31st Of February

by Julian Symons

  The gang chief stops picking his teeth, walks over to Lucy, looks at the nails on her hand, sighs and motions to Pug-nose Two. Lucy rolls about like a sick cow, Benny arrives at the back door. The police draw up in the front. Pug-nose Two advances on Lucy, drooling a little.

  (A heel dug at the side of Anderson’s leg, stripping away – it seemed – the flesh.)

  Benny breaks down the back door, rushes up the stairs and into the room. He kicks Pug-nose One in the stomach and jumps on his hand as it reaches for a gun, catches Pug-nose Two round the neck and throws him toward the gang chief, who has drawn his own gun. The gang chief’s shots go through Pug-nose Two, who is still holding his instruments of torture. Enraged, Pug-nose Two lurches forward against the gang chief pressing him against the wall, pushing the hot irons into his eyes. The gang chief screams.

  (Hand and leg were withdrawn. Anderson felt his wrist tenderly.)

  And then the formalities: the police, congratulations, bag handed over, Pug-nose One confessing, Pug-nose Two dead, the gang chief blinded. Another close-up of the dark head and the fair. Benny pushes his gun to the side of his cheek and winks. Lucy, her eyes cast down in a maidenly manner, looks up suddenly and winks, too. Curtain.

  The lights went up. Anderson turned to his left. There he saw, with a shock of surprise almost equal to that given him by the sight of a bowler hat and an overcoat in the Stag, a small suburban woman in her late forties. She wore horn-rimmed glasses and had on no lipstick and very little powder. Her dark brown coat was dowdy. As Anderson stared at her unbelievingly she turned to him full face for a moment and bestowed upon him a mild, dull gaze. This failure of correspondence between the visible and the imagined struck Anderson most unpleasantly. He got up hurriedly and went out.

  As he was crossing the rubber floor of the foyer he heard his name called: “Andy.” An obscure connection with the incident in the cinema made him walk on faster. “Andy, Andy.” He recognized the voice, and turned.

  Elaine Fletchley advanced towards him, swinging a little umbrella in one hand, the other resting lightly on the arm of a young and fierce looking Guards officer. “At last, Andy. Wherever did you get to at lunch?”

  “I had an international lunch in several Chinese restaurants. They told me to look for you there in El Vino’s.”

  “Not Chinese, darling – Turkish. Bonzo was with me, and we waited and waited. He didn’t like it.” She patted the stiff Guard’s arm. “This is Bonzo. He’s a good dog.” Bonzo growled unintelligibly. “Andy, I’ve got to talk to you. Bonzo darling, you must go.” The guardsman growled again. “Now, don’t be silly. Andy and I have got some business to do, that’s all. Oh, I haven’t introduced you. Bonzo, meet Andy. Andy, meet Bonzo. Now you’re friends.”

  Anderson’s hand felt as though it had passed under a steam roller. Elaine Fletchley pinched her lip. “Bonzo, go home and collect the baggage. I’ll meet you at the station in half an hour. If you’ve been a good dog I’ll give you a biscuit.” The guardsman growled again, but the growl was hesitant. Under the great peaked cap his face was round, pink and immature. She swung the umbrella lightly against his buttocks. “Go on, go on, don’t be foolish, Bonzo.” The guardsman growled again. “I shall be all right. I’ve known Andy for years.” The guardsman raised a hand to the peaked cap in a half-salute, about-turned and strode away, moving with the mechanical precision of a toy. Elaine watched admiringly until he had turned the corner. “What do you think?” she said. “Not very intelligent, but he has such beautiful shoulders.”

  “We were going to talk.”

  “My God yes, we must talk. I’ve wanted to find you all week, Andy. Where have you been hiding yourself? And where shall we go? Let’s go to the Corner House; it’s handy and I’ve got to be quick. Did you like the film?”

  “Not much.”

  “It gets you where you live, I think. At least, it got Bonzo. He was mad about it. We’re going to get married.”

  “Married!” Anderson said incredulously.

  “I’m not married to Fletch, you know. We never got that far. That’s why he’s so madly jealous, jealous of you even. That’s half of the trouble, I think.”

  “Jealous of me. But he hadn’t any cause.”

  “Since when do you need a cause to be jealous?”

  “What do you mean half of the trouble?”

  “I’ll tell you when we sit down.” Elaine trotted along with neat, accurate steps. She was a small woman of thirty-five who looked as if she were made of brass. Bright yellow hair was curled in great coils about her ears, her coat was richly yellow, and brass buckles gleamed on her shoes. These were hard, bright and shining. They attained a gloss that might be mistaken for wit, as her face achieved through cosmetics a freshness that might be taken for youth.

  They sat with coffees at a check-clothed table. She stirred with a spoon and said: “I hate that policeman. He frightens me.” Quite irrelevantly she added: “Bonzo comes of good family you know. He’s the Honourable Roderick Manly. And he suspects because of Fletch. He’s a swine, that man. He knows about Bonzo and he couldn’t get back at him, so he got back at you. It’s not my fault, Andy, honest to God I had nothing to do with it.”

  “To do with what?”

  Elaine rarely listened to what other people were saying. “So now that policeman suspects.”

  “Suspects what?” Anderson asked with extraordinary patience. “What does he suspect, Elaine?”

  “He suspects you.” Anderson moved. “Don’t tell me, Andy, I don’t want to know anything about it. I don’t want to be mixed up. I’ve done the best I can,” she added absently: “He came to see me.”

  “Who?”

  “The policeman, of course. He came to the office and told me about it.”

  “He came to the office,” Anderson repeated dully. “And told you. Told you what?”

  “About the letters, the anonymous letters. Fletch sent them to the police.”

  “Fletch sent them.” He gasped. Why had he not realized it before? Why had he not understood Fletchley’s own hints and the Inspector’s questions about an enemy? “But why?”

  “Don’t ask me why. He’s not sane, that man. I tell you, he’s crazy with jealousy. He admitted sending them as soon as they asked him. But that’s not all. He told them about the switch.”

  “What about the switch?”

  Elaine Fletchley was busy stirring her coffee. This, the revelation, Anderson thought; when she has told me what she knows all my questions will be answered. “You told them,” she said slowly, “about the switch being fused. So that Val fell downstairs.”

  “Yes.”

  “That was at a quarter to eight.”

  “Yes.”

  “Fletch told them he went into the cellar at half past seven and the light was working all right then. Fletch said he hadn’t offered the evidence at the inquest because he hadn’t realized it was important. So then they came and asked me.”

  “Asked you?” Anderson found himself simply unable to grasp the meaning of all this. “Asked you what?”

  “If we were having an affair. I told them no, we’d never had an affair.” Flatly she said: “I don’t think they believed me.”

  Suddenly she said: “What’s the matter with your face? It looks funny.”

  His face was certainly taut with strain and tension. But his questions were not yet answered. “Elaine, you were Val’s best friend, weren’t you?”

  “Well?”

  “You’ll know then – you must know.”

  She looked at her gold wrist watch. “I must be going.”

  “No, no, you can’t go yet. There’s something I must know.” But it was difficult to ask the question, the final and decisive question. He moved uneasily on his seat. “Then you should have told me.”

  The voice was now altogether brass. “Told you what?”

  “Elaine, look here; you were her best friend, she trusted you.” Somewhere in Anderson’s mind was a terror of what he was going to h
ear. Among the checked tablecloths, the suburban families and the respectable clerks, some final sentence was to be pronounced. “You can tell me the name,” he said with difficulty.

  “What name?”

  “The name of her lover.”

  At the next table the waitress dropped knives and forks with a clatter. Elaine leaned a little toward him. “What did you say?”

  Anderson put his hand to his throat He felt as if he were choking. “Her lover.”

  The smoothness of her ageing forehead stayed uncreased, but her bright eyes stared at him with an unfathomable gaze. “Her lover?”

  The waitress was apologizing to the young couple at the next table. “I’m ever so sorry,” she said. “It’s my nerves. It’s a dream I had last night. I’ve got a little boy and I dreamed I saw him in a coffin. Been upset ever since, I have.” The young couple looked at her doubtfully.

  “You know who it was,” Anderson said. The checked tablecloth, Elaine’s wasp-yellow coat, and her intense stare – he sought for some kind of meaning in these things, and did not find it.

  “But –” she said, and then looked again at her wrist watch. “I’ve got to go. I simply must fly.”

  “No.” He pushed away the coffee cup, leaned over and caught hold of her wrist. “Not until you’ve told me.”

  “For heaven’s sake.” She wrenched her wrist away. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, Andy.” The young couple picked at their food watching.

  “What do you mean, the wrong tree? You know the name, I can see you know it. Tell me.”

  “Andy, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She was not convincing; she was trying to shield somebody; she did not know of the irrefutable evidence in his pocket. He tried to tell her of it, to speak calmly, logically, but the phrases tumbled out in the wrong order or in no order at all. He heard his own voice, pitched too high. Somebody in his office, it was saying, the letter on his desk, in Val’s writing, how could she explain the letter? But of course she couldn’t explain – nonsense to pretend, to shield people – who was it? The young couple put down the forks with which they had been picking at their food and looked at it distrustfully.

  Elaine had been opening and shutting the clasp of her black bag. Now she stood up, small neat and determined. “I’ve got to go.”

  But the letter, the letter, Anderson heard the voice say whiningly – how can you explain? Look, here it is, here, here.

  “Now, Andy,” Elaine said loudly and clearly and slowly, “You’re not well, Andy. Listen to me. You should go home and straight to bed and have somebody see to your face.”

  The fingers dragged out the blue paper, and held it up. She glanced and snorted angrily. “That’s a bill. Now look, Andy, go home and see a doctor.”

  He stared at the piece of paper unbelievingly. It was a tailor’s bill. Then the letter – the fingers fumbled again, but she was still talking. “I knew Val better than anyone, and I tell you you’re all wrong.” Anderson stretched out his hands imploringly. The young couple at the next table looked at one another, pushed away their food and got up.

  Now the voice was saying it could find the letter, and was crying out over and over again Tell me the name, please tell me the name. And the blow fell, the blow he had expected and feared. She turned on him, the bag snapped tightly, finally, as tight and final as the look on her face “You’re crazy, Andy. I didn’t want to say it, but you’ve made me.” She paused – the young couple and the waitress waited eagerly, expectantly – and spoke the irrevocable words: “Val was sold on you from the day she met you. She never had a lover. You’ve invented him.” She walked with hard, firm steps on her high heels, past the cash desk and out of the restaurant.

  9

  He stepped out of the small, safe box of the taxi, into a world full of enemies. It would be unwise, no doubt, to let the driver know where he lived. He got out at the Demon, tipping the man half a crown, watching carefully to see if he betrayed any extravagant reaction. But the driver merely tested the coin with his teeth, said “Thanks, guv,” and put in his clutch. Anderson leaned forward confidentially and made a gesture with his thumb at the Demon behind him. “I don’t live here.”

  “You don’t, eh?” The driver laughed, showing projecting teeth. “I wish I did. ’Night, guv.” And he was away, leaving Anderson standing shivering in his raincoat, on the pavement. The rain, thin and slanting, damped his face and his uncovered head. His uncovered head; he remembered now that he had taken off his Homburg – his second-best Homburg – in the taxi cab and put it by his side. Would the man bring it back? How extraordinary it was that he should forget his hat after, last night, forgetting his hat and taking the wrong coat. The wrong coat, the lost hats – they had a meaning, he knew, but what was it? He recognized a meaning, also, in the words Elaine Fletchley had spoken; although its precise significance still eluded him, although for that matter he could not remember exactly what she had said, he knew that he had ground for being deeply upset. But that was all too tangled, too difficult: and besides, it distracted his attention from the immediate problem. Was his home being watched? He walked to the entrance of the Demon, paused as though about to go in, and then moved quickly into the shadow by the side of the pub. In his shadow, not impenetrable but deep, he tiptoed to the corner, and stared into the darkness of Joseph Street. The house was being watched. In the front portico a figure lounged, unidentifiable, just out of range of the street light. Anderson drew back. His whole body was trembling.

  The clumsy fools had stationed somebody outside the front door. He could have laughed aloud. But this was not a matter, after all, for laughter. It meant that the instinct which had warned him not to return here – the distasteful and even terrifying images that had arisen in his mind at thought of the disordered rooms, the empty drawer of the desk, the broken picture, and, yes, the cellar, the uninvestigated cellar – that instinct had been right. It would he falling into the trap, the trap for which that motionless and weary figure was acting as bait, if he turned the corner and walked across the road.

  Is that what I believe, then? Anderson asked himself. Must I turn round and go back? Let me be logical. And now a whole set of completely different arguments came into his mind. Was it really likely that they would be as clumsy as that? Was there not an obvious motive for stationing a man just where he would be seen? Wouldn’t Anderson, in fact, be playing into their hands by running away like a scared child, failing to remark that a double trap had been laid for him? Anderson began to laugh. He said aloud: “Come on now, give them credit for a bit of subtlety. They’re not fools – we all know that.” But beneath these uttered words, or above or behind them or anyhow existing in some relation to them, were the things Elaine had said, the things he had forgotten and could not now try to remember. He spoke again, without knowing the meaning of the words “The letter,” he said, and turned the corner. With rain blowing directly into his face he stepped firmly into the roadway. The figure in the door straightened up, moved slowly to the gate, tucked a newspaper under one arm and then ran to meet him. They met in the middle of the road. It was Molly O’Rourke. “Andy,” she cried, “Andy, are you all right?” He said nothing, but stood looking at her consideringly. “What’s happened to you, Andy? Why are you looking at me like that?”

  In a voice so consciously soft and low that he could not recognize it as his own, Anderson said: “Who sent you?”

  “What do you mean? I heard about it this afternoon.”

  Distracted for a moment, he said: “About what?”

  “That dirty devil Reverton – he’s been wanting to get you out for a long time. When you’re not well, too.”

  What was she talking about? But the last phrase caught in his mind and was linked with other things that had been said recently. “What do you mean not well? Who told you I was not well?”

  “Andy, we can’t stand here in the rain. Let’s go and talk.” Quite passively he allowed himself to be led to the curb, and then broke free of the
hand she had placed on his arm. He said, again with that conscious gentleness: “Who told you I was not well?”

  “Anybody can see for themselves. You’re shivering. And – what’s the matter with your face?”

  “You don’t care to give me the name of your informant?” he said politely

  “Oh, don’t be silly.” Now they were at the front door. “Give me the key.” He handed the key to her obediently, but as she turned it in the lock he moved swiftly. He was inside the front door, and had snatched the key from the lock. He held the door open a little, facing her and laughing. “My dear girl, you must be very simple to think I should fall for that.”

  “For what, Andy? I don’t know what you mean.”

  He laughed again. How easy it had been to outwit her. “I’m afraid you’ll have to go back to them and report failure. Suggest that they should try something subtler next time.”

  “Let me in.” She took a step forward.

  “Ah ha,” he said, and laughed again. “No nearer.” But now she darted forward, with a suddenness that took him by surprise, and they were struggling together in the doorway. He had been overconfident, he had relaxed his guard, and the result was a fight to expel this creature who was all hair and claws, who sobbed even as she tried to push past him. She had come out now, however, thank goodness, in her true colours; there was no subtlety about it; she was simply trying to come in where she was not wanted, and as they swayed together he felt the exhilaration of one whose dubiety’s had been lost in the satisfaction of righteous action. He heard a voice crying out something of this, but he was unable to listen closely, because his energy was given to the struggle with the enemy. Her approach might have been clumsy, but she fought cleverly, eel-like, eluding his grip, trying to get past him. But he was filled with the strength of ten; he caught her by the throat and when she tore his hands away brought up his knee as Shifty had done to Benny Baily. She cried out, and sprawled on the ground with her skirt up, showing a patch of thigh. Somehow the evening paper that had been in her hand was inside the door, as though it had been delivered by a newsboy. He picked it up, slammed the door shut, and burst out laughing.