“What particularly sickens me,” Ned went on, “is the lies you told me, about your uncle. He was obviously worth ten of you. And that nauseating, hypocritical interview you gave the Norringham paper.”
Hammer jerked round in his chair, glaring at the back of his companion’s head. “A little more of that, and I’ll start breaking you up.”
“You won’t start anything, Hammer. You and I brawling in public might lead the police to suspect there was some connection between us.”
Stuart took a grip on himself. He felt baffled, which made him all the more dangerous. Ned Stowe, he sensed, was a different proposition from what he had been on the Avocet; if only he could see the fellow’s face, he could judge how to deal with him.
“Sorry, old man,” he said, after a pause, “but you did rile me, you know. Now, let’s get this straight. What exactly is in your mind?”
“We can’t let Brian Holmes be hanged.”
“But he’s not even been arrested yet, has he?”
“Nor can we let him go through the rest of his life believing he’s a murderer.”
“You’ve come over bloody moral all of a sudden, haven’t you?” said Stuart lightly. “What are we supposed to do about this chum of yours?”
“If he’s put on trial, we come clean—written confession. If he’s not, but he fails to recover his memory, I shall tell him the whole truth, privately, to set his mind at rest.”
Stuart Hammer gasped. “Have you gone off your head? Oh dear me no, sonny. No bid.”
“Or I could turn Queen’s evidence,” came the quiet, strained voice at Stuart’s back.
“So you have lost your nerve, you—” Stuart powerfully restrained himself. “Now look here, old man, what is all this about? We’re sitting pretty—”
“Not as pretty as you think.”
“Come again?”
“The police are onto that car swap you did with Arthur Lee. They’ve only to start getting interested in my movements the night Herbert Beverley was killed, and they’ll break us wide open.”
“Why get windy about it, Ned? I’m not worrying.” Stuart told Ned about his alibi. The night he had driven down to Crump End, he had made an assignation with the blonde, Peggy, at 9 P.M. when she came off duty, in his bedroom. He put a strong sleeping powder in her drink, and they went to bed. As soon as she was asleep, he left the country club, unnoticed, by a side door. He had previously parked Arthur Lee’s car in a quiet road a few hundred yards from the club, to avoid the risk of being seen taking it out from the club garage. When he got back, soon after six the next morning, Peggy was still asleep in his room. He undressed and got into bed. When he woke her, at seven, so that she could go about her duties, Peggy had no conceivable cause to doubt that he had been sleeping with her all night. It was a nuisance that old Arthur had finally told the police about the swap: but Stuart had originally asked him to keep it quiet so that no gossip about the bet should reach Herbert Beverley’s ears: Herbert being dead, Arthur had naturally assumed that there was no reason to keep the exchange secret, apart from the immoral nature of the bet in which it was involved.
“So you see, I really am sitting pretty,” Stuart concluded. “The police are convinced now that the bloke who saw me outside Marksfield got the registration number wrong.”
“Where did you leave the car when you got back?”
“In the lockup at the club, where I keep my own. It was still dark, and the lockup is fifty yards from the clubhouse itself. No one saw me or heard me. Don’t fuss, old chap. Even if the constabulary did get suspicious again about the car, they’d still be stymied because there’s absolutely nothing to connect me with you and your late lamented. That’s the beauty of it. Or was, till you dragged me here to sick up your conscience into my lap.”
A waft of wind blew, and a few yellowing leaves floated down from the tree above them.
“I don’t like it,” muttered Ned. Stuart Hammer stiffened, hearing a telltale quaver in his companion’s voice. “I don’t like it. Suppose the police start asking about my movements that Saturday night?”
“Why the hell should they? And if they were going to, they’d have done it already.”
“That’s what’s getting me down. I feel they’re just waiting their moment, waiting for me to crack up.”
“Oh, bosh!”
Ned’s head was bowed in his hands now, so that Stuart could hardly hear the muffled voice: “If they did ask me—I’m supposed to have been in Laura’s flat the whole evening, but actually I didn’t get there till long after midnight. Suppose they ask me what she and I were doing all the time—”
“That’s an easy one,” put in Stuart, with a short guffaw.
“Laura—I spun her a yarn—she’d back me up; but if they asked each of us separately to describe—well, what we had for supper, what we talked about, and so on—our statements wouldn’t begin to tally.”
“That’s your funeral, old son.”
“My funeral is yours too, don’t forget.”
“Well, you and Laura had better cook up the story together. How is the charming creature, by the way?”
“But—don’t you see?—that’d make her suspicious of me. She’d start imagining the most awful things I must have been doing, and—”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Ned, pull yourself together!” The bleeder’s nearly in tears, thought Stuart: this has got to be stopped: he’s simply not reliable. I ought to have seen he was the short-winded type when we were on the Avocet. The Avocet … A malignant expression darkened Stuart Hammer’s face: his voice took on the man-to-man, sympathetic tone he adopted when discussing their grievances with his shop stewards.
“Tell me some more about this Brian Holmes. Decent fellow?”
Ned told him.
“Hard luck on the chap, certainly. Well, I suppose you can’t let him be hanged.”
“Or imprisoned for life.”
“But it hasn’t come to that yet. I think we should lie low a bit longer and wait to see how things pan out.”
“And in the meantime the police may be catching up on us.” The quavering note was back in Ned’s voice.
“Well, exactly what’s your proposition then?”
“That we should write a letter to Brian—a confession signed by both of us—setting out in detail what happened to Helena and your uncle. It would clear his mind of the fear he may be a murderer. But we’d appeal to him not to make any use of the document except in the event of his being put on trial and convicted.”
Stuart Hammer inwardly whistled. He’d never heard such a fantastic proposal in his life. Ned must be round the bend. “You’ve got it all thought out, haven’t you?” he commented quietly. “The answer is nix, old man. I’m not sticking my neck out that far.”
“I’m sure Brian could be trusted.”
“I admire your faith in human nature,” said Stuart dryly. “No, no, it’s not on the table.”
“It seems to me you have no alternative.”
“What the devil do you mean?”
“If you don’t like my proposal, I told you I’d turn Queen’s evidence. The former’s a risk, but the latter’s a certainty.”
Bluff, a panicky twister’s bluff, thought Stuart, scowling again at the obdurate back which Ned presented him. But was it bluff? Maybe the bastard really had gone off his rocker. Stuart Hammer took one of his rapid, ruthless decisions. “Well, you seem to have me by the short hairs,” he said, putting a good-humored, rueful note into his voice. “Tell you what I’ll do. If young Holmes is arrested, or if the police start turning the heat on you and me, we’ll skip out of the country. The Avocet hasn’t been laid up yet. I can put my hands on quite a packet of money at short notice, thanks to your bit of motoring at Norringham; and you’d better realize everything you can, too. We could nip over to Belgium before the dicks knew we were gone. I’ve contacts there who’d see us through to South America. We’d write our letter to Holmes on board, and post it from the continent. How’s that st
rike you?”
“As a very sudden change of tune,” replied Ned suspiciously.
“Well, you can take it or leave it. But don’t imagine you’d get off scot free by turning Queen’s evidence: you might save your neck, possibly, but you’d be jailed for a long, long stretch. Not nice.”
Head in hands, Ned Stowe appeared to be ruminating. At last he said, “I suppose it is the best plan. Obviously, you and I sink or swim together now.”
“I thought you’d come round, old son.” Stuart Hammer inwardly exulted at the weakness he heard in Ned’s voice: he’d mastered him, as before on the Avocet, by the strength of his own personality. “Now let’s get everything straight, in case we do have to scarper.”
They made plans for communicating with each other—a telephone call would have to be risked in certain emergencies. Stuart would pick up Ned at the same spot as on their previous voyage: it would preferably be at a weekend, so that Stuart could leave Norringham without advertising his departure. Ned must make sure his passport was in order, and collect all the money he could lay his hands on without rousing suspicion: it would not be much, for Helena’s will had not yet been proved: however, Stuart would “see him through.”
“And now I’ll be toddling,” said Stuart Hammer, after they had settled their arrangements. “See you later, if and when. Keep your pecker up, old boy.” He rose, glancing at Ned’s averted profile—a glance that had in it both contempt and calculation.
Ned watched him move away over the grass with his rolling gait, walk past a bed blazing with dahlias and chrysanthemums, and dwindle to a manikin size in the distance.
13 The Bleeding Heart
“What have you been doing all day, my darling?”
“Writing. My play. I’ll have it finished tomorrow.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful!” said Laura. “We’ll go out and celebrate tomorrow night, shall we? When can I read it?”
“When I—I’ve got to go away for the weekend. I’ll leave the play to keep you company.”
“Oh, I thought everything was cleared up at home—at the Old Farm. Funny, the way I still call it that. And I used to be so jealous of your life there.”
“You didn’t need to be.”
Laura’s broad white brow wrinkled as she bent over the socks she was knitting. “Do you feel this is your home now?”
“Well, we make a domestic enough scene, don’t we, love?”
“Oh yes, I suppose so,” she murmured vaguely; then, “Sometimes you seem more of a stranger than you used to in the old days.”
“Mystery man, ha?”
There was a pause. A coal in the little fireplace spurted blue flame, hissing. Laura put down her work and looked full at Ned. “What’s wrong, my love?”
“Wrong?”
“Your body’s here with me. Your mind isn’t.”
“I’m tired, I expect.” Ned began embroidering it. “When one’s been concentrating on fictional characters—my play—it takes a bit of time to get back into focus with real ones.”
“Yes.” Laura pushed back one of her coppery tresses. “You do love me still?”
“I do love you still,” he echoed, with a kind of gloomy fervor which made her search his face uneasily. What she found there did not altogether reassure her; but she was used to Ned’s moods, and experience had taught her not to pry into men’s minds when they had put the shutters up.
“Oh well,” she said, without resentment or impatience.
It was the Thursday evening after Ned’s meeting with Stuart Hammer. He had indeed spent the time writing his play, settling down to it every morning, going for a walk along the Embankment after lunch, and working again from 4 P.M. till Laura’s return. By some mental freak, he was not only able to concentrate on his work, but the upheaval of his life since Helena had died, the turmoil of emotions in which he had been struggling, seemed to have thrown up to the surface a vein of talent far richer than any he had been able to tap before. He knew the play to be good. He had only to sharpen up the last scene a bit, and it would be finished. This afternoon, half an hour before Laura came home from work, Ned had found himself writing, on the back of the title page, To Helena. He had at once inked it out heavily; then, with an odd sensation of fear and release, he firmly inscribed the same dedication again.
Yes, the thing had gone incredibly smoothly, in a long gush of power which even Stuart Hammer’s telephone call this morning had not checked.
“You-know-who speaking,” the resonant, deep, hateful voice had announced. “I find I’ve got to take a cure. Doctor’s orders. My health is seriously in danger. O.K. with you?”
“O.K.”
After he had rung off, Ned speculated for a little about Hammer’s situation. Had the police been questioning him again? or had the girl Peggy somehow been broken down? It was difficult to imagine a man of Stuart Hammer’s type being panicked into throwing away the power and the money he had so ruthlessly schemed to secure. There was an alternative explanation for Hammer’s recent action—an explanation Ned found it much easier to accept. His own course, at any rate, was decided: he had set the machine moving, and it was too late now to jump out of it, even if he wanted to. Ned recollected what Stuart had said to him on board the Avocet, when he had written the draft letter that should be sent to Laura in the event of his own failure to carry out his part of the compact. “Put in a bit at the end,” Stuart had demanded, “saying that since her death, you’ve come to realize that you loved Helena better than anyone else.” Ned remembered it now as one might remember a particularly telling speech in a play seen weeks ago. It came back to him with such force, he realized, because it had come true. …
In the oddly shaped sitting room—it seemed to have more corners than any small room had a right to—Laura covertly eyed her lover, while the fire purred and snickered in the grate. He looked calm, drained, withdrawn, as though he had come through some major crisis in which she had had no part, or made a decision from which she was excluded. A little, vague flurry of apprehension stirred deep within her. It was as if, while he sat there reading, Ned was slipping away from her and she could do nothing to prevent it. At that moment Laura felt an overmastering desire to have a child by him. Hugging this desire like a secret, she said:
“I suppose we’ll have to think of moving out of here soon, Ned.”
He came to himself with a start. “Moving out? Why?”
“Well, it’s really much too small for the two of us.”
“Yes. Yes, of course.” Too small for the three of us, he thought. And any house would be. Helena has settled in, she will be wherever I am.
“And when there are three of us,” Laura incredibly echoed his thought.
“Three of us?” Ned stared at her.
“Yes, love. I want to have your child.”
His heart surged with an overpowering emotion: then at once came the backwash—the child of a confessed murderer.
“Yes. But not yet, dear Laura,” he said when he could speak.
“You shall say when.”
“I want it too. But”—he faltered and stopped, knowing it was both the truth and a lie.
“It’s all right, my darling. I understand. You’re not ready. And anyway,” she added on a lighter note, “we’re not married yet.”
He looked at her gratefully. This divine acquiescence of hers, and this intuition of the times when he could not stand even the gentlest pressure, had from the start of their relationship moved him intensely. By contrast with Helena’s exacting nature and the claustrophobic life he had lived with her, it made paradise—a paradise from which he must soon expel himself. For the first time since he had taken his decision, Ned faced squarely the consequence it would have for Laura. He knew she was not, as once she had seemed, invulnerable: that elusive quality, which had so tantalized and bewitched him, came not from self-sufficiency or coldness, he now saw, but was the effect of some deep feminine timidity, some fear of being too much involved—the very antithesis of her accep
ting passionate flesh: a sort of ingrained spiritual shyness.
Poor Laura. She would suffer. Why should there be the delusive notion that these women with big, easy bodies were somehow padded against the worst blows of anguish? He had betrayed Helena and his punishment was that he must betray Laura too. On paper, it should have been a simple choice between Laura’s peace of mind and Brian Holmes’s; but it was not a simple choice, for Helena all too ponderably entered into it.
Next morning Ned finished his play. When he had read it through for a last time, he typed out a fresh title page and wrote For Laura with my love upon the back of it. He must leave her with something, and to retain the dedication to Helena would be gratuitously cruel, self-indulgently sentimental. What good would Helena get out of it? Laura might at least feel it as some sort of substitute for the child they would never have.
In the afternoon, running sheets and carbon into his typewriter, he set to work upon the confession. It was a slow business, for he wanted it thorough: no detail must be omitted which might help the authorities, if the document came into their hands, to verify the fantastic course of events it described. The statement was objective, with no word of self-extenuation. When he had finished, he wrote a brief covering note to Brian Holmes’s mother and put it with the carbon copy of the confession in a long envelope addressed to her.
It was now 4:20 P.M. Ned took a taxi to his club and ordered tea. While waiting for it, he asked an acquaintance to witness his signature.
“What’s this, Stowe? A will, or a contract?” asked the man, as he bent to sign at the bottom of the folded sheet Ned placed before him.
“Neither. Or both,” Ned replied.
“Oh well, I’ll trust you.”
“Many thanks.”
Poor Stowe, the man thought; ghastly business about his wife—and the fellow who did it still at large. No wonder Stowe chokes people off nowadays: he must be feeling pretty raw still. Damned awkward, though, trying to offer condolences to a chap whose wife has been murdered. What the devil form of words can one use?
Ned drank his tea and left the club. On his way back to Chelsea he called in at an ironmonger’s.