She Died a Lady (13 page)

Neither Craft nor I moved.

‘Crying … I was going to say like a baby. But babies don’t cry that way. It was that horrible kind of shaky sobbing, like as if he was sick and couldn’t get his breath. It’s pretty awful, hearing a man cry like that. It goes right through you. Once or twice he’d hit his fist against the side of the car.’

(Lost soul, damned soul, whoever you were.)

‘And I was scared and wanted to cry too. But I thought, “Oh, you son of a so-and-so? You wouldn’t be crying like that about
me
,” and I hated him and kept quiet. Barry’s like a kid; he’s only twenty-five; I’m twenty-eight. There wasn’t time to think about much. I heard him pottering around, and going upstairs once, and a key in a lock. Then he got into the car, and started it up, and we backed out. I thought, “My God, we’re going to see the floosie; and here I am stuck in the rumble-seat.”’

Belle paused, trying to laugh a little. The brandy had taken hold and was keeping her fairly steady, but she was far from being well.

Craft said quietly:

‘Listen, miss. I want you to be careful about this. You’re sure it
was
a man you heard?’

Belle’s expression grew vaguely puzzled. ‘Sure thing. I thought it was Barry. Naturally.’ Again she paused. Her eyes widened. ‘Wait a minute! Look! Are you trying to tell me it might have been the floosie?’

‘I was only …’

Now she was even more thoroughly scared.

‘If I’m shooting my mouth off and not doing justice to Barry –’

‘Please, miss. It wasn’t the floosie, if that word means what I think it does. I just want to know this. You only heard somebody crying, and walking about. You didn’t hear anybody speak?’

‘No. But if it wasn’t Barry or the floosie, who else could it have been? Look. What’s going on here? Why are you two looking so funny?’

‘If you’ll just go on with your story, miss, the doctor’ll give you another drink of brandy.’

‘No, the doctor won’t,’ I said. ‘This young lady’s not well. She’s going back to Lyncombe, where we can get her some food and look after her.’

‘I’m all right,’ Belle insisted. She made an unsteady pout with her lips, smiled, and put down the flask-cup on the ottoman. ‘I
want
to tell it. Because I’m coming to the part I don’t understand and can’t understand.

‘The car backed out, as I said, and started off. The road was pretty bumpy, but I was all curled up on the rumble-seat and it didn’t jar me much. I was only thinking what a God-awful sight I’d be when I had to get up again, specially my hat.’

She touched her hand to her head, vaguely.

‘Then we got on a smooth road, and seemed to be going miles and miles. I think we were going uphill part of the time, but I’m not sure. There was a little ventilator on each side, down by the floor, but I couldn’t see anything except a little moonlight going past.

‘After that the road got bumpy again. It was much colder, too. I could feel the draught coming in and getting me round the ankles. We were going downhill a little; I was pretty sure of that from the way I had to brace myself. All of a sudden – just like that – we started to bump and jar so much that I banged my head against the side. My hat was awful; the veil had come all crooked; and my fur and handbag had slipped down on the floor.

‘I knew we weren’t on the road at all, because you could hear some sort of dry grass go
whush
against the wheels. There was a cold kind of mist, too; I could smell it. On we went, and I was trying to brace myself, and wanting to scream out at Barry, when …

‘Well, the car slowed down. Barry – or somebody – changed gears. The door of the car opened, and I wondered what the dumb cluck was doing: opening a door with the car moving. It closed again in a second, so I supposed he’d got things under control, when we started forward again like sixty. Whiz! Just like that, and on going as smooth as grease. This was only for a couple of seconds, because we stopped as though something kept trying to push us back.

‘It was like being on a feather-bed, only not quite so steady. I got the horriblest kind of idea that there wasn’t anything under us. Then I heard the sounds: little gulpy sounds like air-bubbles, all around us. They sound
human
, like live things eating at you, and I heard one noise exactly like a belch. There was a smell, too.

‘Then the car began to sink. It wasn’t much movement, but you could feel it inside you. I reached down on the floor to find my handbag – I don’t know why – and some sort of oozy stuff came through the little ventilator and touched my hand. Next the other little ventilator was stopped up, and I was in the dark. All of a sudden the whole car started to shake, and the front of it dropped about six inches, with the gulpy sounds getting louder all the time. So help me, that was the first time I caught on.’

Belle Sullivan stopped, held her shoulders stiff against trembling, and gripped the edges of the ottoman.

Superintendent Craft nodded.

‘I see, miss,’ he agreed grimly. ‘Quicksand.’

B
ELLE
nodded in reply, winking her eyes very rapidly. ‘I knew we were near Exmoor, naturally.’ She swallowed hard. ‘And I’d read
Lorna Doone
when I was a kid, or at least I’d heard about it. But I didn’t think there really were such things. Not really honest-to-God, I mean, and away from the movies.’

Craft snorted.

‘They’re real enough, all right,’ he assured her. ‘Unless you know most parts of that moor, stay off it. Oh, if you must go, follow the moor-ponies. They never make a mistake. Isn’t that so, Doctor?’

I agreed with some vehemence. I have had to learn a good deal about Exmoor in the course of my professional life, but I don’t like that windy, gloomy waste to this day.

‘The next part was the worst,’ said Belle, ‘though it didn’t last long. I can’t tell you how I got the top of that rumble-seat open. At first I thought Barry had turned the handle and locked me in. I was as horribly cramped as though I’d been doing marathon-dancing. And there must have been less air than I’d thought, inside there. When I got the lid up, and tried to stand on the leather seat, I was so dizzy I almost fell over the side into the bog.

‘I must have been a little bit cock-eyed. I screamed and screamed and screamed. But nobody answered me. And there was nobody in the front seat.

‘Don’t ask me where I was! There was a white mist with the moon behind it – you couldn’t see a dozen feet – and it was so cold I could feel the sweat on my skin. It’s funny what you think about at a time like that. I was furious because there
wasn’t
anybody in the front seat: the dope had just jumped out and let her rip, of course.

‘I remember the foggy stuff on the windshield. I remember what the upholstery looked like; and the clock and speedometer and petrol-gauge on the dashboard; and two little booklets like road-maps, one blue and the other green, stuck into the side pocket. But
he’d
gone. And there was the quicksand, sort of grey and brown and horrible, all spreading like oatmeal and pulling everything down in the dark. It moved, you see.
It moved
.’

‘Steady, miss! There’s nothing to be alarmed about now!’

Belle put her hands over her face for a moment.

‘So I stood up on the edge of the car’ – she spoke through her hands – ‘and I jumped.’

Craft was looking rather white.

‘God Almighty, miss,’ he muttered, ‘you’ve got your nerve right with you. That took a bit of doing. And you landed on solid ground?’

‘Well’ – she lowered her hands – ‘I’m here. Aren’t I? Ain’t I? Whatever it is you say? I’m not out there dead under I don’t know how many feet of sand, with that stuff still moving on top of me.’

Her lower lip quivered when she smiled.

‘I’ll tell you something else, too. You know that old phonus-bolonus about your whole past life going in front of you when you’re just about to die? Well, it doesn’t. But I’ll tell you what does happen. I thought: “He can’t be far away. He must have heard me yelling. But he’s standing there letting me go down.”

‘And I thought: “He must have known I was in that rumble-seat.” My cigarette-stubs were scattered all over the floor in the studio. I was wearing perfume, too: one he always liked. “Well,” I thought, “this is as good a way of m-murdering a wife as any.”’

There was a long silence.

‘When I jumped out of that car, believe it or not, I saw Barry in every one of the ways I’ve seen him since we were married. He’s well-meaning: he’s childish; he’s an awful dope; he’s vain of his looks; he’s fond of dough. The next thing I knew, I’d landed. I didn’t feel sand grabbing me, like I expected. I felt ground. I crawled a little farther along, the way you do when you come out of water, and then I passed out. When I came to, I was locked in here.’

Belle lifted one shoulder. Her voice was almost casual when she added:

‘What burns me up now is that I left my handbag, with compact and lipstick and money and everything, back in that car. I left my fur and my hat too. But that’s all. Gimme another cigarette.’

Craft and I exchanged glances. Before very long she would have to be told the reason why her husband couldn’t have been the person who drove her on Sunday night. A very uneasy superintendent coughed, so to speak, in my direction as he produced cigarettes and matches. Belle Sullivan forced the decision herself.

‘Now I’ll tell you why I’m inflicting all this dreary stuff on you. Got that cigarette?’

Craft struck the match.

Its bright yellow flare contrasted with the deepening dusk. As Belle inhaled greedily – the smoke must have made her head swim, and I wanted to protest – you could see the gleam of tears against match light. You could see the soft line of the cheek tremble. Yet her voice remained conversational and even casual.

‘I discovered something else when I was making that jump,’ she told us. ‘I’m not in love with Barry. And that’s straight.’

‘I’m rather glad to hear it, miss.’

‘Oh? You think I’ve been a sap too?’

Craft was unhappy. ‘If you’d just talk to the doctor about these matters, miss –’

‘The way I figure it out is this,’ said Belle. ‘I’ve been kicked around just about long enough. Don’t you agree?’

‘Well …’

‘You tell me it wasn’t Barry who did that business. I don’t know whether I believe you or not. You’ve got something up your sleeves, both of you.’

‘Now, miss –!’

‘But I can’t see
why
Barry should have done that, even if he did want to get rid of me. I mean, that car cost seven or eight hundred pounds. It’s not his property. He’ll have to make good to the company, and he can’t. Anyway, if he wanted to get rid of me, why bring me back and throw me in here while I was unconscious?’

‘Exactly!’ agreed Craft.

‘But look. If he didn’t do that, what
is
the guy doing? Why hasn’t he been out here? Why did he
let
somebody go and sink his car, with a key to the ignition and everything? And now, you tell me, he’s gone back to London!’

‘Not exactly to London, miss.’

‘But you said he had!’

‘No. I said he’d gone away.’

‘Where?’

Craft turned to me and spread out his hands. It had to be faced. It was a risk; but if we refused to tell her she would become hysterical, and that would be worse. After debating it, I picked up the flask-cup from the ottoman, poured out still a third brandy, and handed it to her. She drank it as though she hardly saw it.

‘Mrs Sullivan, your husband and this … floosie,’ I said.

‘Well?’

‘I’m afraid you’re never going to see her. And, if you do see him again, you must get ready for a shock.’

‘They shot themselves and chucked themselves over a cliff on Saturday night,’ Craft blurted out. ‘They’re lying down on a slab in the morgue now. Sorry, Mrs Sullivan; but that’s how it is.’

I turned away and began to make an intensive study of the other side of the room. Each piece of furniture for this room must have been brought secretly, at one time or another. You could see Rita Wainright’s hand in this. The carpet on the floor, the crimson velvet curtains which could be drawn across boarded windows, to shut out a real world for an imaginary. In one corner stood an ornate folding screen, and behind it – I went to look – a washstand with pitcher, bowl, and towels. Sordid? Well, yes. But Rita was Rita.

The thing which occupied me, with intense concentration, was what we should do with Belle Sullivan. Evidently she had brought no suitcase. Molly Grange would be only too glad to take her in. But a vision of Steve’s face rose up against this. No: she had better come to us. Mrs Harping would take care of her.

So I stood there, with bitter black tragedy in my mind, and only wished I could take a drink out of the flask in my hand.

‘It’s all right, Doctor,’ observed Belle. ‘You can turn round now. I’m not going to throw a fit on you.’

Our pocket Venus was still sitting on the ottoman, one leg tucked under her, taking deep draws at the cigarette. The grey eyes looked at me steadily.

‘I just want to ask you a couple of questions about this woman he was running around.
Was
she?’

‘Was she what?’

‘A floosie?’

‘No. She was the Canadian wife of a professor of mathematics.’

‘What was her name?’

‘Rita Wainright.’

‘Good-looking?’

‘Yes.’

‘High-hat?’

‘Not particularly. Just an ordinary professional family, that’s all.’

‘Any mon … No;
that
won’t do,’ argued Belle, squeezing up her eyes, ‘if they bumped themselves off. How old was she?’

‘Thirty-eight.’

Belle took the cigarette out of her mouth.

‘Thirty-eight?’ she echoed incredulously. Then her voice grew suddenly shrill. ‘Thirty-eight? Jesus Christ! Was he nuts?’

Superintendent Craft started as though someone had stuck him with a pin. This shocked him perhaps more than anything he had heard yet. He had been bending gloomy brows on the girl, ready to utter a word of praise for her fortitude, and now he didn’t know what to say. But in Belle Sullivan this seemed neither callousness nor the brandy talking. It was sincere bewilderment, boiling up under every other emotion, because she knew her husband so well. I emphasized it.