a girl when he came in.
“Well, whose debutante are you?” he inquired gaily.
“Yours, if you want me.”
He put his arms around her.
“I always want you, darling,” he said. “Always and ever.”
But she felt rather like the mermaid in the fairy tale, to whom the witch gave legs so she could leave the sea for her lover; the price being that every step was to be as if she walked on naked swords.
She began to breathe more normally at the end of a week. Isabel was not at church on Sunday, and life began to settle down again. Then on Wednesday, fixing some flowers in the living room, she saw the coupé at the door and Isabel coming up the walk. She wore the red hat, but there was a bit of veiling to shade her eyes, and when she came in Sally saw the reason. Under the veil and make-up Isabel had a badly swollen eye.
She was cold and unsmiling, too. She stalked into the living room and determinedly closed the door to the hall behind her.
“You’ll have to help me, Sally,” she said. “I’ve taken all I’m going to.”
“Help you? I’ll do anything I can, of course, Isabel. What do you want?”
“Do I have to put it into words?” Isabel demanded grimly. “Don’t be dumb, Sally. I’m through, and I mean through. Don’t argue with me. It’s too late for that.”
When Sally said nothing she came and stood over her.
“See here,” she said. “I saved you once. I saved you a lot of trouble. Maybe worse. You can thank me for what you’ve got. Now don’t you think it’s your turn?”
Sally got her breath.
“That was self-defense, Isabel. You know it. Terry meant to kill me.”
“What do you think this is?” Isabel demanded, and touched her face. “I tell you he means to finish me.”
The house was still, but in Sally’s ears there was a roaring like the beating of the sea. She could hardly hear her own voice.
“You can’t do a thing like that,” she said. “It’s wicked. It’s horrible. And you’ll be suspected at once. Even your servants—”
“I haven’t told you what I am going to do.”
“You don’t need to. You’re going to kill your husband.”
Isabel lit a cigarette. She seemed to be thinking. She was quieter now, but with the quietness of determination.
“You can’t stop it, Sally,” she said finally. “Nobody can stop it. And it won’t hurt you. I want only one thing from you.”
“If you mean a gun—”
“Never mind about that,” Isabel said. “All I want from you is an alibi.”
“An alibi?” Sally repeated. “I don’t understand. How can I—?”
“Of course you understand.” Isabel was impatient. “I’ll be with you. Who would doubt your word? The respected Sally Fielding, who goes to church on Sunday and works for Red Cross the rest of the week! That’s all you have to do. Say I was with you when it happens.”
Sally got up. They stood face to face, two antagonists, all pretension thrown aside.
“And suppose I don’t?” Sally said. “What about that, Isabel?”
“I think,” said Isabel, “that I would have to tell Scott Fielding the real story about Terry.”
Sally was fighting now. Her voice was defiant.
“He won’t believe you. It would be only your word against mine.”
“He might believe the note.”
So that was it. Isabel still had the note. Sally stood without moving. The roaring in her ears was worse, and she could hardly hear the children, coming in exuberantly and being taken upstairs by Gracie. Isabel listened to them, then she threw away her cigarette and turned to the door.
“Try not to hate me, Sally,” she said. “If I had anything like that I might be different. And I’m not asking you to pay a high price for them.”
“You’re trying to make me into a criminal. That’s high enough.”
Fortunately Scott did not come home to dinner that night. He had a client from out in the country, and she was in bed when he came upstairs. She pretended to be asleep, and he moved about quietly, not to waken her. He did not even turn on his reading lamp, and this care of her sent burning tears under her eyelids. What price was too high to keep him? And she knew Isabel. She meant to kill Jim Eaton. It would happen, sooner or later, no matter what she did.
She slept very little that night. She could not go to the police. After all there was as yet no crime. She debated telling Scott; after all, risking their life together to save another life which hardly seemed worth saving. Then she wondered if she could warn Jim Eaton himself. She had seen him once or twice, a stocky man with the congested eyes of the steady drinker. But how? She had no idea what Isabel meant to do. He would only laugh at her.
Nevertheless she did try, the next morning. She saw Isabel from a distance in town, while she was doing her own marketing, and she slipped into a drugstore and called the Eaton house from a booth.
She was so shaky that she dropped her money and had to fumble for it on the dirty floor. She got the house however, and asked for Jim Eaton.
“Mr. Eaton is asleep,” said a man’s voice. The butler’s, she thought. “Can I take a message?”
“No. This is very important. Please tell him.”
“Who is calling?”
“It doesn’t matter. Only I must speak to him. I must.”
“Just a moment.”
He left the receiver off, and she could hear him moving away. It was hot in the booth and she felt faint. But the voice which finally came back was the butler’s again.
“I’m sorry, madam,” he said. “Mr. Eaton can’t be disturbed.”
She was shocked when she opened the door to find Isabel standing there.
“Don’t tell me,” she said, “that you were trying to warn my beloved husband! I rather thought you might. I saw you coming in.”
“You needn’t worry. I didn’t get him,” Sally said dully.
Isabel laughed.
“I could have saved y
ou your nickel. He’s dead to the world. Only I wouldn’t try it again, Sally. He knows anyhow, only he thinks he’ll get me first.”
That was on Wednesday. Isabel called her on Friday morning.
“How are you off for gas?” she asked. “I can give you a couple of gallons if you need it. I thought we might take a drive this afternoon.”
“A drive?”
Isabel sounded irritated.
“What’s wrong with that?” she said sharply. “I haven’t seen this part of the country at all. I don’t know the roads. Of course if you don’t want to be seen with me—”
A drive, Sally thought. It sounded innocent enough. Perhaps Isabel merely wanted to try to persuade her again.
“It’s not that,” she said. “I’d like to show you the country. It’s lovely just now. Where will I pick you up?”
“I’ll wait for you at our gate at two o’clock. Unless you need the gas. We have some. Black market stuff probably. Jim buys it. I don’t.”
“I don’t need any, thanks.”
At least, she thought despairingly, it was a reprieve. She could make another protest, and maybe Isabel would let Scott get her a divorce. After all Jim Eaton was a notorious drunkard. Scott could get her a decent alimony, and she could go away somewhere. She was almost gay as she dressed after lunch. She put on a white dress and the blue hat that Scott said brought out the color in her eyes, and she saw Isabel eying her when she stopped the car.
“Fine,” she said. “Leading citizen’s wife takes old friend for drive and tea. Where can we have tea, Sally?”
At Isabel’s request they drove through the towns, and at the grocer’s she got out and bought some cheese. Only when she was back in the car were Sally’s suspicions roused. Isabel dropped the package and lit a cigarette.
“That man will remember me,” she said casually. “He saw you too.”
“Why does that matter?”
“Think about it,” Isabel said drily. “I am out with you. We’re taking a drive and having tea somewhere. I’ve bought cheese for the cold supper the servants leave. Quite domestic, you see. They all go out together on Wednesdays,” she added. “It saves gas and bother.”
Alibi for Isabel: And Other Stories Page 11
