The Sleeping Partner

  While John Curtis quietly died in Letherton. That was it, wasn’t it? It was all laid out on a plate for me. I saved myself and he bled to death. As simple as that.

  I chucked the cigarette away. It was faintly flavoured with something, and I saw that an old lipstick of Lynn’s had been rolling against it in the cubby-hole. I started up the car. After about five miles I turned left again, away from London and towards Letherton.

  The cottage might be watched. Stella was the woman in the case, and the police would expect me to turn up there. But a wood came down behind the cottage at the back, and a narrow lane, beginning at the Cock and Pheasant half a mile away, wound round to the other side of the wood. I took that.

  About thirty yards separated the wood from the cottage, and at the last tree I took a good look round. No one. Smoke came from the chimney of the cottage, and upstairs the curtains were part drawn as if to keep out the light. Not that there was much light, because heavy clouds had blown up.

  I jumped over the hedge and made across the grass. I didn’t bother to knock. Stella was in the kitchen.

  ‘Mike!’ She stared at me with huge dark-shadowed eyes.

  ‘Are you alone?’

  ‘At present. Except for John. I came down to refill his bottles. But if—’

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘He came round about nine. Mike, why ever did you come here when—?’

  ‘How did he get up to London last night?’

  A bit startled by the way I said it, she told me. ‘… I couldn’t think why he wanted the soda water. When I got back he wasn’t here; only a note. He came back at midnight – didn’t seem much worse at first – even though he’s not been out of the cottage for weeks.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘The police have been here, asking— Did anyone see you come in?’

  ‘I don’t think so—’

  ‘Darling, what a terrible thing; when John told me … Who killed her, Mike?’

  I said: ‘ Tell me about John.’

  The kettle was boiling and she switched it off.

  ‘A haemorrhage about five. Dr Lewis wanted to get him to hospital but he was too weak. They gave him a blood transfusion here at seven. We couldn’t get a nurse but the District Nurse came in for a couple of hours. She’d just gone when the police came …’

  ‘What did they want to know?’

  She began to fill the bottle. It was queer standing here in this cottage kitchen on a domestic chore. Her lashes were very dark on her face when it was as pale as this. ‘… And they thought I might know where you were. I choked them off – made the excuse that John … They’re coming back later.’

  ‘What chance is there now for him?’

  ‘Dr Lewis didn’t say much. This – this is the way people die of this complaint. But he’s been better since about eleven.’

  ‘Can I go and see him?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, for a few minutes. Can you tighten this screw?’

  I took the bottle from her. ‘ Did he tell you where he’d been last night?’

  ‘Enough for me to know you ought to be in London now.’

  We looked at each other. Then she turned to fill the other bottle.

  ‘What did he tell you?’ I said.

  ‘He says he reasoned it out. This man you spoke of, Ray French, told you that Lynn was a nymphomaniac, didn’t he?’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, John apparently reasoned that Ray French couldn’t be mistaken. That is, he couldn’t be wrong. Either he was right or he was lying.’

  ‘Yes, I see that.’

  ‘Then he thought, you didn’t think she was a nymphomaniac, but you might be deceived. Who else might know? The best chance was Simon Heppelwhite, who, you told him, had employed Lynn for some years and who had been a great friend of hers. He thought Simon Heppelwhite might have views on the subject.’

  Too much steam had got into the bottle and it suddenly bubbled and spat hot water. She held it away from the kettle.

  ‘And what did Simon say?’

  ‘He said no. He said, to talk of nymphomania was nonsense. He’d known about Lynn and Ray French for months, and had quarrelled with Lynn about it, for letting you down. She was mad over Ray French; no one else.’

  I took the second bottle from her. ‘And then?’

  As I spoke there was the sound of a heavy fall overhead.

  Stella had been going to refill the kettle, but now she dropped it and fled up the stairs, and I was close behind her.

  We got in to see the bed empty and John sprawled upon the floor beside it. The whiteness of his skin when we rolled him over was nearly grey.

  ‘John,’ she said. ‘ John …’

  He was breathing, but there was no pulse at all.

  ‘Can you help me?’ I said.

  ‘Of course.’

  I took his shoulders and she his feet. He seemed a terrific weight. Somehow we got him back on the bed.

  ‘He said he’d be all right while I went downstairs. He must have tried to get out and fallen …’

  Now that he was back in a normal position his breath was coming in deep gasps, like a man drowning.

  ‘The doctor left something,’ Stella said, her lips trembling. ‘If he fainted. That syringe. Cora something.’

  ‘Coramine.’ I picked up the syringe and held it up to the light. ‘Shall I do it?’

  ‘Please.’

  I put the thing somehow into his arm and pressed it home. His

  skin was sweaty and cold.

  ‘I’ll get Dr Lewis,’ she said.

  ‘Wait. I think he’s coming round.’

  Perhaps my clumsy puncture had roused him. His eyelids were

  fluttering. Stella moistened his lips, and suddenly I found him looking

  straight at me. Without a sound he said my name.

  ‘John,’ I said.

  His eyes travelled to Stella. ‘Sorry about that,’ he muttered.

  ‘Thought I could …’

  ‘Don’t talk.’

  He shifted slightly. ‘Used to believe – couldn’t keep a good man

  down. Now I realise – only a relative statement.’

  I made some sort of answer.

  He frowned. ‘You shouldn’t be here, Mike. Time is it?’

  ‘Plenty of time yet.’

  ‘You – got my message?’

  ‘Yes, it’s all right. I’m going to act on it.’

  His eyes closed then. I looked at Stella and nodded. She slid out

  of the room.

  He’d gone off again. I felt for the pulse at the root of his neck;

  it was just there. On the table by the bed was a glass pot on a

  stand with a rubber tube and a filter, and a few other odds and

  ends. The light in here was distilled by the curtains, discreet and

  without shadows. I went to the window and looked out. The garden

  was empty.

  She came back. ‘He’s not in, but they’ll ring me as soon as they

  can find him.’

  I nodded.

  We were silent for a time. The drug was having a good effect

  on him, but he hadn’t come round again.

  She said: ‘You must go, Mike.’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘What time is the wedding?’

  ‘There’s time.’

  ‘How can you stop it? Can you see Digby Hamilton?’

  I said: ‘What else did John tell you about last night?’

  ‘He went to see Margot du Caine.’

  ‘What?

  ‘I’m only telling you what he told me. There was a girl there with Simon Heppelwhite. I’ve forgotten her name—’

  ‘Joy Fraser.’

  ‘Yes. She knows Margot du Caine and is going to her wedding today. I don’t know how much John told Joy Fraser or what she said, but it came out that Ray French had been making a great attempt to get the wedding put forward. A week ago he almost had a row with everyone concerned, and at last Ma
rgot agreed to get married by licence this Sunday.’

  ‘I still don’t see why John …’

  ‘He said, if Ray French were innocent, the haste to get married to that extent, was hard to understand. If he were guilty, and he was sure he was, then the haste was simple to explain. You only had to look on Margot as an accessory, especially if she was an innocent one … I don’t know what he said to Joy Fraser, but whatever he said must have impressed her, because she took him straight along to the du Caines’ flat and introduced him.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘He talked to the girl and to her mother. Again I don’t know what he said, but whatever he tried didn’t come off. They wouldn’t believe him.’

  The man on the bed stirred and she was across to him instantly. But he made no other move.

  I went to peer out of the window again, and she came back.

  ‘You’ve got to go, Mike.’

  ‘Not while I can be of help.’

  ‘You certainly have been.’

  ‘And I want to know why he went off as he did last night.’

  I think she saw what I meant.

  ‘He wanted to help you and did help you without considering the cost to himself.’

  ‘Aren’t I allowed the same luxury in return?’

  ‘No … Because you both do it at my expense!’

  That held me for a bit. I said: ‘I hadn’t thought of it that way. Maybe I need even more egoism than I’ve got to see it that way.’

  ‘Or less pride.’

  I looked at her. Physically she was as close to me now as at any time since last Sunday. I looked at the soft flare of her nostril, the fine skin under the dark curling hair beside her ear, the sheen of her eyelashes and the curve of her lips. Last Sunday. But we’d come such a long way since then.

  A train went past. The line was some distance away but it caused a tiny vibration of two of the bottles on the table. As it stopped we heard the telephone ringing.

  ‘I’ll answer it,’ she said.

  It was raining now. My watch said five minutes to one.

  ‘Mike,’ said John.

  I went quickly to him. His lips moved when I came into his view. Some of the dead whiteness had gone. ‘Heard you – mumbling there.’

  ‘Sorry. We thought—’

  ‘Stella been – telling you – my visit to Margot du Caine?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Peculiar interview.’

  ‘Don’t talk now. Lewis is coming.’

  He made a face. ‘ There was – no moving her, Mike. I could tell by the look in her eyes she knew something. My hunch was right. By marrying her French is in some way covering up. But she pretended – didn’t know what I was talking about. I told her – Lynn was dead. She said – unpardonable interference. Tried to show me the door. Her mother … I appealed to her. I think – she thought me insane. But the girl did not. The girl did not.’

  ‘You did your best.’

  ‘Time is it?’

  ‘Plenty of time yet.’

  ‘It’s – up to you, Mike. You’ve got to stop it.’

  There was the sound of a car drawing up outside the cottage.

  ‘John, I have to ask you one thing.’

  He closed his eyes for a couple of seconds and then looked at me. ‘ Yes?’

  ‘I want to know why you did that yesterday – getting up against all orders, nearly killing yourself.’

  He gave a faint shrug. ‘It looked to me – a fair and reasonable expenditure to make.’

  I said: ‘ You know when the divorce petition came; I asked you, supposing what it said were true, what would you have done – and you said you’d take steps to remove yourself.’

  ‘Yes?’

  A door banged. I said hastily: ‘Coming here I had the idea that perhaps you thought Stella was in love with me – why you should think that, God knows, but you apparently considered it possible on Friday. And that if you thought that, you might – have taken these steps.’

  I watched him. He considered. ‘Done it – to kill myself?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It would be – roundabout way, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘I thought you might have considered it appropriate.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well, it might go with your ethics. Helping the man whom you thought …’

  He smiled and his gaze didn’t flicker. ‘I see you don’t – understand me.’

  ‘I’m sorry if I don’t.’

  ‘Or you underrate my – liking for you.’

  ‘I don’t understand that.’

  There were voices downstairs.

  ‘Nor would it – go with my ethics, as you call them.’ He paused, listening, and then said quickly, with an effort: ‘Wouldn’t doing that, my doing that, have the opposite effect of what you think? Wouldn’t that way be putting a barrier between you and Stella for ever?’

  I stared at him and he stared back at me.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  There were footsteps on the stairs. ‘One is – not always detached, Mike. Don’t make the mistake of thinking I am. I hate the misfortune

  that’s come on me. But I don’t hate you.’

  I put my hand on his. ‘I can’t think of anything to say.’

  He returned the pressure. ‘Say nothing. But go.’

  Stella and Dr Lewis came into the room.

  I waited downstairs. I knew it was cutting it impossibly fine now. An hour from here to Chelsea even on a Sunday afternoon. Fairly certainly, so far as the wedding was concerned, I’d lost the trick. But I didn’t regret having come.

  There were photographs in the room, one of Stella, one of a woman I didn’t know. His first wife perhaps. If it was only as good of her as it was of Stella, I shouldn’t get far by looking at it. I felt pressed down with a sense of not knowing, and a sense of fatality along with it. At the moment I was one making up a set of six. John and Stella, Lynn and Ray and Margot du Caine. I felt I didn’t understand a thing about the motives or feelings of any of them, why passion blew up where it didn’t belong, why loyalties and deceits had got tied in with crime and punishment. I could only guess at half the reasons behind what had happened, and I saw no hope at all that I would ever know more.

  In about a quarter of an hour Stella came down.

  ‘He’s having another blood transfusion. Dr Lewis says he’s responded well to the first. I slipped down to tell you to go.’

  ‘He’ll be all right?’

  ‘As right as he can be. Perhaps two weeks in bed. Then he may get up again …’

  I peered out again, at the garden and the rain.

  ‘Now do you feel free?’ she said, almost angrily.

  ‘Yes, I feel free.’

  It was a queer expression of the way I was at present fixed. I kissed her and left. This was the final goodbye and had to be excused.

  I got across to the wood without any trouble. Fifty yards brought me to the edge of the lane. My car was where I had left it, and I was going to climb over the low wall and go towards it when some sort of sixth sense made me decide to have a look first from the other side. I ducked back into the wood and approached this time from about a hundred yards ahead. I didn’t get very far. In a green lichened gateway of the wood just out of sight of the car, and conveniently placed to step out at the right moment, a policeman was waiting.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I MADE for the station. Once out of the wood at the eastern corner, you were up against the raw new villas at the edge of the town; and from there it was only two hundred yards. I knew all the back streets of Letherton.

  Of course they might be waiting for me, but that was a risk that had to be taken. There wasn’t any other way of getting to London now.

  There was a train in ten minutes. That was lucky for a Sunday, but it didn’t alter the fact that it takes an hour and five minutes from Letherton to King’s Cross, and from there I had to get to Chelsea.

  It still didn’t matter as much as it should hav
e done. Even in practical terms my visit to the cottage hadn’t been thrown away.

  I didn’t think I’d proved anything to anybody by going to see John Curtis, not even to myself, but at least I hadn’t snapped at the bait that circumstances had shoved in my way. I’d behaved like a fool two or three times in the last few days, but this time at least I hadn’t been trying to save myself. Perhaps it showed a twisted outlook, not being able to accept what he’d tried to do for me – but I couldn’t, on those terms.

  The train was five minutes late. I got on it all right and settled into the corner of a third-class carriage; there were two other men in the carriage; one in a blue mack nodded to me; doors slammed and the dirty, smoke-grey engine stammered on the greasy lines.

  The man in the mack said something about the weather, and, finding he was speaking to me, I agreed, then they went on talking between themselves. They were going to some sort of a meeting, and the other chap, who was in black, was going for the first time.

  We ran into the next station, a halt, oddly rural-looking, left over, an anachronism. As we waited there an express went through on the fast middle line; rattling windows, carriages flickering like a halting movie film.

  We were off again. ‘It’s the following’s that’s hard, d’you see,’ said the man in the mack, biting his nails. ‘ Mr Thompson always emphasises that with new members. The following and the acceptance …’

  The train was late. It was nearly three when we stopped at New Barnet, and from there on into a darkening city with the sky yellow and a heavy downpour settling in, the train crept forward as if scared of being checked at every signal. As we slid along the platform of King’s Cross I opened the door of the carriage; a porter’s face stared, passing. The man in the blue raincoat said: ‘ You’ll get wet, sir, with no hat or coat. It’s raining. Like to borrow my umbrella?’

  I stared at him.

  He said: ‘It’s got my name and address, inside.’

  ‘Thanks. Thank you … No, I haven’t far to go.’

  I got out quickly and made down the platform, gave my ticket; no taxi waiting but I caught one in Euston Road. It was twenty past three. There might have been some delay.