A Guilty Thing Surprised

by Ruth Rendell

  Georgina was staying at the same hotel. I am no longer an attractive man, Mr Wexford, and I look much older than I am. I have no conversation, for I have talked my whole soul out to my sister. Long long ago I lost the technique of talking beguilingly to young women. I am better suited to a Trappist’s cell than to caper nimbly in a lady’s chamber. But Georgina fell in love with me, poor thing. It was quite a joke in that horrible hotel, Georgina’s love.

  I had had everything and, rich in gifts, had squandered them all. She had never had anything. The youngest child of a large poor family, she told me that she had never possessed anything she could feel to be exclusively her own. No man had ever wanted her or even taken her out more than a couple of times. She was plain and shy and dull.

  A poor ill-favoured thing, but mine own ...

  We were married. I brought Georgina to the Manor and to the disappointment in Quentin’s eyes. Elizabeth suffered no disappointment. She was triumphant in her white velvet and her fake jewels. I looked at her, I looked at poor Georgina and I asked myself, as once again I fell in love with my sister, what have I done?

  The third beginning and the last ....

  I wanted to settle down. I wanted those children. If not six, I wanted some. But I did not listen to the stern daughter of God’s voice, nor even to the shriller querulous voice of my wife, clamouring for me to be all in all to her, a compensation for long loneliness, a real husband who would cherish her. I listened to my sister.

  So we come to the day of Elizabeth’s death.

  No, of course you did not believe me when I said I went down to the school library in the evenings to do research for my work. Only someone as innocent and as uninterested in literature as Georgina would believe that.

  My own works on Wordsworth are the only ones in the school library, apart from the Selincourt and Darbyshire collection edition and those volumes I have in my own house. I went to meet Elizabeth in the forest.

  We had spent the afternoon of that day together, but that was not enough for us. The school holidays would soon be over and then ...? Weekly bridge parties? Literary discussions with Quentin, and Elizabeth a silent third? We were sick for each other. We arranged to meet in the forest at eleven.

  I have said that Georgina accepted my excuses, but if she had, Elizabeth would be alive today. Georgina had begun to doubt me, and to a woman as possessive as she, doubt calls for action.

  We went to the Manor and played bridge. Just before we left Elizabeth gave Georgina a silk scarf. She used to

  give Georgina a lot of her cast-off clothing. I suppose it

  amused her to see my wife in handed-on finery, knowing that Georgina would look less well in it than she and that I would notice and make the obvious unjust comparison.

  I drove Georgina home and went out again to meet Elizabeth. She came to the clearing in the wood just before eleven. We sat on a log, we smoked, we talked. Elizabeth had brought with her that torch from the garden room, for the moon had gone in and it was dark.

  At about twenty past she said that we should go. Georgina’s faint display of temper after our bridge game had made her nervous and she said to spend too long in the forest would be to tempt Providence.

  It was my usual practice, after these meetings of ours, to wait by my car and watch her cross the road and gain the safety of the Manor grounds, so we walked to the car together with our arms round each other. As we went we saw the headlights of another car moving on the road, as if searching the fringe of the forest with its beams. It passed on and we forgot it.

  When we came to my car Elizabeth said that she had forgotten her torch and must go back for it, in case someone should find it and know she had been there. I wanted to go with her, but she said she would be safe alone. What, after all, could happen to her? What indeed?

  I took her in my arms and kissed her, just as I had kissed her on the day Twohey was outside the window. Then I drove home.

  Georgina was not there when I got back; nor was her car. She came in at midnight, shivering in a thin shirt-for she had burnt her sweater on Palmer’s bonfire-and in her hand she held a bloodstained torch wrapped up in newspaper.

  She had followed me, Mr Wexford, and seen me kiss Elizabeth, so she waited by the log for Elizabeth to come back for the torch. What happened then I only know from what Georgina told me. She was so shocked by what she had seen, so horrified, that the balance of her mind, as coroners put it, was disturbed. She tried to express this to Elizabeth, but she was incoherent, she was hysterical, and Elizabeth laughed at her. What did she, Georgina, think she could do about it? she asked her. We would not, in the nature of things, be lovers for ever. Georgina must wait and one day I would return to her. Surely she would not risk the scandal that would arise if she made scenes or told anyone?

  Elizabeth bent over to find the torch which she thought had fallen behind the log. It had not. Georgina was holding it and, while Elizabeth had her back to her, she raised it and struck my sister. Again and again until Elizabeth was dead.

  Georgina was wearing the scarf herself. She pulled it off and wiped her own hands with it. Then she crossed the road, stuffed the scarf into a hollow trec and burnt her sweater on Palmer’s bonfire.

  Is that not nearly all? When Georgina came home and told me what she had done, I confessed the whole story to her. I told her about the blackmail and about the jewels.

  I know what you are asking me. Why didn’t I, as my sister’s lover and dearest friend, immediately give my wife up to you? And you have provided your own answer, that I was afraid of the relationship becoming known. But it was not entirely that. I was almost stunned with horror, with grief, and yet even then I wanted to salvage my life. With Elizabeth gone, I might yet settle down, be peaceful, be happy, tell no more lies.

  Man is a strange creature, Mr Wexford. He has lifted himself so far above his fellow animals that Darwin’s Theory seems fantastic to him, a monstrous libel. And yet he still shares with them his strongest instinct, selfpreservation. The whole world may lie in ruins about him.

  but still he looks for a corner to run into and clings to his hope that it can never, no matter what bombardment he has suffered, be too late.

  At that moment I loathed Georgina. I could have beaten her to death. But I told myself that what had happened was my fault. I had done it. I did it when I went to that party so many years ago. So, instead of doing violence to her, I took her in my arms and smelt Elizabeth’s blood in her hair and under her fingernails.

  I washed the torch myself and threw away the wet batteries. I ran a bath for Georgina and told her to wash her hair. The skirt she had been wearing and her shirt I burned on the kitchen boiler.

  I could not see why you should suspect Georgina, for she had no apparent motive, and that is why I grew hysterical when you brought us the news of the will. To arrest my wife and convict her for the wrong motive! That would have been the ultimate irony.

  She was very nervous, very bad at countering your attacks. When we were alone she told me she would like to confess, for you or any right-thinking person would understand. I prevented her. I thought we still had a chance. Then you quoted Lara to me and I began to make notes in preparation for this statement.

  It is all over now.

  You will, I am sure, be gentle with Georgina, and I know that during her trial every newspaper reader in this country will be for her heart and soul, as well as those more significant arbiters, the judge and jury. She will go to prison for two or three years and then one day she will marry again, have the children she needs and the normal quiet life she wants.

  June re-married long ago. Soon Quentin will have his little Dutch girl as chatelaine of Myfleet and, if she is unfaithful to him, it will be a natural run-of-the-mill infidelity that my kind brother will bear with a perhaps not too painful fortitude. As for Elizabeth, she died at the height of her love and her triumph and just in time to avoid the bitterness of growing old.

  Indeed, one might say with Wilde that the good ended
happily and the bad unhappily, for that is the meaning of fiction. Perhaps it should also be the meaning of fact. In other words, I have my deserts. I have no idea what I shall do, but I think it unlikely that after the trial any authority will wish to employ me on its teaching staff.

  I care very little about that. I think I can bear scandal without too much distress, and if people shun me I can do without people. The one person I cannot do without I shall never see again, and this thing which is unbearable I must bear. I shall never again kiss her in the dark forest or among the shadows of the Old House or see her dressed in white velvet or hear her name spoken with admiration. She is dead and her death is for me the ultimate irreparable mutilation.

  Your inspector asked me what I wanted and nothing has happened to make me change my answer. I want to die.