E. M. Delafield
E. M. Delafield was the pseudonym of Edmee Elizabeth Monica de la Pasture (later Dashwood) (1890–1943), who achieved a degree of literary immortality as the author of the witty and entertaining Diary of a Provincial Lady (1930). This semi-autobiographical journal of an upper-class woman, living in a Devon village but sometimes venturing further afield, was followed by three more books recording the Provincial Lady’s exploits.
Although known as a humorous writer, Delafield had a deep and abiding interest in criminology, and she was the author of Messalina of the Suburbs, a study of the Thompson-Bywaters case. She was close to Anthony Berkeley Cox, who shared her fascination with true crime. There are faint echoes in this story of one aspect of the Thompson-Bywaters case, and also of a novel written by Berkeley’s alter ego, Francis Iles, Before the Fact, which was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock as Suspicion.
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Everybody in the house, almost, liked him—and didn’t care very much about her. That was the truth of the matter. Naturally, I didn’t offer any opinion myself. A woman who takes in paying-guests has to keep most of her opinions to herself—particularly those that relate to her guests.
There was no denying that he was very easy to get on with, very pleasant and friendly, and on the whole quite good about settling up their account promptly.
Mrs Peverelli was ready enough to be friendly, in a manner of speaking, but her idea of being friendly was to talk about her miseries, and her poor health, and after a time people got tired of it, although one couldn’t help feeling sorry for her—she looked so white and frightened, with her great dark eyes, and rabbit mouth, and narrow, hunched shoulders.
When they first took the front first-floor room, Mr Peverelli had explained that his wife wasn’t strong and would often want her meals upstairs, and he was quite ready to pay a little extra for the trouble.
I agreed to that, of course, and asked if she was an invalid, or likely to get stronger.
He looked at me with those very brown eyes—regular Italian eyes they were, though I believe only one of his parents had come from Italy, and he’d never set foot there himself—and gave me that pleasant, taking smile he had, showing splendid white teeth.
‘Between ourselves, Mrs Fuller, there is nothing organically wrong with my wife at all. She’s seen one doctor after another, and they’ve all told me the same thing. It’s her nerves. Mind you, I don’t mean that she’s putting it on. Far from it. She really does feel all the miseries she complains of, and of course the more she diets, and lies awake, and worries about herself, the worse she feels. It’s a vicious circle.’
‘Surely,’ I said, ‘something could be done to help her.’
‘I’ve tried everything,’ he answered sadly. ‘She doesn’t feel up to housekeeping, so we haven’t got a home, and I’ve tried various places—we’re always moving about. She seemed to like the country at first, but she’s got tired of every place in turn. And, of course, it was lonely for her while I was away.’
He was a commercial traveller.
‘It’s lucky your job is what it is, though,’ I couldn’t help pointing out. ‘It isn’t everybody who can manage a change of locality.’
‘I know that, Mrs Fuller, and even in my case we have to keep within a certain radius of town. But now she’s got an idea that she wants to be in London, and to mix with people more. I hope she’ll make some friends here.’
I hoped so too. I had one or two very nice permanents in the house— a widowed Mrs Gordon with her little girl, Joan, and two ladies who worked every day at the Lister Institute, and a couple of single gentlemen, both middle-aged. They all got on very well together and often had a game of cards in the evenings or made up a party to go to the pictures.
Mrs Peverelli seemed ready enough to join in with them at first, although she wasn’t much of a Bridge player.
Mr Peverelli played a very good game and at the week-ends, when he was at home, he was always ready to make a fourth. He and his wife would be partners, and one thing we all of us liked about him was the way in which he put up with her bad play, never getting cross about it, and only pointing out, in a chaffing kind of way, some of her worst mistakes.
Many a husband, I used to think, wouldn’t have hesitated to haul her over the coals after she’d thrown away one good game after another.
But Mr Peverelli never did that.
He’d wait on her, too, coming down himself to the kitchen sometimes to say she fancied a cup of something or other, and offering to get it ready and take it up himself to save trouble.
I let him do it. He was quick and quiet, and I knew the girls had plenty to do without additional running up and down stairs.
Then one night, when he was away, something happened.
Mrs Gordon’s little girl, Joan, who’d been in bed three hours at least and ought to have been asleep, came running down into my kitchen in her pyjamas and dressing-gown, and said that Mrs Peverelli had sent her to ask for a cup of hot cocoa, because she couldn’t sleep.
‘Sent you!’ I exclaimed. ‘Why couldn’t she have rung her bell, I should like to know? Did she call out to you, or what?’
Joan slept in a small room on the landing, next door to the Peverellis.
‘I heard her,’ said Joan. ‘She was crying.’
‘Crying!’
‘Yes, really she was. I’ve often heard her before, but sometimes I go to sleep. But to-night it sounded so sad, that I—I got up. I thought I’d fetch mummie.’
‘Mummie’s out,’ I told her—for Mrs Gordon had gone to spend the evening with some friends.
‘I know, but I forgot. And when I opened the door it creaked, you know how it does, and she called me and so I went in.’
‘Well, you hop straight back to bed. You’ll catch your death of cold, a night like this!’
‘Can’t I wait and take her the cocoa?’
‘I’ll see to the cocoa,’ I said—shortly enough, for I was vexed. The idea of sending a little thing of seven years old running errands about the house at ten o’clock on a December night!
I made some cocoa and poured it into a covered jug and then I went upstairs with it. I didn’t grudge the trouble, or the time, but I thought Mrs Peverelli was a selfish woman and that it wouldn’t do her any harm to be told so.
She looked wretched enough, poor soul. Her face was glazed with crying, and she was one of those women who scatter powder all over everything in a bedroom, and leave soiled handkerchiefs lying about.
The room was a nice room, but she’d somehow made it look sordid and forlorn.
‘I’ve brought you the cocoa, Mrs Peverelli, but I’ve sent Joan off to her bed. It’s too late, and too cold, for a delicate child like that to be running up and down stairs. I’m afraid you’re not feeling well.’
‘No,’ she said—and I thought what a hunted look her eyes had—‘No, I don’t feel particularly well. And I can’t sleep.’
I suggested aspirin.
‘Nothing does me any good,’ she said. ‘It’s my mind, more than my body.’
And she began to cry again.
I begged her to try and brace herself. I told her that she’d a good deal to be thankful for, with her husband in a good job, and always ready to do what would please her, and no anxieties like poor Mrs Gordon, a widow obliged to work for herself and a child who wasn’t any too strong.
‘And,’ I couldn’t help adding, ‘your own health, if I may say so, would surely improve if you didn’t fret yourself so much over nothing.’
Rather to my surprise, she didn’t resent that.
‘It isn’t nothing,’ she said, in a kind of whisper. ‘You don’t know. I’m so frightened.’
‘What is it that frightens you?’ I asked, feeling as though I were trying to reason with a rather tiresome child.
She shivered, and cried a little more, and looked all round her with her poor, swollen eyes before her answer came. When it did, I don’t mind admitting that I was a bit startled.
‘I’m not safe,’ she whispered. ‘My life isn’t safe. There—there are people who want me out of the way.’
Well, as I’ve said, I was startled because, neurotic though I knew her to be, I hadn’t thought she was as near the border-line as all that.
‘You’ve been reading detective stories,’ I said. ‘You know very well you’re talking nonsense. Who should want you out of the way?’
Of course, she couldn’t answer that. So she poured out a whole flood of nonsense, about her being of no use to anybody, and having no friends, and people hating her because she was difficult, and nervous, and ‘they’ said she was always making scenes.
‘“They,”’ I repeated. ‘I don’t want to force your confidence, Mrs Peverelli, but you started this of your own accord. Who are ‘they?’ You don’t mean your husband, surely?’
She gave a sort of smothered shriek. It sounded to me very forced and unreal, like somebody play-acting.
‘You think he’s a good, kind husband to me, don’t you, Mrs Fuller? Everyone does.’
‘It’s not my business to offer any opinion on such a question, and I’m astonished you should ask it,’ I retorted. ‘But since you have asked it, I think you’re very lucky. Mr Peverelli is good-tempered, and patient—which is more than every man would be, in all the circumstances—and though I dare say he has his ways, like most gentlemen, I don’t think you’d find many would say you had much to complain of.’
‘You wouldn’t believe me, would you, if I told you that he’s tried, over and over again, to poison me?’
‘I wouldn’t believe you, Mrs Peverelli, and I should think you were either a very wicked, or a very silly, woman—or both—for letting yourself imagine such things, let alone saying them.’
She burst out crying again and threw herself back on the pillow.
‘Sometimes I know it isn’t true. I know I’m just what he says—morbid, and letting my imagination run wild. Oh, I think I shall go mad!’
She was twisting about, working herself into a state—but I was thinking of what her words implied.
‘You don’t mean to tell me, Mrs Peverelli, that you’ve accused your husband of trying to poison you? My, I wonder he hasn’t had you certified!’
‘He wouldn’t do that,’ she said wildly. ‘He wouldn’t do that. Locked away I shouldn’t be worth anything to him. But if I die first, he gets the money, and he’s free—free to marry somebody young, and pretty, and amusing.’
I was beginning to see daylight.
‘You’re one of these jealous wives, is that it? It’s a terrible thing, jealousy—that I do know—and doesn’t let you see anything straight or in its true proportions. But what you’ve just been saying is nonsense, and you know it.’
‘Then why was I ill, before we left Essex? Why are we always moving from one place to another so that I never have time to get to know anybody? Why is he always making me try new patent foods, and drinks to make me sleep?’
‘And why,’ I asked in my turn, ‘if you really believe the rubbish you’ve been talking, do you drink them?’
‘He stands over me. He makes me. But after I’d been so ill, before we left Essex, I wouldn’t touch anything he brought me. He knew why, though we never spoke of it.’
‘All this talk out of books isn’t getting us anywhere,’ I said. ‘You’re making up a kind of drama, Mrs Peverelli, with yourself at the centre of it, and it doesn’t take one of these psycho-analyst doctors to tell you that if you do that kind of thing long enough, you end by believing in your own imaginings. And where that leads to, I leave you to guess. Now honestly, don’t you know that this nonsense about being poisoned is none of it true? Such things just don’t happen.’
‘I keep on telling myself that,’ she answered, in a weak, exhausted kind of whisper. ‘Sometimes I look at him and I tell myself it isn’t any of it true. It just can’t be true.’
‘Of course it can’t,’ I told her. ‘Use your common sense. If you really believed it, why—you’d have left him. It’s surely the very first thing you’d have done.’
‘No,’ she said, rolling her eyes at me like someone on the stage. ‘You don’t understand. I love him.’
I had her then, I thought.
‘If you loved him, you wouldn’t believe things like that about him. And if you really believed them, you couldn’t still love him,’ I said, feeling I’d scored rather neatly. I was sorry for her, in a way, but her wild way of talking, like a schoolgirl trying to make herself sound like someone in a story, was irritating. It was against common sense, too.
‘Try and be rational,’ I advised her. ‘Poison isn’t at all easy to come by, in this country, and I can assure you that nobody tampers with the food in this house.’
She stared at me without saying a word, and I suddenly remembered how Mr Peverelli had sometimes come down and mixed her a hot drink himself.
As the thought crossed my mind I felt indignant—as though she’d infected me with her own silliness.
‘I’ve just made the cocoa for you with my own hands,’ I said hastily. ‘Drink it up, before it’s cold.’
I poured it out for her and she drank it, and thanked me.
Poor, silly, neurotic thing, I thought—and I felt sorry for her. But thinking it over afterwards, as I was bound to do, I felt much sorrier for him. Well I knew that if she’d work herself up like that with me, a comparative stranger, she’d make scenes—much worse and more often—with her own husband.
Two days later he was back, for the week-end.
I must say it gave me a queer feeling to think of seeing them together, after what she’d said. But it was just as usual.
Mrs Peverelli looked ill and nervous, as she always did, and Mr Peverelli was cheerful and ragged her a little—but not too much.
He was in very good form at tea on Sunday afternoon, and told some funny stories that amused everyone very much. Only his wife didn’t laugh with the others, but just sat back in an armchair, with her eyes half-closed.
Mrs Gordon said to me afterwards:
‘She’s a kill-joy all right, isn’t she?’ and I had to agree that she was.
‘But,’ I said, ‘I don’t think she’s wholly responsible for her moods. Neurotic, that’s what she is, and full of fancies. She invents dramatic situations, if you know what I mean, and goes on brooding over them till she begins to believe they’re really true.’
‘What sort of situations?’ Mrs Gordon asked.
When I told her she was shocked.
‘And he’s so nice and patient with her!’ she said. ‘What a horrible woman.’
I told her she mustn’t let it go any further, and she promised she wouldn’t.
Only her manner towards Mrs Peverelli was rather cold afterwards, and she was more friendly towards him. Partly, I suppose, because she felt very sorry for him, and partly because he was kind to little Joan, making a fuss of her and sometimes bringing back a toy or a few sweets for her.
Just before Christmas something happened.
Mr Peverelli came down to the kitchen, as he’d sometimes done before, and he’d got a cardboard container in his hand with one of his favourite patent foods.
‘I believe it’ll help my wife to sleep, and she’s in a very nervous, highly strung mood to-night,’ he said, his usually cheerful face wearing a worried look.
I held out my hand for the packet.
‘If I may have the jug, and a spoon, and take some water from the kettle—’ he began.
‘I’ll do it, Mr Peverelli.’
‘But you’re busy,’ he said.
‘No,’ I said, ‘I can do it.’ And I did.
He just thanked me and took it upstairs.
The next morning was Christmas Eve.
Joan was to have a little Christmas Tree, and her mother and I dressed it in the evening after she’d gone to bed. Mr Peverelli came into the sitting-room and he’d brought some of those coloured glass balls and little ornaments for the tree, and a lot of crackers.
‘He is a kind man!’ said Mrs Gordon, after he’d gone. ‘Joan’ll be delighted, and don’t they make a difference to the look of the tree!’
We’d only had cotton-wool and coloured paper and a couple of gilt stars, to decorate it, besides candles.
‘They’re pretty,’ I agreed. ‘Look at that red globe—and the string of green balls. I’ve always liked this kind of thing, though I know it’s trumpery.’
We were a small party, because everyone except the Peverellis and Joan and her mother went away to spend Christmas.
It was on Boxing Day that Mr Peverelli told me he was very much afraid they’d have to move again. His wife’s nerves were getting worse, and that always meant she wanted to try a change.
‘I’m very sorry, Mrs Fuller,’ he said wistfully. ‘You’ve made us very comfortable here. But haven’t you noticed that she’s been less well lately? More—how shall I put it—more inclined to get worked up over nothing?’
He looked at me quite pleadingly.
‘I think she lets herself go, Mr Peverelli, if I may say so without unkindness. Lets herself—fancy things.’
He nodded his head.
‘I thought so,’ he said.
The very next day they suddenly went—Mr Peverelli paying me the extra week in lieu of proper notice, and saying how sorry he was.
I was helping Joan to put away the things from her tree at the time, and I didn’t want to go into any of it before the child. Besides, if they’d decided to go, there really was nothing I could say.
And I was sorry for him—he seemed so distressed and helped us roll the things up in tissue paper, very kindly, before going off to his packing.
He came down later to get her a hot drink before the journey, and I told him I was sorry they were going.
‘So am I,’ he said. ‘So am I, Mrs Fuller.’
Mrs Peverelli, when they went off, looked worse than ever—sallower and more frightened.
She hardly said a word to anybody.
Just as the taxi moved off I remembered that he’d left no address, in case any letters came—but it was too late then.
However, he’d promised to let me hear from them.
Not that I set much store by that.
I went up to the first-floor front room, and couldn’t help remembering the night I’d gone up to Mrs Peverelli and she’d poured out all that hysterical rubbish.
I looked round the room, and it seemed as if they’d taken everything.
Something caught my eye, gleaming in a corner, and I stooped down. It was a tiny fragment of—what was it? For a minute I couldn’t think of what the brilliant colour reminded me.
Then I remembered Joan’s tree, and the glass balls.
It seemed as though one of them had got smashed up in the Peverellis’ room, and I looked round for the other pieces to have them swept up, knowing what fine powdered glass can do.
But I never found them.