Waltz Into Darkness (33 page)

"Now
you're a man after my own heart," she said with glittering
fervor. "Now you're worth taking up with. Now you're my kind
of man."

She
smote his uncertain glass with hers, and her head went back, and she
pitched the liquor in through those demure lips, that scarcely seemed
able to open at all.

"Here's
to us," she said. "To you. To me. To the two of us. Drink
up, my lovey. A short life and an exciting one."

She
cast her drained glass against the wall and it sprayed into
fragments.

He
hesitated a moment, then, as if hurrying to overtake her, lest he be
left all alone, drained his own and sent it after hers.

46

The
eye, falling upon them unwarned half an hour later, would have
mistaken them for a pretty picture of domesticity; discussing some
problem of meeting household expense, perhaps, or of planning the
refurnishing of a room.

He
sat now, legs outspread, head lolling back, in a chair with arms, and
she sat perched on one of the arms of it, close beside him, her hand
occasionally straying absently to his hair, as they mulled and talked
it over.

He
had been holding a glass, a succeeding one, in his hand. She took it
away from him at last and placed it on the table. "No more of
that just now," she admonished, and patted him on the head.
"You. must keep your head clear for this."

"It's
hopeless, Bonny," he said wanly.

"It's
nothing of the sort." Again she patted him on the head. "I've
been--"

She
didn't finish it, but somehow he guessed what she'd been about to
say. I've been in situations like this before. He wondered where, he
wondered when. He wondered who had done it, who she'd been with at
the time.

"To
run flying out of here," she resumed, as if taking up a
discussion that had been allowed to lapse some little time before,
"would be the most foolhardy thing people in--our
position--could do." As if hearing her from a great distance, he
was amazed at how prim, how mincing, her words sounded; as if she
were a pretty young schoolmistress patiently instructing a
not-very-bright pupil in his lesson. She should have had some
embroidery on her lap, and her eyes downcast to it as she spoke, to
match her tone of voice.

"We
can't stay, Bonny," he faltered. "What are we going to
do? How can we stay?" And hid his eyes for a moment behind his
own hand. "It's already an hour."

"How
long was it before I came home ?" she asked with an almost
scientific detachment.

"I
don't know. It seemed like a long time-" He started up
rebelliously from the chair. "We could have been far from here,
already. We should have been!"

She
pressed him gently but firmly back.

"We're
not staying," she calmed him. "But we're not rushing off
helter-skelter either, at the drop of a hat. Don't you know what that
would mean? In a few hours at most, someone would have found it out,
be on our heels."

"Well,
they will anyway!"

"No
they won't. Not if we play our cards right. We'll go in our own good
time. But that comes last of all, when we're good and ready for it.
The first thing is--" she hooked her thumb negligently across
the room, "--that has to be got out of the way."

"Taken
outside the house?" he suggested dubiously.

She
gnawed her lips reflectively. "Wait, let me think a minute."
At last she shook her head, said slowly: "No, not outside-- We'd
be seen. Almost certainly."

"Then--?"

"Somewhere
inside," she said, with a slight motion of her shoulders, as
though that were to be understood, went without saying.

The
idea horrified him. "Right here in the house--?"

"Of
course. It's a lot safer. In fact, it's the only thing for us to do.
We're here alone, just the two of us; no servants. We can take all
the time we need--"

"Ugh,"
he groaned.

She
was pondering again, worrying her lip; she seemed to have no time for
emotion. She frightened him almost as much as the fact they were
trying to conceal.

"One
of the fireplaces ?" he faltered. "There are two large ones
down on this floor--"

She
shook her head. "That would only be a matter of days."

"A
closet ?"

"Worse.
A matter of hours." She stretched her foot out and tapped down
her heel a couple of times. Then she nodded, as if she were at last
nearing a satisfactory decision. "One of the floors."

"They're
hardwood. It would be noticed the minute anyone came into the room."

"The
cellar. What's the floor of that like ?"

He
couldn't recall having seen it; had never been down there, to his
knowledge.

She
quitted the chair abruptly. The period of incubation had ended, the
period of action had begun. "Wait a minute. I'll go down take a
look." From the doorway, without turning her head, she warned:
"Don't take any more of those drinks while I'm gone."

She
came running back, squinting shrewdly. "Hard dirt. That'll do."

She
had to think for the two of them. She pulled at him briskly by the
shoulder. "Come on, let's get it down there awhile. It's better
than leaving it up here until we're ready. Someone may come to the
door in the meantime."

He
went over to it and stopped, trying to quell the nausea assailing his
stomach.

She
had to think of everything. "Hadn't you better take your coat
off? It'll hamper you."

She
took it from him and draped it carefully over a chair back, so that
it would not wrinkle. She even brushed a little at one of the sleeves
for a moment, before letting it be.

He
wondered how such a commonplace, everyday act, her helping him off
with his coat, could seem so grisly to him, making him quail to his
marrow.

He
took it up by its middle, the furled rug, packed it underarm,
clasping it overarm with his other. One end, where the feet
presumably were, of necessity slanted and dragged on the floor, of
its own weight. The other end, where the head was, he managed to keep
upward.

He
advanced a few paces, draggingly. Suddenly the weight had eased, the
lower end had lost its restraining drag on the floor. He looked, and
she was holding that for him, helping him.

"No,
for God's sake, no!" he said sickly. "Not you--"

"Oh,
don't be a fool, Louis," she answered impatiently. "It's a
lot quicker this way!" Then she added, with somewhat less
asperity, "It's just a rug to me. I can't see anything."

They
traveled with it out of the room, and along the cellarward passage to
its back. Then had to stop and set it down, while he opened the door.
Then in through there, and down the stairs, to cellar bottom. Then
set it down once more, for good.

He
was breathing hard. He passed his hand over his forehead.

"Heavy,"
she agreed. She blew out her breath, with a slight smile.

All
the little things she did horrified him so. His blood almost turned
cold at that.

They
picked a place for it against the wall. She used the sharp toe of her
shoe to test several, kicking and prodding at them, before settling
on it. "I think this is about the best. It's a little less
compact here."

He
picked up a piece of rotting, discarded timber, broke it over his
upthrust knee to obtain a sharp point.

"You're
not going to do it with that, are you? It would take you the
live-long night!" There was almost a hint of risibility in her
voice, inconceivable as that was to him.

He
drove it into the hard-packed floor, and it promptly broke a second
time, proving its worthlessness.

"It'll
take a shovel," she said. "Nothing else will do."

"There's
none down here."

"There's
none anywhere in the house. We'll have to bring one in." She
started up the steps. He remained standing there. She turned at their
top and beckoned him. "I'll go out and get it," she said.
"You're kind of shaky yet, I can see that. Don't stay down there
while I'm gone, it'll make you worse. Wait upstairs for me."

He
followed her up, closed the cellar door after him.

She
put on her poke bonnet, threw a shawl over her shoulders, as if it
were the merest domestic errand she were going upon.

"Do
you think it's prudent ?" he said.

"People
buy shovels, you know. There need be no harm in that. It's all in the
way you carry it off."

She
went toward the outside door, and he trailed behind her.

She
turned to him there. "Keep your courage up, honey." She
held his chin fast, kissed him on the lips.

He'd
never known a kiss could be such a gruesome thing before.

"Stay
up here, away from it," she counselled. "And don't go back
to that liquor." She was like a conscientious mother giving a
small boy last minute injunctions, putting him on his good behavior,
before leaving him to himself.

The
door closed, and he watched her for a moment through its pane. Saw
her go down the front walk, just like any bustling little matron on a
housewifely errand. She was even diligently stroking her mittens on
as she turned up the road and went from sight.

He
was left alone with his dead.

He
sought the nearest room at hand, not the one in which it had
happened, and collapsed into a chair, and huddled there inert, his
face pressed inward against its back, and waited for her to return.

It
seemed hours before she did. And it must, in truth, have been the
better part of one.

She
brought it in with her. She was carrying it openly--but then how else
was she to have carried it? Its bit was wrapped in brown paper, tied
with a string. The stick protruded unconcealed.

"Was
I long?"

"Forever,"
he groaned.

"I
deliberately went out of my way," she explained. "I didn't
want to buy it too near here, where we're known by sight."

"It
was a mistake to get it at all, don't you think?"

She
gave him a confident smirk. "Not in the way I did it. I did not
ask to buy a shovel at all. It was his advice that I buy one. What I
asked was what implement he could suggest my using to cultivate in
the space behind our house, whether a spade or a rake. I was dubious
of a shovel; it took all his persuasion to convince me." She
wagged her head cocksurely.

And
she could stand there and dicker; he thought, incredulous.

He
took it from her.

"Shall
I come down with you?" she offered, carefully removing her
bonnet with both hands, replacing the pins in it, and setting it down
meticulously so that its shape would not suffer.

"No,"
he said in a stifled voice. To have had her watch him would have been
an added horror, for some reason, that he could not have borne. "I'll
let you know when--I've done."

She
gave him helpful last minute instructions. "Mark it off first.
You know, how long and how wide you'll want it. With the tip of the
shovel. That'll keep you from doing more work than is needful."

His
silent answer to this was the reflex of retching.

He
closed the door after him, went down the steps.

The
lamp was still burning where they'd left it before.

He
turned it up higher. Then that was too bright, it showed him too
much; he quickly moderated it a little.

He'd
never dug a grave before.

He
marked it off first, as she'd told him. He drove the shovel into the
marked-off space and left it, standing upright of its own weight. He
rolled his shirt sleeves up out of the way.

Then
he took up the shovel and began.

The
digging part was not so bad. It was behind him, out of sight, while
he was at it. Horror, though it did not disappear altogether, was
kept to a minimum. It might have been just a necessary trench or pit
he was digging.