EARLY THE NEXT MORNING A WAGON, THE FIRST TO pass since the snowstorm, rattled down the road. A little while later Mary trudged the mile from the streetcar terminal. She pushed through the drifts that surrounded the house, let herself in the back way, took off her mittens, and with her stiff fingers managed to light the stove. After she had warmed herself and put the kettle on, she wondered how late the Horsts would sleep. She had news for Hannah, but she could not use the telephone while her bosses were still in bed.
At half-past eight Mary went upstairs. Usually at this hour Mr. and Mrs. Horst had finished breakfast and Mary was almost through with her dishes. The house was deadly quiet. Mary tapped timidly at their bedroom door.
“Come in,” Mrs. Horst called. She was standing at the window in the blue dressing-gown with the rose-colored ribbons. Her hair hung in braids over her shoulder.
“I got back,” Mary announced.
“I’m glad, Mary.”
“I hope you’re not mad at me, Mrs. Horst. I got snowed in.” “So were we.”
Mary looked around the room. She felt vaguely that something was missing, but could not say what it was.
“I hope you got along all right without me.”
“Poor Mr. Horst had to do all the work. I’ve been in bed with a bad cold.”
Mary’s eyes rested on the bed. Only one side had been slept in. She knew then what was missing. “Where’s Mr. Horst?”
“We were afraid that he’d catch my cold, so he’s been sleeping in the other room.”
“Should I wake him up? I’ve got the coffee on and the oatmeal’s made, you could have breakfast in five minutes.”
“No, let him sleep.”
“Won’t he be late to work?”
“He’ll have to clean the driveway. He can’t get the machine out until he’s got it cleared.”
“He could walk to the streetcar.”
“Never mind, Mary. Don’t disturb him.”
“Will you have breakfast now?”
“No. I’ll wait for him.”
Mary waited there, rubbing the toe of one foot against the other ankle. She had news of her own. With a broken giggle she told Bedelia that she had got herself engaged to Hen Blackman.
Bedelia beamed approval. “Perhaps the blizzard was a blessing in disguise, Mary. I told Mr. Horst the other day that if you were half the girl I thought you were, you’d take advantage of this opportunity.”
Mary, flattered because Mrs. Horst had talked about her, could hardly get over her giggles. She told in full detail how Hen had popped the question. “You know about it before Hannah,” she said, conferring honor upon her boss.
“As soon as Mr. Horst is up and you’ve given us breakfast, you can phone and tell her,” Bedelia said.
Mary was still giggling as she started for the kitchen. Her laughter ceased suddenly and she screamed. She had seen some disembodied white thing floating toward her on the back stairs.
“Did I frighten you, Mary? I’m sorry.” Charlie ascended out of the shadows. He had on dark trousers and a white shirt.
“I thought you were a ghost,” she said.
His felt carpet slippers slid across the floor soundlessly. Bedelia did not hear him as he entered the bedroom. At his “Good morning, dear,” she jerked around.
“I seem to be scaring all the ladies this morning,” Charlie said.
“Martin’s beer truck passed,” she told him.
“Yes, I heard it. But I was too lazy to get up. I didn’t fall asleep until dawn.”
Bedelia looked around the room, letting her eyes rest for a second on this or that piece of furniture and then examining the next, and going on until she had studied everything carefully. Was she thinking of other rooms she had left, comparing this with them, wishing she might stay here with the drapes she had made on her sewing machine, the colors she had chosen, and the bed in which she had slept with Charlie? Did she mourn the husbands along with all the other things she had left behind, the furs and pretty dresses, the copper pots, the casseroles, the ingenious egg-beaters, and can-openers?
The black pearl meant more to her than Jacobs. She would want to keep it to show off at the Casino in Monte Carlo. Would she keep the garnet ring that Charlie had given her for Christmas?
“Are you still thinking of Europe?” he asked.
She seemed not to have heard. Charlie wondered if he ought to repeat the question. He did not want to lose his temper, but he could not help resenting her indifference.
“It doesn’t matter whether you’re thinking about it or not. Because we’re not leaving. We’re going to stay here and fight it out.”
Bedelia smiled at her husband shyly. “Oh, Charlie, dear, you’re so good. I don’t believe there’s another man alive as good and sweet as you are.” She gave him her most enchanting smile.
“Did you hear what I said, Bedelia?” He tried to sound stern, but his voice was unsteady. “We’re going to stay here and fight it out.”
“I knew that.”
“How did you know?”
“You said so last night. You always mean what you say, don’t you?’ She offered this tranquilly, without bitterness. “Don’t worry, Charlie, dear. I’ll do whatever you want. I love you so much, anything you do seems right to me.”
Her serenity bewildered Charlie. She had everything to lose, her reputation, her freedom, possibly her life. The simple faith with which she gave herself into his keeping struck him as false. She went about her tasks calmly, opened drawers, chose clean underclothing, examined ribbons and embroidery.
“This is serious . . .” he began.
Bedelia’s cough interrupted. Her body shook and she staggered toward the bed, holding her hands over her mouth. Tears filled her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered in a husky voice.
“You’re not well yet,” Charlie said. “I should never have let you get up yesterday. Better stay in bed this morning.”
Weak, grateful for his solicitude, and as docile as a child, Bedelia crept into bed. The mood of humility continued. Mary brought her breakfast and, although Bedelia complained that she had no appetite, she obeyed Charlie and ate the good hot food.
“Are you going to clear the driveway now?” she asked, watching him over her cup of coffee as Charlie put on his hunting boots.
“Yes, but only to get it cleared. We’re not leaving.”
“You said that before, dear.”
“I don’t mean to be arbitrary, but we can’t go on treating this as trivial. You may not realize the importance of my decision, Bedelia, but the future depends . . .”
“Why don’t you call me Biddy any more?”
The triviality of the interruption angered him. He wondered whether she was purposely keeping him from talking about the future. A glance at her softened him. Sitting up against the cushions in that large, solid bed, Bedelia seemed far too frail, resigned, and patient to cause him the slightest anxiety. He wished that he, too, might thrust aside his fears and give his attention fully to toast and plum jam.
Bedelia was spreading her toast with jam carefully so that she should not soil her fingers. As Charlie watched her enjoy the jam, pour cream over her oatmeal, measure sugar into her coffee, she seemed so innocent, so sweet and sane that he was ready to discredit everything Ben had told him, and to forget the curious contradictions in her stories and behavior.
“You mustn’t worry about anything, Charlie. Leave it to me. There’s always a way.”
Charlie’s hand was stayed on its journey with the bootlace. Probably Annabel McKelvey had been as mild while she was planning to serve fish at dinner; Chloe had smiled gently upon Jacobs when she knew him to be against her; Maurine’s sweet ways had lured Will Barrett toward the pier.
He hurried out of the room. His excuse was a journey to the attic to find his sealskin cap. It was kept in a cedar chest with folded travel blankets, his mother’s Jaegers and her mink stole. The smell of mothballs brought back the past and, holding the stole in his hands, he could see it as his mother had worn it, thrown over a bony shoulder with her lean face between it and a velvet toque. “Duty,” his mother had always told him, “duty comes first, Charles.”
Laughter greeted his return to the bedroom. Mary had come upstairs for Bedelia’s tray and was talking again about her engagement. It all had to be repeated for Charlie.
“You needn’t worry about help in the house,” Mary said, “I’m not getting married till June, so you needn’t think about getting another girl for a while yet, and there’s my little sister Sarah, she’ll be looking for a place soon.”
“Before you do anything else, Mary, phone Montagnino. We’ve been cleaned out of everything. Bring me the pad and pencil, please.”
Charlie lingered in the bedroom. His spirit was soothed by the quality of Bedelia’s voice as she said, “I was thinking of pork roast, Mary. Mr. Horst is so fond of it and after the pot luck he’s been having for the last few days and the pap we gave him while he was ill, he deserves something good. And don’t forget apples . . .”
“We got plenty of apples in the cellar.”
“How often do I have to tell you, Mary, that I don’t make apple sauce with Macintoshes? Order greenings.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Mary was sullen.
Charlie stayed on to hear Bedelia and Mary argue about the order. What could be wrong in a house where such passion went into a controversy over apples, where carrots and cabbage and kohlrabi were so earnestly compared? Let Barrett come! What better assurance had Charlie of the man’s impotence than Bedelia’s prodigal grocery order? Ten pounds of sugar, Mary, two of butter, six cans of tomatoes, five pounds of spaghetti—the narrow, mind you, not that broad macaroni—five pounds store cheese to be dried and grated, a peck of onions, two dozen eggs. A good housewife would never order so lavishly unless she was sure of the day after tomorrow.
In the midst of it Bedelia coughed again. Fierce tremors shook her. She lay back upon the pillows, utterly exhausted.
“You’re not to get out of bed today,” Charlie said. “Promise me you’ll take care of that cough.”
“Yes, of course, Charlie, I’ll do whatever you say.”
The telephone rang. Mary ran for it. Charlie tried not to listen, but he could not help overhearing her tell the news of her engagement.
“How happy she is!” Bedelia exclaimed, smiling with the complacence that women always show over a marriage or engagement. “We must give her a nice present.”
“It was Hannah,” Mary said as she bounced back into the bedroom. “They got their phone connected at last. They’re almost out of food. They’d have starved if the Keeleys hadn’t sent over some bread and eggs and bacon. Their road’s blocked up, there’s no way of them getting their groceries, only Hannah’s thought of a way. Montagnino’s sending their order out with ours, and the Keeley boys are coming down with their sled to get it. Hannah wanted to know if you’d mind us taking their order and I said it’d be all right.”
“Of course,” Bedelia said.
“Montagnino’s sending the wagon out early, Hannah needs the stuff for lunch. They’re having company.”
Bedelia coughed.
“It’s that gentleman that didn’t come last week. He’s coming today.”
Charlie said, “That’s not possible, Mary. Their road’s blocked, no one can get there.”
“Mr. Chaney’s going on snowshoes to meet the gentleman up to the Wilton Station,” Mary explained. “He’s coming on the twelve-ten and going straight to Wilton. Mr. Chaney’s taking a pair of snowshoes for him. They fixed it up on the phone, this gentleman; he called Mr. Chaney from New York on the long distance, Hannah told me.”
Charlie let down the flaps of his sealskin cap and tied them under his chin. He looked at the wallpaper, the furniture, Bedelia’s silver toilet set, at everything except his wife.
Mary went on, panting with excitement. “That’s why Hannah’s so set on getting her groceries on time. It’s not a hard lunch to fix, but Mr. Chaney says it won’t take no more than fifteen minutes on snowshoes from the Wilton Station and he wants lunch right away when they get back. Montagnino’s sending up their order with ours and the Keeley boys are coming down . . .”
Given the chance Mary would repeat a fact five or six times. Bedelia cut her off. “You’d better hurry and get our order in, Mary.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Charlie hurried out of the bedroom. He did not want to be alone with Bedelia to talk about Ben Chaney’s guest. He took the shovel off its nail in the shed and went out to clear the driveway. The air was like a tonic. He felt the way a prisoner must feel after years in a cell. The sky was a hard blue arch, the sun warm, and the snow had a crisp crust that broke under his feet.
He was not such a fool that he believed his troubles were over because the sun was bright, but he felt new strength in his body, clarity in his mind, and his nerves became steadier. He tried to consider his problem objectively, as if someone had said to him, “See here, Charlie, a friend of mine’s in trouble. You see, he got married recently and he’s crazy about his wife, and now he doesn’t know what to do . . .”
“What kind of trouble?” he would naturally ask.
“He’s discovered his wife’s a . . . a criminal.”
The word was not shocking. Criminal might mean petty thief or a woman who made herself a nuisance to the neighbors.
“What crime has she committed?”
“Murder.”
Murder. That gave a different complexion to his friend’s troubles. But even murder had certain justifications. Self-defense, for instance.
“Who’d she murder?”
“Her husband.” But that was not the whole truth. “Several husbands, in fact. Four, perhaps five.”
Objectively it was unbelievable, the sort of thing that could never happen to a friend of a friend of Charlie Horst’s. He would have to ask why the wife had murdered four or five husbands.
“For money. For their life insurance.”
There it was, the whole truth, so evil that there could be but one solution to the problem. No use arguing, “But my friend loves his wife and she loves him. She doesn’t want her husband to die, she loves him, she’s bearing his child . . .”
He had to quit thinking. It was better to invest his energy in hard work. Each time he raised the shovel and straightened his body, he looked around and saw white hills, the charcoal black of trees and branches, their shadows purple on the snow, and his house, so sturdy and honest in its proportions, and so American and secure and right with its clapboards and its clean green shutters. With each shovel load he felt better and younger, almost as if he were tossing aside his problems with the snow. The events of the past few days seemed less real and his wife was as good and commonplace as any of the neighbors.
Montagnino’s polished black delivery wagon set high on smart yellow wheels stopped on the highway. The boy jumped out. From the back of the wagon he took three bushel baskets, which he carried, one after another, to the shed. He was a handsome Italian boy with cheeks that glowed carmine on his clear dark skin. Although she was now Hen Blackman’s fiancée, Mary did not mind stopping her work to chatter with him. He had plenty to tell her, of the customers who had been snowed in and unable to get groceries and of those who were still isolated. The snowstorm had made him important because some of the richest people in the neighborhood might have starved to death if he hadn’t come out to the country this morning in his yellow-wheeled wagon.
Charlie worked for another hour. The exercise warmed him and underneath his heavy mackinaw he felt the sweat rising on his body. When Mary opened a window on the second floor, he ordered her to close it before a draft crept through the halls to his wife’s bedroom. Suddenly he felt very weary. He stood like a lazy workman, leaning on his shovel and looking at the landscape. He had not done much physical work recently and his muscles had become soft. Enthusiasm was dying. But it was like his mother’s son to push on, and he began again and kept at it in spite of weariness until he had cleared another six feet. Then he gave up and decided to finish after lunch.
Snow was caked on his boots. The soles were dripping. Charlie was too thoughtful to ever walk on the good rugs with wet boots. He went around the back way. The shed was dark, but he did not bother to switch on the light. Sitting on a three-legged stool he unlaced his boots. In a corner near the door he noticed the three baskets that Montagnino’s boy had carried in. Two were empty and one was full. That would be Ben Chaney’s order.
He heard a muffled cough and looked through the glass doorpane into the kitchen. Bedelia stood beside the table, her hand stifling the cough. She was bent over the kitchen table, working at something with a sort of surreptitious tension. She opened a package. Her body screened that part of the table upon which she had set the contents, but Charlie saw that she set the wrapping paper carefully aside and folded the string upon it. She thrust her right hand into the neck of her robe.
Mary thumped down the front stairs with the carpet-sweeper. Bedelia straightened quickly. Her glance slid slyly in the direction of the dining-room door, which was closed. Immediately she thrust into the neck of her robe whatever she had taken from it, and with a casual saunter, went toward the dining-room door. She opened it and called to Mary, bidding the girl hurry back upstairs.
“I want you to clean my bedroom while I’m out of it, Mary.”
“Oh, I didn’t know you was downstairs, Mrs. Horst. Is there something I could do for you?” Mary called.
“Go upstairs and change my bed at once.”
Mary thumped up the stairs.
Before Bedelia returned to the table, Charlie had opportunity to see what she had taken from the wrapping paper. It was a wedge of Gorgonzola cheese, its surface green with mold. Bedelia reached into her robe again and Charlie saw that she had a small round box in her hand. It was the unlabeled pillbox he had found among her knickknacks the night she tried to escape. He had thought the powder in it was a polish for her fingernails.
Charlie was paralyzed. It was like a nightmare. He did not try to speak or move because he knew his voice was gone and his limbs were useless.
Bedelia had put the top back on the pillbox and returned it to her bosom. She wrapped the cheese in the paper and started to tie it up. But the string was knotted. She had to find the ball of twine that she kept in one of the drawers of her cabinet. It was not quite so thick as Montagnino’s string, and Charlie saw that she was making a mistake, the stupid and trivial mistake which destroys the perfection of a crime. Evidently she did not notice, for she cut off a length of twine and tied it around the cheese. Then, walking on tiptoes, she carried the old knotted string to the stove, lifted one of the iron plates and dropped the string into the flames. She was not hurrying, but going about her preparations for murder as efficiently as if she were cooking a meal. A cautious glance around the kitchen assured her that she had left no trace of her work. With the parcel in her hand she moved toward the shed.
Charlie backed into a corner.
Bedelia entered the shed and blinked. It was dark and her eyes had become accustomed to the bright electric light of the kitchen. She had not the slightest idea that Charlie was there and passed close to him. Bending over the filled bushel basket, she rearranged boxes and parcels and placed the package under a cloth bag filled with salt. As she straightened, she sniffed at her fingertips.
Out, damned spot! Out, I say.
Out, damned smell of cheese! Out, damned stink of murder!
Charlie had been stunned at first, had looked away because he had not wanted his eyes to behold this fresh evil. As Bedelia bent over, arranging the parcels so that hers should not be too prominently placed in the basket, he knew that he could no longer close his eyes, deafen his ears, remain mute, or comfort himself with miracles. Cunningly, as she lay in the bed in which his mother had slept, his wife had planned the murder of two men. Charlie saw now why she had been so amiable in accepting his decision to stay and fight it out. She meant to stay, but to avoid the fight.
Circumstances had provided her with weapons for getting rid of troublesome enemies. Ben’s fondness for cheese had served her like Herman Bender’s taste for mushrooms, McKelvey’s enjoyment of fish. The taste of Gorgonzola is so strong, so rotten, that the most delicate palate might not perceive the flavor of poison. Bedelia’s enemies would not have died in her house after eating at her table. She would have no connection with their deaths, but would hear of the tragedy, like the rest of the town, through a telephone call or an item in the newspaper.
“Bedelia!”
She whirled around. Charlie came out of the corner. She saw him and stiffened.
“Oh, I didn’t know you were here. You startled me.” Small spaces marked by heavy breathing separated the words. Hastily she added, “That silly clerk of Montagnino’s has made a mistake again. Putting some of Ben’s groceries with ours. It’s lucky I came down to check our order.”
The ease of her falsehood sickened Charlie. He had swallowed other lies because he loved her, but now that he had seen her cruel and deliberate preparations for a new crime, he abhorred the memory of that love.
“I’m sorry I broke my promise, Charlie, but you mustn’t be angry. My cough is so much better it seemed silly to stay in bed.” A soft woman she was, yielding, gentle, shrinking before his male strength.
His fingers dug into her shoulders. He jerked her toward him. The neck of her robe was cut out like a V and above it her throat was like porcelain. His hand curled around it.
“Charlie—dear!”
That was all she could say. Charlie’s hand had tightened on her throat. When she saw that he was not to be cajoled out of his anger, her eyes darkened and hardened. She fought back desperately, writhed in his arms, kicked at his legs. A kind of ecstasy seized Charlie. His knuckles bulged, knots rose in his hands as they felt the warm throbbing of Bedelia’s throat. Her jetty restless eyes reminded Charlie of the mouse he had caught in the trap and he thought exultantly of the blow that had killed it.
Bedelia was the first to give up the struggle. She relaxed so suddenly that she fell back in Charlie’s arms. Her face wore the curves of gentleness again. Slyness was erased. Whether for death or love she had yielded.
A mist rose, clouding his sight, dimming his mind. His hands loosened and fell away. His ecstasy passed and he felt weary. Both of them were worn out. Bedelia’s eyes sought Charlie’s. She tried to catch and hold his glance. Her hand groped forward, found his arm, lay heavy upon it.
“Charlie, Charlie dearest.”
He avoided her eyes.
“You don’t understand,” she murmured.
“I’m afraid I do,” Charlie said coldly.
He pulled her toward him again as if her were going to kiss her, but instead he reached into the neck of her robe, took out the pillbox, and dropped it into his pocket. Then he went to the bushel basket and shuffled the packages until he found the one she had hidden under the bag of salt. This, too, went into the pocket of his mackinaw.
Bedelia leaned against the stool, watching him through her eyelashes. “You wouldn’t hurt me, Charlie. I know you wouldn’t. I wouldn’t hurt you either.” She had planted herself before him, barring his way to the door. “I do love you, I’d rather die than see anything happen to you.”
He pushed her aside and left the shed. As he crossed the kitchen, he reached for the cord and snapped off the light.
In the hall he felt that she was behind him, but he did not turn. She caught hold of his arm.
“We haven’t much time.”
Charlie jerked away. The whispered warning had made him her partner in crime. “Go upstairs,” he said.
She was bent over, a suppliant, begging for mercy. She dared not look at Charlie, for his face was of metal, no more alive than the face of his ancestor, Colonel Nathaniel Philbrick, the bronze rider on the bronze horse in the square downtown. Bedelia spoke quickly as if she had only a short time and a great deal to say. “We can get away now if we hurry.”
“Sh-sh!”
“We needn’t take anything with us, we can buy whatever we want. I’ve got money, plenty of money, more than you know; it’s in New York and I can get it without anybody finding out. Even you don’t know the name.” Her voice reached a high note and cracked. “I’ll give it all to you, Charlie, every cent.”
“Sh-sh!” he said again. Mary was coming down the stairs slowly, squatting on each tread as she dusted the baseboard.
“You’re all I’ve got,” Bedelia whispered. “I haven’t anyone else in the world. Who’ll take care of me? Don’t you love me, Charlie?”
The telephone rang. Charlie swept Bedelia off her feet and carried her up the stairs.
Mary saw them and her jaw dropped. The phone continued to ring.
“Answer it, Mary. Take the message. Say I can’t come now,” Charlie barked at the gaping girl.
He carried Bedelia into the bedroom. After he had put her on the bed, she would not let him go, but clung to him with tense, trembling hands. As he struggled to free himself, he noticed the garnet ring on the fourth finger of his wife’s hand, and he remembered painfully his joy when he discovered the trinket in an antique shop.
“Let go!” he said.
“Don’t be so mean to me, please, Charlie. Why don’t you call me Biddy any more? You haven’t called me Biddy for a long time now. Have you stopped loving me?”
The effrontery of it shocked him. He gave up the struggle and allowed her to cling while he sat at the edge of the bed. Her hands, gripping on his coat-sleeve, were no longer plump and seductive. The dimples had disappeared and there were blue veins running from wrists to fingers.
She tried, courageously, to smile at Charlie. “You wouldn’t let them take me away, would you? I’m your wife, you know, and I’m sick. I’m a very sick woman, your wife. I’ve never told you, dear, how sick I am. My heart, I might die at any moment. I must never be distressed about anything.” Her hands tightened on the rough wool of the mackinaw. “I didn’t ever tell you, Charlie, because I didn’t want you to worry.” This she said with a sort of determined gallantry, both sweet and bitter.
Gently Charlie removed her hands. Bedelia submitted humbly, showing that she considered him superior, her lord and master. He was male and strong, she feminine and frail. His strength made him responsible for her; her life was in his hands.
He rose.
“Where are you going?” Bedelia demanded.
Charlie did not answer until he had reached the door. With his hand on the knob he turned and said, “I want you to stay up here. You’d better lie there and rest.”
“I’ll kill myself if you let them take me away.” She waited, watching the effect of her words. “I’ll kill myself and you’ll be to blame.” She laughed harshly because she was frustrated. Charlie had shown no feeling.
He closed the door, locked it, and dropped the key in his pocket. He was no more moved by her threat of suicide than by her appeals and ruses. By getting away from Bedelia he had believed he could find clarity and think dispassionately. But his mind was a fog. He felt actually that his head was filled with thick gray clouds.
Mary came out of the living-room, the mop in one hand, the carpet sweeper in the mother. “It was Miss Ellen Walker calling. She says she’s got to see a man up Wilton way, and Mrs. Horst asked her for lunch. She’s coming.”
Leaning the mop and carpet sweeper against the wall, she started up the stairs.
“Where are you going, Mary?”
“I got to ask Mrs. Horst about lunch.”
“Mrs. Horst has a headache. She’s not to be disturbed.”
“What are we going to have for lunch?”
“What difference does it make?” he said querulously.
Mary’s lip quivered. Mr. Horst was not usually rude. She sensed something queer about him and about the atmosphere of the house. “Is Mrs. Horst very sick? Can I do something?”
He did not answer. Mary squeaked her hand along the varnished handle of the carpet sweeper. It sent shivers down Charlie’s spine. Irritably he wondered if he was to be annoyed by Mary at this tragic and uncertain moment in his life, and a moment later, recovering, he rebuked himself for taking out his distress upon an innocent girl, a servant who was in an inferior position and unable to defend herself.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “I was thinking of something else, Mary. Do what you like about lunch. I don’t think either of us will want very much.”
“But Miss Walker’s coming.”
“Of course.” He bowed his head. “Whatever you do, Mary, will suit me.”
He went into the living-room. With his mackinaw on and the sealskin cap pushed back on his head, he sat down. For a long time he stayed in the same position, perched at the edge of the chair, legs apart, hands hanging between them. The hall clock ticked, Mary sang at her work, wagons rattled past on the cleared highway.
Charlie thought about his wife and his marriage and of the life they should lead if they escaped Barrett. He was no longer concerned with the past nor with moral issues nor his shattered pride. Within the half-hour he had caught his wife at a new crime. To save herself she had tried to kill two men. Her mind was a child’s mind, her vision limited by her own needs and desires. If danger threatened again, she would try again to avert it, and probably with the same ruthlessness.
He rubbed his numb hands. Under the flannel shirt and the mackinaw his flesh was cold. He had had a glimpse of the future and what he had seen sickened him.
Shouts drew his attention to the world outside. The Keeley boys had pulled their sled down the hill and tumbled through the snow to the Horsts’ back door. They chattered with Mary as they warmed themselves before the kitchen fire, and when they left they were eating apples. They had tied the basket of groceries to the sled, but it was not firm, and while one boy pulled the other held it. Halfway up the hill they switched jobs.
Charlie watched until the boys were out of sight. When this diversion was gone and he was obliged to face himself again, he felt guilty. Although the present crisis was not of his making, he could not absolve himself from blame. He had been weak with Bedelia. From the start he had blinded himself to her faults and indulged her caprices. He could not have known then that the little New Orleans widow was a murderess, but he had known that she told lies, played tricks, used her sex unfairly. He had cherished, even enjoyed, these little feminine faults because they had flattered him and swelled his male pride. By falling in love with weakness he had grown weak.
He became angry; angrier than he had been when he discovered his wife at the kitchen table with a wedge of cheese in one hand and poison in the other. This anger was more potent because it turned inward, upon himself. In the shed, when his fingers had tightened on Bedelia’s throat, Charlie’s fury had been aimed at her guilt. Now it was himself he hated. He knew that if he continued to live with Bedelia, he would go on indulging her, giving in, appeasing so that she would commit no more murders.
He rose and straightened his shoulders, walked up the stairs quickly and lightly. Bedelia did not hear him unlock the door or come into the bedroom. She had thrown herself across the bed, heedless of bolster and spread. Her hairpins lay in a pile upon the rose-colored silk and her hair flowed about her head, gleaming darkly.
Charlie stood above the bed and looked down at her. She was crying. Usually her tears affected him. He was not used to women who wept and asked for pity. His power to comfort her and dry her tears had always swelled his pride. As he stood above the bed, looking at her woeful, tear-streaked face, he pitied her, but in a different way, without the usual self-esteem. Without saying anything, he turned away and, after he had put on his felt bedroom slippers, left the room.
This time he did not lock the door. Bedelia lifted her head and looked after him. When he returned, however, she was lying in the same position, her eyes closed, her hands flat against the spread.
“Drink this,” Charlie said. He held out a glass of water.
Bedelia did not open her eyes.
He carried the glass to the bedside. “Drink this, Bedelia.”
She opened her eyes and tried weakly to raise her head.
“Wait, I’ll make you comfortable.” Charlie set the glass upon the bed table, lifted his wife’s head from the uncomfortable wooden bolster, took out the pillows, arranged them and lifted his wife so that she was in an easier position. Then he offered the glass again.
“What is it?”
“Please drink it.”
“A bromide, dear? But I haven’t a headache.”
“I want you to take it,” he said firmly.
Bedelia looked at Charlie’s face and then at the glass. The water was clear and bubbling lightly as if it had just gushed out of the artesian well. Charlie had not known how much of the white powder to put in it, but he had guessed that a small amount would work as well if not better than too much.
She took the glass and held it in a pretty, childlike way with both hands. Miraculously her cheeks had filled out, the bloom returned, and her soft glances and dimples were much as they had been that day on the veranda at Colorado Springs. She looked at him expectantly as if she were about to propose some treat or holiday.
“Let’s drink it together,” she said blandly.
Charlie staggered and groped for one of the bedposts. His heart beat swiftly and his face became purple.
Bedelia watched him, holding her head on one side and smiling gently. “You drink first, dear, and then I will.” And in the same bland voice she used when she gave him the digestive powder, she added, “Drink it fast and you won’t mind the taste.”
Under his hand he felt the rough surface of the carved wood pineapple. That, at least, was real and familiar.
Bedelia patted the quilt to show how soft the bed was, and then turned her hand and made a little gesture of invitation. “Come and lie beside me, Charlie. We’ll be together.”
Maurine had asked so prettily that Will Barrett could not refuse to take her out for a midnight sail. Chloe had run the water for Jacobs’s bath. Annabel McKelvey, when she set the fish before him, had been artlessly pleased to be able to serve one of her husband’s favorite dishes. The happy husbands had walked into the trap without knowing a trap was there at all. But Charlie knew that the catch had been set.
He let go of the wooden pineapple and walked toward the head of the bed. His anger had grown cold. When he reached for the glass, his hand did not tremble. Bedelia leaned forward, looking up at him. Her face showed excitement and greediness. The tip of her tongue slid over her lips as if she were impatient to taste a spicy dish which she had not had for a long time.
With the glass in his hand, Charlie sat down beside her on the bed. “Drink it,” he said, raising the glass until it was on a level with her mouth. “There isn’t much time.”
His face was stony. Bedelia knew that she was beaten. Her body stiffened, her back arched, and her eyes became hard and jetty. The cords of her neck stood out like pillars, and upon these two pillars her head trembled. “I thought you were different, Charlie. I didn’t think you were like the others.” She sighed, pitying herself, a woman wronged by a cruel man. Reproach shone out of her eyes and her lips were pulled into a hard knot that said, wordlessly, that Charlie was to blame for everything. She had married him with high hopes and he had betrayed her. He had changed for her, become like the other men she had known, rotten, rotten, a beast.
“I never thought you’d turn against me, too. Not you, Charlie.”
Charlie did not stir nor release her from the hard bitterness of his glance. Bedelia waited, her head trembling, her mouth pulled tight, her eyes glazed. There was no more greed in her, no more coquetry. Defeat had stripped away her charms and left a giant caricature of Charlie Horst’s pretty wife.
“All right,” she cried at last, as if she could no longer endure the waiting, “all right, but it’ll be your fault, Charlie Horst, they’ll blame you, you’ll hang for it!”
The stone wall which Charlie had built around himself collapsed. He felt sick with shame, guilty, as if he had been planning a crime for his own ends and had finally committed it. Looking down at his wife as she lay against the pillows, white and pitiful, he saw that she was thinking of herself as an innocent woman, suffering unjustly. She had planned a murder that morning, but the memory had fled along with the memory of her other crimes. The narcotic of self-pity had freed her of the sense of guilt. They were to blame, not she; they, the rotten men, the jealous women. This illness had enabled her to commit the cruelest of crimes and to forget them, to live almost normally, even to fall in love and to think of herself as a woman deserving a good husband, a home and a child.
Suddenly, as if she were this good wife and could not restrain her love for her husband, she reached for Charlie’s hand and pulled it toward her, resting her cheek against it.
Charlie jerked his hand free. The pity which she felt for herself and which aroused his compassion was the spell she had woven around him, her charm and her madness. He had been caught in the net once and he did not intend to let it happen again.
“Drink it!”
“It’ll be your fault, they’ll blame you, you’ll hang for it,” she repeated. And seizing the glass, she drank the mixture in one long swallow.
Charlie took the glass and put it back on the table. Then he left her and walked slowly down the stairs. The twelve-ten whistled as it rounded the curve. Charlie took out his watch to check its accuracy, counted the minutes until the train should arrive at the Wilton Station and Barrett shake hands with Ben Chaney.
Mary was at the telephone. “That Montagnino!” She jerked down the receiver. “Always forgetting stuff. Hannah wanted to know if they’d put the cheese with our order.”
When Mary had gone back to the kitchen, Charlie closed the door that separated the rear of the house from the front hall and stairs. He went up as far as the turn, listened for a moment, then came down and got his overshoes out of the hall closet.
The great rock beside the river had been rounded by water and weather. Charlie stood in its shadow fumbling in his pocket for the paper parcel that contained the Gorgonzola. He opened it, crumbled the cheese into bits above the swiftly moving water, folded the paper and returned it to his pocket. He did not want any evidence left of the new crime Bedelia had planned. There was enough against her and no need to add another crime.
He returned to the house, put away his overshoes, hung up his cap and mackinaw. He lighted the living-room fire and, when the flames were high, burned the paper which had been around the cheese and the piece of twine. At the washstand in the first-floor bedroom he scrubbed his hands.
Mary was setting the table for lunch. Charlie did not want to be alone and he went into the dining-room to be with her. He pretended to be looking for his meerschaum pipe. Mary had set the table with the filet lace doilies and tried several centerpieces. None suited her until she thought of the white narcissus which Bedelia had planted in the blue pottery bowl. As Mary studied her table decorations, she narrowed her eyes and held her head on the side in exact imitation of Bedelia.
CHARLIE WAS AT the window when Ellen turned in at the gate. He had the front door open before she reached the porch. The cold had painted red circles on her cheeks and her eyes were sparkling.
Charlie helped her take off the mannish coat. She raised her arms to remove her hatpins. This peculiarly feminine movement belied all her efforts to deny womanliness. Charlie’s attentions pleased her. She spent more time than usual on her hair, which she had tried in a new fashion, parted in the center and drawn back to a figure-eight low on her neck.
“How are you, Charlie? Feeling better? Why aren’t you at work?”
Charlie looked up the stairs. There was nothing to see except three photographs hanging on the wall at the turn. They were photographs of the Rocky Mountains which Charlie had taken before he lost his Kodak.
“Yes, much better,” he said, without turning his head.
“What are you looking for?” Ellen asked.
“Nothing.” He saw that he had been inattentive and hurriedly asked her the proper questions, about her health, her parents, her job. As they went into the living-room he had noticed Bedelia’s workbasket on the small table beside the couch. And his eyes sought the what-not where the ornaments stood as Bedelia had arranged them. There, on the ebony board, crouched the three monkeys who neither saw, heard, nor spoke evil.
“How’s Bedelia? Is her cold better? What a lot of illness you’ve had in the house this winter.”
“She’s got a headache. I’m afraid she won’t be down for lunch.”
“What a shame! Headaches are such a nuisance.” “Are you cold, Nellie? What about a drop of sherry to warm you up?”
“At this hour!”
“I’m about to treat myself to a drink of cider brandy. Will you join me?”
“Charlie Horst, what’s got into you?”
“I got a bit of a chill this morning shoveling snow.”
“Well, if you do,” Ellen said.
This was the first time since he married Bedelia that Ellen had been alone with Charlie. Every minute was precious to her. While he went off to get their drinks, she wandered about the living-room. She felt fiercely alive and impatient as if something tremendous were about to happen. When she was with Charlie and other people were present, she had always to defend her pride. The result was a certain brusqueness which was not attractive. Now this was gone. She was tender, girlish, even a bit flirtatious. When Charlie handed her the sherry, his fingers brushed against hers. She gave him a look of extraordinary boldness, raised her glass and smiled.
Yet they had nothing to say to each other. Charlie stared as if he were hypnotized by a commonplace piece on the what-not, those three monkeys that dwelt in every curio cabinet. Ellen gave up trying to interest him and played a game. She dressed all the furniture in dust covers, rolled up the rugs, hung muslin bags over the paintings that used to hang on the living-room walls. She saw the room as it had been the last time she was alone here with Charlie, just two hours before he boarded the train that was to take him to New York and Colorado. He was mourning his mother at that time and Ellen had thought this was what prevented him from saying anything definite. She had been certain that all the indefinite things he had said in the past meant that he was counting as much as she upon their marriage. The room had been somber then, the walls covered in grasscloth and hung with Japanese prints, and in the corner where Charlie and Bedelia had their precious what-not, there had been an inlaid curio cabinet. Ellen remembered that Charlie had told her his plans for doing the house over, and to show that he was in earnest had torn off a strip of grasscloth.
It had been a warm day, the windows had been open, and Ellen had worn a white linen skirt and shirtwaist with eyelet embroidery. She saw it now as she had seen it that morning, saw leaves upon bare trees and grass on the snow-covered earth.
Mary announced lunch. That pulled Charlie out of his reverie. He looked at Ellen as if he were surprised to find her in the wing chair. She kept up her game and, when they were seated across from each other at the dining-room table, her heart beat so crazily that she held both hands over it in order to guard its secret.
“Look what we got,” Mary boasted.
Ellen looked down at the half-grapefruit decorated with a cherry. “How nice,” she said.
Mary had expected more. She thought grapefruit for lunch—and in January!—the ultimate luxury. “Mrs. Horst thinks it’s good for him. She thinks he ought to have fresh fruit every day.”
Charlie remembered what Ben had said about the happy husbands. Bedelia was good at her job as a wife, she knew all the tricks that make a home jolly and keep a husband comfortable. To her life with each husband she brought experience gained with his predecessor. Being a wife was her life’s work and she was far more successful at it than those good women who think because they have husbands they are safe and can treat men like servants or household pets. To Bedelia each marriage was a pleasure cruise and she an amiable passenger, always amused and amusing, always happy to share the fun, uninhibited by the fear that any relationship would grow too important, because she knew the cruise would soon be over, the relationship severed, and she would be free to embark on a new journey.
“You’re not listening,” Ellen said. She had started to tell him about her assignment in Winston. She was to interview a man who was celebrating his ninety-ninth birthday. “Imagine, Charlie, living until you’re that old and seeing your contemporaries all die and your family and friends, and even the people you didn’t like, and then the next generation and the next, the babies you saw christened when you were middle-aged grow old and die.”
Charlie was still inattentive. Ellen blushed. She could understand his having ceased loving her more readily than she could accept his rudeness. The only excuse she could make for his lack of courtesy was illness. His color was not good, she noticed, and his eyes were dull. Perhaps the attack last week had been more serious than he had said.
“Charlie!”
There was nervous appeal in her voice. It caught his attention. “What’s the matter, Nellie?”
“You. Are you ill, Charlie?”
“I’m feeling splendid. What’s on your mind?”
“You never did tell me exactly what was wrong with you last week.”
“Indigestion. I happened to faint, that’s why everyone thought it was serious.”
“You’re sure you’re all right?”
“Are you worrying, Nellie?” he asked indulgently.
“I’m glad you’re all right,” she said, and looked down at her plate so that he should not notice the color flooding her cheeks.
Mary came in with pancakes and sausage. She served them with unnecessary ritual, hovering over the table, waiting for praise. At last she left, saying, “Well, ring the bell if you want anything. I’ll be right there,” as if they didn’t know how to behave without Mrs. Horst.
They did not talk much. But their friendship was old and silence no burden. Ellen took out the packet of cigarettes, but Charlie had to be asked for a match before he noticed that she wanted to smoke.
She had to talk about it, to show off, as if the cheap cigarettes were compensation. “Aren’t you surprised?”
Charlie laughed. “What’s wrong about it if you enjoy it?”
Ellen laughed, too. “I shall have to write Abbie and tell her you’re not a prig after all.”
Two men were coming down the hill on snowshoes. Charlie’s back was toward the window.
“If you think smoking makes you seem less feminine, you’re wrong,” he said. “You’re always trying to make gestures, Nellie, and there’s no reason for it. You’re an independent woman because you go out and earn your living. And without acting as if you were bearing a cross.”
“I have no reason to complain. I enjoy it.” She watched a cloud of smoke drift toward the ceiling. “But men don’t like a girl to be to independent, do they? They don’t feel that she’s really female unless she needs a man to take care of her. Abbie and I talked it over quite a lot while she was here. The secret of Bedelia’s charm, Abbie says . . .”
The doorbell rang. Charlie did not stop to hear Abbie’s opinion of Bedelia. He was in the hall and opening the front door before Mary came out of the kitchen.
“Something’s got into ’em today. Her, too,” Mary told Ellen.
Charlie opened the door to Ben Chaney and a stout man.
“Mr. Barrett, Mr. Horst.”
Charlie nodded jerkily.
“Glad to know you,” muttered Barrett. His sagging cheeks were like deflated balloons, his mouth, the mouth Bedelia had imitated, a pocketbook with a strong clasp. Barrett’s eyes took in all the fittings of the house as he estimated the income of the owner.
Charlie said that he was having lunch and asked if they would join him.
“Thanks, but we’ve had ours.”
They followed Charlie into the hall. He noticed that Ben glanced toward the dining-room, saw Bedelia’s narcissus on the table and Ellen at Bedelia’s place.
“Perhaps you’d like a cup of coffee. You must be cold after that walk.”
“Not me,” Barrett said. “Where I come from it’s a lot colder than this. Matter of fact, I’m all heated up from the exercise.”
At the hall mirror Ben straightened his tie and smoothed his hair. “Barrett isn’t staying long. He’s got to leave again this afternoon, but he’s an old friend of Mrs. Horst’s and thought he’d like to say hello.”
“My wife has a headache. She’s lying down.”
Just then Ellen took it into her head to greet Ben. Remembering Abbie’s news, she stared boldly, trying to penetrate his disguise and find something of the detective in him.
“Won’t you go upstairs and see if Mrs. Horst will come down? Mr. Barrett is anxious to see her again.”
“What about your interview?” Charlie asked Ellen. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll be late?”
She looked at the big round watch strapped to her wrist, sighed and finished her coffee.
“Perhaps she’d prefer to have Barrett come up,” Ben suggested, glancing sideways at Ellen.
“I’ll go and see,” Charlie said. “Good-bye, Nellie. Don’t wait for me.”
He walked up the stairs lightly, his shoulders thrown back, his head high.
“That’s Charlie all over,” Ellen said as she came out of the dining-room. “Worries about my appointment for me. Never missed a train in his life, not even a streetcar. Will you excuse me?” She was annoyed because Ben had interrupted her conversation with Charlie and disappointed because Charlie had dismissed her so curtly. She went to the first-floor bedroom, washed her hands and put on her hat.
Mary was in the dining-room, clearing the table. She called a greeting to Ben, too, hoping that he would start a conversation and that she could tell him about her engagement. He said, “Hello, Mary,” and closed the dining-room door.
Charlie hurried down the stairs.
Ellen was coming out of the dining-room, pulling on her gloves. She stopped and watched while he joined the two men in the living-room.
Ben hurried toward him. Barrett shoved his bulk out of a low chair. Sunlight poured in through all the windows. It lay in gold patches on the rugs. In that clear light Charlie’s face was like damp clay.
He tried to say something, but his voice died in his throat. He swallowed painfully and stood there, a pitiful figure with his arms hanging limp, his shoulders sagging, his Adam’s apple working up and down.
“How is your wife?”
Charlie turned to Ben. A flush rose about his collar and the clayey hue of his face gradually changed to a strange purplered. A network of blue and red veins stood out against the glazed white of his protruding eyeballs. When at last he spoke, his voice was a steel file.
“My wife’s dead.”
His anger mounted. He raised both fists as if to strike Ben, and then he let them fall again and his hands dangled impotently from his sleeves. The moment was silent and frozen as if everything would stay as it was then, the furniture fixed forever in the same positions, the colors never fading, dust never gathering, the sunshine never quite falling in oblique panels from the windows, the curtains never to be drawn, Charlie and Ben, Barrett and Ellen, to keep these postures always, like figures carved out of marble or metal. The house rang with a silence that had more life to it than any sound. It was as if the clock had stopped and the river ceased flowing over the rocks.
Charlie’s shoulders drooped, the lids fell over his eyes, and he took a couple of steps forward, moving cautiously like a blind man. He held out his hand to Ben Chaney. As if that had been a signal, the others began to breathe again. Barrett’s head rolled on his wide collar like a joint rolling in a socket. Ben took something from Charlie’s hand and looked down at it.
Ellen said, “But she wasn’t ill. She had a headache.”
Charlie stumbled to the love-seat. His body caved into it. Ben followed and stood in an erect and vigilant position beside him.
“Suicide?” Ben asked, looking down at the pillbox which Charlie had given him.
Ellen seized the word and threw it back at Ben indignantly. “Suicide! How can you say such a thing? What makes you think it?”
Barrett started to speak, but Ben shook his head and raised his hand for silence.
“You must be crazy!” Ellen shouted at Ben.
“I’m not surprised,” was all he had to say. He went into the hall and closed the door before he used the telephone.
In the kitchen Mary sang as she washed the dishes. Barrett took a cigar out of his pocket, looked at it, looked at Charlie, and put it back. Ellen went to Charlie, crossing the room softly, stopping only on the rugs and avoiding the spaces between them. She did not speak nor touch him, but stood there with her head bent and her right hand in the fur-lined glove resting on the printed linen that Bedelia had chosen for the love-seat when she came from Colorado as Mrs. Charles Horst.
THE END