A Penknife in My Heart Page 10

  But of course this was not true. Ned said it because he had no desire to involve anyone else—to involve them further, at any rate, than they were already involved.

  As he drove out of Marksfield, memories flooded back: the sly look, the faraway look, the complacent look he had caught in Helena’s eye: Brian Holmes’s outburst at the party and Helena’s telling him she had played the piano for Brian when he was away. Her air of suppressed excitement at breakfast yesterday. Her unusual solicitude for his health—awkward for her if he’d had to cancel the lecture.

  Brian Holmes. A soppy, nondescript young man, about whom he knew almost nothing; but admirably placed, his bungalow and market garden being only a hundred yards or so away, for conducting a liaison with the mistress of Old Farm.

  What had he just said to Inspector Bartley?—you don’t kill a woman the first time you go to bed with her. No? A young, idealistic, ill-balanced chap might kill a tart, the first time, out of disgust or shame or horror. But Helena wasn’t a tart. No, but she was neurotic, one couldn’t predict her behavior, she might well have said things, done things, which set up a violent revulsion in the virginal young Brian. He might not have intended to kill her at all—only to stop her tongue with that pillow, stop the endless maddening babble of talk which flowed from it when she got into a hysterical state.

  Ned turned off the main road. Where the woodland drive joined the lane, he stopped his car and got out. Yes, there were tire marks here and there up the drive. Picnic parties sometimes left their cars in it. The tracks didn’t have to be Stuart Hammer’s: but they probably were. Suddenly, Ned saw why Stuart had not adhered to their plan—saw the solution of the whole mystery. Stuart had gone to the Old Farm last night, let himself in, climbed the stairs, opened the bedroom door, and found that the job had already been done for him. He had found Helena dead. Her lover and murderer was already gone. There was no point in Stuart’s faking a burglary now: there was nothing for him to do except put the key in the handkerchief drawer. Must have given him a considerable shock, thought Ned. He probably assumes that I went round the bend and killed her myself.

  These speculations were swirled away, as Ned drove on, by a flood of relief. Helena’s death need never be on his conscience now. He was not a murderer, even by proxy. Fate had intervened at the very last moment, taking the deed out of Stuart’s hands and putting it into the hands of Brian Holmes.

  8 The Faithful Dog

  It was the emptiness of the house that, during the next few days, Ned found most insupportable. Yet in a way the place had never been so crowded. When he arrived, there were newspapermen awaiting him. After putting his car away, he let them question him in the yard between the outbuildings and the house; he had nothing to tell them, but he did not try to shorten the interview—anything that postponed his entering the house was welcome. He made a good impression upon them.

  A uniformed policeman at the front door saluted him respectfully. Mrs. Marle, red-eyed, dramatizing the part she had been given in the tragedy, emerged from the kitchen and almost fell into his arms.

  “I done everything I could, sir,” she kept repeating, between sobs and sniffles. She had made up a bed for him in the spare room; the police wouldn’t let anyone into the bedroom where poor Mrs. Stowe had been—said they were looking for a weapon or something. Mrs. Marle’s wits must be wandering, he thought; Helena had been killed with a pillow. It was not till the next day that he understood. There were telephone messages on the block—inquiries from neighbors, said Mrs. Marle; she hoped she’d done right to tell them Mr. Stowe was expected home this evening. She had left him some supper in the kitchen, to warm up. She really must be off now—didn’t know what her hubby would say. But she showed no signs of leaving. Ned had to listen to her account of finding Mrs. Stowe’s body—they had wandered into the kitchen now—and reassure her ten times over that she had indeed done everything she could, before he finally managed to get rid of her.

  The back door had hardly closed on Mrs. Marle when footsteps were heard clattering down the stairs. A plainclothes man, a brisk sergeant from the Marksfield C.I.D. branch, introduced himself to Ned, who submitted once again to official condolence.

  “I’m afraid I have instructions to seal your bedroom for the time being, sir,” the sergeant then said. “I thought you would wish to move some clothing out first. Anything you need for the next day or two.”

  Ned followed him dumbly upstairs. The bedroom was looking tidier than usual: an impersonal, empty room, the spirit fled. Another plain-clothes man was standing by the larger bed, which had been stripped: he helped Ned to carry a tweed suit, hairbrushes, pajamas, socks, handkerchiefs, shoes into the spare room down the passage.

  The telephone rang. Ned hurried downstairs, but the sergeant was before him.

  “For you, sir. Someone from the Manor.”

  “Oh God, why can’t they leave me alone.… Yes, who is it? Ned Stowe here.”

  “Bob Avening speaking. Forgive me, my dear boy, I don’t want to intrude on you. My deepest sympathy. It’s a shocking business. Don’t like the idea of you brooding there all alone. Would you do us the kindness of letting us put you up for a few nights?”

  Ned was touched by the little man’s diffident courtesy. He was touched; but he realized, with horror, that he must now go through a hell of false pretenses. He declined Sir Robert’s offer, but accepted an invitation to lunch the next day.

  After eating his supper, Ned wandered restlessly about the living room. He sat down to write to Laura—some cautious instinct prevented him from ringing her up.

  Laura darling, he began, the most terrible thing has happened—and found he could write no more. False pretenses with Laura, hypocrisy—no, he could not do it: not yet. He had intended that Helena should be killed: she had been killed by another human instrument, certainly; but still, the intention had been there. A violent craving for Laura came over him as he looked at her name on the sheet before him—a craving to bury himself and his guilt in her. He sank to his knees, laying his head on the seat of an armchair, as if on a woman’s lap. It was the chair Helena had always sat in: he thought it was Laura’s lap, till he heard his own voice muttering. “Forgive me, forgive me.”

  For two hours that night he wandered about the empty house, feeling as if it were he, not Helena, who was haunting it, bodiless and ineffectual. Once he had been reunited with Laura, things would become real again, solid. But he could not go to her yet: the police would become suspicious if he shot off to live with another woman the moment his wife—No, that was nonsense: the police had the best reasons in the world for not suspecting him, now or ever. I managed that interview with Inspector Bartley pretty well, he thought. But the thought gave him no pleasure, eager though he usually was for self-congratulation.

  Next morning he awoke with Helena’s voice sounding in his ears. It came from the lawn, below the spare-room window. “Ned! Quick! the daffodils are showing!” He sat up in bed. The mist in his mind cleared. It was not her voice but a memory of it. When they first moved to the country, Helena had taken up gardening in an erratic, unhopeful way, buying a sackful of bulbs and planting them all over the lawn, for instance. Her maladroitness had ceased to be a joke with them by then. “I don’t expect they’ll grow,” she had said, self-pityingly. “Did you put them in the right way up?” “I don’t know. Anyway, I’ve probably got whatever’s the opposite of green fingers.” But the daffodils did come up. One morning in early spring she called him to look at the first green shoots. He was in low spirits that morning, after one of those degrading nocturnal scenes with her. He put his head out of the window: “Nature’s tough—she can even survive your treatment.” He did not mean it unkindly; but he saw the radiance go out of Helena’s uplifted face. They must have been a symbol to her, those daffodils—if they grow, he and I will be able to start a new life. But he had rejected it. She never touched the garden again.

  Funny remembering that now, he thought, trying to stifle the ache of compu
nction which the memory started. Why in hell’s name did she have to take everything so much to heart? God knows I was patient enough, building her up inch by inch—and then one word of mine a little out of place and the whole thing came tumbling down and all was to do over again.

  However, Ned had little time to brood that morning. There were a consultation with Mrs. Marle, more telephone inquiries, letters to be written to Helena’s parents and her solicitors, his own correspondence to be dealt with—the morning’s post had brought two offers of television productions. He was deep in these chores when Josephine Weare turned up.

  “Poor Ned, I am sorry. Throw me out if I’m a nuisance. But if there’s anything I can do—help you with your letters, or shopping?”

  “It’s awfully good of you, Josephine. But I can manage. I wouldn’t think of letting you interrupt your own work—”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that. Women novelists jump at any excuse for not writing—particularly if it’s a chance to interfere in other people’s lives.”

  Her huge blue eyes were fastened upon him with an expression of—was it commiseration or curiosity?—he did not know. It was good to have her company, anyway: her astringent tongue braced him, and she was a relief after the first-mourner presence of Mrs. Marle. Ned dictated a few letters to her; they made a list of household necessities she could buy for him in Marksfield this afternoon—Helena’s housekeeping had always been a hand-to-mouth affair, and there were plenty of gaps to be filled.

  It was only when she was leaving that Josephine Weare touched upon the disaster. Looking up at him, she suddenly remarked in her light, quick voice:

  “You mustn’t feel guilty about this, Ned.”

  “Guilty?” His heart lurched sluggishly, like a waterlogged vessel in heavy seas.

  “Yes. I know you and Helena didn’t hit it off. Don’t feel you were responsible for that, and for what has happened. I don’t expect you could have done any more for her; but, even if you could, there’s no use brooding about it now. Think of it as a happy release”—her mouth quivered over the cliché—“a happy release for you both. A release, anyway.”

  Josephine Weare patted the back of his hand and marched briskly down the path to the wicket gate.

  Extraordinary little creature, thought Ned, as he put on a black tie to satisfy Lady Avening’s sense of the conventions. A happy release! He was aware of some relief, though. It was not Stuart Hammer who had killed Helena: therefore the contract was cancelled—he himself would not have to go through with the Herbert Beverley clause.

  Ned’s relief was short-lived. He had shut out of his mind the idea of what was to take place at Norringham; or the shadow of the nearer event had blocked it out. But now that event had occurred, bringing the future close with a nightmare rush. Stuart Hammer held his letter to Laura and, unless Ned was utterly mistaken about his accomplice’s character, would post that letter to Laura if Herbert Beverley were not put out of the way. Stuart Hammer was a ruthless and unscrupulous man: it had not been necessary for him to carry out his part of the pact, but no such consideration would induce him to give back to Ned the trump card which he held.

  Occupied with these thoughts, Ned walked through the village unaware of the glances thrown at him, some hostile, some pitying, all curious. Crump End was already divided into two camps, one of which, in spite of the village constable’s assurance that Mr. Stowe had been in Bristol when his wife was murdered, firmly believed that he had murdered her. In a couple of hours’ time everyone in the village would know that he had lunched at the Manor. For one faction this would set the seal upon his innocence: for the other, it would prove once again that the gentry stand together in a crisis and cover up one another’s sins.

  Sipping sherry in the Avenings’ library, Ned endured the condolences of his hostess, while Sir Robert sat silent.

  “First your poor wife, and then that young Mr. Holmes,” the lady concluded. “Well, I always say it never rains but it pours.”

  “My dear,” put in Sir Robert with surprising asperity, “sometimes you are the soul of tactlessness. Do think before you speak?”

  “Well, what have I said wrong?” she inquired, flushing.

  “Holmes? What’s happened to him?”

  “He has been taken to hospital, Mr. Stowe. It seems he was attacked on the same night that—”

  “My dear girl,” interrupted her husband, “you’re just repeating gossip. There’s no evidence that he was attacked.” Sir Robert turned to Ned. “His mother found him yesterday morning in one of their outbuildings, unconscious. He was put to bed at once. Shock and exposure. When he didn’t recover consciousness after some ten hours, Ainsley thought it was best to put him in Marksfield Hospital, where they can keep him under observation.”

  “Inspector Bartley didn’t tell me anything about this.”

  “The young man had been bludgeoned,” said Lady Avening.

  “That is a possibility, my dear, not a certainty. He could have hit his head against a container of kerosene in the outbuilding—fallen against it and knocked himself out.”

  “Are you suggesting he was intoxicated, Bob?”

  “I’m not suggesting anything. All we know for certain is that he’s in a coma and threatened with pneumonia.”

  “I never approved of that young man, what little I saw of him. I suspect him of leftist inclinations,” pronounced Lady Avening. “I should not be surprised to hear that he was an intellectual.”

  “I trust, my dear, you did not carry your disapproval to the extent of clubbing him over the head.” Sir Robert’s elfish face remained quite solemn.

  “Really, Bob! You do get the most extraordinary notions. And now tell me, Mr. Stowe, what arrangements are being made for the funeral. I would strongly recommend—”

  “My wife was a Catholic, Lady Avening.”

  “Indeed? A Roman Catholic?” Her tone suggested that this denomination was as undesirable as leftism. Fortunately lunch was announced at this moment, and Ned was spared further embarrassment. Sir Robert, who was clearly master in his own house, whatever he might appear outside it, kept his formidable consort on a very short rope during the meal, and Ned found himself warming to the little man’s tactful charm and the occasional gnomelike twinkle of his eye. How on earth could he support life with such a humorless, stupid, self-important woman?

  Such speculations faded, though, beside the mystery of Brian Holmes. Looking back over his last few days with Helena, Ned was increasingly convinced that, in spite of all his preconceptions about her, Brian must have been her lover. But how had he come by his injury? The police were looking for a weapon, Mrs. Marle had told him. If this was true, it could only mean that Helena had defended herself against young Holmes when he became violent. She must have struck him and he had succumbed to delayed shock after getting home.

  It was a comforting idea, so far as it went, but it did not survive a conversation with Colonel Gracely that same evening. The colonel had invited Ned for a drink in his comely Queen Anne house on the village green. Sitting in the study, which was lined with cabinets containing entomological specimens and decorated with flocks of exotic stuffed birds, Ned watched the colonel mix him a stiff whisky. He seemed to be seeing these neighbors for the first time. For years the Avenings, Gracely, Josephine Weare had been no more than pleasant acquaintances: neither he nor Helena had formed any close friendships in the village. But now, as though Helena’s death had removed a barrier between him and them, Ned was beginning to make real contact with them. Their concern and practical kindness drew from him a response rather like the convalescent’s languid gratitude toward nurse and doctor. He was in the limelight now, and the part he was playing suited him. “You can’t bear anyone else getting the limelight for a moment,” Helena had said during their last quarrel. He had been outraged by the injustice of it then: now, he began to wonder. …

  “Drink up, my boy. It’s a rough time for you. Damnable. I’ve seen enough sudden death in my time, but I never g
ot used to it. Never. Friends alive one moment, snuffed out the next.” The colonel snapped his fingers. “Well, there’s no justice. No doubt Bartley’ll nail the fella. String him up or put him away for life. Got to be done. Protect society. But don’t call it justice.”

  “I don’t. I’m not panting for anyone’s blood. It won’t bring her back—” Ned broke off, disgusted by the hypocrisy of this. “The fact is, Colonel, I—well, it’s an awful thing to say, but Helena and I—”

  “Say no more, my boy. I’ve got eyes in my head. You stuck to her anyway. Stuck it out. So you should—it’s in the contract, after all.” Gracely’s vague gray eyes took on a quick, pointed shrewdness. “You’re dazed now, eh? Can’t feel the wound yet? You will, though. You put down your anchor in another human being: things go wrong: you want to get away: but when the cable’s cut, you’re all adrift for a while. Habit, y’know, just habit. I had a mistress myself for several years. Eurasian. Immoral girl. Proper bloody handful. Bored me stiff after a bit, except in bed. But when she did finally bolt, it took all the stuffing out of me: I’d sunk too much emotional capital in her. Drink up.”

  After a companionable silence Ned was moved to say:

  “The police seem to think Helena must have had a lover.”

  “You don’t mind talking about this?”

  “No. Not with you.”

  “Well, between ourselves, it’s true. The chief constable’s an old friend of mine. Had a chat with him this afternoon. They’ve identified fingerprints in your wife’s bedroom as Brian Holmes’s.”

  “It’s incredible,” muttered Ned, more to himself than to his companion. “Brian Holmes? Why on earth should she pick on him?”

  The colonel’s innocent gray eyes regarded Ned calmly. “Oh, not so very strange. For one thing, he’s rather like you.”

  “Like me?” Ned could not keep a note of outrage from his voice. This was the most violent of all the shocks he had recently received.