Before the Fact (26 page)

When, therefore, Lady Fortnum found herself short of a man for the party she was taking over to a regimental ball at Poole she had no compunction in ringing up Beaky, whom she had met twice, and inviting him to dine and go on with the party, without thinking it necessary to include Beaky’s host and hostess in her invitation.

“Here, I say,” observed Mr. Thwaite, coming back from the telephone in much perturbation. “Here, this is a bit thick, you know. What? I mean, look here, old bean, what the devil am I to say? What?” He explained the dilemma.

“A sweet piece of impertinence,” Johnnie grinned. “And what did you say, Beaky?”

“Well, dash it all, old bean! I mean, I hedged. What? Told her I’d have to find out if you had an engagement. I mean – well, dash it all!

What? Look here, I say, she’s hanging on. What shall I say?”

“Go if you want to, Beaky,” said Lina. “Don’t if you don’t. Do you?”

“Oh, draw it mild. I mean ... Good God! Well, after all, I suppose a dance is a dance, isn’t it? But look here, I say, if she’s got the nerve not to ask you too ... Well, I mean, dash it all!”

“You go, Beaky,” Lina advised.

So Beaky went.

“I think that about reaches even her limit, for downright impudence,” observed Lina, but without rancour. The absence of rancour was due to the fact that at any rate she would have an evening without Beaky, which was a relief.

During the course of it she said tentatively to Johnnie:

“Johnnie, I don’t want to be a nuisance or interfere with your plans, but need we really have Beaky to stay again for a long, long time?”

Johnnie grinned at her. “Getting a bit fed up?”

“Yes. He’s
so
dull.”

“I’m getting fed up too. We won’t have him again.”

“What, never?”

“I hope not.”

“You can manage the business without him?”

“Oh, Lord, yes.” Johnnie paused. “As a matter of fact,” he said airily, “it’s all a washout.”

“What, the land scheme?”

“Yes. The price of land has gone up. We couldn’t make a good enough profit. Don’t tell Beaky that, though,” Johnnie added quickly.

“Why not?”

“I’ll tell him myself, by letter, when I call the whole thing off.”

“Why not tell him before he goes?”

“Oh, I don’t know. He’d want to ask a lot of fool questions. It’d be easier by letter.”

Lina felt her heart give a little leap. Johnnie had spoken far, far too glibly. She thought: There’s something wrong here, my lad.

Quite casually she asked: “What’s going to happen to the money, then?”

“The money?” Johnnie looked his artless surprise.

“The fifteen thousand that you brought back from America.”

“Oh! Well, I suppose Beaky will use it in some other way.
I
don’t know.”

“Has he got it now, or have you?”

“He has. You’re very curious this evening, monkeyface.”

Lina forced a laugh. “Am I? I didn’t mean to be. I suppose I want to talk to you, now we’ve got an evening to ourselves for once.”

“Well, don’t let’s talk about that business. I’m sick of it. And of course it’s been a great disappointment to me.” But Johnnie did not look disappointed in the least: though he obviously tried.

Lina hid her alarm as she thought to herself: Johnnie’s made up his mind to get that fifteen thousand somehow. I’m
certain
he has.

She felt suddenly very miserable and dispirited.

Johnnie had relapsed.

But she had no evidence that Johnnie had relapsed.

On the contrary, Johnnie had spoken the truth.

Not for a moment had Lina believed that the fifteen thousand pounds was in the possession of Beaky.

Wrapping up her question as much as possible, though careless of what Johnnie might say did he discover that it had ever been put, she found out from Beaky the next morning that the fifteen thousand really was in his own keeping. It was lodged in a bank in Paris, under an alias.

“Why do you have to be so secretive about it?” asked Lina, worried.

“Good God, I don’t know. Ask the old bean. Agin the law, or some rot.”

“Johnnie would know, of course,” Lina said quickly, doing her best to prevent this conversation from being repeated too. “Did he advise secrecy?”

“Rather. Half the fun, what? Don’t want to be copped and jugged, eh? I mean, what?”

“No, of course you don’t,” Lina said brightly.

But the conversation had not eased her mind.

If anything it worried her still more that Beaky should have the money himself.

For how in that case did Johnnie contemplate getting it except by some scheme that would be quite flagrant?

There were two whole days left of Beaky’s visit.

Lina did not know what to do.

She did not see how she could warn Beaky more than she had done already. If he had been too stupid to take her hints, then she had done all she could for him. Besides, it was not the possibility of Beaky losing his money that worried her in the least. That prospect meant nothing to her at all. What terrified her was the unmasking of Johnnie as the dishonest agent of Beaky’s loss.

She did not know what to do.

The thought occurred to her of asking Johnnie outright
why
this suspicious secrecy was necessary: of questioning and pestering him until she got at some clue to the plan that Johnnie must have in his mind. But Johnnie, she felt sure, would not allow himself to be questioned and pestered. And in her ignorance he could so easily put her off with a plausible answer. In any case, she did remember vaguely something about a prohibition against the removal of funds from England during the crisis; though whether it was still in force or not, she did not know. But such a prohibition there seemed to have been; and Beaky seemed to have contravened it; so the employment of secrecy would, according to Johnnie, be quite plausible.

Sitting in front of her dressing-table mirror as she curled the back ends of her hair before dinner, Lina laid down the tongs and stared sightlessly at her own reflection.
Why
had Johnnie called the land scheme off so suddenly? And
why
had he been so anxious that Beaky should not know yet?

And why, for that matter, had he told her?

Had it been by way of preparation for some surprise later?

Why, why, why?

“Oh, God,” Lina breathed wretchedly.

It was all beginning again; and she had thought it all finished. The old load of unfair responsibility, enormous responsibility which she hated so much and with which she felt herself so unfitted to cope, was pressing down on her again.

She took up her tongs from their little nest of fire in the Meta holder and went on with her work. Whether one’s husband is meditating larceny on a grand scale or whether he is not, one’s back-hair must still be curled.

She worked mechanically, her mind busy.

The tongs slipped and burnt the side of her neck. She uttered a little squeak and searched hurriedly for cold cream.

As if the physical stimulus had jogged her mind, her thoughts became less despondent. After all, what evidence had she? None at all. There was nothing whatever really to show that Johnnie was meditating any such crime. It had just been her intuition; and Lina had read enough books by men to know how fallible feminine intuition is.

She had probably been imagining the whole thing.

Yes, that was it. Her imagination, stimulated by fear and the knowledge of Johnnie’s old weakness, had carried her away. Johnnie had assured her only a couple of days ago that all that kind of thing was dead and buried. She must have more faith in him. Johnnie had not relapsed at all. She had imagined the whole thing.

While she finished dressing Lina was very busy persuading herself that she had imagined the whole thing.

But in the drawing room after dinner her fears returned.

Johnnie was so very attentive to Beaky.

Uselessly Lina told herself that it was absurd of her to be suspicious because Johnnie was attentive to Beaky. She remembered only too well how attentive Johnnie had been to herself when he was about to rob her. And here was Johnnie behaving in exactly the same way to Beaky: laughing at his silly jokes, encouraging him to the reminiscence that Beaky loved, pressing drinks and cigars on him, quite ignoring his wife in his concentration on his guest.

“Ho, ho!” roared Beaky, already rather drunk. “Here, draw it mild, old bean. You’ll have me tanked soon. What? I mean, won’t Lina have a spot?”

“No, thank you,” said Lina coldly. She really disliked Beaky now, for being about to be robbed by Johnnie.

Too restless to sit down, she moved to the piano, which she had not opened for months. Johnnie meant to rob Beaky. How was she going to stop it?

“Going to strum?” inquired Beaky, superfluously. “Tophole. Here, I say, old bean, remember those songs old Hardy had on that gramophone of his? Pretty ghastly, what?
Carolina Brown.
Eh? Good God! Play
Carolina Brown,
Lina.”

Lina played Debussy.

She thought:

“My husband’s going to rob you. You
idiot!
My husband’s going to rob you of fifteen thousand pounds. Why the hell can’t you stop him for yourself?”

She got up from the piano.

Beaky, egged on by Johnnie, was consuming yet another whisky-and-soda. He would probably be drunk soon. Was Johnnie trying to make him drunk? Why? Johnnie would certainly have no difficulty in making Beaky drunk if he wanted. Beaky did anything Johnnie suggested. And if he demurred, it only needed an adult version (and not so very adult either) of the old schoolboy “dare” to bring Beaky up to scratch at once. But why should Johnnie be trying, apparently, to make Beaky drunk here and now? The money in any case was in Paris.

“I think I shall go to bed,” Lina said.

Johnnie nodded. Beaky rose, not too steadily.

Lina looked at him with distaste. She thought, again:

“Yes, my husband’s going to rob you. He’s going to rob you of that fifteen thousand pounds as sure as eggs are eggs. He’s going to get that money if he has to kill you for it – if ...”

“Darling – what’s the matter?” exclaimed Johnnie.

“Hullo! Here, I say ... Good God!” said Beaky. Lina had fainted.

Johnnie meant to kill Beaky.

Lina knew it.

She could not prove it, she could not argue it, she could not defend her conviction in any way. She simply
knew
it.

And what was she going to do about it?

All night long, after Johnnie had carried her up to her bedroom, she lay awake, trying to force her distracted mind to deal with this dreadful emergency; and in the morning she still had no plan.

Beaky was going the next day but one. And some time after that, unless she prevented it, Johnnie would kill him. She had two whole days in which to find a means of preventing it.

What was she going to do?

Stray remarks of Johnnie’s had taken on a new significance now. It was the last time Beaky would stay at Dellfield; the failure of the land scheme was a great disappointment, when Johnnie had not looked disappointed at all – when Johnnie had tried to look disappointed and failed. Lina saw now why Johnnie had abandoned the land scheme. It was horribly true that there was not enough profit in it. There would be far more profit in getting rid of Beaky altogether: there would be fifteen thousand pounds’ profit in that. And the reason for all that secrecy about the money was now only too plain. It would never be traced to Johnnie, because nobody at all except their three selves knew of its existence.

But Johnnie had insisted on secrecy from the very first. Did that mean that from the very first he had meditated ...?

Lina buried her burning face in her hot pillow. It was too horrible.

And only she could stop it.

And what was she going to do?

In the end she did nothing.

As the morning drew on she saw more and more clearly that she had been making a colossal, a perfectly hideous mistake. A single stab of preposterous inspiration had led to a whole night’s nightmare; and that was all. It is ridiculous to take seriously the bogies that sit on one’s bed when one’s head is splitting and one cannot sleep. Indigestion! From indigestion of the stomach to indigestion of the mind is only a short step after all. The whole thing had been indigestion, and nothing more.

Ordering the meals, doing the flowers, washing out a pair of stockings, among normal tasks and normal sights, Lina rapidly became normal herself. It was, she saw, and even smiled at herself for ever having failed to see it, quite impossible for murder to connect itself with such a very ordinary household as Dellfield.

Murder!

Johnnie contemplating the murder of Beaky!

Husband Johnnie contemplating the murder of friend Beaky!

What could be more impossible?

Of course there had been that incident four years ago. But that had not been
murder.
Not exactly
murder.
And it might very well not have been anything at all. Lina had never known. And nowadays she did not want to know. But more and more she had been taking it for granted lately that her imagination had created the whole thing. Nothing like that scene which she had visualized had ever taken place at all. She practically believed that now. She did believe it.

So of course there simply was no precedent.

And without a precedent this new piece of idiocy would naturally never have entered her mind at all.

So there one was.

But just to prove to herself how mistaken she had been, how wickedly mistaken, she noticed Johnnie very carefully during that evening; and Johnnie was perfectly normal.

Johnnie was normal, Lina was normal, Beaky was as near normal as he ever could be: everything was normal. And too much imagination is a great curse.

Fortunately Lina was far too worn out that night to exercise the curse. She slept for nine hours without opening an eye.

But in the morning her doubts returned.

She felt heavy and depressed, as one does when one has slept too long. The breakfast tray seemed to weigh her down in bed; she did not even open
The Times.