At a quarter to twelve Chloe came home. She turned in at the gate and hurried up the drive, but there was no sign of guilt or uneasiness in her haste. He stood up and moved back from the window so that she would not see him. As she opened the door with her key he stood silent, and, he hoped, forbidding. She came from the hall into the front room and threw her handbag onto the settee. Then she switched on the light.
When she saw him she jumped, and said “Oh!” Then she laughed and went straight to him, and hugged him.
“There,” she said, petting him. “He got home first and no supper. When he’s worked hard all day. Poor tired darling. Never mind, she’ll have it ready in a minute.”
She left him, and ran upstairs to put away her coat, because she was never untidy with her own clothes. She returned, pushing up the short sleeves of her pretty dress as if she were going to do all the work in the world.
“What would you like, dear?” she asked.
“What is there?” he inquired sulkily.
She giggled briefly. “Nothing much. I didn’t get down to the shop today. Will you have an egg and some ham?”
“What, again?”
“You know you like ham and eggs, I’ll have it ready in a jiffy.”
He leaned in the kitchen doorway, watching her as she stood by the cooker. When the ham was in the pan he said: “Where have you been all this time?”
“I went to the Odeon,” she said. “Then there was a terrific queue for buses. You know how it is, Friday nights. I just got on the last bus.”
He remembered the film at the Odeon. “You said you’d seen it,” he grumbled.
She nodded. “It was so good I thought I’d go and see it again. I enjoyed it twice as much the second time.” Then suddenly she giggled again.
“Was it so funny?” he demanded sourly.
She turned and came close to him. She was a petite girl; slender, with a disproportionately heavy bosom. She had fair hair, brown eyes, and a pretty, pointed, elfin face. There was mischief in that face; maybe innocent mischief, maybe-well, Gus sometimes wondered.
“Did she stay out late then, and make him jealous?” She murmured, with her face hidden against his shoulder. She seemed to be contrite, and yet he thought that she might be secretly laughing at him.
“You’re always out late,” he growled, “and you always have an excuse. One of these nights your watch’ll be wrong, and you’ll miss that damned bus.”
She smiled up into his face. His resentment did not worry her. So long as he did not actually know anything, she was sure of her ability to wheedle him into a good humor. “Then,” she twinkled, “she’ll have to take a taxi.”
She stood on her toes and pulled his head down and kissed him, and because he also had been drinking he did not smell the gin on her breath. Then she turned away and cracked an egg into the pan, and started to cut bread. He returned to the front room, and stared moodily through the window at the lighted gateway.
When the meal was ready she came to him, and hugged him again. “Now, go and eat his supper,” she coaxed. “Then they can go to bed and she’ll be nice to him. She’ll love him and love him and love him, and he won’t be jealous any more.”
“If ever I catch her two-timing,” he said to himself, “I’ll break her neck.” And yet he knew even then that it was a vain resolve. He had always had too much common sense to resort to violence.
She pressed closer, and as his arms went round her his mood changed as it had done before in similar circumstances. He thought that he might be wrong about Chloe. After all, he had no direct evidence.
That was last night. Tonight, he felt sure that if she had seen an evening paper she would be waiting at home for him. Even Chloe would stay at home to be with a husband who had just been robbed of four thousand pounds and had a valued and trusted woman clerk murdered. In the afternoon he had tried to speak to her on the telephone, but apparently she had been out. Later, when the evening papers had appeared, she had not phoned the office to ask for details, and so, perversely, he had not tried to reach her again. Now he thought: “Let her wait. I need a drink.”
He went to the Stag’s Head and had several drinks, but this time he did not conform to his own tradition of drinking champagne from a tankard to celebrate a thoroughly disastrous day. He had lost four thousand pounds, but, with poor Cicely lying dead, he could not drink champagne.
While he was in the bar, Ugo the headwaiter passed through. Ugo, who was a sort of friend of his, informed him confidentially that he had some rather exceptional steaks. Gus was still slightly annoyed because his wife had not telephoned, and he thought again: “Let her wait,” and ordered a meal.
Men will stay out when they should go home. That is probably the world’s most common cause of domestic discord and unhappiness. Gus Hawkins should have gone home. Like other men who sometimes linger on the way from the office, he would have saved himself a headache if he had not done so. He would have saved himself a number of headaches.
It would have been much better if he had gone straight home. Certainly, on this occasion, it would have been much better for his wife.
5
Martineau and Devery ended a long day’s work at ten o’clock. “Let’s have an odd one at the Green Archer,” Martineau suggested, because he did not want to go home. These days, he never wanted to go home.
His domestic trouble was not of the same type as Gus Hawkins’. Julia Martineau was not unfaithful, and it was impossible to suspect that she ever would be. She was only interested in fine clothes, social standing, attractive homes, and the affairs of her acquaintances. The sexual behavior of other people (as a topic of scandalous conversation) was more interesting to her than her own or her husband’s. She was rarely aroused. The sexual act was sometimes a duty, sometimes a favor to be granted, and always a ceremony which she allowed to be performed after it had been suitably prayed for. Lately, Martineau had ceased to pray.
At half past ten, when the landlord of the Green Archer called “Time,” Devery excused himself. “Sorry to dash off,” he said. “I’ve got a supper date.”
“If you have to go a-courting at all,” said his disillusioned senior, “suppertime is as good a time as any.”
“Exigencies of the service, sir,” Devery replied briskly. “She seems satisfied if I show up sometime during the twenty-four hours.”
He went. Martineau lingered, until he remembered that it was Saturday night. There would be queues of people waiting for outward-bound buses. He went to catch his bus.
He could not get on a bus before eleven o’clock, and it was eleven twenty-five when he arrived at his neat semidetached house in suburban Parkhulme. A light was showing downstairs, at the back. Julia was waiting.
“Hello,” he said as he entered the living room, but his wife stared coldly at him and said: “What time do you call this?”
He looked at his watch and told her the exact time.
“What time did you sign off?” she wanted to know.
“Ten o’clock.”
“And since then you’ve been in some pub.”
“Correct,” he said.
“You’ve been working on that murder, I suppose. Have you got anybody for it?”
He shook his head. “Anything for supper?” he asked, not very hopefully.
“There’s your tea, if you want to warm it up,” she said. “Other husbands can ring up their wives and tell them when they’ll be home. Of course, I couldn’t expect you to do that. You couldn’t even phone and tell me you’d be working late. You never come home. Not until you have to.”