Hell! said the Duchess

by Michael Arlen

  Icelin’s lean clever face was very pale.

  “Yes, but not as a policeman. I don’t think I’m a coward, Wingless. But I am frightened of this man.”

  Wingless said: “So am I. I’m so darned scared that the muscles of my legs are getting strained from trying to keep my knees steady. And my family is liable to varicose veins, too.”

  Crust appeared through a gap in the hedge, followed by the Sergeant. Wingless gave him a vague grin and started pacing up and down the lane with his hands deep in his pockets. Icelin told Crust what had happened.

  “Sir,” Crust said, “we have made one hell of a mistake. We have warned our man before having anything against him. What we should have done, sir, and what we must do now, is to get to London as quickly as may be and take a good long look at the girl Monica Snee. Colonel Wingless, sir,” said Crust, “did you hear what I said?”

  “I heard you, Crust. Take my car. Mr. Icelin can drive it, or thinks he can. If he can’t, sell it and hire a taxi.”

  “You are not coming with us, sir?”

  “Did I never tell you, Crust, that I am a horticulturist?”

  “Sir,” said Crust, “it had slipped my mind. So it is your intention to stay here and while away a few hours by looking at the pretty flowers in the neighbourhood?”

  “You have exactly guessed my mind, Crust.”

  Icelin, with a sidelong look at the Super­intendent, who nodded, said: “It’s close on half-past three now. We’ll come back for you about six.”

  Wingless said: “Not much later, please. It’s apt to get damp in the evenings.”

  “Sir,” said Crust, “while I am not a horti­culturist myself I have ascertained that there is what you might call a certain technique about it. Am I wrong, sir, in thinking that a tall man is apt to stoop to look at a flower?”

  “You are right, Crust.”

  “Then, sir, there is a chance that he might be caught in a position which is commonly known as ‘bending’.”

  “I gather,” said Wingless, pocketing the revolver which Crust gave him, “that this is not merely a Scotland Yard exhibit but is loaded with the usual conveniences?”

  “You bet it is,” said Crust. “Therefore, sir, you must exercise great care in not aiming it in any given direction.”

  “But suppose it goes off by accident?”

  “And aren’t I supposing just that?” said Superintendent Crust.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  We have now to relate the true history of the inexplicable events that took place in the course of that summer afternoon within the white house not far from Leatherhead.

  Icelin and Superintendent Crust had never, of course, any intention of permitting Colonel Wingless to carry on the burden of the investigation alone. Therefore Icelin wrote a note to the Chief Constable of the county, who was fortunately a friend and admirer of his, and gave it to the Sergeant to take back to Leatherhead. Then, when no more than ten minutes had elapsed since Wingless had left them, the two men slipped through the gap in the hedge and made for their objective across the fields.

  There was very little cover for them as they approached the white house from the back, but it seemed unlikely that the man Axaloe would spot them, as he must be interviewing Wingless at the front. And that Wingless had this time effected an en­trance seemed certain, since there was no sign of him. The garden, or rather field, at the back of Axaloe’s house was very easily accessible once they had crossed a railway embankment, but before approaching the back entrance the two men stood thought­fully looking at the quiet scene before them.

  “It’s uncommonly quiet,” said Icelin.

  “Sir, I’ll tell you why. There’s no dog.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense. What sort of a man would it be, Crust, who can live alone in the country without a dog?”

  “So help me God,” said Crust, “I’ll never sleep easy again until we find out.”

  They made for the back of the house, but when they gently tried to open a door that was there and a window giving into a tidy kitchen they found the one locked and the other bolted. Hugging the wall, one behind the other, they then made for the front, where the pretty wild garden was a bright contrast to the desolate scene they had left. Crouching, so that they should not be seen from the windows, they cautiously went for­ward towards the front door in the hope that Axaloe had left it open or unlatched. But they did not reach the door. They were held, they were frozen, by Wingless’s voice, which came to them very clearly from the open window immediately above their stooping heads.

  “No,” Wingless said, “I won’t have any tea. But do you think there’s such a thing as a whisky-and-soda in this house, Mary?”

  Then the two crouching men stared at one another.

  “Well,” Crust whispered, “this surely beats cock-fighting.”

  “But how,” said Icelin, gulping down the nausea which kept rising within him, “but how could she have got here without our seeing her? Could she have been here with Axaloe since before we came?”

  “Sir, the question is how could the Duchess have got away from the nursing-home, this morning it must have been, with­out Colonel Wingless or the police having been notified at once?”

  Since the first shock of Wingless’s voice from the window above their heads they had heard no other words but only the rattle of a cup, maybe, and the creak of a chair. Crust and Icelin, still crouching, backed out of the line of vision before straightening out their cramped knees. And then they saw Wingless standing at the open window, his great body filling it. And he was looking straight at them, as though he had known of their presence all the time.

  He said: “Mary is here, Icelin.”

  Now Icelin was very white, but Wing­less’s ruddy face was as blanched as though the devil had kissed him on the mouth.

  “Sir,” said Crust, “then we must do our duty.”

  Wingless said: “Go ahead.”

  Crust said: “I have a warrant here in my pocket, made out three weeks ago but not used before owing to the peculiar circum­stances you know of. But now, sir, we can no longer avoid the necessity of immediately arresting Mary Wingless St. Cloud Bull, Duchess of Dove, for murder.”

  Icelin and Crust had now approached the open window. Their heads came to about Wingless’s middle within the room, which was furnished comfortably as a parlour and library. On an easy chair well within the room, her calm and lovely profile turned to them in the act of sipping from a cup of tea, sat the gracious young woman whom they knew to be the Duchess of Dove. Her clus­tered curly hair was free from any covering, and her arms were bare, for she was loosely dressed in white as a woman might be in her own house who is receiving only intimate friends. Her expression was so serene and unconcerned that Icelin had literally to pinch himself to realise that here was a woman with a rope around her slender neck. But Crust, looking sombrely at her, could think only of what a matchless actress this murderess must be, for with her diffidence and her blushing and her sensitive modesty she had quite taken him in when he had called on her that morning in Grosvenor Square.

  Icelin said: “Where is Axaloe?”

  Crust said: “Yes. We can hold him now as an accessory before or after.”

  Wingless said: “He must be upstairs. There’s a small laboratory and his bedroom up there. I haven’t seen him. It was Mary who opened the door to me.” He made a queer stifled sound which may have been a laugh, and said hoarsely: “Imagine my em­barrassment.”

  Maybe it was a sudden draught in the room that brought to the two men’s nostrils a caress of Jane the Ripper’s familiar per­fume. And at the same time they heard the Duchess’s cool clear voice, and her wide grey eyes for a moment rested on the men outside with a very level graciousness.

  “Victor,” she said, “won’t your friends come in for a moment from the hot sun out­side?”

  In the dumbfounded silence that followed Wingless shifted his big limbs a little to one side so that the two men could not see within the ro
om. His ruddy face was blotched with grey and the bruise on his jaw where Axaloe had hit him showed red and angry. Stooping forward he addressed his two friends in a low voice, but his pale eyes looked over their heads as though his mind was not on what he said.

  “I can’t presume to give a man in your position any advice, Icelin. But I can pre­sume to suggest that you might never have got on to this man Axaloe but for the hint I gave you. At the moment I don’t know whether I am standing on my head or my heels. But I do know, Crust, that we should make no move here until we have found out definitely if the Duchess of Dove is at this moment still at Dr. Lapwing’s nursing-home or not. I can’t tell you what I mean, since she is here. All I can tell you is to find out. There is no telephone here. You can trust me to take care of myself, and if Axaloe turns up rough I shall have the gardening implement you gave me. I suggest that you find a telephone and ring up the nursing-home in London. I shall stay here.”

  Now Crust did not know what to think, but his chief seemed to agree with the sug­gested plan. Icelin said later that he would have agreed with anything which would take him away from that damned house if only for a few minutes. The two men were walking down the garden path to the gate when Crust, without a word to Icelin, sud­denly turned and strode back to the window where Wingless still stood.

  “Sir,” said Crust, in the loud voice of a man who wishes to be overheard, “I forgot to ask you something. Now do you identify, and will you so swear before God, the woman in the room behind you as the Duchess of Dove?”

  “Before God,” said Wingless, looking very intently down at Crust as though each word he spoke must be separately noted, “I do so identify this woman as the Duchess of Dove and from my experience and know­ledge of her I do swear that in figure and person and voice and in all outward forms that are visible and audible this woman is the Duchess of Dove.”

  Crust, rejoining his chief by the gate, shook his head glumly.

  “Sir,” said he, “this is a rum business, and no mistake. Did you notice he distinctly said ‘in all outward forms that are visible and audible’?”

  “As God’s above,” said Icelin, “I wouldn’t stay alone in a room with that inhuman woman for all the money in the world.”

  “Nor me,” said Crust. “I hold Colonel Wingless, sir, to be the most courageous man I ever met or heard of.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  But Colonel Wingless would not have agreed with his old friend Crust. When Mary Dove had first opened the door to him and greeted him in her dear familiar voice, he had been too stupefied by distress to think. Fear was to come later. Was the pursuit of the murderess known as Jane the Ripper at an end? Did she stand there now gazing at him with the gentle grey eyes of dear Mary?

  “I had no idea,” he said stupidly, “you were here, Mary.”

  “Dear Victor, I came this morning latish. I was so sorry to overhear your disagree­ment with Xanthis when you first called. He is such a nice man really that I am sure you will presently like him as much as I have grown to during the last few months.”

  “I thought I knew all your secrets, Mary. Why did you never tell me of your friend­ship with this man?”

  They were now in the parlour, where the light was very restful after the glare outside. They stood near a round table piled high with heavy books from which the musty odour of ancient bindings rose to his nostrils as a welcome friend in an atmos­phere which, he began to feel now, was out­side normal experience.

  And he was afraid. Standing a yard or so away from her familiar person, he stared intently into her face. Then, with an offen­sive particularity he would never have per­mitted himself with Mary in any other situation, he traced with his eyes the lines of her round breasts and of her slender feminine body beneath the white gown that she was wearing. When his eyes came back to her eyes he saw that she was smiling at him with a half-smile so mocking that his courage returned to him in a rush of anger at the change that had taken place in Mary Dove.

  “Why,” she said, “what a look from an old friend! Does my figure please you, Victor?”

  He stretched out his right hand and caught a handful of her curly hair by the roots and held it tight enough to hurt. He wanted to know if this woman was not a figure made in Mary’s image, if her face was not a lovely mask, if her hair was not a wig. But what happened to him was so unex­pected that he could not at first realise what was happening. Her body yielded to him with a soft submissiveness that seemed to burn her tight round breasts into his chest, her parted lips were raised to his with an invitation which her sharp white teeth seemed to bite lecherously into his male con­sciousness. It was Mary’s hair, Mary’s fragrance, Mary’s body. And it was very greedy, like a whore. She pressed her limbs to his, and her parted legs embraced his thigh with so urgent a fever of burning soft­ness that her face suddenly flushed and her eyes half closed in a frenzy of anticipated pleasure. No wonder, he thought grimly, this woman had been described by coffee-stall keepers and the like as a “hot number.” She was hotter than hell.

  “I’ve always,” she whispered, “wanted you, Victor.”

  He let her go, so that she almost fell, and he stood for an instant with closed eyes try­ing to find a power of reasoning within him­self. For her lustfulness had sent an arrow into him so barbed with poison that he won­dered if he was not as wanton as she. Mary was like a sister to him, he had always re­garded her as his sister. And yet her desire could awaken his desire. When he opened his eyes she stood before him with a mantling flush which was like a noisome caricature of Mary’s modesty.

  “That was naughty of me, wasn’t it, Victor? But the idea of having you has always excited me so much that just touch­ing you set me——”

  “How,” he asked harshly, “did you man­age to leave the nursing-home?”

  “Darling, don’t let us talk about dull things now. I was just having tea when you came. Won’t you have a cup?”

  She sat down by a small lacquered table. He felt his strength quite drained from him by the realisation that Mary, the gentlest and the most chaste of all the women he had ever met, had always in reality been hungry and thirsty and greedy for men. He threw himself into an armchair away from her near the window, and it was then that he spoke the words overheard by Crust and Icelin outside.

  After the conversation already reported had taken place between the three men and Wingless turned back into the room, he saw a smile playing on her delicate profile.

  “You look quite sane, Mary, but of course you must be a madwoman. What can you find to smile about when you know that presently you and Axaloe, who I suppose is your lover, are to be arrested for a series of the most horrible crimes ever committed by a woman?”

  Smiling Mary’s gentle smile, she said: “Darling, there’s your whisky-and-soda, a nice stiff one. You will feel better after it. Now don’t be afraid it’s poisoned, because I’ve got too much use for your vitality to risk anything like that.”

  He drank the stimulant avidly, put the glass down on the table, and was in the act of sitting down again when, conscious of the intensity of her gaze on him, he looked across at her.

  “Victor,” she said, in a voice at once so clear and so alien to his experience that for an instant he wondered if he were on another planet, “Victor, go and lie down on that sofa.”

  He could see nothing at all but her eyes, nothing in the whole world but two eyes. And then he could see two black bright points. He wanted to shut his eyes tight against them, but he was without any will at all. And he felt the coils of a snake around him. He saw the two black bright points of a snake’s eyes reared above his head. He felt his hands caressing the rough sensuous coils. Then he found himself lying on his back on the sofa with her body pressed down on him and her pointed tongue dart­ing in and out of his mouth. The surface of her tongue was very rough, rougher than a woman’s. He would have cried out, but he could not. How long he lay there powerless he could not tell, nor if he returned her raging kisses or answered to the co
nvulsions of her frenzied limbs which slit her eyes so that he could see no more than their up­turned whites. Then something happened which helped him to regain himself. The woman’s crazy movements had naturally disarranged both his and her garments, and suddenly, where her gown had slipped from her shoulder, his eye caught something that was salmon-pink in colour. This slight distraction helped to counter her hypnotic power, and with a movement more brutal than he had ever thought it possible for him to make he threw her from him to the floor and got up. She lay where she had fallen digging her teeth into the backs of her own hands in a frenzy beyond all control and screaming: “How dare you? How dare you—just when I was going to——”

  He took her from the floor by the slender nape of her neck. In the act of bending down he seemed to descend the steps of hell. With his open right hand he hit her as hard as he could on the side of her face. Then he let her fall to the floor again. She clung to his legs, arching her body upwards, and he kicked her away. She began whispering obscenities which were the more horrible because they were meant as endearments, and he hit her across the mouth with the back of his hand. She smiled at him with adoring eyes and pointed to a whip which stood in a corner.

  He dared not leave her alone for fear she might escape, or he would have searched the house for Xanthis Axaloe. But he knew he would not find him. What did he know? Only that in this trim little house the laws that govern mankind had been degraded into another service than God’s.

  Stooping again, he turned her body and tore open her white gown and saw that beneath it her only covering was the salmon-pink bathing-costume which had so surprised him and Icelin on the masculine figure of Xanthis Axaloe. She twisted snakily in his grasp and buried her teeth in the back of his neck so that he felt the blood gush out. He rammed backwards with his elbow and she sighed as though with pleasure. At last, gasping with pain and disgust, he freed him­self. She stood up, swaying, smiling, and her pointed rough tongue languished with delight between her red-flecked lips.