“I have to entertain a lot and Yvonne will take some of the load off me. You’ve no idea how it is to clean up before and after a gathering.”
Three days after Yvonne arrived Burt wrote her a small bracelet. It was presented while Lila was off on a shopping binge.
Yvonne said, “Ooh, Msoo, I could not accept!” She clutched it, her eyes big as soup plates. “It is tres belle! How can I ever zank you?”
Burt had an idea how — but he wasn’t going to force things.
Lila went places, and had people over, and her world was: full. Burt was the machine that provided. As long as the machine functioned, one didn’t worry about it, one hardly noticed it was around,
Burt presented Yvonne with other gifts. The boys at Swinny’s noticed a spring in his step, color in his cheeks, a brightness in his eye. “You’re looking better, Burt. You look like you enjoy life again,”
“I do love life again.”
Yvonne murmured, “I lof you, Burt.”
“I lof you too. I want to marry you.”
“Mais — there is Madame.”
“Yes. Madame. That’s how I think of her now too. Well, Madame will have to go, is all.”
“She would never divorce. You are ze provider.”
“Yes. I write things.”
“What do you write? I never know.”
“Things. Tangibles... You’re right. She’ll never give me a divorce.”
When he left Yvonne, there was a strange look in his eyes.
The next morning he went downstairs to work. Not at the desk, but at the uncemented end of the cellar. Because he couldn’t write intangibles; and what he was preparing for Lila was something quite intangible.
Finally he mopped his sweating face, propped his tools against the wall, and went upstairs. Yvonne was out. Lila lay on the couch. Burt said, “Come down in the cellar.”
“Oh, have you written something special?”
“Uh — well, there’s something special for you down there.”
Downstairs she looked around. “I don’t see anything.”
“It’s at the far end.”
“It’s dark, I can’t see. I’ll get dirt on my slippers. What is it?”
He was behind her. “A little further. You’ll see it.”
She stopped. “A hole. You’ve dug a hole!”
“Yes,” said Burt, and swung hard with his pick.
Later that afternoon, after he’d had some drinks, he wrote a new tile floor for the entire cellar.
He went upstairs and said to Yvonne, working in the kitchen, “Dinner just for us two tonight. Madame telephoned. She said she’s going on a trip.”
“Really? Where?”
“She didn’t say. She sounded kind of odd. Said she’d write me a letter, explaining.” He sniffed at the pots. “What’s for dinner?”
The sudden disappearance of Lila Dee caused puzzlement to her friends. They weren’t satisfied with Burt’s explanation that she had gone suddenly on a trip. They buzzed about it among themselves.
At length someone suggested the police.
Burt had given little thought to possible consequences; as far as Lila was concerned, it was out of sight, out of mind. Yvonne, however, had worries.
“It is very strange about Madame. No word from her. If only we had a letter, in her handwriting, in case people start to wonder.”
“Yes,” said Burt. They looked at each other. He said, “You got relatives in France?”
“Oui.”
“Good.” It was 2:00 P.M. on a Friday afternoon. “I’ll go down and do some work for a while.”
A letter postmarked from France would be a good thing to have. He would keep it vague. It would be in longhand, telling about, tensions she’d been having, an urge to get away for a while, think things out, travel a bit... so she and Philip had gone away. Don’t try to contact her, she’d write later.
Philip was a nonexistent person. Burt was pleased with the concept. It would give the police a chance to snoop about — and Burt a chance to develop a more permanent disposition of Lila’s memory.
He thought that a little later he would present another letter from Lila, hinting at some illness. Finally, there would be a brief, grave note from Philip, saying that Lila had passed away on a cruise; her body had been buried at sea.
Not a perfect solution, far from it. However, sufficient unto the day, and giving him time to hatch up something better, as it might occur.
Lila’s handwriting would be no problem. She had no living relatives and had rarely corresponded with anyone — even lately, her contacts were always by telephone. He had taken care of all their business affairs. Her signatures on some documents were all there was on record. He had samples of it, and it would be easy to forge. Nobody could say for sure that a note, slanted like her signature, and showing characteristics in certain letters that could be compared, was not written by her.
Burt took some nips out of his desk bottle and started a draft of the letter on the typewriter.
He wrote, “Dear Burt. I am sorry to have left without notice, but certain tensions, certain—”
Suddenly he felt the overdrive. Damn, he thought, as his vision blurred and his fingers skipped over the keys, I’m writing something. I didn’t want to. I just wanted to write this note.
Isn’t a note a tangible? But no — he saw the flaw. A real letter would be a tangible. But this, what he had set out to write, was a false letter. A hoax. A hoax was an intangible. And he couldn’t write intangibles.
Damn. But he couldn’t stop. Once started, he just had to pound away until something tangible had been written.
At last came the spent feeling. He shook his head, wiped his glasses, and looked around to see what he had created.
Yvonne, at his shoulder, said, “Msoo!”
He jumped on his stool.
“Msoo, it is a Sergeant Hare — from the police.”
Burt looked beyond her shoulder to a broad-faced man who stood at the bottom of the cellar steps.
Yvonne said, “I knocked, I called — mais you were absorbe.”
“Yes.” In the machine before him was the sheet of paper, with its incriminating message, trailing off in x’s. Fortunately the sergeant didn’t have a view of it.
“Yes,” said Burt, rolling the sheet out, laying it on the desk, and casually sliding other sheets over it. “I was working. I’m a writer, you know. I write things.”
Sergeant Hare said, “I am making an inquiry about your wife.”
“Yes,” said Burt. “She telephoned me some days ago. Said she was going on a sudden trip.”
“You have no idea where?”
“No. I expect she’ll write soon. She’s been behaving somewhat oddly.”
“Do you mind if I look around?”
“Help yourself.” Burt waved, to indicate the whole cellar, with its perfect tile floor.
Then his eyes stuck out. So did Hare’s.
“What’s that?” said Hare.
“What’s what?” said Burt, though you couldn’t miss it, looming palely at the dark far end of the cellar.
Hare walked over to it. He read aloud:
“Under this stone
Lies Lila Dee.
In her 45th year:
R. I. P.”
“Well?” said Hare.
Burt walked over. The tombstone was rich gray marble, topped with an exquisite angel. The carving was deep, sure, masterful.
Burt sighed. He had to feel a little pleasure.
“I write good stuff,” he said.
Face Value
by Margery Allingham[7]