Bedelia (24 page)

He was not such a fool that he believed his troubles were over because the sun was bright, but he felt new strength in his body, clarity in his mind, and his nerves became steadier. He tried to consider his problem objectively, as if someone had said to him, “See here, Charlie, a friend of mine's in trouble. You see, he got married recently and he's crazy about his wife, and now he doesn't know what to do . . .”

“What kind of trouble?” he would naturally ask.

“He's discovered his wife's a . . . a criminal.”

The word was not shocking. Criminal might mean petty thief or a woman who made herself a nuisance to the neighbors.

“What crime has she committed?”

“Murder.”

Murder. That gave a different complexion to his friend's troubles. But even murder had certain justifications. Self-defense, for instance.

“Who'd she murder?”

“Her husband.” But that was not the whole truth. “Several husbands, in fact. Four, perhaps five.”

Objectively it was unbelievable, the sort of thing that could never happen to a friend of a friend of Charlie Horst's. He would have to ask why the wife had murdered four or five husbands.

“For money. For their life insurance.”

There it was, the whole truth, so evil that there could be but one solution to the problem. No use arguing, “But my friend loves his wife and she loves him. She doesn't want her husband to die, she loves him, she's bearing his child . . .”

He had to quit thinking. It was better to invest his energy in hard work. Each time he raised the shovel and straightened his body, he looked around and saw white hills, the charcoal black of trees and branches, their shadows purple on the snow, and his house, so sturdy and honest in its proportions, and so American and secure and right with its clapboards and its clean green shutters. With each shovel load he felt better and younger, almost as if he were tossing aside his problems with the snow. The events of the past few days seemed less real and his wife was as good and commonplace as any of the neighbors.

Montagnino's polished black delivery wagon set high on smart yellow wheels stopped on the highway. The boy jumped out. From the back of the wagon he took three bushel baskets, which he carried, one after another, to the shed. He was a handsome Italian boy with cheeks that glowed carmine on his clear dark skin. Although she was now Hen Blackman's fiancée, Mary did not mind stopping her work to chatter with him. He had plenty to tell her, of the customers who had been snowed in and unable to get groceries and of those who were still isolated. The snowstorm had made him important because some of the richest people in the neighborhood might have starved to death if he hadn't come out to the country this morning in his yellow-wheeled wagon.

Charlie worked for another hour. The exercise warmed him and underneath his heavy mackinaw he felt the sweat rising on his body. When Mary opened a window on the second floor, he ordered her to close it before a draft crept through the halls to his wife's bedroom. Suddenly he felt very weary. He stood like a lazy workman, leaning on his shovel and looking at the landscape. He had not done much physical work recently and his muscles had become soft. Enthusiasm was dying. But it was like his mother's son to push on, and he began again and kept at it in spite of weariness until he had cleared another six feet. Then he gave up and decided to finish after lunch.

Snow was caked on his boots. The soles were dripping. Charlie was too thoughtful to ever walk on the good rugs with wet boots. He went around the back way. The shed was dark, but he did not bother to switch on the light. Sitting on a three-legged stool he unlaced his boots. In a corner near the door he noticed the three baskets that Montagnino's boy had carried in. Two were empty and one was full. That would be Ben Chaney's order.

He heard a muffled cough and looked through the glass doorpane into the kitchen. Bedelia stood beside the table, her hand stifling the cough. She was bent over the kitchen table, working at something with a sort of surreptitious tension. She opened a package. Her body screened that part of the table upon
which she had set the contents, but Charlie saw that she set the wrapping paper carefully aside and folded the string upon it. She thrust her right hand into the neck of her robe.

Mary thumped down the front stairs with the carpet-sweeper. Bedelia straightened quickly. Her glance slid slyly in the direction of the dining-room door, which was closed. Immediately she thrust into the neck of her robe whatever she had taken from it, and with a casual saunter, went toward the dining-room door. She opened it and called to Mary, bidding the girl hurry back upstairs.

“I want you to clean my bedroom while I'm out of it, Mary.”

“Oh, I didn't know you was downstairs, Mrs. Horst. Is there something I could do for you?” Mary called.

“Go upstairs and change my bed at once.”

Mary thumped up the stairs.

Before Bedelia returned to the table, Charlie had opportunity to see what she had taken from the wrapping paper. It was a wedge of Gorgonzola cheese, its surface green with mold. Bedelia reached into her robe again and Charlie saw that she had a small round box in her hand. It was the unlabeled pillbox he had found among her knickknacks the night she tried to escape. He had thought the powder in it was a polish for her fingernails.

Charlie was paralyzed. It was like a nightmare. He did not try to speak or move because he knew his voice was gone and his limbs were useless.

Bedelia had put the top back on the pillbox and returned it to her bosom. She wrapped the cheese in the paper and started to tie it up. But the string was knotted. She had to find the ball of twine that she kept in one of the drawers of her cabinet. It was not quite so thick as Montagnino's string, and Charlie saw that she was making a mistake, the stupid and trivial mistake which destroys the perfection of a crime. Evidently she did not notice, for she cut off a length of twine and tied it around the cheese. Then, walking on tiptoes, she carried the old knotted string to the stove, lifted one of the iron plates and dropped the string into the flames. She was not hurrying, but going about her
preparations for murder as efficiently as if she were cooking a meal. A cautious glance around the kitchen assured her that she had left no trace of her work. With the parcel in her hand she moved toward the shed.

Charlie backed into a corner.

Bedelia entered the shed and blinked. It was dark and her eyes had become accustomed to the bright electric light of the kitchen. She had not the slightest idea that Charlie was there and passed close to him. Bending over the filled bushel basket, she rearranged boxes and parcels and placed the package under a cloth bag filled with salt. As she straightened, she sniffed at her fingertips.

Out, damned spot! Out, I say.

Out, damned smell of cheese! Out, damned stink of murder!

Charlie had been stunned at first, had looked away because he had not wanted his eyes to behold this fresh evil. As Bedelia bent over, arranging the parcels so that hers should not be too prominently placed in the basket, he knew that he could no longer close his eyes, deafen his ears, remain mute, or comfort himself with miracles. Cunningly, as she lay in the bed in which his mother had slept, his wife had planned the murder of two men. Charlie saw now why she had been so amiable in accepting his decision to stay and fight it out. She meant to stay, but to avoid the fight.

Circumstances had provided her with weapons for getting rid of troublesome enemies. Ben's fondness for cheese had served her like Herman Bender's taste for mushrooms, McKelvey's enjoyment of fish. The taste of Gorgonzola is so strong, so rotten, that the most delicate palate might not perceive the flavor of poison. Bedelia's enemies would not have died in her house after eating at her table. She would have no connection with their deaths, but would hear of the tragedy, like the rest of the town, through a telephone call or an item in the newspaper.

“Bedelia!”

She whirled around. Charlie came out of the corner. She saw him and stiffened.

“Oh, I didn't know you were here. You startled me.” Small
spaces marked by heavy breathing separated the words. Hastily she added, “That silly clerk of Montagnino's has made a mistake again. Putting some of Ben's groceries with ours. It's lucky I came down to check our order.”

The ease of her falsehood sickened Charlie. He had swallowed other lies because he loved her, but now that he had seen her cruel and deliberate preparations for a new crime, he abhorred the memory of that love.

“I'm sorry I broke my promise, Charlie, but you mustn't be angry. My cough is so much better it seemed silly to stay in bed.” A soft woman she was, yielding, gentle, shrinking before his male strength.

His fingers dug into her shoulders. He jerked her toward him. The neck of her robe was cut out like a V and above it her throat was like porcelain. His hand curled around it.

“Charlie—dear!”

That was all she could say. Charlie's hand had tightened on her throat. When she saw that he was not to be cajoled out of his anger, her eyes darkened and hardened. She fought back desperately, writhed in his arms, kicked at his legs. A kind of ecstasy seized Charlie. His knuckles bulged, knots rose in his hands as they felt the warm throbbing of Bedelia's throat. Her jetty restless eyes reminded Charlie of the mouse he had caught in the trap and he thought exultantly of the blow that had killed it.

Bedelia was the first to give up the struggle. She relaxed so suddenly that she fell back in Charlie's arms. Her face wore the curves of gentleness again. Slyness was erased. Whether for death or love she had yielded.

A mist rose, clouding his sight, dimming his mind. His hands loosened and fell away. His ecstasy passed and he felt weary. Both of them were worn out. Bedelia's eyes sought Charlie's. She tried to catch and hold his glance. Her hand groped forward, found his arm, lay heavy upon it.

“Charlie, Charlie dearest.”

He avoided her eyes.

“You don't understand,” she murmured.

“I'm afraid I do,” Charlie said coldly.

He pulled her toward him again as if her were going to kiss her, but instead he reached into the neck of her robe, took out the pillbox, and dropped it into his pocket. Then he went to the bushel basket and shuffled the packages until he found the one she had hidden under the bag of salt. This, too, went into the pocket of his mackinaw.

Bedelia leaned against the stool, watching him through her eyelashes. “You wouldn't hurt me, Charlie. I know you wouldn't. I wouldn't hurt you either.” She had planted herself before him, barring his way to the door. “I do love you, I'd rather die than see anything happen to you.”

He pushed her aside and left the shed. As he crossed the kitchen, he reached for the cord and snapped off the light.

In the hall he felt that she was behind him, but he did not turn. She caught hold of his arm.

“We haven't much time.”

Charlie jerked away. The whispered warning had made him her partner in crime. “Go upstairs,” he said.

She was bent over, a suppliant, begging for mercy. She dared not look at Charlie, for his face was of metal, no more alive than the face of his ancestor, Colonel Nathaniel Philbrick, the bronze rider on the bronze horse in the square downtown. Bedelia spoke quickly as if she had only a short time and a great deal to say. “We can get away now if we hurry.”

“Sh-sh!”

“We needn't take anything with us, we can buy whatever we want. I've got money, plenty of money, more than you know; it's in New York and I can get it without anybody finding out. Even you don't know the name.” Her voice reached a high note and cracked. “I'll give it all to you, Charlie, every cent.”

“Sh-sh!” he said again. Mary was coming down the stairs slowly, squatting on each tread as she dusted the baseboard.

“You're all I've got,” Bedelia whispered. “I haven't anyone else in the world. Who'll take care of me? Don't you love me, Charlie?”

The telephone rang. Charlie swept Bedelia off her feet and carried her up the stairs.

Mary saw them and her jaw dropped. The phone continued to ring.

“Answer it, Mary. Take the message. Say I can't come now,” Charlie barked at the gaping girl.

He carried Bedelia into the bedroom. After he had put her on the bed, she would not let him go, but clung to him with tense, trembling hands. As he struggled to free himself, he noticed the garnet ring on the fourth finger of his wife's hand, and he remembered painfully his joy when he discovered the trinket in an antique shop.

“Let go!” he said.

“Don't be so mean to me, please, Charlie. Why don't you call me Biddy any more? You haven't called me Biddy for a long time now. Have you stopped loving me?”

The effrontery of it shocked him. He gave up the struggle and allowed her to cling while he sat at the edge of the bed. Her hands, gripping on his coat-sleeve, were no longer plump and seductive. The dimples had disappeared and there were blue veins running from wrists to fingers.

She tried, courageously, to smile at Charlie. “You wouldn't let them take me away, would you? I'm your wife, you know, and I'm sick. I'm a very sick woman, your wife. I've never told you, dear, how sick I am. My heart, I might die at any moment. I must never be distressed about anything.” Her hands tightened on the rough wool of the mackinaw. “I didn't ever tell you, Charlie, because I didn't want you to worry.” This she said with a sort of determined gallantry, both sweet and bitter.