Out Of The Past (8 page)

She lifted her eyes to his face and said, “Go on.”

“He talked—about how he had never had any luck. You can’t get anywhere without money, and he had never had any. It didn’t give you a chance. And now the best he could do was to tie himself up for a beggarly few hundreds a year. I’m not going to tell you everything he said, but it was all along those lines. I went over and sat down at his table. The girl who was with him was practically out. I said, ‘You’re getting married in a day or two, aren’t you?’ And he said yes, worse luck, but you’d got to live hadn’t you, and he was down on his uppers. I said, ‘If someone were to offer you a good round sum down and a fresh start in, say, South America, what would you say about it?’ He wanted to know what I meant by a good round sum, and I told him. It seemed to sober him up. He stared at me and said, ‘You’re joking!’ I said, ‘Look here, you’re drunk. I can’t do business with you like this. If you’ll come home with me and put your head in a bucket of water, we can talk.’ ”

Carmona said nothing. She kept her eyes on his face and said nothing.

James went on.

“Well, that was how it was. He knew what he was doing all right. I fed him black coffee, and he wasn’t drunk when he made the bargain. England was getting a bit too hot for him, and he had quite a fancy for South America. And he was quite frank about the money—said yours wasn’t going to be very much good to him because it was all tied up on you and your children, whereas if he had some capital to play with, there were no end of things he could do. I saw him again next day and we fixed up the details. He was to have his passage and some spending money, and the main sum down when he reached Rio. And he wasn’t to see you. He was to write and tell you the truth—that he wasn’t within a hundred miles of being good enough for you, and that you would be better off without him.”

“He didn’t write.”

James put out his hand towards her, but she drew away from it. ‘

“I went—to the church—to marry him. He didn’t come.”

“I know. I didn’t mean it to be like that.”

It was almost as if she were appealing to him not to have let it happen, and as if he were putting out a hand to steady her—not in any physical touch, which would have sent her shrinking away into her own loneliness, but with some quiet assurance of safety. That was the curious thing about what was happening between them—under the shock, the hurt, the anger which had ravaged her, there was the instinct which looked to him for security and knew that he could give it. It was this instinct which had drawn her into marrying him. Everyone had been pleased, but everyone had been very much surprised. She knew that they were wondering how she could. So soon, and after such a hurt. They didn’t know, and she could never tell them, that when she was with James the pain and humiliation dimmed and faded out. If she could be with him all the time, it wouldn’t come back. So when he asked her, she married him.

After they had been silent a little while he said,

“We haven’t ever talked about Field. Does it still hurt such a lot?”

She looked at him piteously.

“I thought—he needed me. I knew—it wasn’t going to be easy, but I thought—I could do it. Then I began to wonder— whether I could. I had to make myself—go on. When I went to the church—and he didn’t come—it was—I don’t know how to say it—”

“You had been trying so hard, and then what you were trying to do wasn’t wanted. Was that it?”

She moved her head in assent.

“He didn’t want—any of the things—I thought—I could give him. Now I know that all he ever wanted was the money—and it wasn’t enough—” Her voice went away until the last word could only be guessed at.

He leaned forward and took her hands. This time she did not draw them away. The fingers clung to his, but when he tried to loosen them so that he might put his arms about her they clung and wouldn’t let go,

“Carmona—darling!”

But she shook her head.

“No—please—James—”

He let it be as she wanted.

The tears were running down her face. Presently she took away her hands to find a handkerchief and dry them.

James put out the dressing-room light and drew back the curtains. He looked out upon the same scene which he had watched from the drawing-room—dark water, luminous sky, and the odd shapes of the things with which Uncle Octavius had cluttered up his garden. What was new was something that stirred amongst the clutter, a tall shape amongst the other shapes which had lifted once to the sea and would never move again. Someone was going down the path which led to the cliff.

He stood there, frowning a little. Difficult to imagine that anyone from inside the house would be choosing this time to take a walk. It would certainly not occur to either of the Trevors or to Esther Field. He thought about Pippa Maybury. It was the sort of thing she might do if it came into her head, but not alone—quite definitely not alone. He remembered Alan Field’s “Can I have a word with you, Pippa?” and that she had gone out on to the terrace with him and come back looking—well, how had she looked? Excited—frightened? The impression was so momentary that he couldn’t be sure of it. He couldn’t be sure about anything. The moving figure could be someone who had no manner of business to be there. He thought he would just go down and make certain that everything was quite all right. If, for instance, someone had gone out of the house, one of the doors or windows would be ajar or at least unlatched. If, on the other hand, someone was lurking in the garden—he recalled Pippa’s use of the word with dislike—

He thought he would just go down and see what was happening. The bare possibility that Alan Field might be hanging about—

He opened the door into the bedroom and saw that Carmona was asleep. The overhead light had been turned out, but the room was full of a soft glow from the lamp on his side of the bed. She lay turned away from it, her hair dark against the pillow. He closed the door again, slipped on shoes, and caught up a torch and a light raincoat. As he came out on to the landing, the clock struck the quarter after midnight.

He found what he was looking for at the first trial. If anyone was getting out of the house in the middle of the night, it was a hundred to one they would use the glass door in the drawing-room. And there it was, the door he had locked as he talked to old Tom Trevor about the Beestons an inch or two ajar. He had locked it all right an hour ago—he was sure about that. Someone had come down and opened it. He switched off the torch, pushed the door wide, and went out on the terrace.

Standing now and listening, there was nothing either to hear or see except what he might have heard and seen on any summer night of all the nights he had slept or waked at Cliff Edge. But that someone had been there he was in no doubt, and the open door bore witness. With the torch in his hand but not switched on, he walked down the path to the gate which opened upon the cliff.

Carmona woke. It was later. She had fallen into depths of sleep almost as soon as her head touched the pillow. It was as if she had made a long journey and come to the end of it with nothing left but utter weariness and the need to sleep. When she dried her tears, it was as if she had wiped away with them all the pain which had brought them to her eyes— the pain, the anger, the deep humiliation. She no longer felt anything at all. All she wanted was to be left alone, and to lie down and go to sleep. Now she woke to the sound of running footsteps. She opened her eyes upon the glow in the room. The windows on either side of the dressing-table were dark beyond it. The footsteps ran and stumbled. There was the sound of a sobbing breath. She had the confused instinct to see without being seen. To do that she must switch off the light. She pushed back the sheet and the thin blanket and got out of bed.

As soon as the lamp was out, the windows sprang into view, no longer dark. She made her way towards the nearest and leaned out. Someone ran across the terrace and was gone.

She could hear the small sound which the glass door beneath her made as it fell to. Her mind was still not quite awake. The thought of James came into it. Not his step—no. A much lighter step than that of any man. But—the thought came again and more insistently—where was James? She had the feeling of time gone by. How much, she didn’t know, but more than it would take for him to undress and come to bed.

She drew back from the window, went to the dressing-room, and put on the light. The clothes he had worn were tumbled on a chair, his dressing-gown beside them. The raincoat which had hung behind the door was gone. The torch was gone from the dressing-table. It had lain up against the mirror behind the brushes which she had given him for a wedding present. It was gone.

She went back into her bedroom, crossed to the door, and opened it, all a good deal as if it was part of a dream. A low-powered bulb burned at the head of the stairs. The footsteps she had heard in the garden were in the hall, but they were not running now. She heard them come from the drawing-room with a slow, lagging fall, and at the foot of the stairs they stopped, as if there were no strength to go farther.

Carmona waited. The breeze between window and door made her shiver a little in her thin nightdress. The footsteps began again. They climbed the stairs, dragging on every step. She heard them come, and in the end she saw.

Pippa pulled on the newel at the head of the stair as if that last step was indeed the last that she could take. It was her right hand that pulled on the newel. Her left hung down by her side. Her face was ghastly pale, and all across the front of her dress from the knees down there was a frightful red stain.

Pippa leaned on the newel. Her breath came in shallow gasps. Then all at once she made a sideways thrust like a swimmer pushing off and took her stumbling way across the red carpet to the door of her room. It was closed. Her hand came up groping and failed twice to find the knob. The third time it gave under the fumbling touch and she went forward into the dark and was lost.

Carmona had stood there frozen, her heart thudding against her side. Now, with a quick shiver, she came back to thought and action. Oddly enough, the first thing that came to her was that she had done well to let Pippa go by, because if she had touched her she might have screamed and waked the house. Even then Carmona had a horrid certainty that no one must wake and no one must know. Adela Castleton wouldn’t wake. Her room was the nearest, but she had taken her sleeping-tablets, and she wouldn’t wake.

She crossed the landing, opened the door, and went in. Darkness met her. As she shut the door again and felt for the switch, there was a quick shuddering intake of breath not more than a yard or two away. Her fingers found the catch, light flooded the room, and she saw Pippa standing there, her eyes wide with fear, her hand stretched out as if to ward a blow. Under the high-powered bulb overhead, so much brighter than the mere glimmer on the landing, everything was quite frightfully distinct—the vivid stain on the white dress, the smudged stain on the hands.

Carmona said in a voice which surprised her because it sounded so like her own,

“Don’t look like that. It’s only me.” And then, “What has happened?”

Pippa said, “He’s dead—” Her hands came slowly down.

Carmona reached behind her and locked the door. It wasn’t until she had done this that the thought of James came to her again, and dreadfully, because she didn’t know where he was, and Pippa hadn’t said who was dead. She said it now.

“Alan—Alan is dead—”

There was such a sense of relief that Carmona almost cried out. Just one word, a name, and the blood had turned back to her heart. She came across the little space between them and said quick and low,

“Get out of that dress! And hurry! You can tell me afterwards.”

Between them they got it off, bundling it up upon itself. The stain had soaked right through. Stockings were stripped and thrust into the bundle. It was like undressing a child. Pippa’s hands pushed feebly at the white chiffon of the dress, fumbled at the clips of the suspender-belt. Her hands—the stain on them was dry. It wouldn’t come off on anything else now, but it must be got rid of. The dress must be got rid of.

Why?

Carmona said, “You had better tell me. You said Alan was dead. Did you—kill him?”

Pippa gasped and shook her head.

“No—no!”

“You had better tell me.”

“I went—to meet him—”

“Why?”

“He was going to town—in the morning. He said—he would see Bill—so I went—”

“Where?”

“The beach hut.”

“But it was locked—we always lock it.”

“Key on the hall table. He put it—in his pocket.” A shiver went over her. “As simple as that.”

Carmona said, “Go on! Here, you’d better have something round you.”

A filmy black wrap hung over the foot of the bed. It had gold and silver stars on it. Over the inky folds Pippa’s small pointed face was chalky white, her scarlet lipstick standing out like the patches on the face of a clown. The mouth opened and said,

“I went. The door was open. There wasn’t any light. I stumbled over—something—and came down. I didn’t see the stain—on my dress—I just knew it was wet—and my hands—” She had begun to shake all over.

“You said Alan was dead? You did say that.”

“Yes—he was dead—”

“How do you know?”

“I had a torch. I put it on—to see.” Her tongue was suddenly loosed. She began to sob, and between the sobs there was a jumble of words. “He was there—just inside the door. He was dead—someone had stabbed him. I didn’t do it—I swear I didn’t! How could I—I hadn’t anything to stab him with! My dress was all wet—and my hands! Oh, Carmona!”

“Are you sure he was dead?”

“You wouldn’t ask—if you’d seen him—” Her voice stopped. She shuddered dreadfully.

Carmona said, “We ought to call the police.”

Pippa stared at her.

“They’d say I did it. No—no—we can’t! Carmona, we can’t! I’d have to say I went there to meet him in the middle of the night. I’d have to tell Bill, and he’d want to know why—the police would want to know why. Do you want me to tell them Alan was blackmailing me and I was giving him my pearls so that he shouldn’t tell Bill? How long do you think they would believe I hadn’t done it if I told them that? I’d rather kill myself! Carmona, don’t you see?”

Carmona saw. During the last few horrible minutes she had been becoming more and more conscious not only of Pippa’s position, but of other things as well. Where was James? It must be very late. Uncle Octavius had had a craze for clocks. There was one in every room, and they all kept very good time. The one on the mantelpiece in Pippa’s room was of green and gold china. A bulging cupid held up the clock face on either side. Between them the hands stood at twenty to one. She had been here with Pippa for how long? Five minutes—ten?

She asked quickly, “When were you to meet Alan?” And Pippa said, “Twenty past twelve.”

The time echoed in Carmona’s mind. At twenty past twelve she had been deeply and dreamlessly asleep. James had gone to his dressing-room. He hadn’t come to bed. Where was he then? Where was he now? If they were to call the police, it must be done without delay. She couldn’t bring herself to say that it must be done.

It was half an hour before she returned to her room. They had crept downstairs and burned Pippa’s stained dress and stockings in what remained of the kitchen fire. Pippa had scrubbed and washed at the scullery sink. The Beestons slept at the top of the house. Down in the old-fashioned half-basement it was safe enough to stir up dying embers and let water run.

They went up at last, sure that no stain was left. When she had seen Pippa into bed, Carmona went back to her own room. It was in darkness, as she had left it, but it was no longer empty. She had no sooner opened the door than she knew that James had come back. The sound of his deep, quiet breathing reached her. She went softly round to her own side of the bed and got in. Not until she lay down did she know how tired she was. Too tired to think or to remember. Too tired to be anyone, or to do anything except go down, and down, and down into the sleep that closed about her.