“Keep him in bed,” Dr. Lawson said, “and give him plenty of warm drinks. I doubt if he could get up if he tried.”
I said rather shamefacedly that I had tried and I couldn’t and that my legs felt like jelly. Immediately Laura said she wouldn’t go out that night, and I blessed Lawson when he told her not to be silly.
All I needed was rest and to be allowed to sleep. After a good deal of fussing and self-reproach and promises not to be gone more than two hours at the most, she finally went off at seven.
As soon as the car had departed, I got up. Brenda’s house could be seen from my bedroom window, and I saw that she had lights on but no porch light. The night was dark, moonless and starless. I put trousers and a sweater on over my pajamas and made my way downstairs.
By the time I was halfway down I knew that I needn’t have pretended to be ill or bothered with the thermometer ploy. I was ill. I was shivering and swaying, great waves of dizziness kept coming over me, and I had to hang on to the banisters for support. That wasn’t the only thing that had gone wrong. I had intended, when the deed was done and I was back home again, to cut up my coat and gloves with Laura’s electric scissors and burn the pieces on our living room fire. But I couldn’t find the scissors and I realized Laura must have taken them with her to her dressmaking session. Worse than that, there was no fire alight. Our central heating was very efficient and we only had an open fire for the pleasure and coziness of it, but Laura hadn’t troubled to light one while I was upstairs ill. At that moment I nearly gave up. But it was then or never. I would never again have such circumstances and such an alibi. Either kill her now, I thought, or live in an odious ménage à trois for the rest of my life.
We kept the raincoats and gloves we used for gardening in a cupboard in the kitchen by the back door. Laura had left only the hall light on, and I didn’t think it would be wise to switch on any more. In the semi-darkness I fumbled about in the cupboard for my raincoat, found it and put it on. It seemed tight on me, my body was so stiff and sweaty, but I managed to button it up, and then I put on the gloves. I took with me one of our kitchen knives and let myself out by the back door. It wasn’t a frosty night, but raw and cold and damp.
I went down the garden, up the lane and into the garden of Brenda’s cottage. I had to feel my way round the side of the house, for there was no light there at all. But the kitchen light was on and the back door unlocked. I tapped and let myself in without waiting to be asked. Brenda, in full evening rig, glittery sweater, gilt necklace, long skirt, was cooking her solitary supper. And then, for the first time ever, when it didn’t matter any more, when it was too late, I felt pity for her. There she was, a handsome, rich, gifted woman with the reputation of a seductress, but in reality as destitute of people who really cared for her as poor old Peggy Daley had been; there she was, dressed for a party, heating up tinned spaghetti in a cottage kitchen at the back of beyond.
She turned round, looking apprehensive, but only, I think, because she was always afraid when we were alone that I would try to make love to her.
“What are you doing out of bed?” she said, and then, “Why are you wearing those clothes?”
I didn’t answer her. I stabbed her in the chest again and again.
She made no sound but a little choking moan and she crumpled up on the floor. Although I had known how it would be, had hoped for it, the shock was so great and I had already been feeling so swimmy and strange, that all I wanted was to throw myself down too and close my eyes and sleep. That was impossible. I turned off the cooker. I checked that there was no blood on my trousers and my shoes, though of course there was plenty on the raincoat, and then I staggered out, switching off the light behind me.
I don’t know how I found my way back, it was so dark and by then I was lightheaded and my heart was drumming. I just had the presence of mind to strip off the raincoat and the gloves and push them into our garden incinerator. In the morning I would have to get up enough strength to burn them before Brenda’s body was found. The knife I washed and put back in the drawer.
Laura came back about five minutes after I had got myself to bed.
She had been gone less than half an hour. I turned over and managed to raise myself up to ask her why she was back so soon. It seemed to me that she had a strange distraught look about her.
“What’s the matter?” I mumbled. “Were you worried about me?”
“No,” she said, “no,” but she didn’t come up close to me or put her hand on my forehead. “It was — Isabel Goldsmith told me something — I was upset — I…It’s no use talking about it now, you’re too ill.” She said in a sharper tone than I had ever heard her use,
“Can I get you anything?”
“I just want to sleep,” I said.
“I shall sleep in the spare room. Good night.”
That was reasonable enough, but we had never slept apart before during the whole of our marriage, and she could hardly have been afraid of catching the flu, having only just got over it herself. But I was in no state to worry about that, and I fell into the troubled nightmare-ridden sleep of fever. I remember one of those dreams.
It was of Laura finding Brenda’s body herself, a not unlikely eventuality.
However, she didn’t find it. Brenda’s cleaner did. I knew what must have happened because I saw the police car arrive from my window.
An hour or so later Laura came in to tell me the news which she had got from Jack Williamson.
“It must have been the same man who killed Peggy,” she said.
I felt better already. Things were going well. “My poor darling,”
I said, “you must feel terrible, you were such close friends.”
She said nothing. She straightened my bedclothes and left the room. I knew I should have to get up and burn the contents of the incinerator, but I couldn’t get up. I put my feet out and reached for the floor, but it was as if the floor came up to meet me and threw me back again. I wasn’t over-worried. The police would think what Laura thought, what everyone must think.
That afternoon they came, a chief inspector and a sergeant. Laura brought them up to our bedroom and they talked to us together.
The chief inspector said he understood we were close friends of the dead woman, wanted to know when we had last seen her and what we had been doing on the previous evening. Then he asked if we had any idea at all as to who had killed her.
“That maniac who murdered the other woman, of course,” said Laura.
“I can see you don’t read the papers,” he said.
Usually we did. It was my habit to read a morning paper in the office and to bring an evening paper home with me. But I had been at home ill. It turned out that a man had been arrested on the previous morning for the murder of Peggy Daley. The shock made me flinch and I’m sure I turned pale. But the policemen didn’t seem to notice. They thanked us for our co-operation, apologized for disturbing a sick man, and left. When they had gone I asked Laura what Isabel had said to upset her the night before. She came up to me and put her arms round me.
“It doesn’t matter now,” she said. “Poor Brenda’s dead and it was a horrible way to die, but — well, I must be very wicked — but I’m not sorry. Don’t look at me like that, darling. I love you and I know you love me, and we must forget her and be as we used to be. You know what I mean.”
I didn’t, but I was glad whatever it was had blown over. I had enough on my plate without a coldness between me and my wife. Even though Laura was beside me that night, I hardly slept for worrying about the stuff in that incinerator. In the morning I put up the best show I could of being much better. I dressed and announced, in spite of Laura’s expostulations, that I was going into the garden. The police were there already, searching all our gardens, actually digging up Brenda’s.